Last week I whipped up a batch of watermelon cookies. The recipe called for watermelon, of course, along with sugar, flour, an egg white, and a few other ingredients. The directions were pretty simple: stir the watermelon gently in a saucepan filled with sugar water over medium-high heat, add in the egg white, and mix in flour, baking powder and salt. The result was barely edible. It looked more like a watermelon omelette muffin than a cookie, and tasted like a sugary, gloopy nightmare.

Last week I whipped up a batch of watermelon cookies. The recipe called for watermelon, of course, along with sugar, flour, an egg white, and a few other ingredients. The directions were pretty simple: stir the watermelon gently in a saucepan filled with sugar water over medium-high heat, add in the egg white, and mix in flour, baking powder and salt. The result was barely edible. It looked more like a watermelon omelette muffin than a cookie, and tasted like a sugary, gloopy nightmare.

The Argentinian summer Sun beat down on the Buenos Aires city circuit as the cars approached the penultimate turn. It was February 18, 2017, the Saturday of Formula E's South American weekend, and two cars jostled for first place. The second car, though, was being too aggressive. Nearing the corner's apex, the vehicle misjudged its position and speed. The vehicle slammed into the blue safety walls surrounding the track. As the wreckage crumpled to a stop, a detached wheel rolled freely across the hot asphalt. The scene was eerie: though the marshals were alerted to the smash, the usual scramble to rush paramedics to the scene didn't happen.

Google is moving onto Uber Technologies Inc.'s turf with its own ride-sharing service in San Francisco that would help commuters carpool at far cheaper rates, according to a person familiar with the matter, jumping into a booming but fiercely competitive market. Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., GOOGL -0.60 % began a pilot program around its California headquarters in May that enables several thousand area workers at specific firms to use the Waze navigation app to connect with fellow commuters. It now plans to open the program to all San Francisco-area Waze users this fall, the person said, with hopes of expanding the service if successful. Waze, which Google acquired in 2013, offers real-time driving directions based on information from other drivers. Unlike Uber and its crosstown rival Lyft Inc., both of which largely operate as on-demand taxi businesses, Waze wants to connect riders with drivers who are already headed in the same direction.

Taking a vehicle to the race track to improve it has been a thing for almost as long as we've had cars. Henry Ford built his brand's name on his early racing exploits, and so have countless others. So it's natural that some of the people interested in self-driving cars have been thinking about how the track can benefit this new technology. Joshua Schachter is one such person, and he's organizing the first autonomous track day, to be held on May 28th-29th at Thunderhill Raceway in Willow, California. Self-driving cars and racing are two of my favorite things, so I spoke to Schachter to find out more.

The arrival of bots to Facebook's Messenger app has the potential to transform how people communicate with brands, but analysts said the fight for consumers' attention in this emerging space is just beginning. "There will be a lot of excitement about the potential for these bots," said Macquarie analyst Ben Schachter. "We are somewhat more cautious." As the marketplace for apps rapidly matures -- most people spend 84% of their time in just five apps each month, according for Forrester -- companies will increasingly try to get user's attention via those most-popular apps. Facebook has a big advantage here, because brands and companies naturally want to be where users are, and Facebook's Messenger app currently has 900 million monthly active users and Facebook's WhatsApp has more than a billion monthly active users.