Hasta La Ideas

On a darkened on-ramp to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, I once hit a pothole so deep that it dented the rim of my Integra. Years later, on a stretch of Lafayette Street near City Hall, I hit another pothole with so much force that the Golf I was driving freaking deployed the passenger-side airbag. Google the word “pothole” and the number one link is to Wikipedia’s description. The number two link is to New York City’s Department of Transportation website.

The NYC DOT’s Pothole Gang (probably not their official name) fixes up to 4,000 potholes a day. Their goal is to fix them as fast as they find them. And to find them, they rely on agitated motorists like me taking the time out of our day to report a pothole’s location to the DOT’s website.

Designer Ajay Rao doesn’t live in New York (he hails from India), but he’s proposed an interesting way to passively create a pothole database. As an entrant in Local Motors’ BMW Urban Driving Experience Challenge, a design competition seeking ways to turn BMWs and MINIs into “a socially responsible machine that contributes to our global well-being,” Rao conceptualized a system whereby drivers intentionally aim to hit potholes.

The idea behind Rao’s “Beamer” concept is that the car’s suspension is specifically designed to cope with pothole impacts, and once the pothole event occurs, a sensor goes off and your car radios the pothole’s coordinates in to the authorities. For performing this service, the driver receives some type of tax credit or points on a BMW debit card.

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Amid all the hubbub of film releases and elbow-rubbing that will happen at the Sundance Film Festival this week there is a lesser-known venue with enormous potential. New Frontier is a multimedia installation space featuring cutting edge work from some of the world’s most interesting contemporary cinematic artists. Stepping…

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We’ll give you just one hint as to designer Christian de Poorter named his latest project, a concept for a phone with a flexible display: it begins with “i” and ends with “flex.” The Milan-based designer predicts that “2013 will be the year of flexible displays: not only a technological revolution, but also something that will open new unexplored possibilities,” as he duly suggests in the “iFlex,” a proposal for a so-called “flexPhone.”

The two [ends] of the rigid flexPhone aluminum case are connected by the central silicone part with deformable inlay so that the device can assume and maintain any desired angle, supporting new usage patterns. The phone has a magnetic lock for the closed position that protects the display from scratches and bumps. The flexible touchscreen display is surrounded by a nylon frame.

De Poorter doesn’t mention a specific supplier, but surely there have been new developments in flexible touchscreen since last April, when we saw LG’s flexible displays and Atmel’s XSense technology. If the CST-01 is any indication, e-ink displays are now thinner and less expensive than ever before, and de Poorter might be onto something in his further predictions:

Obviously, the same principle can be applied to tablets and laptops as well. The iFlex concept can give birth to the flexApps, a new generation of software applications that have never been possible with rigid displays. Some new usage examples have already been devised, such as a digital makeup tool for women, a bent-over placeholder for conference speakers with the name for the public on one side and the remaining time on the other, and an alarm clock that can be switched off with a touch of the hand on the top.

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The Ka-mu-ra is a concept based on Kanketsu, the idea of simplicity. When the brief was given to designer Forrest Radford, to design a camera for Muji, the obvious loophole was that Muji isn’t a very tech-centric company. So his first reaction was to creatively push the brand forward from where it currently is. Simple to use, the camera is off when closed and on when opened.

• Touch interfaces on both surfaces pick up gestures made by your fingers.
• An accelerometer controls which surface picks up information so as not to cause a conflict of information.
• This allows for a totally unique buttonless camera.
• Specs include 8 megapixel camera, LCD flash, Lithium Ion battery, a CPU with 4GB built in flash memory and an accelerometer, a mini-b USB for charging and transfer of data, an LCD screen and a rotational switch.
• The camera comes in two colors, black and white.
• The outside cover is made of soft touch ABS and the internal body of white polycarbonate.

As the designer puts it, since most photos taken now are snapshot only a few controls are needed. And since most photos are now snapshots done with phone cameras it seems logical to put this technology to good use.

Designer: Forrest Radford

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(Simple Muji Camera was originally posted on Yanko Design)

Related posts:

1. A Simple Problem Deserves A Simple Solution
2. Kengo Kuma Houses for Muji
3. 2007 Muji International Design Competition

IllumiRoom est un des derniers projets de Microsoft Research. Le but est ici d’immerger le joueur dans un jeu en scannant la pièce pour pouvoir par la suite projeter des images dans celle-ci afin de dépasser le simple cadre de l’écran. Une idée d’amélioration à découvrir en vidéo dans la suite de l’article.