Hasta La Ideas

San Francisco designer Yves Behar of Fuseproject has designed a lock that replaces physical keys with a smartphone app.

Developed by Yves Behar in collaboration with technology entrepreneur Jason Johnson, the August Smart Lock is a cylindrical metal device that fits over the existing deadbolt and syncs with the user’s smartphone.

It uses Bluetooth to sense when the phone is approaching in your pocket then unlocks the door automatically, while remote allows you to open the door for guests from anywhere.

With an access code, other people can be given assigned entry times and dates – for example a cleaner could have a code that only grants access on a specific morning each week, or guests staying for a week could have a code that expires after they leave.

It’s possible to send invitations to events and grant access to guests through the app, where guests and owners can also leave notes for each other or share pictures and comments.

The user interface of the app features flat coloured circles to indicate whether the door is open or closed and control who has access when. The lock has an anodised aluminium case and incorporates LEDs to indicate whether it’s locked or unlocked.

The battery-powered device uses the same secure secure communications technology as online banking and August is not dependent on the house’s power supply or WiFi.

“Whereas traditional keys are easy to lose and copy, keypad codes can be easily shared, and biometrics are expensive and a challenge to install, the smart lock is a beautifully designed, easy to install, sociable device accompanied by a single mobile app that runs on your smartphone,” explain Behar and Johnson.

The product will be ready to ship later this year and is the first from new brand August, co-founded by Behar and Johnson, which launched on Wednesday at the D: All Things Digital conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

Here’s some more information from Behar:

August: you are invited

Have you ever lost your keys? I am willing to bet that 99% of us have. In the last year, 20% of Americans have been locked out of their homes at least once. Humanity has been carrying keys, sharp pieces of metal in our pockets, for 200 years…it’s time we think of something else.

This is the task my co-­founder Jason Johnson and I have decided to address: to make home entry magical, safer than keys or keypads, and something that makes our lives a little better. We set out to design the August Smart Lock hardware so that it works with existing deadbolts, it is easy to install and is beautiful on a door. The user interface of the smartphone app is intuitive, and allows for great control about who and when friends, family as well as services will be able to access your homes. The best user interface is often invisible: August auto-­‐unlocks your door as you approach, and sound design creates an audio confirmation.

The name and logo is warm, friendly and elegant; these qualities are extended to the app, which uses a flat design of simple color circles as indicators for door status, a keychain of all your keys, and scheduling guests’ access. The lock itself is also a simple circular extruded shape, hand sized and made of durable anodized aluminum. The craft details increase tactility with diagonal knurling and the LED’s micro-­‐perforations, as well as a physical scoop on the lock, are visual indicators as to whether the door is locked or unlocked.

Changing the archaic key system is also a way to shift the conversation from keeping people out to ways of making our homes both secure and social places that our family and friends can easily access. With a beautiful and minimally designed smart lock, and an easy, safe, social app experience, August is the first step towards seamless interactions with useful technology we will experience everyday in our home.

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Product news: a tap presented by French designer Philippe Starck in New York this week uses half as much water as regular taps.

Ninety jets spurt combinations of air and water to give the sensation of more falling water than is actually being used. These nozzles are made of silicon to prevent limescale formation.

“We have created a new type of water, which we call ’empty water’,” Starck told Dezeen. “You have the feeling of having a lot of water, but with less.”

Designed for bathroom brand Axor, the Organic faucet is turned on at the nozzle to either an economy or a boost setting, keeping the hands low in the bowl to avoid splashing the surrounding basin and surfaces.

The temperature is preset at the top of the tap, so water comes out at the desired warmth each time it’s used and none is wasted while fumbling to adjust the heat. “When we change temperature we lose a lot of water,” said Starck. “We don’t need to change temperature – we always use water at more or less the same temperature. That’s why we’ve added a pre-set feature.”

Its shape is derived from natural forms. “It’s something very, very pure,” he said. “The lines come from our body, from vegetation.” This version is a development of the Starck’s original design for Axor (below), first conceived 20 years ago and influenced by a simple outdoor farm tap.

We’ve recently featured a combined tap and hand dryer by Dyson, and other faucets on Dezeen include gently rounded bathroom fittings by Matteo Thun & Partners and a curving sculptural tap by Zaha Hadid.

See more tap design »

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Each tab on this credit card-sized pack by American designers Bolt Group can be torn off and used as a USB stick.

The GIGS.2.GO pack by Bolt Group is made of recycled paper pulp and contains four tear-off tabs with a USB flash drive in each.

The concept was inspired by Bolt Group designers frequently having problems sharing presentation and CAD files with clients.

