The beauty of some of the new reactor designs is that they use old radioactive waste as their fuel source. By some people's estimates we have about two centuries worth of fuel for the energy needs of the entire United States just in our existing stockpiles of nuclear waste. Not only would we not have to mine additional fuel, we would be significantly reducing the amount of waste that we need to store.

Here's a TED talk that covers the subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I

By the end of life of these new reactors, solar should be cheap, efficient and plentiful.

Storage is cheap. The manual process of scanning each of these documents is the costly part. It is thus better to scan at the maximum resolution and quality possible so that they never have to do it again. They may even be scanning multiple passes with different methods (visible, IR, etc.). 1.2GB per page is not unreasonable, even if it uses a lossless compression scheme.

This looks like an evolution of what FingerWorks was building before being purchased by Apple. Fingerworks multitouch technology led to the iPhone, macbook multitouch trackpad, etc. Their Frogpad product: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qg8IB64yu8

Start small. Shared hosting is probably fine unless you need the features of a dedicated Virtual Private Server. Some things that used to require dedicated VPS can now be outsourced to services like Amazon S3 and MySQL hosting. Shared Hosting: I like Dreamhost.com for all my PHP/MySQL related sites. They offer SSH accounts, unlimited number of domains for a shared hosting account, IMAP and preconfigured webmail, cron and a bunch of other goodies. Support is decent but not great. Using the promo code "JMK" will get you $50 off if you sign up. They are already very cost effective for what you get, with or without the promo code. VPS: Don't go with dedicated hardware, choose a VPS. I really like the service provided by MediaTemple.net. Their knowledgebase and support staff are top notch and their prices are reasonable. If and when you grow to need multiple servers they can set you up with your own private network. They do not charge for traffic between these machines which can save you alot of money. Do not go this route unless you are comfortable with linux administration. You will be responsible for maintaince of the machine. General Tips: Use a different registrar than your hosting company. This ensures that they don't give you the run around if you ever need to switch hosts. I foolishly used Network Solutions several years ago and when I went to change hosts that continually hung up on me on the phone, didn't answer my emails, and eventually let me domain name expire, at which point they said they could get it back for around $200 instead of the already inflated normal price of $25 to renew. Use a version control system for you code and keep your own regular backup of your site. You can setup a cron job to run daily / weekly backups of important data and have them sent to another hosting provider or online storage. Check them occasionally and make sure they contain all the right data.

I used to make kiosks for museums and other public areas. Do not underestimate how much abuse these things get from the public. I would highly recommend researching kiosk enclosures and ensuring that the hardware, touch screen and pc, will fit in whatever enclosure suits your needs best. Our kiosks were constantly moved around. Access to ethernet wasn't always an option so we often went wireless. Many times we would develop software so that it stored all content locally on the kiosk. We would create an admin program that would push any content changes to the devices. The devices were then able to run even if the network/internet went down. It also gives you a speed boost since you aren't streaming 20 video feeds across ethernet/wireless. Try finding a local interactive media company that has kiosk experience. It will save you headaches in the long run, even if you only pay them to meet with you once or twice to hash out your ideas and ask for recommendations.