thoughts

Getting Quality Feedback

Posted by _tango! on December 29, 2006
Posted in: design, experience, ideas, information, me, thoughts. Leave a Comment
feedbak methodologies

I came across this great post reminding us that showing too many details too early can be incredibly unproductive. I’ve always questioned people, clients, and educational systems that emphasized looks, glam, and presentation over the methodology, experience, and solving the larger issues. I’m not saying this goes with all industries, but probably a great majority. Sure you can glam out a phase and impress certain clients, but creating your own lie can bite you bad down the road. I could ramble on and on about this, but I’m sure everyone in the creative world can relate to this topic in many instances with great stories. Read the rest of the article here.

POM Teas

Posted by _tango! on December 28, 2006
Posted in: brand, design, experience, food, green, ideas, inspiration, materials, thoughts. 9 comments

POM juice teaI just treated myself to a refreshing glass of POM Juice Tea (Pomegranate Lychee Green Tea to be exact). Besides the zesty taste I’d like to point out the simple and sustainable container, which is shaped like a glass cup! Yup, it’s that simple. You pop off the top, and enjoy it like a fresh glass of juice. Better yet is that you can add it to your shelf for reuse. It’s a good thickness glass which I like more than most of the glass cups I have anyways. If your more of a herbs person, the cap pops back on airtight. Extra points for POM, their wonderful juices, and now their sweet sustainable glass containers!

Robin Hood Restaurants

Posted by _tango! on December 27, 2006
Posted in: brand, design, experience, food, fun, ideas, information, inspiration, me, thoughts. 2 comments
Robin Hood Restaurants

What a kick-butt idea!!!

“These pay-as-you-can cafes have missions that are unapologetically altruistic—call it serving up fare Robin Hood style. “Our philosophy is that everyone, regardless of economic status, deserves the chance to eat healthy, organic food while being treated with dignity,” explains Brad Birky, who opened SAME with his wife, Libby, in October. Customers who have no money are encouraged to exchange an hour of service — sweep, wash the dishes, weed the organic garden — for a meal. Likewise, guests who have money are encouraged to leave a little extra to offset the meals of those who have less to give. “We’re a hand up, not a hand out,” says One World owner Denise Cerreta, who prides herself on the fact that everyone can afford a meal at her café.

The cafés’ business models have won fans among the city’s well-to-do residents, many of whom regularly dine there. At One World, patrons have given Cerreta a car, bought new dishes, arranged to professionally clean her carpets, supplied new tile for the restaurant bathrooms, and donated property for an organic garden and funded a new irrigation system for it. Last week, a gentleman left a $50 bill next to an empty bowl of soup at SAME. Since opening, one man has regularly come in and left money on the counter without eating, stating “I was blessed today so I though I’d pass it on.” He’s homeless.” via TIME.

I’ve always been a fan of exchanging ones time for another rather than diving into money talks. This probably occurred when I had to pay a lawyer recently, but I did continue this trend when my friend needed a design for his CD album. I knew he had little money, so I said I’d do it for free in exchange for his time down the road. I spent 15-20 hours designing the cover for him, and in exchange he said he’d give me a free concert (you know who ya are 😉 ). Buh yeah to to community driven ideas!(much like my thoughts on search engines)

SAME (SoAllMayEat.org) was inspired by another cafe, OneWorldEverybodyEats.com, for this great initiative.

Wikiasari: the Killer Search Engine?

Posted by _tango! on December 27, 2006
Posted in: ideas, information, inspiration, tech, thoughts. 2 comments
wikiasaru

Is Wikiasari going to be the “killer” new search engine to trump over Google? I’m not sure, but what I am sure about is the dominant power that community driven sites have had over the past few years(MySpace, Craigslist, eBay,YouTube, WikiPedia, etc). Wikiasari is the vision of Jimmy Wales who pioneered and founded Wikipedia, a dynamic online community driven encyclopedia which I personally use almost everyday and trust more than the printed stuff. I’m a sucker for community driven websites and am optimistic about this buzz, but what I can say, is that there is a great deal of improvements needed for search engines. I’m just going to wait (rumored to launch in early 2007) and see what pops, but if your the early adopter craving to know, read on to these articles for more details(such as Amazons funding, etc); TechCrunch, TopTechNews, CNet.(also an influential read about this topic is TIME magazines Person of the year: You)

This is good reminder that even if a specific market is controlled by a monster company, there is always room to dominate, much like google did back in the yahoo, netcrawler, netscape days. 😉

Great Products!

