Google reportedly closing in on $1.3 billion deal for Waze traffic app Mobile

Last month news leaked that Facebook might acquire crowdsourced navigation / traffic / mapping app Waze, but now two papers in Israel say Google is about to close the deal. Globes and Calcalist both peg the potential sale price at $1.3 billion US, with the company's development team remaining in Israel after the sale and not moving to the US. Where they will work from is cited by Globes as one reason why negotiations may not have worked out with Facebook, along with the price tag. For those unfamiliar with Waze, the app generates mapping data in real-time based on its nearly 50 million users and reports of accidents or traffic jams.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 and 8.0 spotted in golden brown hues

Do you wish Samsung would color its newer Android tablets in a shade other than washing machine white? You may be in luck: @evleaks claims to have images of both the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 and 8.0 in what's billed as a "gold-brown" tint. There aren't any details of when these earthier variants could launch, or if other colors would tag along. Knowing Samsung's willingness to offer a rainbow-like selection of devices, though, brown might not arrive alone.

Sony's Google TV box gets a refresh, NSZ-GS8 adds voice search ready remote HD

Sony has just announced a new Google TV set-top box, the NSZ-GS8. Apparently replacing last year's NSZ-GS7 that lead the charge of second generation ARM-powered Google TV hardware, this one appears to be quite similar. As seen in the picture above (check after the break to see the old remote for comparison) it adds a microphone this time around, necessary to enable the voice search features added to the Google TV platform last fall. We're not seeing any other changes, but we'll let you know if we hear of any differences. In lieu of actual new devices, Google TV fans can at least take heart that Sony is continuing development on the platform -- good to hear after the NSZ-GP9 Blu-ray player that was also announced last year ended up being cancelled prior to its release. Like its predecessor, the NSZ-GS8 carries a sticker price of $199 and should reach stores by early July.

Sony NSZ-GS7 remote:

Inhabitat's Week in Green: 310MPH Maglev train, full-color 3D printer and a car that boasts an astounding 1,300MPG

Lego just made an announcement that will have geeks around the world salivating: Beginning in September, the company will release a 1-foot-tallStar Wars Ewok Village, complete with tree houses, rope ladders and of course, our favorite furry friends. That's not all -- this week the toy maker also unveiled plans for a new Lego museum in Denmark that looks like a big pile of toy bricks. In other blocky building news, the world's first carbon-negative building brick was just unveiled in the UK, and Studio Liu Lubin created an awesome set of stackable Tetris-style micro houses in China. And in green transportation news, Tesla announced that it will add a fourth car -- a compact SUV -- to its electric vehicle lineup, and Japan just unveiled a new prototype of its ridiculously fast 310MPH maglev train.

Think your Prius gets good gas mileage? A team of students at Brigham Young University designed a new car that can travel 1,300 miles on a single gallon of fuel. And speaking of fueling up, a new charger that can juice up an electric bus in 15 seconds flat is being tested in Switzerland. Siemens is set to harvest energy from speeding trains by installing a new regenerative-braking energy storage system on the TriMet Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Transit Line in Portland. German scientists createda new lithium-ion battery that can maintain its charging capacity for 27 years. And in Chicago this week, architects and car designers participated in the "Big Ideas in Small Spaces Webcast," and you can watch the entire talk on Inhabitat.

In other green design news, Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto's cloud-likeSerpentine Gallery Pavilion just opened to the public in London. Architecture firm SOM is the latest high-profile firm to promote building skyscrapers from wood with the publication of the "Timber Tower Research Project." Chinese counterfeiters are at it again -- this time, it's Florentijn Hofman's six-story-tall inflatable yellow duck that they're copying, and Hofman is reportedly not pleased about it. Architecture firm Woods Bagot recently used 200 orange traffic cones to make a big prickly light installation. In green textile news, Nike and NASA teamed up with USAIDto launch a competition that calls for the creation of new sustainable materials. Finally, Inhabitat sat down to chat with botObjects founders Martin Warner and Mike Duma about ProDesk3D, the world's first full-color 3D printer, and we took at a look at PreNatal 3D -- a company that creates framed figurines from ultrasound scans.