Hasta La Ideas

Our friends over at PSFK took their self-published “Future of…” trend report series to whole new level this month with a physical exhibition showcasing over 60 products, ideas and services from their latest research into “The Future Of Home Living.” Located in the 5,000 sq. ft. future retail space of Stonehenge’s latest building development, 101 at 101 West 15th Street, the exhibition not only addresses the changing needs of the modern-day New Yorker but also the global shift towards urban living and managing smaller spaces.

To examine our trends through a macro lens, we’ve organized them into three larger themes: Adaptive, On-Demand and Equilibrium, which point to the importance of a clean, efficient and responsive space that can flexibly conform to the ever-changing needs of its residents. This overarching framework is meant to inspire anyone to reshape their life at home, regardless of whether they live in a studio apartment inside a high rise, a split-level home in the suburbs or a remote cabin in the woods.

Anyone familiar with the Life Edited project will be aware of many of the concepts put forward, but one thing that resonated with us was the subscription-based services for: coffee, cocktails, exact ingredients for healthy homecooked meals, and a library for periodically rotating your wall art. The on-demand services are not only practical but offer a form of entertainment for the dweller, improving the quality of their life at home.

Kitchen and living room section.

AT-UM Table for Lenovo’s Horizon Tablet PC by UM Project.

Home Aquaponics Kit by designers Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez.

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As you start making your adventure wishlist for 2013, audio brand BOOM are fueling the fire with a sneak peek of their newest product, the Urchin. BOOM is an audio line from the folks behind Polk Audio targeted at an active consumer who expects their products to keep up with their lifestyle. With the release of the Urchin, they’ve created a bluetooth speaker that falls in a category BOOM has identified as “R4A certified” or ready for anything. Their internal classification means it is IPX level 4 water resistant (5 minutes of direct spray with a hose), shock tested (50 drops at 10 feet) and dust sealed.

With a colorful removable silicone skin in 10 different hues, this little speaker is made to match any situation. The Urchin also ships with suction cub, custom designed carabiner and adhesive mounts in the box, so it really is R4A—beach sand, shower wall, back pack, or adhered to a dorm room window. The cuddly shape is defined by anti-sonic diffraction geometry producing clearer sound at louder levels than some boxier options on the market.

Above, the Urchin ships with a custom milled aluminum carabiner, suction cup mount and adhesive stamp.

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Karim Rashid sez: “Human beings touch an average of 600 objects a day.” I’m guessing that number drops, and becomes much more focused, during emergency situations. Here are the two things I touched most during the recent blackout.

Surprise winner: The iPod Nano I never ordinarily use.

The Nano’s built-in radio tuner was my only link to mass media, and as I live in a city well-covered by broadcast towers the reception was crystal clear. The device is tiny and unobtrusive, easy to clip on the lapel of a shirt. It only had a sliver of battery life left, yet lasted hours longer than I thought it would, because after you turn the screen off it uses such little juice.

The Nano will now be a go-to piece of kit for me, as soon as I get around its only drawback (proprietary charging method) by acquiring a battery-powered iDevice charger. I’d recommend it for anyone not requiring a powerful antenna.

Expected winner: Surefire flashlight.

Undoubtedly the object I touched the most during the blackout whether cooking, trying to take a pee, or confronting someone I thought was breaking into the darkened diner downstairs (turned out to be the diner owner, who offered me free bagels in gratitude). I can’t say the model I have, the E2L Outdoorsman, is any better or worse than competing ones, as the only thing I have to compare it to is the relatively wan Mag-Lites I grew up with. The ergonomics of tactical LED flashlights are obviously superior, requiring just one hand, and the beam is almost absurdly bright for something so small. The metal clip is sturdy and makes it easy to keep the thing at hand at all times.

However, there are two central design flaws that I see with LED flashlights like this. 1) A lack of visual feedback on power levels, and 2) no well-designed way to attach extra batteries.

1) When this flashlight does run out on you, it’s completely without warning. One second it’s working, one second it’s not. Old-school flashlights start to get dim, telling you it’s time to switch batteries.

I realize this would add to the cost, but I’d consider it a perfect object if there was an indicator of exactly how much battery life was left. I’d settle for a sequence of LED dots, but I’d pay more for a counter that dumbed it down—the way new cars tell you you’ve got 72 miles left in the tank—by telling me how many more minutes I could leave the thing on for.

