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Quarters From Hell [b3ta] Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
A picture is worth a thousand words, but you can read the rest here.
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
Illuminair is a very sweet idea, using a squeeze bulb to increase illumination instead of circutry.
As more air fills the lamp more of the fluorescent bulb is revealed. The resulting impression is that of being able to fill a room with light by simply moving air. [redferret]
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Don't you just hate it when your 52" flat panel TV is sitting idle on your wall? A big grey rectangle hanging there over the fire place. Don't worry. Detour DVD has three collections of motion graphics available on DVD designed to liven up that empty space, so your party guests won't end up watching Friends instead of mingling.
Posted by: StuCon | Comments (0)
Wait till your boss steps out, crank up the speakers and tune into Tokyoplastic's 'Opera Dude'. If you're new to Tokyoplastic, read the interview at myplasticheart, and stop by here for a chance to win your own 4" Vinyl Opera Dude.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
Last night's panel discussion, nicely moderated by Kimberly Oliver and featuring Paul Rowan, Mary McBride, Aric Chen, Carl Alviani, and Jason Miller, was a fun and affectionate evening hosted at Sublime and attended by some usual and some unusual suspects. The theme was potent enough and the panelists did their best to tackle the premise but the whole question of what "American Design" is (or should be, or might be) is a slippery beast for sure. The most interesting bits revealed themselves when panelists fought against the term entirely, and Mary McBride, Professor of Business and Public Policy at NYU, and Director of Design management Graduate Program at Pratt, brought in the big guns by questioning what the real metrics (and destiny) of American design are. There wasn't enough talk about the perceived value of design versus the real costs of design (human, fuel, waste, etc.), but at least the panelists owned up to the fact that, at least last night, they were talking about housewares & furniture rather than a broader spectrum of design or design thinking or design strategy. Still, some good commentary by the group, a couple impassioned questions/speeches from the audience, and a nice way to spend a gorgeous Wednesday evening in New York City. American design indeed. Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Featuring Howtoons illustrations and a lot of handholding, Instructables is a "step-by-step collaboration system that helps you record and share your projects with a mixture of images, text, ingredient lists, CAD files, and more...Show your colleagues how to operate a machine, show your friends how to build a kayak, show the world how to make cool stuff." We like the Pimped Out Megaphone Helmet. Not hardcore enough for you? Try the Metalworking Lathe. Even harder? Dare we link to the No-Sew Disco Gear? [lifehacker] Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Pol Oxygen, an Australian design magazine, has a nice photo gallery covering the recent London Design Week. Above is an object from the desigersblock show. Look for the Core77 photo gallery soon!
Posted by: StuCon | Comments (0)
I suppose a lot of Gotham stories end with the sentence, "...We end up driving back to Brooklyn with the back of our van dragging in the dirt," but at least in this case, it has to do with design.
BART: But sometimes when we go and do pickups, that number goes down to 10%. I guess it really depends. It fluctuates a lot week to week. A good example is Steinway (the piano manufacturing company) out in Astoria. It's amazing the amount of awesome material that they get rid of. Sometimes we go and they have nothing for us, other times we show up and they have more scrap than can even fit into our van. We end up driving back to Brooklyn with the back of our van dragging in the dirt.
[Read interview here.]
"It's no wonder we cloak innovators in awe. There's a serendipity to their brainstorms that defies investigation. But investigate we must, for the need to master the dynamics of this process�and it is a process�has rarely been more urgent."Posted by: StuCon | Comments (0)
Eva Solo, the Danish masters of elegant and functional housewares, has a new video center on their website with promotional shorts for their various wares. What I love the most about these segments is that they come across less like advertisements, and more like short stories about the product's inherent beauty. As designers we should all take note-- we are in the business of story telling when we present concepts-- these videos are worth a thousand gorgeous photos.
Posted by: | Comments (0)
This is one cool race. A shame the Iranian team didn't show up in time (apparently the vehicle got stuck somewhere in shipping). A bigger shame there seems to be so little news. But for anyone interested here's the link to the 2005 competition homepage. And with any luck you'll get better hits in your searches for news and updates; especially as the race progresses. Last I read, the Dutch are leading again. What are they feeding them over there? Someone put some meat on their bones and give the rest of the world a chance already.
