How often have you flipped through the pages of your favorite magazine, admired a pair of shoes and wondered where you can buy them? Or maybe you’ve got the shoes in mind when you step into a department store but you’re unable to find them amongst all the other shoes– or worst of all, they don’t have your size? Well, the shopping frustration and wasted trips are over! Lucky magazine has introduced a new shopping service called Lucky At Your Service. Think of it as your personal shopping concierge who can find that must-have pair of shoes from Lucky’s March issue spring shoe guide at a local store or online. Download the iPhone app or use the web interface to choose the shoes you want in your size, then an email or text message will be sent back to you within ten minutes informing you if it’s in stock or not. If it’s in stock, they will automatically put it on hold for you too! Still mystified on how it all works? Watch the video to see it in action, and most importantly, use it and soon enough you’ll be singing its praises!
UNITX (united networks international transport exchange) is a concept for the transportation of goods to your house using logibots (pictured) which would travel at speed through a massive network of underground tunnels. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was the work of some 3D rendering kid who’s watched one too many high budget sci-fi films, in fact it’s a project by Viennese entrepreneur turned artist Michael Marcovicia and author of the book, “The end of EBay”.
Marcovici dropped out of school at 17, sold hist first company at 23, spent 3 years globetrotting, founded magazines werk-zeug, a technology and art magazine, and streetfashion, a global fashion snapshot mag. He holds international patents to many ideas ranging from inventions for climbing and bicycle equipment to trading systems and electronic payment systems. His eBay business at it’s peak had 80 employees and a turnover of 30 million euros a year—the company went bankrupt in early 2005.
The UNITX project proposes to fundamentally change the way our economy works today.
The logibots are able to transport up to 4 boxes with dimensions of up to 60x60x45 cm. They can travel with a top speed of 50 km/h, not only able to move forward and backward, but also up and down in the corridors. This way, sending and receiving merchandise or items in general becomes much easier. Deliveries will only take 20 minutes on average, no packaging is required, special logibots could offer cooling or freezing services, X-Ray or bomb detection.
Now some of us are still in the dead of winter- it’s cold outside, and sometimes you can hardly distinguish the grey sky on the horizon from the snow on the ground. On days like this, it’s easy to stay warm in bed, and oversleep, setting your whole day behind. Well, if you invest $49.99 in the Clocky, you can guarantee that will never happen again! This super gadget actually jumps off your nightstand when it’s time to wake up, and wheels around the room to look for a hiding spot. The alarm sounding guarantees that you’ll be scrambling out of your bed in no time to find it! What’s more, I’d bet that after stepping on one too many items in an attempt to find your hiding Clocky, that your room will be much more organized! How about that!
Price: $49.99 Who Found It:KNplaid was the first to add Clocky to the Hive.
Marian Bantjes’ “serve” in her Layer Tennis match against Armin Vit, which featured in the first season
Kicking off today at 2pm Chicago time is the latest season of Layer Tennis, the online game which tests designers’ skills to the limit….
Supported by Adobe Creative Suite 4, the game works as follows: Player One creates a single file of art within 15 minutes. This is placed in the ‘web stadium’, found here, where Player Two then has 15 minutes to creatively manipulate it (using Adobe tools, natch), before ‘volleying’ it back to Player One, who then re-manipulates it. Each player has five turns, creating a ten volley match. The match also has an online commentator giving his/her views on how the play is developing, and the audience gets to vote for who is the winner. It’s all good fun, and serves as a nice piece of advertising for Adobe CS4 too.
Armin Vit’s return volley
The first season of Layer Tennis took place in 2007-08 and included matches between Marian Bantjes and Armin Vit (their match is shown here – Bantjes emerged victorious), Aaron Draplin and David Nakamoto, and Scott Hansen and Rob Cordiner. Their matches can be viewed in full here.
Bantjes replies
First up in the 2009 season is graphic designer Jeffrey Kalmikoff playing against interactive designer Brendan Dawes. The commentator is John Gruber, whose match preview can be read online here. He describes the players as follows:
“This week’s match is a doozy. On one side, Jeffrey Kalmikoff, a graphic designer’s graphic designer, with a keen sense of branding. On the other, Brendan Dawes, “interactive” designer, which is just a fancy way of saying that he’s just as likely to create a volley by writing code as he is by drawing….”
Let the games begin….
