Hasta La Ideas

A new sale site for community-curated tech products

The excitement of curated flash sale sites combines with community sourcing on Curisma, a new site for tech junkies and online shoppers alike. With a name that’s a mash-up of the words curiosity, curated and charisma, the MIT start-up applies the same principles to its business model. Twice a week, the website features an item chosen by Curisma community members. Carefully chosen to match users’ tastes, products span virtual keyboards to fingerprint-protected wallets. Curisma members hand-select the products, which means that you can potentially choose your own sale item. Several Cool Hunting picks have gone up for sale on Curisma in recent days and weeks, including Barnacle and Rev–>Table.

With a sharp eye for new and under-the-radar products, the site helps users stay ahead of the tech game, as it tracks activity with the Curisma-meter, which traces products added to the site. While Curisma remains in beta, it definitely shows promise and is an example of clever ingenuity in a digital setting. For more proof, check out the video above.

A look at the future of consumer printing reveals a gorgeous user-centered design

In terms of form and function the printer has not made any great strides in the last decade. What in reality is a cumbersome necessity, most printer experiences leave much to be desired between clunky design, awkward parts and a near total lack of user interface. While most companies seem content to continue churning out semi-archaic tech, Artefact has decided to push the envelope with an innovative new printer design. See What You Print (SWYP) is a sleek concept printer that promises high design combined with performance and a fantastic user interface.

Announced yesterday, the SWYP device sheds the traditional printer approach and draws the user right in. The touch screen is not a completely novel component to modern printer but it usually manifests as a small and barely functional element. In SWYP the entire front facade of the printer is a touchscreen with multi-touch capabilities. Wirelessly connect the printer to your camera, computer or Flickr account and your images will appear on a queue from which you can drag and drop them into the work area. Once pulled into the editable zone you can live edit the prints, including cropping, sizing and rotating. The image on the screen reflects exactly what you will see when you print, hence the name See What You Print.

The fantastic interactivity aside, the SWYP concept is beautifully designed. Compact, sleek and elegant the printer’s form strays drastically from contemporary ink-jet space hogs. The foldable, semi-fabric paper tray fits seamlessly into the body of the printer, keeping it compact while also acting as the on/off switch. To check the ink push a button and the color screen fades revealing the printer’s guts without prying open the case. This product has really taken the consumer into consideration in terms of ease of use, fun, and performance.

With no set release date the SWYP is an excellent look at the potential of printers. This new take on a stagnant device offers an exciting view of the future and promise of consumer based printing.

Unexpected missions and odd adventures in a new iPad pub with a clever user interface

The brainchild of a creative group of friends in Berlin, Astronaut is an independent magazine designed specifically for the iPad. Intriguing editorials and clever interactivity lend the first issue—released last month—a comfortable feel which, nicely complimented by strong imagery and enthralling mini-documentaries, which tell tales “of amazing journeys, great missions and epic adventures.”

Although the overall package is compelling in its own right, the short documentaries are a fantastic device-specific enhancement. Ranging from four to 22 minutes in length, each film acts as an extension of the editorial content by diving deeper into the subject at hand. And after swiping through the issue numerous times, the documentaries alone seem well worth the magazine’s modest $4 price. Make sure to check out the study of eccentric Midwesterner “Zoomer” and the Polar Bear clubs of Australia, each a pleasure to watch.

In terms of interactivity, the navigation is a simple swipe-to-turn-pages model that’s enhanced by only having some components of the page turn from time to time. The article opened might move off the page to see the background picture full screen before moving on to the next page, for example. To further challenge the dynamic of traditional magazine format, some pages hold hidden imagery only discovered with a keen eye and the slide of your finger in just the right place. What could have been overdone, the clever user interface content finds a nice balance with the editorial content without getting in the user’s way.

Astronaut magazine can be found in the iTunes App Store—with twelve editorial features and over ninety minutes of film there is really no reason not to jump on board.