{Image Copyright: The World Solar Challenge} Posted by: csven | Comments (0)
The London Metropolitan University is one of many showcasing its students' talent. They are studying for an MA in Design Research for Disability, and have come up with a number of innovative technologies and products. Among the ideas are user-friendly central heating timers and phones, and storage for those with limited reach. There is also a toilet seat designed for children with cerebral palsy. [Link] Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
The INDEX: award winners have been announced, with LifeStraw, iPod and Architecture for Humanity taking some of the top honors. Read all about it. Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Dassault Systemes announced that Lenovo's new ThinkPad Z60 was designed with Catia V5 - bit of a change for the auto/aero obsessed software developer.
According to the press release, the ThinkPad development team has used Catia for several years to help with the design process for ThinkPad systems. The system's design and analysis capabilities were key to the development of the ThinkPad Z60 and enabled Lenovo to bring the model to market faster.
For the internal obsessives out there, in addition to 25% more screen available than other 14 inchers, the Z60 also features a new inner armour chassis (a roll cage) that reduces the amount of stress on internal components when the notebook is dropped. The internal components, including the hard disk drive, are mounted in a one-piece magnesium cage that forms a more protective shell than traditional casings without affecting usability.
Posted by: al dean | Comments (0)
Some very nice work here at bernstrand.com. Image above is "Wembley sofa." Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Hans Hagen's gorgeous WORLDview mapper program is out for PSP, with an iPod version around the corner. (Don't forget about the Widget, neither!)
WORLDview for PSP is a content based service where you can get information, photos and maps of 269 countries, territories and important areas in all 5 continents. (This means a full coverage of all countries on our planet)
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
With fuseproject's slant towards brand and strategy, its easy to imagine the two firms combining to do some pretty dynamic work.
Posted by: Don Lehman | Comments (0)As we move toward a creative economy based on continuous and rapid innovation, bloggers can play a tremendous role in driving organizational change. They may be much closer than their managers to problems, solutions, new technologies, new paradigms. Not listening to your bloggers may be the biggest managerial mistake being made today. Instead of hunting them down and firing them, companies should be listening to their bloggers.
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
100% Design has kicked off with numerous satellite shows opening in conjunction for London Design Week. The Earls Court venue has all the hallmarks of a commercial trade fair while the overly hip east end offers a diverse and interesting mix of young talent. Pictured above, the DesignersBlock exhibition interior, 'seams cushion' by Armadillo, 'solarplexus' by John Wischhusen, 'Hot Stuff cup' by Stephen Reed and 'Watch Paper' from Random International. Check back shortly for complete coverage in the core gallery.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark have invented a technology which may be an important step towards the hydrogen economy: a hydrogen tablet that effectively stores hydrogen in an inexpensive and safe material.And it's so safe we can literally carry one of these things in our pocket. Very cool. Maybe someone should ensure it doesn't look too much like a regular tablet though.
{via Wired}
Posted by: csven | Comments (0)
The San Patrignano rehabilitation community, based in the north east of Italy, uses professional training as an educational instrument aimed at the complete social rehabilitation of its guests. The community produces furniture, textiles, housewares and other crafts. The objects are sold thorugh a wide network of distributors in Italy. Nice work, and a well done website to show it off.
thanks to Nick at Fox Racing for the tip. Posted by: StuCon | Comments (0)In exchange for their advertising slogans, catch phrases or campaign ideas, participants could win cash prizes from $50 to $500 and the bragging rights of seeing their ideas used to sell anything from Coke to Levi's jeans. The prizes aren't much right now, but Hoffman hopes to increase the rewards as Adcandy takes off, maybe even to a more standard percentage system. ... While Adcandy has a different model, Carrie McLaren of Stay Free magazine says, "It's safe to say that $50 for a winning idea would be comparable to sweatshop labor in the advertising world."This sounds familiar. Posted by: csven | Comments (0)Most participants aren't interested in the prizes right now, but really want the chance to contribute their original ideas.
The new protocol enables off-the-shelf Wi-Fi radios to form mesh networks with distances of up to 40 kilometers between their nodes--compared with one kilometer or less for existing Wi-Fi mesh networks--while maintaining or even increasing data transfer speeds.Admittedly, this is one of those times when being behind the curve maybe makes some sense. I wonder if Google is happy? Posted by: csven | Comments (0)
What can I say? Vinyl dress up clothes for your iPod Shuffle, adhesive backed so you can pick the design you want? If you feel the way I do about this concept, especially in light of Apple's entire design language based on simplicity, why go ahead and tell them what you think on their blog.