Vit
Bantjes
Vit
Bantjes
Vit
Bantjes
Vit’s final volley. Sadly it wasn’t enough to secure the game for him this time though
Many Unclutterer readers have confessed in the past that they love making lists. I, too, enjoy a good list. They’re systematic. Predictable. Effective.
Last week I learned about Printable Checklist, a website that exists for the sole purpose of basic list making. There are very few bells, and even fewer whistles.
If you have a need to make a list, it will meet that need. Items for your children to remember to take to school, groceries for your spouse to pick up after work, routines for the baby sitter to follow — whatever list you need to make, Printable Checklist will make it.
Instead of printing it directly to paper, print it to PDF and save it on your hard drive for future or repeated use. Check out our directions for printing to PDF if you’ve never printed a file in this way.
Sure, there are other programs that do similar tasks. But, this one is easy. You can teach your young children how to use it in just a few seconds. You can teach yourself to use it without a tutor. And, it’s a lot cleaner than writing out a list by hand if someone else needs to read the information. Often, simple solutions are good solutions.
Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster and The Guardian’s infographics both appear in the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year show which opens today at London’s Design Museum
When the Design Museum’s Designs of the Year Show debuted last year it had a mixed reaction. ‘Good first attempt, but plenty to think about for next time’ seemed to be the consensus. This year’s exhibition opens today – CR went along to the private view…
I have to declare an interest here – I was a nominator both this year and last. The process is fairly informal. A letter from the Design Museum invites you to suggest worthy projects from the current year (although, judging from some of the work included, time scales are flexible). You can nominate as many projects as you like in whatever categories. And then a few months later they tell you which of your suggestions will feature and ask for some text on your choices.
A segment demonstrating the technology used in Troika’s All The Time In The World installation at Terminal 5 which displays the time in London and at interesting sites around the world – such as the world’s highest mountains or most popular museums
Inevitably, this approach results in what appears to be a fairly random array of projects in the final show, and certainly a selection that differs markedly from the results of the industry award schemes, but it is this idiosyncrasy that I enjoy about it.
The weakness of all award schemes (and, yes, I include our own Annual in this) is that the only way to make them work economically is to have paid entries. Inevitably, then, choice is limited. The Design Museum show, on the other hand, is a totally blank canvas.
The Pixel Clock, designed by Francois Azambourg for Ligne Rosset – the clock’s face is made from honeycomb-effect fibreglass
Tony Mullin’s Green Felt Protest Suit – the idea is that demonstrators can wear the suit in areas in which political protests are banned. When filmed for TV, the protester’s suit will act like a green screen meaning that messages can be projected onto it visible to TV viewers but not the authorities
Juries on award schemes can flatten things out – the majority view holds sway. During judging there are often conversations about how the industry will receive the choices being made – is the selection a fair reflection of the year? Do we have enough of this type of work or that? Should we include a certain project because it did well at a rival scheme?
The Design Museum show method, on the other hand, encourages the quirky and the controversial – pieces of work that one person feels strongly about. That inevitably means that some will divide opinion and, as a result, encourage debate – both about the work and about what constitutes ‘good design’. Which is surely what a good exhibition should be all about.
Personally, I also think that this show is not necessarily about the ‘best’ design projects of the year but more about selecting projects that in some way have had an impact – either by changing thinking or influencing the culture or offering a new viewpoint.
The July 08 Black issue of Italian Vogue featuring only black models
From Onkar Kular and Noam Toran’s The MacGuffin Library – in Hitchcock movies the MacGuffin was always an object at the heart of the story, usually being sought by the protagonists eg The Maltese Falcon. The designers her imagined a new set of such objects, created using rapid prototyping.
There are obvious weaknesses in the show. Relying on the personal experience of the nominators can mean that geographical spread is uneven – I chose the Design Indaba 10×10 housing project, for example, because I had seen it in action in Cape Town.
And from a communications point of view it in no way represents the work that the average designer will have been engaged upon for the majority of his or her year. There are no big branding projects. Very little mainstream work at all. So it doesn’t provide a snapshot of the design industry as most practitioners will experience it. It’s not an accurate portrait of where the majority of activity is, but then neither are most awards.
The work of Job Wouters, aka Letman, including CR’s February cover
What the Design Museum show does provide is an interesting snapshot of where the design profession would like to be. It reveals design’s aspirations and its ideals. For that reason I think it is a valuable addition to calendar.
