Students create promising products, trying to help solve world problems
By Valerie Vande Panne from HarvardScience/HarvardGazette.com: Imagine spraying the nape of your neck with a skinlike substance that keeps you cool as you jog in the August heat. Imagine generating electric power with every step you take. Imagine stopping along the way to pick a container of refreshing water from a tree. This is the […]
A Designer’s Internal Ruler
From the great 20px.com.
Remarkable Cave Houses, Including the Homes that Inspired Tolkien
By Vincze Miklós from io9.com: Forget putting up four walls and a roof; these homes use the stony walls of natural and human-made caves to shelter their inhabitants from the storm. Check out these incredible rocky homes, from ancient cave dwelling to modern house, to the buildings that may have inspired J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbiton. […]
Review: Pebble e-paper watch
From boingboing.net: 69k backers. $10m in the can. But now that the Pebble E-paper watch is showing up on our wrists, was it worth it? With 68,929 backers pledging more than $10m, the Pebble E-paper watch is the highest-grossing Kickstarter project to date. The pitch, to fund an Android- and iOS-compatible smartwatch, was so successful […]
Reframe
Unhappy Customers Want to Parachute From Adobe’s Creative Cloud
From Wired/Enterprise.com: Adobe’s move to the Creative Cloud isn’t sitting well with all of its customers. Over 5,000 of them have now signed a Change.org petition calling on the company to keep selling packaged software. The blowback started on Monday when Adobe said that it will no longer sell new versions of its Creative Suite […]
Memoto Camera Logs Your Life
From MIT Technology Review: [Video] Logging Life with a Lapel Camera A startup believes people will want a photographic record of their lives, taken at 30-second intervals. “We want to provide people with a perfect photographic memory,” says Martin Källström, CEO of Memoto. His startup is creating a tiny clip-on camera that takes a picture […]
What your Mac keyboard would look like if it was buried for a hundred years
After the excavation, everybody attending the 2113 meeting of the World Anthropology Association discussed what they’d found. It was a century-old midden pit, full of Apple devices from the days before the company had gotten into biological devices and cloning kits. Maico Akiba is an artist and illustrator in Japan who has created an entire […]
If Payphones Survive, Will They Look Like This?
From Mashable.com: When was the last time you used a phone booth to make a call? Odds are, not for several years at least. So are all of those city phone booths rendered useless, relics of a bygone era? Not necessarily — they might just need a bit of a makeover. Late last year, New […]
Images from a century of medical propaganda
Health, history, and design collide at the National Library of Medicine. The US National Library of Medicine is much more than a library about medicine. Founded in 1836, the Maryland-based NLM is home to the world’s largest collection of biomedical resources, including old books, videos, and scientific studies. It also houses a fascinating online collection […]
Productivity
From the great 20px.com site:
Astronauts articulate some of the life-changing feelings brought up by their experience of space
Apollo and Shuttle/International Space station astronauts, as well as philosophers, talk about the haunting “overview effect” of seeing the Earth from space.
What Adobe Creative Suite’s Move to the Cloud Actually Means for You
By Adam Dachis from LifeHacker.com: Adobe Photoshop, along with all other Creative Suite applications, just made a move to the cloud. Adobe decided to discontinue software you can actually buy so they can force you to rent the applications for a monthly fee. This change comes with a number of problems but also some advantages. […]
Digital copies of The Hydra, magazine of Craiglockhart, the Edinburgh hospital where WWI poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon met
The Hydra was a journal written by patients at Craiglockhart, a World War I hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland. The hospital was for both officers and enlisted men suffering from “shell-shock” — what we’d now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder — with a variety of causes and symptoms. Patients included poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. The institution […]
Cook. Charge. Go.: BioLite
By Rachel Martin from DesignEnvy/AIGA: An innovative business that converts waste heat into electricity—and integrates environment, people, economy and culture from The Living Principles for Design framework—is BioLite. BioLite, headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, was founded by Jonathan Cedar and Alex Drummond and has received numerous awards for their innovative CampStove. What’s so great about […]
Is Adobe making a mistake by moving to a subscription-only model?
From Lifehacker.com: Adobe announced the end of their Creative Suite software, instead choosing to focus on their Adobe Creative Cloud subscription service. CS6 is the last version you can buy and download, and if you want access to tools like Photoshop and Illustrator in the future, you’ll need a subscription to get them. Adobe says […]
Late Arrivals, Goldfish, and Guinea Pigs: Unofficial Soldiers’ Clubs of WWII
From Slate.com‘s history blog, the Vault: During World War II, soldiers serving in Allied armies formed several exclusive clubs honoring troops who survived harrowing ordeals. Though unofficial, these clubs offered a morale boost to their members, as well as to other soldiers, as proof that survival—against all odds—was possible. The Caterpillar Club, which was first […]
Will Google Glass be a commercial failure because you look like an idiot using it?