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)The exhibition covers all forms of design, from manufactured products to information architecture. Featured products include refugee shelters, demining equipment, baby strollers, and protective sports gear. Designers are trained to balance risk with protection and to mediate between disruptive change and normalcy; good design goes hand in hand with personal needs, providing protection and security without sacrificing innovation and invention. SAFE redirects the pursuit of beauty toward the appreciation of economy of function and technology. Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
Amino returned home from this year's IBC event in Amsterdam after collecting one of the industry's most prestigious awards for its latest IPTV set-top box. The AmiNET124 was awarded the Broadcast Engineering Pick Hit Award to the best IP set-top box for its innovative design and advanced performance - features which have already led to both customer interest and actual deployments only a few months following the product's initial launch at Supercomm in June 2005.
Read full story here.
Why should a transistor radio from 1954 be causing a buzz online? Could it be part of a realisation that, amid talk of invention, no novelty is completely new?
The Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes has a few words to say about novelty, fashion and innovation.
- "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be:
And that which is done is that which shall be done:
And there is no new thing under the sun."
The Regency TR-1 transistor radio, made in 1954, had a decent claim to be a genuine piece of innovation, however. It was, by popular agreement, the world's first commercially sold transistor pocket radio.
Small enough to hold in your hand, and powered by batteries, it came in a variety of delicious colours, including green, pearlescent blue, lavender, white and red
Via BBC, read full article here. Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)This website lists and explains every idea generation method I've encountered during the past 15 years. It is the result of extensive research; my many sources include books, management journals, websites, academics, consultants and colleagues.
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Founded in 2003, B�ro North is Soren Luckins's multidisciplinary studio, dipping fingers in all manner of 2D, 3D, furniture, product, and more. Above is the "Surf Shower," a quick washdown device for surfers. Car lighter warms the water, if said surfers are a bit chilled. Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
So this is kind of cool. We linked to a blog awhile ago that documented the design-development process of a guitar case (since updated), but Jo�o Sabino's blog is a design blog-as-website. Maybe there are lots of these out there, but the work is interesting, and some of it is very inspired. Our faves are the Helium Lamp and the Bottled Spice, and you'd think that this keyboard bag would be silly, but it actually looks pretty sweet. Click here for the homepage. Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
So, boldly states the tag line on Red: The Design Council's blog. I haven't scoured it thoroughly enough to say whether they meet up to these standards or not, but they certainly give a birds eye view of the UK design industry.
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)Google's interest in Feeva likely stems from the startup's proprietary technology, which can determine the location of every Wi-Fi user and would allow Google to serve up advertising and maps based on real-time data.Back in May on another blog (link) I brought up something like this kind of scenario (only with Google purchasing a radio satellite company), so this is an interesting twist. For the interaction designers out there, increasing connectivity and improving technology has to be keeping them crazy busy. Posted by: csven | Comments (0)
Very nice Flash intro. (Work good too.) Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
The I/O Brush is the brainchild of Kimiko Ryokai, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts.The device allows children to pick up colours and textures from their environment and paint with them on a large digital screen. Ms Ryokai has dubbed it the I/O Brush as it has an input and an output. The children just call it the magic paint brush and use it in ways she never anticipated. As a member of the Tangible Media Group at MIT, she seeks to create bridges between the physical world and the virtual environment of computers and networks. Read full article here.
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
Via hackaday, talk about innovation...turn your hamster into a fighting machine!
Posted by: Jeannie Choe | Comments (0)
Core Bullitt McQueen Jeanie just turned us onto genometri.com.
Plants have genes, Animals have genes. Have you ever wondered if products have them? If products have genes, then the methods of design in nature may be applied to products. Genometri is a Singapore based design technology company that just does that. It has developed a generative design technology that allows designers to create 1000's of design variations based on their original design. It is able to explore a huge range of possibilities that is not possible other wise. Texture and color may also be explored. This technology gives designer unprecedented power of exploration creating variations that are significantly distinctive.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
I have no idea what to think about this. Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Via Cool Hunting's entry comes word of a consumer rebellion. How can there be too much cuteness?
{Image source: cuteXdoom}
Posted by: csven | Comments (0)
New Scientist reports about a thing called 'e-skin', a thin flexible plastic film with embedded electronic sensors. This e-skin can measure temperature and pressure changes. Covering robots with this film will give them a human-like sense of touch.
Impressed? At the University of Tokyo they are already thinking of a future e-skin which will also sense light, humidity, strain and ultrasonic sound. Very touching indeed! Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen | Comments (0)
Philips is bringing fabrics to life by demonstrating photonic textiles—fabrics that contain lighting systems and can therefore serve as displays. According to Philips, photonic textiles open up a wide range of applications in the fields of ambient lighting, communication, and personal health care. The promotional video demonstrates shiny pillows and blinking backpacks - we are hoping for more...