“Burning CDs is slow and impractical, and nobody wants to leave behind their trusty—and expensive—32GB thumb drive. We saw a need for a smaller pack of drives that could be shared and even left behind with a client,” said designer Kurt Rampton.

Though the drives are designed to last for many uses, the paper and electronic components can eventually be separated and recycled.

Other USB sticks we’ve featured include a Nendo design concealed as a paper clip and a collection of jewellery that conceals USB drives.

See more technology on Dezeen »

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Product news: cable clutter is hidden away under the lid of this extension lead from Swiss design brand Punkt.

The ES 01 socket hub by Colombian designer Georges Moanack conceals five plugs under its cylindrical cover.

A central button allows all five devices to be turned off at once.

“I wanted to make crawling under furniture to untangle cables a thing of the past, and the design challenge was to find an attractive and accessible solution to this problem,” says Moanack.

The power cord is three metres long and there are six different socket types available for different countries.

Like all Punkt. products, it comes in red, black and white.

The ES 01 was presented at Spazio Rossana Orlandi in Milan last month.

Punkt. is a Swiss product brand with Jasper Morrison as creative director. Past launches include Morrison’s DP 01 telephone and AC 01 alarm clock. See all our stories about products by Punkt.

Other extension sockets we’ve featured on Dezeen include a system that combines plugs from different countries, one shaped like a crucifix, and a combined alarm clock and extension cable that wakes you with the breeze from a fan or the smell of coffee brewing.

See more stories about product design »
See more product launches from Milan »

Here’s some more information from Punkt:

Cut out cable clutter

Punkt. launches its third product: the ES 01. The ES 01 is an original extension socket that has been designed to tackle a ubiquitous lifestyle problem: cable clutter. The ES 01 plugs 5 sockets and is available in a range of versions to comply with the different power supply standards of a wide selection of countries.

Punkt. ES 01: finally a solution to the cable clutter that plagues modern lifestyles and makes a mess of interiors. All of your cables and plugs converge neatly in the ES 01 extension socket, tucked away under its sleek rounded lid. Convert cable chaos into a clean design feature for the home or office.

No hiding power stations under furniture, no crouching down to untangle dusty cables, and no power damage to your devices; just an attractive, sturdy design piece that blends in well with all interiors and simplifies cable management.
Get organized and power your gadgets and devices with the ES 01!

The young Colombian designer Georges Moanack designed the ES 01 under the art direction of Jasper Morrison. The ES 01 combines Georges’ fresh outlook with Jasper’s talent and experience, resulting in an ingenious solution to a ubiquitous problem.

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for Punkt. appeared first on Dezeen.

News: the world’s first 3D-printed plastic gun has been successfully fired in Texas, USA.

The handgun, named The Liberator, was assembled from separate printed components made from ABS plastic, with the exception of a metal nail used as a firing pin.

The makers of the gun, who belong to Austin-based libertarian activist group Defense Distributed, now plan to publish the blueprints for the gun on the group’s Pirate Bay-style file-sharing site Defcad.

A video published online initially showed the gun being fired remotely by pulling a string attached to its trigger.

The BBC later filmed the gun being fired by Cody Wilson, Defense Distributed’s 25-year-old leader, who said that gun control laws had become outdated in the face of new technology.

“I’m seeing a world where technology says you can pretty much have whatever you want. It’s not up to the political players any more,” he said.

The successful test firing came after a year of development by Defense Distributed, which a few months ago launched Defcad to host 3D printing blueprints for illicit items including weapons, drugs and medical equipment.

In other 3D printing news this week, US office supplies retailer Staples is to become the first major US chain to sell 3D printers, with the $1300 Cube 3D Printer arriving in its stores by the end of June.

Last year designer Ronen Kadushin, a pioneer of the open design movement that calls for designs to be shared freely without copyright, warned that advances in 3D printing could allow people to “print ammunition for an army”.

In our earlier report on Defense Distributed, the founder of collaborative design practice Superflux, Anab Jain, suggested that democratised access to blueprints is “about making sure there is a possibility to debate these things instead of just becoming passive consumers and saying, ‘tomorrow I can order a 3D-printed gun if I want’.”

We report on the rise of 3D-printed weaponry in our recently launched print-on-demand publication Print Shift, which also looks at how the technology is being adapted to architecture, design, food, fashion and other fields.

Read more about 3D printing on Dezeen, including the race to 3D-print a house and a proposal for a moon base that would be 3D-printed by spider robots using lunar dust.

Photographs are by Defense Distributed.

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