I have heard of the porous asphalt, although I'm not aware of it being widely used around here. The only place I actually know where it's been used is on a Royal Farms parking lot (to those without Royal Farms, think 7-Eleven, Highs, Wawa, Circle-K, etc.). There's a sign on one of the light posts that announces porous asphalt was used to pave the parking lot, and warns not to dump anything on it.
On a side note, there is another asphalt variation that they used to use in Baltimore City, but I think they don't use it too much anymore. This asphalt variation incorporated pieces of recycled glass in the aggregate material. Obviously, something was done so that the glass wouldn't puncture tires. The effect of the glass was that, at night, the glass reflected light which seemed to make the road look like the road itself was lit. It seemed to me, thought, that this effect would have been more useful where there was less ambient light to begin with.
On a different side note, there's a stretch on Rt. 100, about a quarter-mile long, where between the fast and middle lanes, there are reflectors embedded in the road in the spaces between the white lines. Reflectors embedded in the roadway are not unusual here, but what makes these noteworthy are that there are about ten of them between each white line dash. But what's even more unusual is during the last several white line dashes, instead of embedded reflectors, there are actual little glowing things. I don't know what they actually are but they look like blue LEDs. And since there are about ten of these between each white line dash, they go by so fast as to give a very erie effect. This is the only place I have ever seen this and it only lasts a few hundred feet, or less (for the lights). There's nothing special about that part of the road, it's just like any other roadway as far as I can tell. The only thing even remotely unusual is that it happens to be about directly under a common landing path for airplanes to BWI, and the planes are only a few hundred feet AGL at that point, but I can't imagine any connection between this and the little glowing lights on the road between the white line dashes.