Hasta La Ideas

It seems a lot of blogs are fond of making monthly roundups. Maybe it is a good idea. Maybe a lot of smart stuff gets forgotten about when it could be appreciated by more people if we were to make such a monthly roundup, too. Let’s try it. Here’s our five favorite posts from the past month (it’s kind of hard to pick five but here goes):brbr
• Extra long finger plastersbr
• The inkless penbr
• The California car dusterbr
• The Multimirrorbr
• Electric power shifter for bicyclesbrbr
If you have missed any of these, we suggest you click and have a look. We do not think you will be disappointed. /Ed.brbr

We suppose Shimano has done pretty much everything in bicycle gears except an automatic, so it was probably due. The new (?) technology is launched under the Coasting brand (almost unreadable site), and as far as we can gather it may be available in four bikes from three manufacturers; Trek, Giant and Raleigh. If any of them will hit Europe and Sweden is shrouded in uncertainty, by we think at least Trek has an importer, so maybe… The bikes shown are no sports rigs, they are more like something you’d pedal to the store with. The power shifter is located inside the oversized chain cover, and, if we are not mistaken, it’s powered by a dynamo in the front wheel. The actual gears are located in the rear hub. You’ll find a longer text on the Bike Gallery web site.brbr

Previously we have mentioned the Swedish Contactboxen, the Multipot and the charging box that is meant to be placed under a cabinet. Now we have another installment in the charging box series. Student industrial designer Alexander Lundqvist Cruz has created the Speakerbox and introduced it at the Stockholm Furniture Fair recently. The Cruz box is different from the others since it has integrated speakers allowing you to listen to your tunes while the phone or iPod is charging. So far the Cruz box is a concept, but with the proper interest, it may be produced.brbr

During the Stockholm Furniture Fair there was a special section with works by students at different art- craft- and design schools and colleges. Among them we found the Art Academy of Latvia in Riga. And among the works displayed these two struck us a both clever and good looking. The first (above) is the Yoke water carrying strap by Janis Valdmanis. The simplicity is compelling. A piece of rubber with room for one, two or three bottles, and an ordinary nylon strap.brbr
The other (below) was the Chiks folding seat by Kaspars Jursons, made from a metal tube with a fabric seat. The seat is small, but OK, and the whole thing small and light enough to bring along to the kids football or little league game, we suppose.brbr

Even though we do try not to, it happens that different foodstuffs and beverages end up in close proximity to our keyboard. This is of course not good, but what do you do when things heat up? Anyway, we’ve often looked enviously at the plastic covers some restaurants and shops use. (We actually know a sushi place where they wrap the entire remote for the stereo in cling-film to keep it out of trouble.) However, we’ve never seen a cover for notebooks. Until today, when we saw the Sonnet Technologies silicon notebook cover. The cover is as far as we can see only available for Apple’s MacBook, MacBook Pro and PowerBook G4, but perhaps other brands will be covered in the future. The cover is USD 20:-.brbr