Posted by _tango! on December 23, 2006
Posted in: experience, information, me, tech, thoughts. 5 comments

lasting gifts
At a recent holiday gathering I was asked to bring a gift with a story, meaning, and perhaps a life changing experience for whomever was to receive my gift. I generally custom make gifts for friends, so making something for a stranger was a bit tough. So instead I asked myself “what are life changing products that have made a huge impact to my lifestyle and would be useful for anyone”?(this gathering was a bit tech oriented). We’ll, here are two products that have changed my life drastically along with some software producs that have done the same.

Sonicare Electronic Toothbrush : It’s a massage in your mouth using this beauty. Once you go electric, it’s hard to go back.

Logitech 8-button mouse(MX510): Navigating will never be the same! I personally use the extra buttons on the mouse to, “go back, forward, scroll, close windows, and launch internet browser”. I rarely hit those backwards and forwards button on the nav bar, nor do I ever click on that “x” to close a window anymore…saves thousands of seconds daily.(their new “hyper-wheel” seems interesting)

E-mail Clients:Eudora, Outlook(or express), Mail, Opera, Thunderbird, etc:
It amazes me how many people don’t use email clients. I can’t imagine managing emails without them. It surprises me to see people typing in passwords to check mail only to find no mail at times. E-mail clients save loads of time if you communicate through e-mails. E-mail clients still have a long way to go, but the first jump has been drastic.

Digital Calendars: Outlook, GCal, 30boxes, Sunbird,iCal, etc:
Never forget a meeting, birthday, appointment, event, etc…even have the calendar send you a text message reminder! In the world of information overload, calendars will be playing a HUGE role in our everyday future of multitasking and managing ourselves.

Lots of other compelling products out there, but these are some that I bring up all the time. Do you have a life changing product story? Let me know..
Happy holidays!!

Sugar Dragons

Posted by _tango! on December 21, 2006
Posted in: art, entertainment, food, ideas, inspiration, thoughts. 2 comments

Neatorama links us to a great video of a street vendor in China creating sugar animal lollipops by hand. I’ve seen this many times in in person, but it still fascinates me to see it over an over again. This reminds me that if you can spark someones attention through the creation of your art it’ll make the buying and product experience more thrilling than just buying an end product like most objects are sold today.

Newspaper Monster!

Posted by _tango! on December 20, 2006
Posted in: art, fun, ideas, inspiration, materials, style, thoughts, wacky. 3 comments

How crazy cool, scary, mysterious, and inspirational is this! I love it when people take ordinary objects and make them extraordinary. In this case, lots of old newspaper transformed into an alien like monster that’s somewhat cute, yet scary to guard your entrance. I’m making one over the holiday break!
via MyHumanComputer
More pics after the jump.
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Fish Pedicure

Posted by _tango! on December 17, 2006
Posted in: experience, fun, ideas, information, inspiration, thoughts, wacky. 3 comments

fish pedicureOOOooo…I never thought I’d be craving for a swarm of little fish to nibble on my feet and hands, but I just might now. I’ll assume it tickles at first then transforms into a soothing yet odd prickly massage..one day..i’ll give it a try.

“For the adventurous, there’s the Ooedo Onsen. This three-year-old kitschy spa made to look like a centuries-old, shogun-era village lets visitors choose from 15 different yukatas (light cotton kimonos) to wear while inside. In addition to its 28 baths and massages, Ooedo offers an exotic esthetic treatment called Doctor Fish, a foot bath featuring live fish called garru-rufa.

The small fish swim in a shallow tub of warm water and nibble at dead skin, leaving hands and feet smooth [top]. Imported from Turkey, the fish are used in some Middle Eastern countries as a natural way to treat skin disease and rheumatism. Be warned: Dozens of fish chewing on flesh looks like something straight out of a horror movie. But when you get over the ick factor, the nibbling can have a calming affect.” www.ooedoonsen.jp

read more via bookofjoe

Google Patent Search

Posted by _tango! on December 14, 2006
Posted in: design, experience, ideas, information, tech, thoughts. Leave a Comment

google patent search

Thank GOD!!! Googles beta “Patent Search” visually reorganizes all the complex, confusing, and congested data from the USPTO(US patent and trademark office) and makes it a much better experience to seek out inventions. If you have ever used the USPTO patent site, you probably gave up after a few minutes due to the very unfriendly graphical interface then hired an expensive lawyer to suffer through the horror that you experienced for a bit. I’m super glad Googles taken notice of this craziness and I look forward to the future development of it….then again…it’s google and they will data mine what people are searching for then patent it themselves! They can be evil you know..