2) The CR2 batteries required by LED flashlights are not easy for me to find locally, so I stock up on Amazon. But I don’t like that they sit in the back of some drawer. I wish the Surefire had some type of clip-on thing so I could always keep the extra batteries together with it, in case it runs out while I’m in the middle of doing something important. I’m guessing someone makes a holster that holds both the flashlights and extra batteries, but I’d prefer not to have a separate thing, I’d like to see it built into the flashlight itself.

Up Next: Your Suggestions for Disaster Prep Objects

Dispatches from the Dark – How Hipstomp Weathered Hurricane Sandy:
» Good Objects, Bad Preparation
» Public Behavior, during the Blackout, in Traffic & Communications
» What Came in Handy During Sandy?

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Add this new acronym to your phrase book: GIR, or Get It Right. For their very first product, the designers at GIR have cooked up what they’re calling the Ultimate Spatula, a single piece of molded silicone that’s easy to hold, easy to clean and can handle food temperatures up to 460 degrees. You’d think by now someone would have been able to nail spatula design, but most spatulas available to consumers have a number of flaws. For example, a spatula made from multiple parts, including a head, handle and grip, means there’s at least three extra joints for food gunk to get stuck in. Metal handles get too hot; wooden handles have to be hand washed. The GIR spatula, however, is made from a single piece of silicone molded over a nylon reinforcement that runs through the entire body, ending just 5cm from the tip, lending the blade enough structure to mix heavy, wet ingredients while retaining the flexibility to run it flush against the inside of bowls, dishes and cookware.

To see if the GIR spatula really was “the best spatula you’ve ever used,” we road-tested it in a variety of dishes and temperatures. At first we were skeptical that the blade wasn’t thin enough at the tip to scrape the bowl clean, but after using it in dense, wet cookie dough, hot, sticky oatmeal and a greased frying pan for flipping our eggs over easy, we found the tip was able to run between the food and the cooking equipment seamlessly. We bent the blade back with the palm of our hands, used it in an impromptu kitchen sword fight and ran it through the dishwasher, where we were sure the heat would mangle its pristine silicone body, but it emerged from our endurance test without a scratch. Consider us convinced.

GIR’s Kickstarter goal has already been met two-and-a-half times over, but you can still donate $20 and preorder your Ultimate Spatula in one of ten colors.

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My other life as a recreational cyclist often influences the occasional product reviews that I write, whether the product is actually a bike accessory or not. Outdoor Technology‘s Turtle Shell is somewhere in between: the LA-based company offers an optional bike mount for the wireless speaker, which is designed expressly for outdoor and urban settings. Complementary usage scenarios notwithstanding, I found it more impressive as a portable speaker as opposed to a bike accessory, handsome and entirely practical in a variety of settings except when mounted to my handlebars.

The thoughtfully designed packaging of the Turtle Shell promises premium product within: the acrylic box looks fit for an Apple store and is easily repurposed for all variety of knick-knack and tchotchke. As per the description on the Kickstarter page, it comes with a USB charging cable and a wall adapter, as well as a 3.5mm audio cable for non-Bluetooth audio sources, plus a carrying pouch that’s perfect for the speaker but doesn’t quite fit all of the accessories.

It’s not quite usable out-of-the-box: the quickstart guide advises a full charge prior to use. Charge time comes in at a completely reasonable 2.5–3 hours for up to eight hours of music playback; it’s obviously too soon to tell how the battery life holds up over time, but I found that I was able to use the Turtle Shell on and off for a couple days at a time without recharging it. In fact, it never completely ran out of juice on my watch, and I assume that the indicator light, which blinks red when charging, does the same when the battery is low.

The controls—three buttons and a backlit on/off switch—are located on the outer edge of the device, as are the USB and line-in ports (neatly concealed with a protective flap). I happen to like the old-fashioned jog dial myself, but it turns out that the buttons are multifunctional (especially in ‘Talk’ mode, below), allowing for both volume control and previous/next track function. The interface isn’t quite intuitive—the red/blue indicator and loud-ish beep can be a bit arcane—but all that you really need to know is that holding down the center button activates ‘pairing mode’ for new devices.

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