Amanda Schupak

1. Solicit Tips

Add a button from microfinance site Tipjoy.com to your Facebook page, blog or Web site to let your fans tip you for entertaining them. Or encourage your Twitter followers to text-message you some coin: Tipjoy tracks payment "tweets" (usually a dollar or so) and transfers the money via PayPal.

Image courtesy GigaPan and the Chicago Office of Tourism

Try this: See that bright blue sign on the far wall? Can you read it? Double-click it. Can you read it now? Now move in again. And again.

This impressive panorama is actually a collection of 592 distinct photos, shot with a Canon Powershot with a 360mm zoom, and the help of a nifty gadget called the GigaPan Epic. Plop your camera into the device and it will automatically take between 20 and several hundred slightly overlapping pictures of a scene. The GigaPan software stitches them together for you into one massive, ultra-detailed, thousands-of-megapixels collage.

The Toy Industry Association's annual toy fair had some standout 21st century innovations. Some were creepy, like the Dora the Explorer doll whose hair actually grows when you play an online beauty game. And some were just plain cool. The best thing I got my hands on: A fully electronic version of the classic Rubik's Cube.

See below for details on the technology, plus exclusive video of one of the two existing prototypes.

Picking barbecue-flavor potato chips over salt-and-vinegar can be tough enough without having to choose between brands made with "natural flavors" and ones that are "artificially flavored." Natural flavors, you might think, are derived from the pure essence of a food's flavor, and as such are more authentic. But the term "natural" is misleading.

What will next year's science headlines bring? Popular Science predicts.

Read more of Popular Science's predictions for 2009.

Nothing inspires innovation like a seven-figure check, which is why more and more private and government sources are offering big money for creative technologies -- and plenty of Americans are rising to the challenge. The California company Scaled Composites won the $10-million Ansari X Prize in 2004 for its trips to suborbital space on SpaceShipOne, a feat that all but launched the private space industry. And in 2007, Carnegie Mellon University won the $2-million Darpa Urban Challenge, bringing us one step closer to a world in which cars drive themselves.

Want a new cellphone? Just press a button. What looks like painted artwork on the Hitachi W61H phone is actually a new E-Ink screen. Unlike LCDs that add bulk to a device, manufacturers can add these screens—just twice the thickness of a hair—as if they were stickers.