Full story: Philips Research (newscenter)
photo: Philips Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen | Comments (0)
Recently taking out the 'Best of show, New Product Award' at Maison et Objet, Paris 2005 and 'Best Lighting' at AUTUMN FAIR BIRMINGHAM 2005, the CUTlight from Polka will be presented September 23rd at the 100% Design Show featuring a live-cutting with Tom Dixon, Nicky Clarke and Monica Singer.
100% Design : Innermost Stand Number B14
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)Let me avoid the hype and get down to the real meat of what Sparkle is. Sparkle is a vector-based UI designer that supports both 2D and 3D objects. There are many applications for Sparkle ranging from Flash-like presentations to designing UI for windows applications.I love it when people avoid the hype. Too bad so much of the discussion on arstechnica focuses on the hyper-headline. Posted by: csven | Comments (0)
When Lego executives recently discovered that adult fans of the iconic plastic bricks had hacked one of the company's new development tools for digital designers, they did a surprising thing: They cheered.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
If you're going to do this stuff, you gotta go all the way. Agustin Otegui's interface is just crazy enought to work, and the work is just crazy enough to compel. All in all, a nice visit for a Friday morning. Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
This is actually smarter than you think. Fruit typically rots at the points of contact with other fruit (and with the container holding them); fruit also rots faster when not well aerated. Waffle, designed by Yiannis Ghikas, both minimizes contact and maximizes aeration. When faced with the "what about cherries and strawberries�won't they fall through?" charge, Ghikas responds, "You are right, but then such fruit are usually kept in the fridge." Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Nintendo is busting paradigms with the newly announced controller for their upcoming "Revolution" gaming system-- they eschewed the traditional two-handed button-based interface for a one-handed motion-sensitive remote control:
"For the fist time, a controller will allow you movement in every direction," Reggie Fils-Aime, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Nintendo of America, explained to me. "Obviously left and right, but you can also move in and out, pitch and yaw.""What I believe many developers will choose to do is take full advantage of the telescopic and movement aspects of this controller and make it so games are not very button dependent," predicted Fils-Aime.
Perhaps this is a reaction to the rise of one-handed game playing on mobile phones? Now you can text and play Super Mario Bros. 18 in each hand simultaneously-- sweet. Cheers to Nintendo for trying something bold in the conservative world of gaming input devices. Now let's bring back the Power Pad. Posted by: | Comments (0)
100% Design Pre-registration deadline : September 16
Opening times
Thu 22nd : 10.00 - 21.00
Fri 23rd : 10.00 - 19.00
Sat 24th : 10.00 - 18.00
Sun 25th : 10.00 - 18.00
full details
also : don't miss designersblock
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
Finally after over a year of working in stealth mode, accelerating pace to clean up code in the past six months, after pruning, reshuffling and resurfacing the information architecture and usability features, Netdiver v.3 launches.
nice links selection in the ID gallery
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
A good general rule of thumb in razor design is the more blades it has, the more it has to look like something the X-Men would use. This new Gillette Fusion has 5 blades, so clearly the X-factor had to be through the roof.
Posted by: Don Lehman | Comments (0)
I'm the first to admit that I love a good dumpster dive (my favorite find was a nice Bianchi touring bike). Dumpsterworld celebrates this pastime, including a photo gallery of favorite items. Sadly, I no longer have the Bianchi, and I didn't take a photo!
Posted by: StuCon | Comments (0)
sram corporation recently commissioned udagawa yasuhito (aka shovel head), to design and build two complete good and evil robots using their bicycle components. after seeing the robots first hand these pictures do not do his work justice. if anyone is planning on attending interbike in vegas later this month, you will have a chance to see them in person at the sram booth.
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So now your choices are donkey, mule, or sheep. (Still, I'd like to do this.) Click on this link to see the big pic. You gotta see this big. [designobserver] Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
There's been a slow buzz building around a new kind of modeling algorithm introduced a couple years ago using what the developer (website) is calling "T-Splines". The big deal - and for anyone who's run into this problem it is a big deal - is the ability to dead end a spline as shown in the above image (note the junction in the green bullseye). The translation between NURBs and T-Splines is also pretty impressive. There have been some recent announcements, some beta testing, and the first plug-in (for Maya) is on sale. I expect more apps will be supported in the near future so this might be worth checking out now. From their website:
T-Splines patent-pending technology opens up new frontiers of modeling possibilities, allowing artists and designers to add detail and merge models in ways that were previously impossible. Since T-Splines is fully compatible with existing modeling technologies, it is poised to integrate easily with any production pipeline.CGTalk has a number of threads discussing the technology. You can just do a Search and find them. One worthwhile thread is this one which has one of the developers discussing the plug-in and what sounds like an eventual move into product development applications. The thread goes off on a tangent however, so just read "nurcc"'s posts and save yourself some time.
