warm office=fewer typing errors
finally, empirical evidence for why you should crank up the thermostat: cornell researcher, alan hedge, has found that increasing office temperature from 68 degrees to 77 degrees lowers errors and shortens break times. "The results of our study also suggest raising the temperature to a more comfortable thermal zone saves employers about $2 per worker, per hour," says Hedge, who presented his findings this summer at the 2004 Eastern Ergonomics Conference and Exposition in New York City.

wired has an article about a new device for turning off televisions. called TV-B-Gone, the device sends out 209 different “OFF“ commands for various televisions, with the most popular off commands first. the device is designed for turning off televisions in public spaces - places where TVs have been left blaring giving passers - by no recourse. the device also nicely demonstrates the dangers of deploying a communiations protocol (infared remote control) with no security. anybody can send unauthenticated commands.

Audi illusions, inspired by Escher

Paul Saffo is speaking at PARCin Palo Alto on Oct. 28
The Case of the Blind Venetians
It is fashionable, but premature to write off the future of the US info tech sector. The dot.bomb collapse and offshoring are quite real, but hints of the path forward are hidden in the history of Silicon Valley and the tech sector. And the secret is this: innovation advances from failure to failure, not from success to success. The time has come to understand and embrace this hidden source of the US' technological dynamism, lest we end up like Venice in it's last century, trapped by old habits and sinking beneath the sea that once sustained it's economic and innovation miracle.

Last spring DesignGreen ran a series of workshops on sustainable design in three cities around the US. Their website is now updated and the various materials distributed at the events are available to download. If you were unable to attend the events this is the next best thing.

Just in time for the holidays - the 2005 Protein Calendars are on sale now. Limited edition. We prefer the Japanese version.

smart fabrics : the softer side of mix-and-match gadgetry : the bag that never forgets...

smart fabrics make for enhanced living : Imagine a bag that warns you if you are about to forget your umbrella or wallet. And later you could turn it into a scarf that glows when pollution levels are high. Bizarre objects such as these may soon be possible thanks to a system of multifunction fabric patches.

Interesting collaborative experiment at Just Letters, a Flash page where people can drag around fridge magnet letters - will it produce art, work, chaos, or something else?

They Made America is a new PBS series about innovation in American history. Found on noisebetweenstations

HYDROGEN-POWERED CARS A team from the Universities of Newcastle upon Tyne and Liverpool in the UK have discovered a safe way of storing and releasing hydrogen to produce energy using nanoporous materials. The researchers found a workable method of injecting hydrogen gas at high pressure into the tiny pores in specially-designed materials to produce a dense form of hydrogen. In order to store the captured hydrogen safely, the pressure is reduced within the material. Heat can be applied to release the hydrogen as energy, on which a car could potentially run. Professor Mark Thomas of Newcastle University's Northern Carbon Research Laboratories in the School of Natural Sciences, said, "Now that we have a mechanism that works, we can go on to design and build better porous framework materials for storing hydrogen, which may also be useful in industries that use gas separation techniques."

The 2004 National Design Awards were given out on Tuesday at the Cooper-Hewitt in NYC. Milton Glaser (Lifetime Achievement), William McDonough (Environment Design), and Yves Behar (Product Design) are among the chosen few. Congrats!

Your signature is needed to help save the Imprimerie Nationale, one of the greatest repositories of typographic material in the world. (If you have ever used a Garamond revival, or a Didot or a Fournier, you are indebted to the Imprimerie.) Their collection, which spans four centuries, is scheduled to be dissolved in the next twelve months. Please sign the petition, in seventeen languages.

syd mead lecture at columbia college in chicago on november 05. doors open at 6:30 pm with the lecture commencing at 7:00 pm. for more information visit the idsa chicago chapter website.

Treehugger is a blog covering the latest in ecofriendly design and manages to go beyond the usual molded paper pulp. Good stuff.

the Berlin based young architects Jan & Tim Edler have been nominated with the BIX media façade (which is possibly the coolest/impressive permanent light- and media installation) at the new Graz Art museum for the 50.000 Euro "Inspire-Award" given by the Deutsche Telekom. The important thing about the award is: an online vote will decide who will get this prize. From now until approximately December 15th. so if you think they deserve the award too, go to www.bix.at and just enter in your email address to put a vote in for them.

Adam Greenfield drank too much too good Kona coffee and wrote a very extensive review of...drum roll please............the Dyson DC07 vacuum cleaner!!

Last weekend, the Buckeye Bullet, an electric vehicle designed and built by U. of Ohio undergraduate students, set new US and International land speed records for electric vehicles - 308 mph and 271 mph respectively.

A nice piece in today's NYTimes on type designer Tobias Frere-Jones (Interstate) teaming up with type designer Jonathan Hoefler (Champion Gothic).

InCA, the quarterly journal from the SF IDSA, is back after a year+ hiatus. The most recent issue, Design for Mass Market, has articles on toy design, extreme sports, royalty payments, and much more. Highly recommended.

Design Inspires Design:

The idea behind Found Item Clothing is recreation of "classic" t-shirt designs straight out of the movies. While this might be seen as some kind of design piracy, it sure is an interesting concept.
(Via Waxy)

Results of a Sony Ericsson concept phone design competition organized for university and college students in China.
Won't beat IDEO soft wrist-phone, Nec's tag phone, nor Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau Mobile Feelings.

When Charlie Suisman lets it fly, look out. Today's MUG (Manhattan User's Guide) dishes the dirt on how those Zagat Guides come together. Forgive the pun, please.