Hasta La Ideas

This is where we’re at as a society.

A company called Bullet Blocker manufactures child-size backpacks that feature bulletproof inserts made from a Kevlar-like material. ABC News reports that their sales increased 1,000% following the awful, horrific events last week at Newtown, Connecticut.

Another company called Amendment II, in Utah, makes similar products. They report sales have increased 500% since last Friday.

The backpacks are meant to be used like shields that children crouch behind. Some news sites are circulating photos of children using the backpacks to do this. (I realize these are meant to be instructional, protective measures, but I found the images too disturbing to post here.)

The men running each company, Elmar Uy and Derek Williams, respectively, both have children of their own.

Uy and Williams, who are both fathers, recognize that bulletproof backpacks and the inserts their companies sell aren’t a solution to surviving a school shooting.

“There is only so much you can do,” Williams said. “The bottom line is, having some armor is better than none. I don’t want my kids to be unprotected in schools, which are becoming increasingly violent.”

Amendment II plans to donate a portion of their sales to the families of Sandy Hook victims, Williams said.

“On Friday my business partners and I were in tears along with everyone else. We’re all fathers,” he said. “We can’t do much except do what we can and what we’re good at, which is making good body armor.”

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Here we go again: with this September’s release of the iPhone 5, third parties have yet another excuse to revisit the iPhone case. We’ve passed on a lot of the usual suspects, but a pair of independently-developed Kickstarter cases are noteworthy for their ultraminimal approach. Alex Karp’s “Bummpies” and mod-3’s “Radius” case kicked off their campaigns within 24 hours of one another last week, and although they’re different enough that they’re not outright competitors, both cases abide by the less-is-more approach to design.

First of all, I should clarify that Bummpies will work with the three most current models of iPhone: seeing as Karp’s been working on the adhesive bumpers for 16 months, he must have started designing them for the 4/4S and simply tweaked them for the new model. This gives him a significant edge in terms of potential customers.

The mod-3, on the other hand, has the ambiguous advantage of a Harvard-educated designer and CAD-geeky backstory: Hendra Bong holds a graduate degree in Architecture the Ivy League school. (A bit of digging reveals that Karp actually studied mechanical engineering but has since shifted his professional focus at HP.)

Bummpies are made of polyurethane rubber and are attached with a semi-permanent (but removable) adhesive from the materials experts at 3M. The corners for the Radius are made of 6061 aluminum with a non-slip lining; they’re held in place by an X-shaped brace, which is secured with a tiny screw (as is the case with many of Apple’s offerings).

Videos after the jump…

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Kata Bags creates “lightweight protective carrying solutions
for photo and video equipment,” and given that the two founders are ex-Israeli-military guys, it’s no surprise that one of their new bags draws its inspiration from a gun.

Their Revolver-8 model aims to solve the problem of an outdoor photographer who needs to quickly and frequently swap out lenses. To that end the bottom half of the bag contains an unusual circular compartment—a “revolving magazine,” as they call it—featuring a user-configurable chamber into which separate lenses can be loaded.

During set-up, the photographer can open a flap to access everything at once; while in the act of shooting, they can open a smaller flap to spin the magazine and access the lense they need. And despite the circular bottom, the bag still appears to stay upright when placed on the ground, a nice touch.

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“Always go for the Samsonite, son.”

Nighttime in downtown Manhattan, about a year ago, and I see this kid tearing down the street on a BMX bike—with a piece of carry-on luggage balanced on the crossbar between his frantically-pumping knees. It looked so un-doable, but the kid was moving so fast, that he clearly had practice doing it. What was weird was that I knew he was probably headed for Baxter Street.

I’d basically just witnessed Phase Two of a common local crime. To explain, I live near several popular hotels, and incautious tourists have been getting separated from their luggage for years. I knew that after snatching the bags, the thief would take them to a quiet street like Baxter or Crosby, rifle through them to take whatever was worthwhile, then ditch the bags. I deduced this by frequently spotting Phase Three—new pieces of some poor sap’s luggage sitting in sidewalk trash piles, his clothes strewn about, every zippered pocket flayed open. What I didn’t know was that the thief could execute Phase One—the snatching—via bicycle.

In any case, this is my roundabout way of saying I spotted a cool concept for luggage by London-based RCA student Rodrigo Garcia that I’d never dream of using in a city, but I still think the idea has merit. Check it out:

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A buddy of mine who goes camping carries a foam eggcrate-looking thing with him. He explained that it’s to lay on the ground underneath your sleeping bag as a measure of insulation. Even rolled up the thing’s pretty bulky, but he says it’s indispensable.

The AeroBed Pakmat seems like a neat alternative, and I dig the design (though I should admit I have very little camping experience). First off it’s inflatable, so air pockets provide the insulation rather than bulky material, and once emptied it rolls up to a fraction of its size. Secondly it stows away in the canister you see here, which is actually the hand pump you use to inflate it.

You can be fooled by the product photos into thinking the canister’s smaller than it is, as it kind of resembles a water bottle; but poking around the web I found this review, and the photo below shows its actual size:

The $120 asking price on Aerobed’s website seems kind of steep, but they’re also selling them on Amazon for 96 bucks.

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