By Matthew Yglesias from Slate.com: Marcus Wohlsen wrote what I think is a fairly persuasive piece arguing that Google Glass will be a commercial failure because you look like an idiot using it. My good friend Tom Lee calls Wohlsen’s piece “truly awful” and goes on to write a fairly persuasive piece about the importance […]
Gorgeous Concept Designs for Underwater Cities
While some pieces of conceptual architecture guide out imagine toward distant planets, others plunge us into the depths of the ocean. These underwater cities concepts, dreamed up by illustrators, architects, and designers, imagine the sorts of structures we might inhabit beneath the watery surfaces. Syph, Australia A collection of specialised organisms function as a whole, […]
Submit your name and a haiku poem to be sent into Mars orbit on the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission) spacecraft
Who can submit a name and where will it go? Anybody on planet Earth is welcome to participate! However, to create a log-in you must be 18 or older. If you are under 18 and you would like to enter, please ask your parent or teacher for help. Your name will be written to a […]
Book Cover Warfare
Goggle Glass: Your Body Does Not Want to Be an Interface
By John Pavlus from MIT Technology Review: The first real-world demo of Google Glass’s user interface made me laugh out loud. Forget the tiny touchpad on your temples you’ll be fussing with, or the constant “OK Glass” utterances-to-nobody: the supposedly subtle “gestural” interaction they came up with–snapping your chin upwards to activate the glasses, in […]
xkcd: AirAware is the new drone technology
THE BEST COMIC EVER.
Baratunde Thurston and Brian Janosch Discuss Their New Web Series about Crowdfunding
From Slate.com. Baratunde Thurston is former director of digital for The Onion and the author of How to Be Black. Brian Janosch is currently writer-at-large at The Onion. Slate spoke with them about their new web series, Funded, which tells the stories of small businesses that have used crowdfunding to get off the ground. Slate: What’s the idea behind Funded? Baratunde Thurston: We—meaning Cultivated Wit, a company I helped […]
How Pretty Pictures Are Conquering Online Shopping
For its first 15 years, online shopping consisted mainly of typing words into search engines. Sellers would jockey for top position in the results, and buyers were at the mercy of search-ranking algorithms. That text-driven model of e-commerce is slowly but surely beginning to change, giving way to a more visual form of shopping, in […]
Incredible Pictures of Early Science Labs
From io9.com: [Full article]
Researchers Put Sense of Touch in Reach for Robots
By John Markoff from the New York Times. (Scroll down for video.) Finding and recognizing objects by touch in your pocket, in the dark or among items on a cluttered table top are distinctly human skills — ones that have been far beyond the ability of even the most dexterous robotic arms. Rodney Brooks, a […]
Install Google Fonts on Windows or Mac for Faster Web Browsing
Windows/OS X: Google is now offering a convenient way to download Google Fonts, its 1,000+ collection of free, open-source fonts, to your desktop. Not only will your downloaded fonts sync to Google, they’ll also help load websites faster if they use those fonts. Although there are other ways to download Google Fonts to your computer, […]
Penguin Books has released new covers of five of George Orwell’s works
My personal opinion about the cover of Nineteen Eighty-Four: Beautiful conceptual design with its “redacted” look, but the type isn’t visible except when held in your hand, so the effect is completely lost on a bookstore shelf or online. By Mark Sinclair from CreativeReview: Brand new covers for five of George Orwell’s works feature in […]
Infographic: The 7 Types of Digital Marketers
Which are you? The Data Whiz, the e-Artiste, the Social Media Master, the Beta Tester, the Marketing Megaphone, the Old School Advertiser or the Snarky Marketer? Infographic by Optify.
Perspective
By Whitevinyl: Here is today: Wednesday, 1 May, 2013 [Interactive art]
IBM Manipulates Atoms to Create the ‘World’s Smallest Movie’
By Pete Pachal from Mashable.com: IBM has created a short film where the actors are actually individual atoms. A Boy and His Atom would be just like any number of unremarkable animated shorts were it not for the fact that it’s only visible if you use a microscope that enlarges the action by 100 million times. […]
Winners of the Webby Awards 2013
The totally great animated short “Dumb Ways to Die” won Webbies in three categories: Animation, Viral, and Viral Marketing, and won People’s Choice in Public Service and Activism. Don’t watch it unless you want to be singing the little song for days. My extra lyrics: Take a nail gun to yer face / Steal a […]
Is 3D printing about to hit the mainstream? Plus some items I’ve printed for myself
I ordered this skull and heart from Shapeways.com, a well-known 3D printing service. The 4-inch-high skull is heavy and beautiful (the heart hasn’t arrived yet). You can choose from many items with 3D patterns already uploaded, or upload your own. Some items are available only in the white plastic discussed below, and others in […]
HOW Design Live is divided into four distinct conferences, all taking place under one roof
At HOW Design LIVE, you’ll find everything you need to take your design expertise to a whole new level, including educational and career opportunities you simply can’t find in one place anywhere else. Make the kind of valuable business contacts that lead to great gigs. Find talented subcontractors or build a collaborative network you can […]
What the Heck Is P-Commerce?
