Design posts

Here’s a Twitter oddity I am absolutely not going to do the opposite of talk about. You’ve probably seen something like this before, but its ties to social media and the fact that you can watch it in real time set it apart. This is Marble Art, and while they could have spent a couple more hours on a name, it’s impressive nonetheless. Essentially, it’s a marble coaster powered by tweets – specifically, the hashtag #marbleart.tv. Punch the keys (for God’s sake) and check out the live webcam feeds to watch your marble do that thing marbles like to do: succumb to gravity. While I for one wish there was a little…

Awhile ago, I wanted to purchase some custom Converse shoes. Y’know, how on their website, they let you design your own? I’m all sorts of Canadian, so I was turned away upon checking out. I’ve been ensaddened ever since. In fact, it isn’t the first time my online shopping experience has been stifled by my nationality. But lo! Now I can drown my sorrows! Taking a page from Converse and throwing iconic brand visibility to the wind, Heineken has begun a bizarre online campaign  that allows you to ditch the green bottle and design your own, for a truly… uh… custom drinking experience? That seems weird…

Now here’s a partnership of which you’d never have fathomed to dream. The Guggenheim has jumped into bed with YouTube to begin the hunt for the world’s most creative online video content. More like GOOG-enheim, am I right? Yeah? Never mind. Anyway, the initiative is weakly branded ‘YouTube Play’, and anyone on planet Earth can nominate their video (by July 31st – better get moving, kids!). Actually, I guess it’s not limited to Earth, but good luck getting reception from the moon. That place is a black hole, guys. A black hole. That’s really all there is to it – the official announcement and even the…

Gabriel Dishaw knows what beef is. Culling tech refuse for old circuit boards, processors, and other obsolete throw-away-ables, Gabe recombobulates them into – what else? – shoes. There’s really not much to say about these that you can’t already divine from these photographs, including but not limited to the fact that Dishaw has chosen an extremely odd artistic fixation, if a rad one. You’re currently looking at the ‘Junk Dunk’. Cute. In all seriousness, I’d totally rock a pair of these. Comfort schmomfort, am I right, people? It’s the price we pay for totally pimp kicks. Apparently, though,…

Yeah, maybe I talk about iPads and iPad accessories a bit much, but this is seriously cool, so let’s just get this out of the way and I swear I’ll move on to something a little less iPad-centric, aight? Aight. So this is pretty self-explanatory. Jack Zylkin is man who couldn’t be bothered with the comfy, convenient ergonomics of modern input devices, and apropos has taken up the previously-unclaimed mantle of ‘guy who invented the USB typewriter’. Billed as ‘a new and groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence’, the USB typewriter is, in fact, a typewriter – or rather several different…

The rock don’t stop. Remember the iCade? Of course you do, that’s a stupid question. Possibly one of the finest April Fool’s jokes of 2010, there was speculation that ThinkGeek may in fact go ahead with actually producing the iCade, if only to silence the ranks of howling fans it had garnered. Anyway, it seems while ThinkGeek is content to sit on its gold mine, fellow gamer Hideyoshi Moriya has gone ahead and built his own iCade-like iPad dock, using – what else – an Arduino board. Considering the thing is made of cardboard, it looks sturdy as hell. You best get moving, ThinkGeek. We really, really want…

Have you ever been to a house and stated in your head “WTF were they thinking?” when judging their design choices? Now with the help of some docking speakers for your iPod/iPhone you can provoke your friends into thinking the same thoughts. The iCrystal by Speakal is a new innovative design as far as docking stations go; backlit Omni directional speakers with an illuminated teardrop giving off a gentle blue light around its rim. They have been compared to alien pods, and its hard not to see why. These orb-like speakers definitely give off the feeling of something that is not from our world. Of…

So I was in Best Buy yesterday, iPadding in Cantonese because I like a challenge, when I thought to myself ‘Gee, this form factor is so ugly. Can we get back to basics for a minute?’ Well, yes. Yes we can. SiteHirac presents an iPad case for the gentleman-or-woman who wants to take it back to the day of beautiful, age-stained yellow computer casings – the day of the Mac Classic. And as far as I can tell, this is an actual Macintosh Classic, gutted and retooled into the cutest lil’ iPad holder you’ve ever seen. The lack of home button functionality is disturbing, but nothing a solid half-inch drill bit can’t…

Given that today’s announcement of iPhone 4 contained almost nothing surprising, you’d think everything that needed to be said has already been uttered. You’d be wrong. In fact, the most important part of Jobs’ keynote today was not the the arrival of a phone we all knew was coming. No, it was a slide near the end that Apple have shown before that stated that Apple exists at the intersection of technology and ‘the liberal arts’. Here’s what Jobs said about it: I put up this slide earlier this year, and to me it represents what Apple is all about. It’s not just a technology company, even though we have…

The green movement has stopped being just about saving our dying planet and has become the fashionable thing to do. I am not sure if this is a good or bad thing, as on one hand it gets a group who wouldn’t normally care to be pulled into the movement involved, but on the other we lose the reason and passion of what began the movement in the process. This new phone charger from Nokia looks as if it will walk the line between the two, balancing green power and posh-ness. Nokia has come up with a way to charge your phone using the static electricity created by your rotating tire on your bike, therefore charging…