{Image source: T-Splines}
Posted by: csven | Comments (0)
the rules are quite simple: rearrange a box to make any kind of figure or object. make the most of least.
david hofmann // the box doodle project [boingboing]
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)Designers are calling purple plum, while green is thyme, pink is blush, yellow is buttercup and blue is cornflower.Imagine that. French vanilla is an ice cream color. Well, it must be Tuesday; my boss is wearing his "cornflower-blue" tie. Wait a sec. Is cornflower now retro? I'm so behind... Posted by: csven | Comments (0)Then there's clove and espresso and earth and ginger and raffia and pecan -- all of which are some sort of brown.
So homey are some looks that designer Carolina Herrera trotted out a "coffee bean" bikini with "radish detail," and Betsey Johnson showed a "mint chocolate" -- pale green and brown -- baby doll dress.
Then there's the popular French vanilla, which is half yellow, half cream, said Eiseman.
"It's an ice cream color," she said.
Damn, you gotta admit it's pretty robust. The crew over at arstechnica.com decided to do a bit of real life product testing to see just how well the iPod nano takes a fall. After finally killing it, what else could you do but an autopsy.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
We're not sure how a site "promoted by ECVM, The Europeoan Council of Vinyl Manufactures [sic]" can claim that "PVCDESIGN.ORG is a cultural project without any commercial interest," but for those intersted in the material and the processes, the site is a goldmine. You could start here for the mission statement, but you might want to start here instead. (You actually won't believe how much stuff uses this stuff.) Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
As one person who is admittedly sometimes overly-engrossed with the wonders of bleeding edge technology, it's a kind of whiplash to occasionally be catapulted to the other side; the dull edge if you will. Wired has an article today that did just that to me as I was reading it. It's obviously new and interesting or they wouldn't bother reporting it. It's got VoIP and solar panels and Linux and all the kewl tech things I and most Wired readers (and IDers too) enjoy. But the take away this time wasn't how Inveneo was mashing these things together in some poor region of the world - we've heard these stories before. Nope, the mechanism that launched my sensibility to the other side of my skull was something so obvious that, well, it made me realize that an Industrial Designer shouldn't ever be in the position of saying "Oh, yeah". I shouldn't ever be reminded of the basics because to be an effective designer, one needs to always keep them in mind. From the article:
Mark Summer, Inveneo's CEO and co-founder, said that while most people in the United States have access to a telephone and can communicate with anyone in seconds, it is not so in these remote areas.When I was in grade school, one of my classmates proudly raised her hand and announced to the class that we could make phone calls to Hawaii... all the way across the ocean. Everyone laughed. That was a long time ago now. In retrospect, it really isn't funny unless you're ignorant of the big picture. She had it right all along.
"Every time they want to do anything, they have to walk down the hill for three to four kilometers," said Summer. "Being able to make a local phone call is a big deal to them."
{Photo source: Inveneo} Posted by: csven | Comments (0)
Harry Allen keeps the hits coming with the latest entry to his "Reality" line, the Pile wine rack. The simplicity and obviousness of a design like this is somewhat unnerving.
Via Better Living Through Design.
Posted by: Don Lehman | Comments (0)
dynTypo is part of Vitor Quelhas's research for his Master's degree in multimedia arts, Fine Arts School of the University of Oporto.
The website is intended to inspire and provide valuable information on dynamic typography, dynamic font models, typography and multimedia arts, design and related documents, papers, essays. In the project links section there is ample material concerning works from influential designers, programmers and artists.
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Designed for people suffering from incontinence, Uturn uses ultrasound and Bluetooth technology to carry out a diagnosis and alert the wearer when the bladder is full. (This project is part of +81 New Designers on the Block from Denmark's design Schools. View the site here.) Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Somewhere between Walton Ford and Bionicles, is Jessica Joslin's work. Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Not quite fully recovered from last nights party that left a few people (self included) more then a little semi-intoxicated... Semi-Permanment's debut in New York delivered a solid 2 days of inspiration and insight into the workings of some truly unique individuals. Personal highlights included the overwhelming stage presence of Charlie White, the 3D drawing software from Insert Silence, a complete retrospective from Visionaire and the unstoppable Joshua Davis. Congratulations again to DIK and thehappycorp for pulling this event off, we look forward to next year.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
Read the story for an obviously simplified version of how Kodak had the technology but didn't enter the market. Innovation, as always, presents significant cultural challenges.
