Archive for the ‘Electronic Gadgets’ Category
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 |
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A funny thing happened today when I was surfing the Web, anxious to find some interesting stuff to write about. A friend of mine asked me whether I find it normal for someone to achieve a laptop instead of a washing machine. She was complaining about her boyfriend’s desire of having a laptop when he already has a desktop and he didn’t seem to be bothered by the lack of a device to help them wash their clothes.
She didn’t finish her story when I came upon this amazing concept which I knew nothing about. My, my, what a coincidence! The device was no more, no less than a washing machine.
Designed by Guopeng Liang at China’s Tongji University, one of the finalists in Electrolux’s Design Lab ’08 contest, which I already mentioned on a previous occasion (when I talked about the Drawer Kitchen), the iBasket is a space saving clothes hamper and washing machine in one.
The novelty about the iBasket is that it will automatically begin the wash cycle once the weight of the clothing reaches a critical predetermined point. With a transparent cylindrical body made of acrylic glass, engineered plastic and recycled aluminum, the device washes the dirty lot for a selected duration, while the built-in refresh system gets of the smelly odors. When the washing is over, the LEDs fixed at the bottom flashes out to let you know the process is over. As if it wasn’t enough already, the iBasket features a WiFi link that allows you to control the machine from your computer so that, when it has its job done, it sends a twitter message to your cellphone or PC. “Mission accomplished”, maybe?
Once again, the device is in its concept phase, but I’m sure there are many people among you, guys, who put their hopes in the iBasket.
(Source Dvice)
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Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 |
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I’ve always had a problem with reaching all kind of things I used to deposit on very high shelves or in drawers which overtopped my height. This isn’t my problem and my problem only, I suppose there are millions of you out there who lack space and try everything in order to conserve it by stuffing things in unreachable places.
Therefore, I applaud the apparition of the StairCASE, created by the Chinese designer Danny Kuo for the average human height – 1,8 meters. “This is one of my favourite projects, which realized in 8 weeks, from assigned theme to an almost finished and working prototype”, says the designer on his official website.
The StairCASE is a smart solution for people with limited space and, why not, “limited” height. It’s a standard bookcase where each shelf is a box that slides out and becomes a stairwell. Alright, such an amalgamation of shelves and stairs isn’t the greatest novelty of them all. We have seen before, in London, a similar concept, but StairCASE has the advantage that it can be put just about anywhere.
The concept is based on three initial keywords: space, storage and future. The designer understood that in the future space will be an urgent problem because big apartment buildings are taking over normal 1, 2 or 3 level houses. The main reason for something like this to happen is that building vertically is the most efficient way to save space because it uses less ground square meters to house people. The same rule should be respected regarding the interior design also: focus must be on height rather than width.
The StairCASE allows you to have a much taller bookshelf and reaches the ceiling, making the topshelves easier to reach without getting into awkward positions or getting help from another furniture piece.
(Source gizmodo.com)
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Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 |
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After quickly surfing the official website of Tokyoflash – the home of unique Japanese watches, as they say – you will discover the main common characteristic of these timepieces: you can barely read the hour. You must be either very smart and ingenious, either a fine connoisseur of the time-telling devices. If you ask me, the attempt to read the time means exercising your patience first and telling yourself that it’s not a big deal if you couldn’t do this in the first place.
Their latest creation, the Negative, is the proof of the company’s ongoing quest to bring some of the most novel digital watches out there. “With an <> Liquid Crystal display, and a stylish solid case, Negative is one of the most sophisticated designs available from Tokyoflash. Negative will look as good on your wrist at a business meeting as it will on the dance floor”; this is the presentation of the watch on the company’s official website.
The watch is available in polished silver or polished black and it features a LCD screen which always displays the time and allows the wearer to read it with a quick glance. The Negative watch gets its name from the “always-on” inverse LCD display which uses oversize black dot-matrix pixels to reveal the time, day or date.
Another interesting feature is the multi-color LED light guide; when you touch one button, you practically switch between seven user selectable colors, but the feature is most impressive at night. This way, you can have a different color for each day of the week. There is also a “frenzy” mode which sends the screen into a psychedelic colored light show with a press of a button.
In addition, Negative features a vertical or horizontal display option, several alarm functions, 12/24 hours mode and multi-color mode, sending all LED colors into the frenzy when the backlight is activated.
As I was saying before, reading time won’t be a very easy job and will require some practice and skill. The watch presents time in negative space, where the unlit squares on the screen show digital numbers highlighted by the bright squares around them and the result is a subtle optical illusion effect.
The Tokyoflash Negative is available on Tokyoflash’s official website and it retails for about $162.
(Source technabob.com)
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Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 |
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Look at the picture below and guess what that thing might be. It’s true, there aren’t too many clues to help you, but unleash your imagination and let it go beyond the boundaries. It’s the only way to get somewhere near the truth.
I, for one, couldn’t have thought of the right answer in a million years, by only looking at the picture that has no numbers written at the bottom of the object. Well now, was there any moment when the word “timepiece” crossed your mind? Because if it did cross your mind, that’s what I call a lucky guess.
It’s a clock, alright, and it’s called “The Rim”. Designer Jansen Lye wanted to overthrow theories about how clocks should look like and created a simple device which astonishes by its minimalist and distinctive appearance. Therefore, the Rim looks like an eccentric sculpture hanging on your wall, instead of a clock.
The weird thing about this unique clock is that the hands have been positioned on the outer edge of the clock rather than the normal clock look, which has the hour and minutes in center. Moreover, they don’t point to numbers; the hands of the Rim Clock are actually protrusions that go around the outside and point to the wall. The pointy shaped hand shows the minutes, while the rounded one represents the hours.
There’s only one disadvantage of the clock, which might be decisive: if you haven’t had your walls painted, penciled or stenciled with numbers from 1 to 12, I suspect it will be a little difficult for you to maintain punctuality among your virtues. It looks great, it’s ingenious, but it sure isn’t a reliable time-telling. Not to mention the fact that it will take some time until you’ll be able to correctly read the hour and minutes.
Another discouraging aspect is that, like lots of other distinctive things, the Rim Clock is still in its concept phase.
(Source technabob.com)
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Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 |
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People are crazy about gadgets these days and that’s a fact. They prove themselves to be so passionate about these innovative and sometimes useless devices precisely because they are a further sign of a remarkable imagination spiced with the boldness everyone would like to have.
USB gadgets are always taking gadgets to a whole new level of bizarre and the USB Seamour Sheep Lamp is no exception. Based on the Seamour Sheep comic series which follow the misadventures of Seamour and presumably his sheep, the USB-powered lamp is released under the form of a Radioactive Edition and it’s the natural consequence of the success of the Seamour Sheep Illuminative Edition.
The lamp features an atmospheric green LED lighting, a cool radioactivity warning sign on his side and the coolest goggles so far (completely black). You must agree, this guy’s lazy expression and the removable goggles do make him look pretty cool. Another point of attraction is the fact that the release version of the Seamour Sheep Radioactive Edition brings a visible improvement to the painted eyes (the pupils are looking straight ahead like the original Seamour, but there are extra upper eyelashes to make its eyes more pronounced).
Moreover, the sheep is provided with a motion sensor that detects when you turn Seamour on his side. When you do that, the light is switched off. If you want to turn it on again, you simply put Seamour back on his feet. Yeah, you got it right: you can wave and say goodbye to plugging and unplugging of power cables and to the ugly visible power switch.
The device is available, according to the Seamour Sheep’s official website, on the Crazy Label webstore and the Fugitive Toys webstore and it costs $69. Pretty expensive, isn’t it?
(Source coolest-gadgets.com)
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