Hasta La Ideas

If you live in Manhattan, I guarantee this has happened to you: You check to see that the coast is clear, and start to cross the street. Then you hear this attention-getting noise: Shrill howling, Doppler-effected cursing or the sound of a human voice mimicking a police siren with astonishing accuracy. As you pause, a bike messenger hurtles past you with mere inches to spare.

Urban bike messengers have long known what hybrid car owners are just now discovering: When people can’t hear your moving vehicle, they have a tendency to step in front of you, creating a potentially messy physics lesson involving bodies intersecting at vastly different speeds. And so, as an article in the Times points out:

Working with Hollywood special-effects wizards, some hybrid auto companies have started tinkering in sound studios, rather than machine shops, to customize engine noises. The Fisker Karma, an $87,900 plug-in hybrid expected to go on sale next year, will emit a sound — pumped out of speakers in the bumpers — that the company founder, Henrik Fisker, describes as “a cross between a starship and a Formula One car.”

Nissan is also consulting with the film industry on sounds that could be emitted by its forthcoming Leaf battery-electric vehicle, while Toyota has been working with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the National Federation of the Blind and the Society of Automotive Engineers on sounds for electric vehicles.

“One possibility is choosing your own noise,” said Nathalie Bauters, a spokeswoman for BMW’s Mini division, who added that such technology could be added to one of BMW’s electric vehicles in the future.

Yep, make no mistake: One day we’ll all be downloading vroom tones that will annoyingly branch out beyond mechanical sounds to include the latest YouTube sound effect or cloying songs that will remain stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

If this comes to pass, I’m going to develop and market a vroom tone of an angry bike messenger screaming “Yo yo yo YO!”

By the by, my favorite screamed bike messenger invective, overheard seconds before slamming into a pedestrian:

“You IDIOT!” (WHAM.)

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Nouvelle étape pour Nescafé Dolce Gusto avec la lancement de leur nouvelle machine, au design très réussi et moderne. Un mélange d’innovation produit et d’un aspect futuriste. La commercialisation est prévue pour novembre 2009, avec des prix allant de 149 à 179 euros.

Bonus : vidéo sponsorisée de présentation de la machine.

Previously on Fubiz

• Open Air Pool Eybesfeld
• Overheating
• Nendo Sketchbook

Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing and current head of design direction for service and user-interface design at Nokia, has a new manifesto on his blog called “Towards urban systems design,” based on a talk he’ll be delivering in November at the Pompidou. The abstract reads as follows:

The networked objects which are increasingly populating our lives and our cities already generate torrential, unceasing volumes of data about our whereabouts, activities, and even our intentions. How can we ensure that this data is used for the equal benefit of all? What provisions regarding such objects should citizens demand of their municipal governments? How might the juridical order respond most productively to the presence of these new urban actors?

“This is not a talk intended, primarily, for technologists,” Greenfield explains, “but for people who understand themselves to be citizens, constituents and co-creators of an urban polity. And it’s an attempt to use the appearance of networked informatics in our cities to argue a much larger point: that our times and circumstances call for a conscious art and craft of urban systems design.”

Read the entire piece here.

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The primary disadvantage of DSLR cameras is the inconvenience of trying to carry them everywhere. In searching for the perfect everyday camera bag, I found that bags for cameras are designed to carry only camera equipment. Some backpacks will fit a laptop and a few personal items, but if you prefer a messenger bag, there really isn’t any middle ground.

But it turns out that Timbuk2’s new Commute 2.0 bag is just the right size for adding a single insert to carry a DSLR. Two inserts that seem to be the right size are the Billingham 12-21 Superflex insert and the Domke FA-211 insert. I didn’t really feel like paying $30 for this experiment, so I constructed one myself from some foam and duct tape, then attached it to the inside of the bag with industrial strength Velcro. I’ve been using it for a couple of months now, and it has held up nicely.

As you can see, there is plenty of room for my camera, along with the other items that I like to carry with me. If i need to bring my laptop, there’s a zipper compartment on the outside of the bag so that the laptop doesn’t take up interior space.