A case in point, I recently test drove the 2008 Hummer H2 through busy downtown streets and found it to be much smaller on the road and more maneuverable than I expected. From the outside it looks enormous, but drive the H2 and you might be surprised how “small” it really is.

At the far end of the spectrum, the small but larger-than-life Mazda2 won the World Car of the Year award during a ceremony held this morning at the 2008 NYIAS. It was chosen from a list of 39 original entries from across the globe. The Mazda2 was also voted onto the short-list of top three design finalists, together with the Audi R8 and Volvo C30.

Though not available in North America at this time, it may not be long before the mighty Mazda2 is spotted parked next to a Hummer H2 at the local grocery store. We can only hope!

The focus of Day Two at the 2008 NYIAS was on the future of automobiles. Mitsubishi Motors chose to take us on a journey of their past accomplishments as a way to set the table for what they have planned for the present and into the near future.

Working with GS Yuasa Corporation, Mitsubishi Corporation and Mitsubishi Motor Cars established a joint venture company, “Lithium Energy Japan” to manufacture high-capacity, high-performance lithium-ion batteries. The company projects the rear-midship mounted commuter will quick charge in as little as 30 minutes. Someday soon, the i MiEV may be coming to an outlet near you.

Hewlett-Packard scientists report that they have designed the theoretical fourth fundamental circuit outlined 37 years ago that could power tiny computers to work the way the brain does, reports The New York Times.

University of California-Berkeley professor Leon Chua years ago theorized mathematically that there should be a fourth circuit beyond resistors, capacitors and inductors. He called the fourth circuit a “memristor” for memory resistor, which would remember how much current had passed, reports News.com. But to this point, no one had actually been able to build one.

The discovery could not only lead to development of more energy-efficient machines, but also nano-size switches and memory that remembers where you were when the computer was shut off, according to Wired.

HP says it plans to bring the technology to market quickly

The CBS crime drama “CSI: NY” to air Wednesday night will be fictional, but the technology will be real, though not yet on the market, reports USA Today.

In the story, forensic scientists piece together loads of photos taken on camera phones of a prom held in a school gymnasium to help solve a murder. The technology, Microsoft’s Photosynth software, does just that. It analyzes multiple images for similarities and stitches them into a three-dimensional reconstruction. It’s due on the market later this year, the story says, though it’s not clear whether that will be a commercial or consumer application — or both.

Photosynth was used on a NASA Web site last summer showing the space shuttle Endeavour being prepped for launch, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Microsoft and the television show have an ongoing creative relationship. The show’s creator, Anthony E. Zuiker, saw the technology on one of his visits to Redmond and thought it was cool.

BBC News reports it has unearthed a plan in which fraudsters with stolen credit-card information would clone the information onto the magnetic strips of other cards, then use them in UK supermarkets to strip money from unsuspecting Americans.

One gang said it accessed the accounts of more than 2,300 Americans in one month and planned to make fake cards to be used overseas. It claimed to have acquired the information from gangs in the United States that say they have tapped the phone lines between banks and cash machines.

Central to the plan was to use the cards at supermarket self-service checkout stands, bypassing the risk that a store employee might spot the forged cards.

The story blames the slow uptake in the United States of chip-and-pin technology for enabling the thefts. The targeted supermarkets, however, said their systems automatically call the bank for authorization anytime a card is swiped rather than using chip-and-pin.