Parans Natural Lighting

"A room is not a room without natural light. Natural light gives mood to space by the nuances of light in the time of the day and the seasons of the year as it enters and modifies the space."
Louis Kahn

A Swedish company has developed a natural lighting system which transports sunlight into internal rooms using fiber optic cables that are connected to a collecting panel, placed on the roof of a structure. Internally the cables are connected to a luminaire block which has a mixture of parallel light beams and ambient light. The system can create a natural atmosphere in a room absent of exterior fenestration, re-establishing a connection with the outside environment. The product has reminiscence of more primitive methods such as reflecting light though mirrors similar to a periscope.
Technical info
http://www.parans.com/Technical%20Information.pdf
Site
http://www.parans.com

Virtual Earth

Microsoft have released an aerial and satellite mapping service similar to google earth, it has some different features such as photobased elevations on the 3d cities and birdseye views for many locations enabling you to view the same site from four different angles in 2d mode. It also maps some locations at a higher zoom definition than google earth.
http://maps.live.com/

Micro landscape

Swiss landscape architects Tur & Partner have designed an inventive business card to market their ideas. It is filled with seeds which eventually sprout through the small holes to create a minature landscape.
http://www.turpartner.ch/

You Know You're An Architecture Student When...

You can live without human contact, food or daylight, but if you can't print it's chaos.
Lots more at:
http://pintday.org/funny/architecturestudentwhen