More digital camera history here.
Posted by: Steve Portigal | Comments (0)
“Bendywood® is solid hardwood that can be easily bent in a cold and dry state. It can be worked like normal wood and can offer great time savings, cost savings and a better finished product compared to traditional wood bending techniques. Handrails can be bent into shape, table edges can be profiled and then bent and glued in place, sculptural wooden forms can be created quickly and with ease.”
- www.bendywood.com
Via : Material Explorer Posted by: Aart van Bezooyen | Comments (0)
The image above shows a 'suspended-load backpack' which was recently developed by Lawrence Rome, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania. The luggage compartment travels up and down on the frame as the user walks, turning a gear which drives a small generator. The amount of power generated depends on how much weight is in the pack and how fast the user walks. Researchers measured a maximum output of 7.4 watts. Seven watts is sufficient to power a handful of electronic gadgets at the same time, including a cell phone, an MP3 player, a handheld computer, night-vision goggles, and a water purifier.
via treehugger
Posted by: StuCon | Comments (0)
Give the people over at ArriveNet credit for braving the perils of horrendous video content (watch the embedded Flash movie at your own risk here). It's their fearlessness in the face of what sounds like an 80's MTV clip that allowed them to report on it (link) and get picked up by Engadget (link). Seriously though, this technology is moving much faster than I think most any of us imagined, so kudos to Nano-Proprietary Inc (and their consortium of no less than six Japanese companies) for moving so quickly. Between this and the flexible display technology reported on earlier (link), I think we're going to see some pretty wild products being rolled out in the next few years. Now let's hope they use something else to show off their stuff.
{Image source: Nano-Proprietary, Inc.} Posted by: csven | Comments (0)
We're a bit late this year, so help us out. Our fifth annual design salary survey is now online. Add your info, share the link with your friends, bosses, whoever. The more entries the better.
Posted by: StuCon | Comments (0)
Here's another late entry (I'd have expected reading about this on the Core front page): Peugeot has posted some online materials discussing the "Moovie", Portuguese designer Andre Costa's winning entry to the 3rd Annual Peugeot design competition (link). And as some of you know, the winning design was to have been made into a full-scale model. Well, it's happened. Check out some of the coverage:
gizmag
Car Body Design
Engadget
But go to the Peugeot site first if you like looking at some process stuff.
There's not much, but it's something.
{Photo source: Peugeot}
Posted by: csven | Comments (0)
A comprehensive timeline of Mobile Devices going back to the first Motorola car phone in 1984.
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)SAN JOSE, Calif., Aug. 31, 2005 - PayPal, the global online payment service, today announced new micropayments processing fees for digital goods. The new pricing will provide merchants with a more affordable way to process payments for low-cost digital content such as video games, online greeting cards, news articles, mobile phone content and digital music.Why does this matter to the average designer? Well, if you are doing any 3D work in your design process, you will at some point be in a position to sell 3D designs of your own - piecemeal - to videogame companies, simulation service bureaus, or even the military... all to help populate virtual worlds (actually, this is already happening). If you're a graphic designer, this move by PayPal might provide additional options for selling your work over the internet; although I'm guessing you'd have to find a way to maintain control over your work or watch as design pirates take over your business. Another option is to take orders from people who just want you to send your custom, handprinted "Get Well" card to a relative of theirs. Low monetary risk to them. Design-safe for you. You might not get rich, but then again some big companies started out small. Just without the advantage of micro.
With all the designer laments nowadays (example), maybe some designers wishing for more out of their jobs will see the opportunities instead of just the roadblocks. I hope so.
Posted by: csven | Comments (0)
Real Parts, Real Tools
"Titanium. Tool steel. Inconel. If metal is your material of choice, now is the time to investigate direct metal manufacturing (DMM). Considered by some the holy grail of additive manufacturing technologies (aka rapid prototyping), DMM capabilities are now within reach."
Image credit EOS GmbH.
Via Desktop Engineering Magazine. Read the full story here. Posted by: | Comments (0)
Press release announcing an interesting brand extension - stationery with Pantone colors. Along with some scary marketo-babble "Drawing upon decades of research into the psychology of color, Pantone provides three emotional cues for each color in the collection, allowing the consumer to better understand their individual color preferences." Sounds positively therapeutic! Time to start a dream journal!
