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We’ve reviewed our share of LED task lamps but our latest procurement, the Sonneman Quattro, evokes a kind of playful spirit normally reserved for Luxo, the Pixar Lamp. The lamp is immaculately engineered. The aforementioned playful spirit comes from the retangular arm that articulates at multiple points. It freely rotates 90º at the base with two additional pivot points across the arm. Devoid of any discernable switches, the lamp is switched on by a feather’s touch above the LED plate. Tapping it multiple times cycles through 3 brightness settings.
I’m not at all surprised by the fit and finish. Designed by Robert Sonneman, a name many of you design enthusiasts will be familiar with, a force in lighting design for over 40 years. It’s the attention to detail that really struck me. For example, the lighting elements consists of a flat LED plate that throws an even warm light. Most other lamps use an array of LEDs. Not to say one is better than the other, it’s just different and that’s why I like the Quattro.
The Quattro is available in bright satin aluminum, white, black and a red/yellow/black combination which is the one I received. It’s particularly special because the rectilinear forms and coloring serves up Mondrian and Rietveld – true modernists. The lamp retails for $575 with an estimated lamp life of 50,000 hours.
Designer: Robert Sonneman and Peter Polick
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(In Love With The Sonneman Quattro was originally posted on Yanko Design)
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The way we watch TV and movies is changing. So-called “time-shifted” television and on-demand movies make it possible to see just the programs we’re interested in when we have the time to watch. I love this practice because it lets me get work and family activities completed first, and save TV watching for when my schedule allows it.
There are many ways to access on-demand movies and television shows. Each has its own pros and cons. In this article, I’ll look at some of the most popular options, describing the benefits and drawbacks of each.
Netflix started out as a way to rent DVDs through the mail, and today it provides streaming television and movies to millions of users. I’ve been a customer for about two years and I enjoy the service quite a bit.
Pros:
Cons:
Hulu Plus is the paid version of Hulu, the online streaming service that works in a web browser, iPad, iPhone and more.
Pros:
Cons:
The PBS app for iPhone and iPad is very nice. Here are a few things I like about it.
Pros:
Cons:
Apple’s media behemoth iTunes is a great choice for people who want access to current TV and movies in HD.
Pros:
Cons:
Prime is Amazon’s service that includes two-day shipping on qualifying items plus access to its library of streaming video. It’s a good deal for those who shop with Amazon and love streaming video.
Pros:
Cons:
There’s also a newcomer to the group. As of yesterday, audio streaming service Rdio has added streaming video to is business: Vdio. It’s only available to Rdio Unlimited subscribers in the US and UK for now. In the few hours I spent looking at it, I found the selection to be small in number but big in names. Recent hits like Lincoln, Les Mis, The Hobbit and Life of Pi are available right now. Vdio is young but definitely a service to watch. (Sorry for that pun).
So there’s a look at the more popular video streaming services. There are more, of course, but this post is already long enough. It’s really nice when you can schedule TV viewing on your own terms. The whole process becomes more efficient with less time wasted. Have fun watching TV in “the cloud!”
Need help getting organized? Buy the DRM-free audiobook version of Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week today for only $8.99.
Three weeks ago I reached out to Oral-B to review the Deep Sweep 5000, their top of line electric toothbrush. After brushing twice a day, everyday for 2 minutes at a time, I sit here writing to you with whiter teeth, a brighter smile, and confidence to walk into my next dentist appointment with no fear of hearing, “oh you should brush more often.” Hit the jump for my review.
The start of the new year prompted my search for products that could make 2013 better than 2012 and part of that initiative is proper health and hygiene. I’ve always been an avid brusher but manual brushing requires proper form and execution. The Deep Sweep 5000 takes care of both those points by doing all the work for you. The head pulses 40,0000 times and conducts 8,800 sweeps per minute. Manually I could only manage 113 sweeps per minute. Add that to the recommended brushing time of 2 minutes and the Deep Sweep clearly out performs manual brushing.
Those 2 minutes are key to cleaner, whiter teeth. The Deep Sweep comes with a handy Wireless SmartGuide, a companion LCD display that conveniently divides up your mouth into 4 quadrants, brushing each one for 30 seconds before an audible beep tells you to move on. Standby time was excellent, working for nearly 8 days instead of the advertised 10 before juicing up on the included induction charger.
Of course that all depends on which of the 5 brushing modes you use. I generally kept mine on daily cleaning but other modes like deep clean and whitening use more power because the motor augments the speed at which the bristles sweep.
My official verdict? Love it. My teeth are definitely whiter just from 3 weeks of use. Of course there’s a tiny bit of staining that only a dentist equipped with bleach and lasers can remove but the Deep Sweep 5000 is the perfect mini dentist in between visits. It retails for $133 on Amazon and that’s a steal when you consider the comparable competitor is closer to $200.
Designer: Braun $133.00
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Yanko Design
Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
Yanko Design Store – We are about more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the YD Store!
(Oral-B Deep Sweep 5000 Review was originally posted on Yanko Design)
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Hideshi Hamaguchi’s formula for innovation is simple: !? – ? = ! [What – Oh this is the reason = Aha!] and this is what we got to see with the red dot award: design concept 2012 winning designs. Innovative solutions by a diverse group of designers from across the globe! For their 2013 competition, red dot award: design concept once again teams up with YD to bring for you the One Hour Free Registration Window that entitles you to a complete fee waiver for pre-judging entries. Details Inside.
The red dot is a recognized international seal for excellence in design innovation. Winning this recognition would provide credit; highlight your existence, widening your client base. This is the only award that evaluates the submitted entries purely on its design merit and not by who submitted the entries. We know this personally because YD’s publisher Takashi Yamada was a jury member for the 2012 competition.
