Après La Vitrine Montreal, voici une nouvelle sculpture dynamique et interactive qui réagit en temps réel au comportement de l’homme. Cette réaction prend forme à travers la lumière et la musique, le tout grâce au savoir-faire technologique de la société Festo.
Site de Festo.
 | One would think that being both a jogger and a musicophile is a personality combo made in athlete’s heaven, given all the Apple-Nike collabos and music-friendly running accessories, not to mention all the sweet hour-long cardio remixes I’ve stumbled across on Pandora. But running with your music device is easier said than done, unfortunately, especially if you’re jogging out in the fresh air without a treadmill’s shelf to perch your player upon. In an effort to keep my hands free, I’ve even tucked my iPod under the band of my sports bra… which kept it secure, but soaked in sweat by the time my run was over (sorry, TMI). Sure, you could always buy an armband holster specifically for your mp3 gadget, but I’m still always getting my headphone wires snagged and yanked out by bushes and mailboxes I’ve narrowly had to bypass. Is it just me, or should combining these hobbies be much less complicated?! With the Sony W Series Walkman, it finally is! The 2-gig gizmo combines the music player and the earpieces into a one-part device, so it’s literally just a pair of headphones — no wires to get tangled in or contraption to tuck anywhere but your ears! It functions similarly to the iPod Shuffle, only let’s face it — this is much more convenient for a girl on the go. Plus, even if you’re not sold yet on the concept itself, how can you resist its hot pink design? Price: $69.99 |
 | A true techie is firmly attached to her PDA, music player, digital camera, and other can’t-live-without gadgets at all times — rain or shine, land or sea. Sure, it might be the perfect day to hit the beach, but are those afternoon hours of relaxing on the sand really worth the withdrawal symptoms you suffer from having to leave your electronics behind? Fret not, tech-fiends. The summer months, in cahoots with the ever-evolving gadget industry, bring forth a slew of water-safe, portable versions of your plug-ins so you can stay connected even while in the pool. Chat it up while you float on your blow-up raft with a waterproof bluetooth headset, take underwater video with a Sanyo digital camcorder, and lug all your e-loot in a solar charging tote! Take a look at the slideshow and see how your beach days can get a major upgrade. |
Un mur interactif pour le centre d’information de la ville de Montréal, par la société Moment Factory, Steven Bulhoes et Marc-André Baril. Il est capable d’effectuer de nombreuses visualisations basées sur la présence et le mouvement des personnes.
Last month, reader Bev wrote in to our Ask Unclutterer column looking for tips on how to use Entourage on a Mac to organize e-mail and create tasks. A few days before I received her question, I had spoken to super organizer Peter Walsh about the program and was able to pass along a few of his tips.
Peter has gone on to create a 15-minute video for Microsoft talking about how he recommends using Microsoft Office to organize three specific areas of one’s life (family, finance, and health). It’s on the Microsoft for Mac section of the website, but I’ve watched most of the video and can’t really see that any of his tips are necessarily Mac-specific. If you’re a Microsoft Office PC user, you can benefit from the video just the same.
A few words about the video:
I was particularly interested in seeing how he recommended using Office to help track health-related matters. If you’re a Microsoft Office user, you might be interested in checking out Peter Walsh’s video.
Digital Confetti est une installation interactive, créée par la société Rockwellgroup pour l’événement Metropolitan Home Design 100. Un véritable jeu de lumières et de musique à travers duquel les spectateurs et invités peuvent interagir. Vidéo disponible dans la suite.
 | Whenever you buy a new piece of technology whether it’s a phone or a laptop, you always have to add a protective case to it as well. I mean, you’ll never know when you might slip on a banana peel and lose your precious data! An iPod definitely tops my list for gadgets that need extra protection. I’ve got over 10,000 songs in my iPod and I know it’ll take lots of time to recover all the music if I ever lose it. An iPod Shuffle may only hold about 1,000 songs, but that doesn’t it shouldn’t get a case too! And don’t even think about sticking it in some plain and boring silicone case that everyone else has. That’s where the WAFER dermaSHOT iPod Shuffle comes in! At less than $15, the tasty looking silicone cases come in three colors (chocolate, vanilla and strawberry, anyone?) and provide shock resistance. Wear it to the gym and I guarantee everyone will be drooling over it! Price: $13.99 |
Constructed of stainless steel and aircraft aluminum, the display is made of 888
LED screens, with 500,000 pixels spanning across them, providing concertgoers
with clear and visually stunning images. It has a screen area of 3,800 square feet,
and weighs approximately 120,000 pounds.
Hoberman Associates has teamed up with Innovative Designs to create the Expanding Video Screen, a transformable elliptical screen for the U2 360° Tour. Based on Hoberman’s patented Iris structure, this “fusion of architecture, stage scenery and extreme technology” stretches upwards to form a 7-story cone around the band, displaying footage directed by the Irish artist Catherine Owens.
E-waste, that nasty by-product of our desire to constantly upgrade our gadgets, is a problem that we really wrestle with in the design community. The most common ways to “handle” the problem at present: 1. Ship the waste overseas to workers so desperate for cash that they expose themselves to the toxins within just to reclaim the materials, 2. Throw it in the landfill so all of those lovely toxins can seep into the ground water.
Hardly elegant solutions.
In this recent NYTs piece, the debate is focused on who should be responsible for picking it up and managing it. Is it the states? Is it the Fed? How about the manufacturers?
Of course, ‘Who should take care of the mess once it’s made?’ isn’t the right question to ask. From the NYTs piece:
Ultimately, said Ms. Kyle, coordinator of the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, recycling does not eliminate the root problem: the vast amount of electronics generated in the first place and fated for disposal.
Carole A. Cifrino, the environmental specialist who manages Maine’s e-waste program, said she hoped the strict recycling would eventually prompt manufacturers to rethink their designs.
“Maybe since they have some responsibility for the cleanup,” Ms. Cifrino said, “it will motivate them to think about how you design for the environment and the commodity value at the end of the life.”
That’s right, designers. It’s on us! No challenge too big, right?
photo: Curtis Palmer, Creative Commons, Flickr
 | I spent all last weekend indoors despite the beautiful weather outside. Why? Because I treated myself to a three-disc special edition set of Pixar’s Wall-E. The set is chock full of deleted scenes, audio commentary, and special clips about making the movie. That meant hours of fun for me! With any Pixar movie, there’s bound to be toys to go with it. Being at a point where I’ve been buying toys for all the kids my friends and family are having, I’ve been keeping a close eye on toys they’d like to have. Never have I really wanted to keep one for myself, until now. The Clean and Go MO is an adorable action figure I’d love to display on my bookshelf. The obsessive compulsive clean freak from the movie can actually clean your room! He comes with a little bristle roller that picks up crumbs and dust lying around. Too bad he doesn’t make cute little noises though, but that just means I’ll incorporate my own sound effects! Price: $22.50 |
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