Nintendo Wii

Posted by _tango! on December 12, 2006
Posted in: brand, experience, fun, information, tech, thoughts. 4 comments

When you see these ads, it’ll make you want to buy a Nintendo Wii because they just scream out FUN! Yes, there is the ever so powerful Xbox and Playstation3, but when those 2 are battling for first place, the Wii stands out especially at a much lower cost($250ish) and a much more playful attitude. Sure the Xbox and PS3 are more powerful and graphic intense, but are they as much fun? Isn’t that the point of games? I’m sure their good, but not as exciting since the Wii is creating a community of people obsessed about not just the gaming aspect, but how they play it. There’s a wonderful pool of images on Flickr of Wii users! I’d like to see a comparison of pictures of people playing the PS3 or Xbox, which would probably seem like the stare of boredom that we get in webcams. Anyhow, just my prediction, but the Wii will kick butt! I want one even if I end up smashing my TV with the controller. I’m not saying the Xbox and PS3 are bad, I’m just saying that the Wii is really revolutionizing our aspect of gaming consoles.

Watch the fun ads above or after the jump(direct links: here, here, and here) I’ll throw in some images from that pool of Wii players as well after the jump.

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TerraCycle Inc.

Posted by _tango! on December 8, 2006
Posted in: design, food, green, ideas, information, inspiration, materials, tech, thoughts. 11 comments

terracycle inc tom szaky

Wow! What an amazing story, idea, and kick-butt revolutionary company. Terracycle delivers the most eco-friendly consumer product in big box retail shelves made entirely by garbage, yet with a higher quality than most competitors and at a lower price! So, how they they do it? They use garbage!!! Founder Tom Szaky(23 yrs old when he founded TerraCycle and a freshmen Princeton dropout), explains, they get paid to take garbage away and they get paid to sell their new products. Their main product is a liquid worm poop fertilizer which is created by feeding red worms organic waste in return for their castings which get mixed with water to create a rich organic fertilizer that’s proven to be better than MiricleGro or various other competitors which are chemically driven rather than organic.(or as they claim, “The proof is in the poop!”)

Now with a great product came the task of packaging it. When they first started up, they had no money to purchase fresh bottles, hence another innovation…they ran around town collecting used soda bottles, cleaned them, added labels, and used that! They saved tons of money this way and also did something new in the product world; every single bottle was different, be it an old Pepsi bottle, Coke, Water, Sprite, etc. Their spray tops are even extras that have been dumped by manufacturers of other spray-on products and even the boxes that the plant-food is shipped in are misprinted rejects from major companies. Yup, it’s garbage made into huge profits at its best!

TerraCycle is a definite company to watch out for in our sustainably driven world. I’ve seen many companies re-use recycled goods, but I’ve never seen one come out with a product that can be used again, cost less, and is better than competiing products. They also have a pretty cool name tag concept to get kids pumped about recycling. Watch that video here.

For a deep read into TerraCycles company dig into their websites video and stories, this detailed article at Inc.com, or for a quick view, watch the YouTube video above.

More pics after the jump.

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Crit Buns

Posted by _tango! on December 7, 2006
Posted in: design, experience, fun, ideas, inspiration, materials, style, thoughts. 6 comments

crit bunsDo you go to art school, or sit through tons of crits(critiques)? Perhaps your in a space with tons of stools with missing or worn out foam pads. Well, if so, your butts probably craving one of these soft “crit buns” to sit on! “Crit Buns” were created by designers from my school RISD. I first spotted these colorful and graphically packaged buns during the RISD alumni sale and thought, duh…we all need one…then again, I just sat on my hands back when I was there even though the dirty pants from the charcoaled up floors were somewhat proud war marks for the RISD-oids.(mainly freshmen students since they have drawing studios which are famous for using bricks of charcoal a day which most kids end up sneezing out towards the end of the day…ooo, those were the days.) Go get a crit bun and make your buns smile!!!