Posted by: Steve Portigal
| Comments (0)
Lifehacker links to a lengthy piece in The Guardian about Andrew Richie, inventor of the Brompton folding bike. (You gotta love this photo.) Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
A shower which recycles water promises to save householders money and energy.
The idea is the brainchild of Peter Brewin, a design student at the UK's Royal College of Art.
"Peter has used innovative design to provide a solution to an immediate environmental problem combined with significant cost savings for consumers," said Awards judge Nick Marshall.
From Mr Brewin's point of view the aim of the project was to balance both the needs of the consumer and the environment and to make sure it had a chance to make it into the shops.
"Designing something which is good for the environment but which has no commercial value did not make sense, because it will never get to market," he said.
Via BBC, read full story here.
(via Treehugger)
Posted by: Don Lehman | Comments (0)The VoIP bicycle works like this: Someone sits on the bike and pedals to generate power. That drives power for the low-power computer. A regular telephone handset is connected to a circuit board that plugs into the computer. A caller can use the phone to place a call over a wireless Internet connection using the 802.11b WiFi radio standard.
Since the bike has a directional antenna with a range of 7.2 miles, the call can be carried that distance until it hits another antenna. That antenna transmits the call another 7 miles and so on. So the VoIP bike and its network of antennas can actually extend the range of the phone to 62 miles. Once it reaches a given destination, Inveneo can switch the call into the regular phone network, and direct it to any phone worldwide.
Read full story here. Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)
A round up of the coolest physical computing at this year's Siggraph. found on Waxy's links
The pic above is of Ulysses - an interactive installation which reminds me of those pendulum and sand contraptions often found in science museums.
Posted by: shaggy | Comments (0)
A resource for those in the creative industry recently displaced by the on-going situation in New Orleans and the surrounding region�
There are a lot of displaced individuals out there who've recently lost a great deal. Many of us watching the tragedy unfold have asked ourselves, "what can we do?" People have responded by offering shelter, a space in their homes. Many of the displaced�creative people like us�will have to start from scratch.
We wish to help by offering these people a space from which to earn a living, to re-establish self-sufficience... to get back on their feet. With this in mind, we have started this resource�a place where displaced individuals can be matched with those of us with some extra studio/office space, a desk (or table), a computer/phone/internet connection, or a handful of square feet from which they can start to work and continue to earn a living.
Also, D.Observer has a growing collection of resources for artists, designers, and architects
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
...PIMPED-OUT-LIMOS! Yes. [redferret] Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
Some older gas pumps don't allow prices to be set above $3.00. Station owners are turning away customers or have state permission to display only the cents portion of the price.
Posted by: Steve Portigal
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Pretty lines; pretty future. (Thanks to Arnoldo for the link.) Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
This would have been more helpful last week, but it is still noteworthy. DasParkHotel is a series of single-occupancy rooms in Linz, Austria, site of the Ars Electronica festival. Tourists can book the rooms online, and pay whatever amount they can. As the hotel has no facilities beyond sleeping rooms, guests should plan to use facilites like nearby showers in the public pool, and bathrooms in museums (the web site has a map of local facilities). The intent is great, but the open hole in the top of the cylinder raises the question of how to keep out unwanted intruders (human and animal), rain, and bugs.
thanks to strauss for the tip
Posted by: StuCon | Comments (0)
The New York Times writes about Harley-Davidson (and other American firms) that are challenging themselves (beyond jingoism) to keep their products Made In the USA.Innovation is often compulsively pursued at the manufacturing companies that stay in America. The engineers and designers at Harley and Haas - they constitute more than 10 percent of each work force - are constantly altering the companies' products in ways that are not easily imitated by lower-priced foreign competitors. The resulting cachet helps to sustain demand.Posted by: Steve Portigal | Comments (0)"There are tweaks to the product that we do regularly," said Rod Copes, general manager of Harley's main engine and transmission plant in Milwaukee. "It could be just the relocation of a hole in a casting. Having production here, we can make that happen."
Posted by: squee.gee
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Is there a glut of students graduating from graphic design programs in the United States today? A 2004 National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) survey indicates that out of 18,000 graphic design majors in 152 four-year programs conferring B.A. and B.F.A. degrees 3,500 are graduated annually. This figure is strongly disputed, however, by North Carolina State's Meredith Davis, who claims the comparatively low number does not account for approximately 1,300 two-year associate degree programs (according to the GDEA), other schools that confer fine art degrees with limited design study, and schools that are not NASAD accredited. If there are overall 450 four-year programs, 1,300 two-year programs, and each graduates, on average, 25 students a year, then Davis estimates these schools could be releasing as many as 40,000 students (with and without degrees) into a field supporting around 200,000 practitioners (not including interactive designers).
