Thanks to everyone who has viewed my bicycle design Squidoo lens over the past few weeks. When I first created it 3 weeks ago, my lens rank was 26,072, dead last I assume. Over the weeks, the rank has moved up steadily. Today the BD lens is ranked 237th overall and 17th in the recreation category. Of course, I want to break into the top hundred and reach the #1 spot in the recreation category, so keep viewing and, if you have a Squidoo account, please rate my lenses. The links to all three are in the side bar (you will see that the racing one still needs to be updated with some content). If any of you have any suggestions of old blog posts to spotlight or additional links to feature, please let me know.

Elsewhere on the web, Bicycle Retailer points out that FSA received a 2006 Fiets Rai Innovation award for its MegaExo Ceramic bottom bracket. The award is given to the most innovative products at the Dutch show.

RoadBikeRider.com points to another story from BRAIN. The headline is “Road Market Still Strong, But How Long Can it Last?” Scroll down a bit to see the story here. I agree with the RBR editors that the high-end road market will remain strong for the foreseeable future, but I firmly believe that bike companies also need to get serious about transportation oriented bike designs. What do you think?

A few interesting projects, some of which are still in the prototype stage, are featured on the Trek ACG (Advanced Concept Group) pet projects webpage. Click around to see some of the other ACG pictures and articles on that section of the company’s website. It is a nice little peak into the product development department at Trek.

Last but not least, take a look at the Shimano Coasting group if you haven’t seen it already. I have been meaning to do a post about this group since I first saw it on Bicycle Tech a couple weeks ago. Several of the commenters to the Bike Portland post don’t seem to like the look of the prototype group. Personally, I think that it could be pretty neat if shown in context on the right bike. I wouldn’t put it on my road bike, but hey, I am not really part of the target demographic. I know I sound like a broken record when I say that the bike industry really needs to make an effort reach out to new customers. This is a great example of Shimano doing just that.