With the notion of the paperless office fading into history, researchers from the University of Washington are working to more closely integrate the paper world — still on the rise — with the world of electronic data.

It’s not crackpots, or even eccentrics, who populate the fringes of aviation design. These are dedicated engineers and entrepreneurs who see a gap and wish to fill it, using technology that they have tweaked and honed, improved designs that may finally be optimal and strategies that big aero firms may simply have never thought of.

For those of you who think that playing cricket is a game for stuffy old British people, now comes a version for the rest of us.

An image scanner built into a piece of flexible plastic little bigger than a credit card has been developed in Japan.

Engineers at Michelin’s American technology center are envisioning a future in which vehicles will ride on what they call the Tweel, a combined tire and wheel that will never go flat because it contains no air.

A US physicist is lobbying for people to adopt his novel calendar in which every date falls on the same day of the week each year.

Here we are, nearly midway through the decade, and the tech landscape promises to be more interesting than ever. My predictions for 2005 (best enjoyed with a salt shaker handy):