By Lauren Indvik from Mashable.com: First there was ecommerce, a term developed in the early ’80s to abbreviate “electronic commerce,” or sales made possible through electronic funds transfer (and later, the Internet). Since then, marketers have gleefully affixed various letters to the word “commerce” to describe sales (or the potential for sales) made through different platforms: […]
You’re Creating iPad Art Without Even Trying
By Stephanie Buck from Mashable.com: Technology is becoming increasingly invisible. That’s impossible, you might protest — technology is more omnipotent than ever. It’s everywhere, and we can’t seem to go a day, much less an hour, without encountering it. But entire computer systems are shrinking down to spaces the size of decks of cards. Keyboards […]
Sinuous animal sculptures made from tires
By Benjamin Starr from VisualNews.com: It’s perhaps the very best and ethical way you could place an animal bust on your wall – Korean artist Yong Ho Ji uses recycled tires from all sorts of vehicles to create these incredibly dynamic sculptures. The shape of his medium is what leads to the sinuous curves of […]
Jan Chipchase was given the opportunity to try out Google Glass. He declined.
By Jan Chipchase from Hidden in Plain Sight at Medium.com: On Friday I was invited into Google Labs New York and given the opportunity to try out Glass. I declined to put on a pair. Here’s why. There are many people who are exploring what Glass could be, evaluating and providing feedback to Google, exposing […]
Interactive 3D projection on a miniature model of Tokyo – and music!
Lights and images play over a scale model of Tokyo in this fascinating and INTERACTIVE! art piece. Create your own light/music symphony! [Link to site]
Minuscule yet functional gold skeleton expected to sell for $150-250,000 at Sotheby’s
By Alexis Coe from The Awl: In 1896, Israel Rouchomovsky, in Odessa, completed a 3-1/2 inch gold skeleton with 167 parts. It had taken five long years to create a fully articulated rendering, and he took particular delight in the lower jaw, which opened and shut. In Rouchomovsky’s memoirs, he wrote that he was truly satisfied […]
Steampunk rabbit collectible toy
This “steampunk” bunny started as one of internationally famous artist Frank Kozik’s plain white plastic “Smorkin’ Labbits.” I tricked the bunny out by applying a fine film of spray adhesive to hold multiple layers of silver leaf. I “antiqued” the silver with a wash of black acrylic paint and topped it with a layer of […]
Teen outfitted with first “i-limb ultra revolution” prosthetic hand, which can be controlled with an iPhone app
16-year-old Patrick Kane was just nine months old when he fell ill with meningitis and lost part of both hands and his right leg below the knee, but he has since become the first person to be outfitted with the “i-limb ultra revolution” prosthetic hand by Touch Bionics, The Scotsman reports. The prosthetic hand can […]
A miniature book collector and his little library
By Claire Kelley from Melville House: A visitor to the Headley-Whitney Museum examines a display of Neale Albert’s complete works of Shakespeare as part of a Miniature Book Society exhibit. Neale Albert, a 75-year-old man who has 4,000 miniature books, was profiled—along with his tiny collection—in the New York Times on Monday. His titles include […]
Icon Strike! by Flinto: Easily test iOS icon designs on your home screen
Flinto is an iOS prototyping tool that allows you to quickly create realistic, installable, shareable prototypes. From the website: Icon Strike! By Flinto Like Icon Strike? You’ll love Flinto. It’s like Icon Strike for entire apps! Easily test iOS icon designs on your home screen. Upload Icon Open link on your iPhone Install your Icon […]
30 Video Game Box Art Recreations Using Only Clip Art and the Despised Comic Sans Font
Designers hate clip art and the Comic Sans font more than war, poverty and plaid combined. Lots and lots more superlative constructions in the Full article. See how many you can look at before your eyes explode.
Google Adds Dropdown Menu to Search Results, Hides Cached Pages Inside
Google recently updated their search results format, again moving the link for cached page access somewhere else. Now it hides in a convenient menu next to the page’s URL. Just click it and you can select the cache page, share the link, and find similar results.
Physics, Entropy and Web Design
A long, interesting article by Anthony Wing Kosner from Forbes.com. Excerpts are below. [Full article] We have been taught to think of entropy as a bad thing. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” wrote William Butler Yeats in the aftermath of World War I, in words that still ring […]