In addition to the 3D display hacked from a Wiimote that netted Johnny Chung Lee 7+ million views on YouTube (and a blog post from us) last year, the homebrew technology superhero posted another, slightly lesser known Wiimote hack wherein he turns a projection of a computer screen into an interactive whiteboard. For fans of his other stuff, it’s a must view, even if it garnered just a paltry 2 million hits:
For interactive technology specialists, this is perhaps the most intriguing of Lee’s demonstrations. Portland-based Tinder Labs was inspired enough by the implications to start experimenting with it themselves, and shared the results with Core77. Tinder partner Richard Fox showed us the prototype they set up in their office, using two Wiimotes this time so that multiple users can mess with the screen simultaneously without blocking the tracking ability of the unit’s camera:
Tinder’s interest in the technology, and the direction in which they’re attempting to extend Lee’s concept, is in using it as a long-distance collaborative tool. Like many design studios, Tinder relies heavily on the whiteboard as a tool for exploring concepts with clients and collaborators, and hopes to create a scenario in which multiple parties in multiple locations can all work on the same large screen simultaneously, reducing the need for long-haul travel while still affording the rapid exchange of ideas physical proximity allows.
Interesting idea, and one they’re hoping to perfect and start applying later on this year. Follow their efforts on Tinder’s blog here.
After Vivienne Tam’s models carried mini special edition HP laptops as clutches during her Spring/Summer show at New York Fashion Week in September, we had a feeling we hadn’t seen the last of the fashionably marketed tech toys- and we were right! As the countdown to the Fall/Winter shows begins, Sony is sending models to various New York City settings, toting the new VAIO Lifestyle PCs while showing off the latest from Elise Overland, Threeasfour, Libertine, and Katy Rodriguez. So if you happen to be window shopping in Midtown today and spot a group of impeccably dressed women acting strangely robotic with laptops in hand, go ahead and stare- it’s like one of those artsy television commercials, except live and kind of awkward. You can even track the models on Sony’s web site and watch video footage of them at each location. Strange? Yes, but this is NYC, and Fashion Week no less, and strange is to be expected.
An undoubtedly devastating aspect of climate change is rising sea levels. It’s also one that many people in the UK no doubt find hard to visualise; severe flooding (Boscastle, 2004) and coastline erosion (Holderness, on-going) likely being the closest we get to experience its potential impact. In Bristol, a public arts project that sought to highlight the impact of rising seas comes to an end tomorrow night. Projecting watermark lines onto various buildings across the city, artist Chris Bodle has no doubt made many people stop and think. Thanks to Ben for his initial post on Watermarks at Noisy Decent Graphics…
The organisers of the Watermarks project explain their intentions as follows:
“Flood level marks will be projected on to the sides of buildings, showing how high water levels could potentially rise as the sea inundates the central, low lying areas of Bristol. By displaying these levels in real space, the project aims to help us to imagine the depth and extent of this potential future flooding – allowing us to measure them against ourselves in familiar environments.
“The complexity and inherent uncertainty involved in predicting sea level rise means there is little consensus across the global scientific community as to how much sea levels could rise in the coming decades. The Watermarks project will use current UK government predictions for the next century to set key flood mark levels. The project, however, will also acknowledge uncertainty explore other scenarios.
“Although the message is stark, the flood levels shown are as if the city is undefended and adaption measures have not been put in place. As the waters gradually rise over the coming century, there is much we can do to adapt and defend.”
pimg src=http://www.productdose.com/images/products/draft_5159.gif alt= //ppPretty much over anything else, even sex maybe, I enjoy reading the most. I have thousands of books. And there are thousands more I would love to own. And I do read them so I’m not just a book fetishist. When I first heard about the Kindle I was skeptical that an electronic book would be an enjoyable reading experience. But now that I’ve seen the new, slimmer Kindle released on Monday, I’m reconsidering. Imagine having 1,500 books in the palm of your hand. And the device is now only 0.36quot; slim. It will also read aloud the text to you, though I can’t imagine any serious reader would use that function (except for the blind). But my favorite feature is the built-in dictionary. This alone makes it worth considering. When reading, there’s always a word I encounter that I want to look up. A lot of times I just continue reading because the act of flipping the dictionary open takes me out of the narrative. With the dictionary built-in, the Kindle makes the time to look up a word almost negligible, keeping the reading flow running smoothly. I don’tnbsp; know if I’d pay the $359 for this … but I’m tempted./p
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.
