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All posts for the month June, 2006

sustainable goods

Having read Cradle to Cradle, listened to Jack Johnsons Curious George CD (3 r’s, reduce, reuse, recycle), and watched Inconvenient Truth, I’ve noticed a rebirth in more products based on reused or broken materials which is awesome! Recycled materials was a mini trend some years ago, which is actually somewhat bad for the earth, but reusing is another option which I hope stays a trend. Posted are three products that fit the “reuse” part of things. First off, is the beautiful Transglass Carafes+Tumblers, made from perhaps broken or thrown away bottles. Next is a “open tote bag” from Shawn Parks made from “safety fence plastic” that pretty much all construction sites use then discard. (Shawns a RISD alum, wohhooo!) Third is a is a clever use of a broken ceramic cat, sold to be a 3D puzzle.

fuzzmailI recently had a conversation with a friend about the digital gap and how things seemed more authentic in the past. One such topic was e-mail. E-mails are easy to delete, easy to read, and easily copied, but real physical mail has a personal feel, an authentic touch, a ritualistic process, and at times a more meaningful if not more emotional experience. This can be due to simple crinkles in the paper, ones handwriting, a few scribbled out words, the stamps they used, color of paper, a coffee spill, or something that the digital world has not yet captured. An example I brought up was Fuzzmail, a great email tool that records the act of you writing and let’s you send it as an e-mail. You hit record, start typing, deleting, re-spelling, thinking, etc and finish recording. When your friend receives the fuzzmail, the message is played back as you wrote it, including your spelling errors, backspaces, and pauses. Now, I know this isn’t great for the fast paced digital revolution, but it is a bridge between the authentic years and the fast paced digital years. You really have to try it out to understand how it works. Rather than reading the email, the email reads to you. It’s almost like an IM conversation without the interactivity.
Fuzzmail was created by Hayes Raffle and Dan Maynes-Aminzade at the MIT Media Lab.
For an example fuzzmail, click here! Enjoy;)

the book of cool

The Book of Cool” is a simple and edgy looking 320 page book with 3 DVD’s packed full of 35 of the worlds most talented sportsmen and performers showing and teaching you over 250 of their coolest tricks, skills, and moves. The tricks range from soccer tricks, baton twirling, freestyle frisbee, golf tricks, skateboarding, streetball, card tricks, bar tricks, pool, footbag, pen spinning, and much more. You can watch a preview of their DVD’s here though the breakdancers were one of the cooler clips. I’d love to get my hands on this set and just might for a sweet $40.

head ball

With the World Cup kicking off this week, there have been tons of great ads everywhere, but these political soccer heads really caught me off guard and made my day. “Heads will roll: Just in time for the World Cup, visitors to the Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts can bounce Bush or Blair, corner-kick Clinton or soccer-punch Saddam. Kendell Geers’ interactive art, titled Masked Ball, is one of 24 football-themed works by international artists. “
via sfgate

timbuk2bagI had the wonderful opportunity to donate some of my creative time to create an artist bag for Timbuk2’s Charity Auction for the Homeless Youth taking place June 15th, 2006, from 5-8pm, at TIMBUk2 San Francisco, 506 Hayes Street. TIMBUK2 donates hundreds of messenger bags each year to “At The Crossroads“, which reaches out to homeless youth and young adults at their point of need, and works with them to build healthy and fulfilling lives. You can view my bag on Timbuk2’s website here, my detailed pictures here, or other artist bags here. The bags will be available for viewing starting June 12th, so if your in the area, go check them out, attend the silent auction at 5pm on the 15th, enjoy the cocktails & hor’s d’oeuvres, and rock on an artist bag!

eepy birdThis is what happens when you take 200 liters of DietCoke, 500 mentos, and have some serious free time to have fun. Watch this insane video!
I’m not sure what to think, but no soda is ever entering my mouth with a mentos together. This viral video has surfed the net the past few days and is a bit geeky to post, but also too cool to miss.

update: apparently some people don’t realize the power of this combo…by drinking Coke and eating Mentos, watch this foo here.

PopUrls

popurlsI’ve been using Popurls for the last few days and must say it’s a great little tool for the web. Popurls is much like an rss feed that merges several dynamic content driven sources into one simple easy to read page. These sources include the best of Flickr, Youtube, Digg, del.icio.us, google news, slashdot, odeo, and a few others. The titles also have roll-over blurbs detailing the articles. If you don’t end up using PopUrls, I’d also highly suggest Bloglines, which is an incredible time saver for you blog readers.

ibar

“iBar is a system for the interactive design of any bar-counter. Integrated video-projectors can project any content on the milky bar-surface. The intelligent tracking system of iBar detects all objects touching the surface. This input is used to let the projected content interact dynamically with the movements on the counter. Objects can be illuminated at their position or virtual objects can be “touched” with the fingers.”

I’m not sure what to think here, but I guess it would be fun while I was a bit loopy or really bored. I go to bars to socialize with people and feel this is more of a distraction than an enhancement. Otherwise, it has a settle way of connecting strangers to one another, but it’s not quite there yet. I love the idea of interactive tables in bars, but it comes down to meaningful and smart applications. Be cool if it somehow connected lines to people that were attracted to each other. Otherwise, it looks super cool! Watch the video on their website or watch a YouTube Video.

barry schwartzI first heard Barry Schwartz speak at the GEL conference about his book, “The Paradox of Choice – Why More Is Less“. He talks about how freedom is better, but also worse. How the more options we have the better the final outcome, but the worse the experience. How 175 different types of salad dressings is ridiculous. Is too much choice bad? Does it really numb our thinking and decision making? Does variety mean quality? What’s better, Capability vs Usability. Anyhow, his incredible 1 hour Google lecture can be viewed here. For any of you out there that create consumer products, this is a must watch!

In my opinion, there are the services and products that that I love to have choice in, but then there are a ton of services I wished never had options. Airline tickets, phone plans, health plans, cameras, cars, and the everlasting ordeal of figuring out which movie to watch. A few years back, we’d just watch a movie that came out. Now we look at all the trailers, read a bunch of reviews, dive into their websites, ask friends that have seen it, look at their rankings, look at who’s in it, then finally deciding if the movie is worth watching even though we know everything about the movie now. After all that chaos, we have to figure out how to buy the ticket. Should we buy it early, online, offline, as a group, print the ticket, pick it up, matinée, which theater, etc. Many hours later, our choice is made, which is probably a great decision, but the experience to get there has become a job… So, is choice good? Is thinking about this good, bad? Well, enjoy the video which has several other examples of this paradox!

jet blue terminal

JetBlue is already one of the coolest airlines to experience with great service, prices, DirecTV in every seat, some yummy snacks, their shut-eye package, and their recently won wireless license, yipeee! So, what’s left you may ask..well, enhancing not only the on-flight experience, but also the off-flight experience by hiring design guru David Rockwell to design their busy interior terminal environment. In Mr. Rockwells well known odd collaborations, he hired Broadway colleague and dance choreographer Jerry Mitchell for the job. For some this may seem odd, but in truth, I love it when projects bring in new disciplines to solve problems. This collaboration uses movement, like in a dance, throughout the terminal as a central means to differentiate the user experience for arrival and departing customers. This interplay between architecture and choreography for a public space is brilliant. The terminal is not scheduled to be finished until 2008 at the Kennedy International Airport(which needs a GUI re-design), but I’m looking forward to checking it out then.
Read more via nytimes article.
Project PDF (more pictures)