Till the next announcement comes in, you can browse through the 24 categories and see which best suits your design submission best. Three new categories have been added and they are: Interaction, Skin and Service. To know more about the judging criteria visit here and to know more about the fee structure and timelines, hit this link.
The red dot award: design concept awarding ceremony is always held in Singapore. I have seen the euphoria of winning and the subsequent growth of designers first hand. Trust me, this is one competition you really want to win; have a look here to know why!
New York: Wednesday, 6 February 2013, 11:00:00 EST UTC-5 hours
Santiago: Wednesday, 6 February 2013, 13:00:00 CLST UTC-3 hours
London: Wednesday, 6 February 2013, 16:00:00 GMT UTC
Frankfurt: Wednesday, 6 February 2013, 17:00:00 CET UTC+1 hour
Singapore: Thursday, 7 February 2013, 00:00:00 SGT UTC+8 hours
Seoul: Thursday, 7 February 2013, 01:00:00 KST UTC+9 hours
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Yanko Design
Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
Yanko Design Store – We are about more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the YD Store!
(YD & red dot award: design concept 2013 Present the One Hour Free Registration Window was originally posted on Yanko Design)
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The organizers of a new Kickstarter project got in touch with us yesterday because they thought our readers might be interested in the modular desktop organizer they’re trying to crowdfund. Watch the following video:
The design seems both simple and flexible. We’d love to see them produce the base in a variety of woods though. While sustainable, bamboo isn’t always our cup of tea.
At a pre-order price of $26, we’re still impressed.
Need help getting organized? Buy the DRM-free audiobook version of Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week today for only $8.99.
Many people use their computers to manage four things: work, browsing the Internet, music, and photos. For my family, photographs are a big deal. My iPhoto library is bulging at 32 GB, and that’s with 2009 – 2010 archived on an external drive. In short, my wife and I take a lot of pictures with our digital cameras and smart phones.
Keeping the lot organized is a challenge. Not to mention sharing with far-flung family and friends, as well as finding that one shot you’re after. While I love Apple’s iPhoto, I’ve been looking for something that’s platform-agnostic (Mac, Windows, whatever), easy, tidy and even fun. There are many contenders, but for right now, This Life is what we’re using.
There are a few things I like about This Life, and I’ll describe my favorites. It recently came out of its beta testing period and is now available to the public.
You can’t start using This Life until you fill it with photos. Fortunately, the process is easy. The company has made a free “uploader” application for both Macintosh and Windows. Simply download it, open it and follow the instructions. It will begin uploading any photos you throw at it. Depending on how big your library is, it may take a while, so go make a sandwich.
You can also import photos from many popular services like Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Twitter, Picasa, SmugMug and more. I moved my Instagram and Facebook photos over to it easily.
Once your photos are in This Life, it’s time to start organizing.
Many photo-management applications offer face recognition, but I haven’t found one that works as well as This Life’s. Facial recognition technology lets you give a name to a face in one of your photos. This Life then looks for that same face in the other photos and assigns that name to it. The idea being that you can search photos by face (“Jane Smith”). It isn’t 100 percent accurate but, boy, does it work well. It also runs in the background so you can do other things on your machine.
Once you give it a name/face combination to ponder, This Life gets to work. The next time you launch it, you’ll be given a few guesses to confirm. The next time, a few more. As This Life gets more confident, it does greater and greater batches and eventually leaves you alone. It works well.
This Life also handles duplicates very well. Specifically, if it finds two copies of the exact same photograph, it keeps the one with the highest resolution and deletes the others. That’s very handy and saves me from having to find those on my own.
There’s no This Life application for the Mac or Windows (aside from that uploader utility). Instead, you use it in a web browser. It’s organized in a very clever way. By default there are two “views,” or ways to look at your photos: My Story and Library.
The library view presents all of of your photos at once, in chronological order, from left to right (oldest on the left, newest on the right). There are there rows of photos and a pretty little drop shadow makes them appear to be resting on a big table. A slider on the bottom of the screen lets you move back and forth, and if you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, that will work, too.
Click any photo to zoom in and share via Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr or email. You can also leave a comment and perform simple editing tasks like “Image Magic,” which attempts to correct for lighting and color balance (hit or miss in my testing) and rotation. Finally, you can delete the image or download the full-resolution original to your computer.
That’s great, but the real beauty is in Stories.
This Life lets you group photos into what it calls Stories. You can think of Stories as albums, but they’re more than that. This Life’s developers refer to them as “living albums — they are a dynamic collection of photos, videos and notes.” I’m a big fan of This Life Stories.
Creating a new Story is simple. Just click “New Story” in the upper left and give it a name. Adding photos and/or videos to a story is even easier: just place your mouse over it and click the heart that appears. That’s it. Honestly, you can add dozens of photos to a Story in seconds. To switch to a different Story, select it in the drop-down menu and resume clicking hearts.
Stories are also collaborative. You can invite others to contribute to a story and upload their own photos and videos. My family has a reunion ever year, and everyone takes pictures. It was fun to invite them to my “Family Vacation ’12” Story and see their contributions come in.
There’s more to love like searching by location, which shows all photos taken at a certain geographic location, and tags, which lets you describe what’s happening in the image. This makes search very powerful, as you can enter “Jane eating cake at Grandma’s house” and find exactly those shots. Super.
This Life is free to use for up to a certain amount of storage, and additional plans increase based on the amount of storage you require. There are many photo management options out there, and This Life is definitely worth your consideration.
Like this site? Buy Erin Rooney Doland’s Unclutter Your Life in One Week from Amazon.com today.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
