In these economic times, cake shops can't afford to give out free samples of their baked goods. Absolutely not! The next best thing is to brainwash elevator riders into craving your cakes is with wallpaper that can be licked. Gross? Definitely. Desperate times call for crazy tricks.

Come 2014, the world's tallest building — the Ghost Protocol-famous Burj Khalifa — will no longer be able to also claim that it has the world's fastest elevators. That honor will go to the Shanghai Tower in China, which will stand 2,073 feet with 128 floors, and have bullet-shaped elevators built by Mitsubishi that zip around as fast as cars.

Buildings are getting higher, and nobody wants to stand around waiting for an elevator. Hitachi aims to fix that with its latest elevator, a 40.26 mph rocket that's the fastest in the world. It's installing the new 1,080 m/min lift...