A nice slideshow on materials and manufacturing methods used in products by industrial designer Arik Levy.
tech
Geocities 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.
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.
“The Accouphene tuxedo is decorated with 13 soft speakers, embroidered in the shape of a coil with highly conductive yarns. By pulsing energy through the coils and running a magnet, embedded in the sleeve of Accouphene, over the coils, sounds are generated. Accouphene creates a 3D sonic environment around the human body that can be activated and modulated through movement of the hands and the twisting and compression of the cloth.”
Accouphene is a project by Vincent Leclerc, Joey Berzowska & the XS Labs Squirrels. (photos by Vincent)
“Babble, from Sonare, is the industry’s first sound management system designed to provide patented voice privacy without wallsâ„¢. Babble is the only voice privacy device currently on the market that offers true confidentiality for any office, open workspace or cubicle.”SonareTechnologies
Video Example
Applied Minds– Firm that worked on it.
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
Litracon made the blogsphere last year, but it’s making second rounds. Litracon is concrete reinforced with fiber optic strands, hence creating a semi-translucent material with some magical results. As for a new material, great, but what are the new and valuable applications? I haven’t seen any great application yet, but I’m sure there are some in the works. Anyhow, check out their site, think up some great applications, and post them here.
I have no idea what this is, but it grabs my curiosity! Each of those bubbles have number displays in them… hmmm.
via mocoloco
Japan Design Net (images)
“Audiopad is a composition and performance instrument for electronic music which tracks the positions of objects on a tabletop surface and converts their motion into music. One can pull sounds from a giant set of samples, juxtapose archived recordings against warm synthetic melodies, cut between drum loops to create new beats, and apply digital processing all at the same time on the same table. Audiopad not only allows for spontaneous reinterpretation of musical compositions, but also creates a visual and tactile dialogue between itself, the performer, and the audience.”James Patton AudioPad
Video
Talk about sustainability in design. These cute bears are made out of, well, Tofu!
“SOYSILK® is a fabulous, cutting edge fiber made from soy. – it’s earth-friendly and from renewable resources. No petroleum products are used. “
Tofu Bear
SoySilk (the creators of silk, bamboo, tofu, and other such innovative fabrics)
“dVitral, [is] an interactive high dimensions digital vitral….developed for the IVAM facade, this non-approved installation allows to convert the actual glass facade of the museum in a dynamic interactive, low-resolution screen.based in an array of SmartGlass pieces, a high tech glass cappable of turn opaque with an electric impulse.”
via poeticsoft
running screen (details)
This is one freakin amazzzing wall clock! If you have a hard time seeing your clock display from across the room, go make yourself a 12 footer. The website has instructions on making this beast which includes a GPS receiver as well.