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Preservation Ads Young&Rubicam has created some beautiful blueprint poster ads for preserving our national parks. Taking a glimpse at these ads make me cringe at the idea of nature becoming manufactured mechanical elements. I know lots of things are getting teched up these days, but I’d rather not see nature go in this direction. There are three pdf posters in this series: Delicate Arch, Yosemite Falls , and Giant Sequoia.
Also reminds me of the Climate Crisis movie that everyone should watch, “An Inconvenient Truth”.

via bldgblog
An Inconvenient Truth preview

water as fuel video A must watch video!

Another video to follow from 1998, Water Power Car.
I’m a huge advocate for greener cars but my question is where are they? These videos are 8 years old. I’d pay well over 100k for a car now that just needed water as fuel. Hopefully I’ll see them soon, cause we need them. If your not motivated, you should watch the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”.

update: another water as fuel invention Daniel Dingel of the Philppines has been trying to get made for 30 years!!!

Update: Yet another option, air as fuel car, yes, I said AIR!!!

Karim Rashid Here’s an interesting interview with Karim Rashid. One portion that caught my thoughts:

How do you see history?
“I think tradition is what holds us back. You know, if I’m a Muslim or a Jew, I don’t eat pork. That’s absurd. The reason we didn’t eat pork at one time is that it was full of worms because we didn’t have refrigerators, right? We’re hanging on to ideas and values and ways to live that are six, seven thousand years old.”

Tradition or definitions are good at times, but sometimes definitions should only be defined by restrictions. This is something I think about a great deal in the design world!

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An Inconvenient Truth (Climate Crisis) Watch this preview for the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” about the troubling Climate Crisis. I had the great opportunity to hear, listen to, and interact with Al Gore at the TED conference where he spoke passionately about this global issue. His personality during the conference was incredible. The content that he presented was mind-boggling. I can’t wait for this movie to reach a larger audience in hope for changes that must be made.

An Inconvenient Truth preview
ClimateCrisis.net

3d table

There are two incredible developments in the interactive tables arena, the muti-touch table by Jef Han and the touch table by >Applied Minds. So, whats next?… A freakin dynamic 3D version of one!!! Yes, like the one in the X-men movie. Xenotran has developed a Dynamic Sand Table (DST) that can produce accurate topographic models in under 3 minutes. It’s basically a table with a bunch of needles that retract or extrude upwards to represent the projected terrain. Watching this table work is awesome!Touch Table (has video clips)
Multi-Touch Table
Xenotran Table w/videos
Touch-Table /3D table demoat EG (a must watch!)

Billion dollar networksGeocities was bought for 3.6 billion dollars in 1999 by Yahoo. Facebook, one of the newer trendy social networks, is apparently trying to sell themselves for 2 billion now. The founders of Facebook are Harvard undergrad dropouts. The number of American millionaires is at a record high of about 9 million Millionaires. Are all of these social networks worth this much? Myspace, Orkut, Friendster, Hi5, LinkedIn, etc?

Sure makes me wonder when I’m going to make my million. Check out those links, figure out a better network, and go make a billion.

Solar Decathlon The 2005 Solar Decathlon competition has an amazing assortment of incredible designs based on sustainable energy-efficient living. The competition introduces a variety of innovative methods to use solar energy and high-tech materials. If you dig deep into some of the submissions, you’ll be blown away by the student concepts. I recently saw a special on TV about this competition and became hooked. They recently announced the roundup of schools invited to compete in 2007.

Solar decathlon image gallery
Video summary

Glas Platz, glass speakers Sounds been a hot topic in the past few years. Pictured right are “Glas Platz”, glass speakers, an elegant solution to those large ugly looking speakers. This technology also works by using the SoundBug, which is a device you slap onto to any hard surface, and whala, that surface projects sounds. Below are a few more sound based inventions I’ve come across. Enjoy!

SoundBug -surface speaker device
Feonic Tech products– a bunch of sound concepts
Glas Platz -glass speakers
HyperSonicSound(HSS) -directed sound
AudioSpotlight -directed sound
Herman Miller Babble -White noise for your cubicle