Hasta La Ideas

Previously we have mentioned the Swedish Contactboxen, the Multipot and the charging box that is meant to be placed under a cabinet. Now we have another installment in the charging box series. Student industrial designer Alexander Lundqvist Cruz has created the Speakerbox and introduced it at the Stockholm Furniture Fair recently. The Cruz box is different from the others since it has integrated speakers allowing you to listen to your tunes while the phone or iPod is charging. So far the Cruz box is a concept, but with the proper interest, it may be produced.brbr

During the Stockholm Furniture Fair there was a special section with works by students at different art- craft- and design schools and colleges. Among them we found the Art Academy of Latvia in Riga. And among the works displayed these two struck us a both clever and good looking. The first (above) is the Yoke water carrying strap by Janis Valdmanis. The simplicity is compelling. A piece of rubber with room for one, two or three bottles, and an ordinary nylon strap.brbr
The other (below) was the Chiks folding seat by Kaspars Jursons, made from a metal tube with a fabric seat. The seat is small, but OK, and the whole thing small and light enough to bring along to the kids football or little league game, we suppose.brbr

Even though we do try not to, it happens that different foodstuffs and beverages end up in close proximity to our keyboard. This is of course not good, but what do you do when things heat up? Anyway, we’ve often looked enviously at the plastic covers some restaurants and shops use. (We actually know a sushi place where they wrap the entire remote for the stereo in cling-film to keep it out of trouble.) However, we’ve never seen a cover for notebooks. Until today, when we saw the Sonnet Technologies silicon notebook cover. The cover is as far as we can see only available for Apple’s MacBook, MacBook Pro and PowerBook G4, but perhaps other brands will be covered in the future. The cover is USD 20:-.brbr

Don’t know about you, but we have lots of doorstops. There was a time when we collected doorstops; ever searching for The Perfect Door Stop. We actually went as far as drawing sketches for our own door stop design. Well, we’re a lot better now, except for the occasional relapse. Like today, when we found this doorstop designed by Italian design firm Modoloco in Milan and manufactured by Japanese R.F. Yamakawa. We like the fact that you can hang it on the door knob when it’s not in use, and also that they have been able to save so much material without compromising on function (we suppose without having tested it). As far as we can tell it’s available in four different colors, but we have not been able to find a price.brbr

We had never heard of this stapler before we looked in on the JND web page, where Don Norman writes on good design and related topics. The stapler is called PaperPro and it uses a new (at least for staplers) approach inspired by – staple-guns. The staples uses an arrangement of levers and springs to load and enhance the power that is applied to the handle in order to release that power accurately and powerfully at the right moment. The model above is promised to staple up to 20 pages of paper, but there are other models available, too, both one smaller and one more powerful. Available from, among other places, Amazon- at about USD 19:-.brbr