Posted by: Niti Bhan | Comments (0)Retail industries spend a significant amount on plastic bags, costs that are ultimately passed on to consumers. Considering Americans throw away up to one hundred billion plastic bags each year, and each bag costs stores roughly four cents, the annual impact adds up to $4 billion! Despite this, when consumers at local grocery stores were asked to consider how they might transport their groceries if there were no plastic bags, few were able to think of a viable alternative...
...Your task is to propose a viable alternative to �Paper or Plastic� from policy-, education-/communication-/advocacy-, and product-based perspectives. Solutions should consider the social, economic, and environmental factors involved. More than merely a design exercise, the Challenge is expected to generate a wealth of ideas that Foresight will seek to implement in the coming year. [Thanks to Treehugger for the tap]
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)Variability of the infrastructure is tangibly manifest in the quality of products that arrive on the market. They have been through a sourcing, production, and delivery system that at every stage is subject to non standardized treatment. Delivering on the central promise of branding, consistent quality over time, is a difficult task in such an environment. But it is precisely this variability in the environment that puts a premium on brands that are able to deliver consistency. In order to deliver consistent quality, products need to be designed to cope with variability. Typically, products from developed markets are designed for fairly standardized usage and handling conditions, and do not tolerate wide environmental variance. Whirlpool found that, in India, its machines needed to be designed to restart from the point in the washing cycle where they had left off when the power and/or water was interrupted, rather than return to the start as they are designed to do in developed markets where uninterrupted power and water supply are taken for granted.*
*excerpt from a paper analyzing the failure of Whirlpool's first entry into the Indian market.
'Cubic Tragedy' by Ming-Yuan Chuan from the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology Taiwan takes out a 'People's Choice Award' in this years SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival.
A polygonian girl tried to make herself prettier by using her new cosmetic tools (for polygon modeling of course), and by doing so accidentally ruined her own face. This tragedy may have inspired one of the world's most famous paintings.
view quicktime movie (108MB ) | via pixelsurgeon
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)
Read it for the comments:
At 4:36 AM, Anonymous said... Why would someone refer to a certain shipping company as "a certain shipping company" instead of just saying FEDEX? And, why would someone go to the trouble of building a table out of Fedex boxes but then feel the need to blur the Fedex logo in the photos of his Fedex box table.
At 4:59 AM, bjohnson1969@gmail.com said...
why would they say 'a certain shipping company?' because these people are dorks. just like the geeks on boingboing who called this piece of crap 'absolutely beautiful". what these people are doing iss stealing. they go into fedex, take the boxes under false pretenses and make crap that would have looked sh!tty in my college dorm. oh, how cool they are. i bet these loosers steal napkins from mcdonalds to wipe the crap from their theivin' arses. how cool!
At 5:11 AM, Anonymous said...
Hey, everybody, look at me, I feel big by calling people "dorks." What's up, chief? People pick on you or something? Gee, you went to college. Great. While I happen to agree with your point that stealing boxes sucks, your post sucks more. Loser.
Well, all those teachers who were giving a hard time to students coming in with "futuristic" roll-up LCD displays on their PDHoo-haas are out of business this week. Just print out this link, or memorize the following and stick it to the man!
The Readius is based on the PV-QML5 display module. Polymer Vision said design starts around its PV-QML5 were imminent in March. The PV-QML5 is 100-microns thick with a resolution of QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) on a 5-inch diagonal. When not in use the display can be rolled up with a radius of curvature of less than 7.5-millimeters, Polymer Vision said. With four gray levels, the monochrome display provides a contrast ratio of 10:1. The display uses a bi-stable electrophoretic display effect from E Ink Corp. When the user has finished reading, the display can be rolled back into the Readius which then measures 100-mm by 60-mm by 20-mm. [Engadget]
Posted by: Allan Chochinov | Comments (0)
If streaming internet radio is too convenient for you, meet the USB radio, a computer peripheral featuring a mini headphone jack and FM receiver. Bundled with recording software that creates WAV & WMA files, you simply connect the headphone jack to your sound cards line-in jack. Slick - not!
Posted by: squee.gee | Comments (0)