Design posts

Perhaps not one for the Bridezilla, this design innovation will help reduce the carbon footprint of your upcoming wedding. The eco-friendly wedding dress is made from polyvinyl alcohol, an odorless, nontoxic polymer that dissolves in water. Perfect for that shotgun wedding where the less evidence there is afterwards the better, this is a perfect example of sustainable fashion in a use case where the item of clothing is normally only worn once. The blushing bride might not be so happy to discover that the family heirloom and longstanding wedding souvenir she purchased is due to become a sloppy…

Swarovski has decided to dazzle us with a sparkly technicolored jeweled case. This iced-out case is made up of  1,500 pieces of those tiny jewels. All the  crystals used on the case are 100% genuine Crystallized Swarovski Elements.The case is a limited edition for the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS made by Distinctive Style. There are only 100 limited edition cases available, and each all have something a little different about them, making them all unique. What if you don’t have an iPhone but have a BlackBerry or Nokia… no problem! They have a custom service which lets you pick the phone you want to…

The 2010 Expo in Shanghai is showcasing some fantastic designs in pavilions. If you haven’t already noticed the peculiar aspects of this Italian pavilion yet, look at the grey shady parts of the building. That right there…yep, that’s transparent cement. Each concrete block measures 100 x 50 x 5cm. About 40% of Italy’s pavilion is covered by using 3,774 blocks. Italcementi Group, an Italy-based cement maker, developed the transparent cement which was used to build the pavilion Although the Italian group of men haven’t fully disclosed what was put into the mixture to make the cement, they did…

Perfect for people in business or the absent-minded blogger, these USB post-its are a godsend. The design is so simple; I am not sure how anyone could not have thought of it before. We have all had those moments while sitting at our computers when we have needed to make a few quick notes, and with no paper in sight had to running looking around the house or office for some scrap. But with these babies on the market now, our prayers are answered. It is a USB memory stick with a notepad attached to the back of it, and to keep the paper ready for scribbles and protecting it from wrinkles – there is a plastic slider…

Using the iPhone OS, a Belgian man managed to make a wonderfully sounding guitar. Drums and background music can also be heard from the guitar, which makes him a pretty good garage band. Using multiple touch screen phones, he strums the chord he’d like to use and continues to play his “banjo”. Besides using the iPhone OS, a battery-powered speaker and some good old duct tape to keep it all together, he also uses two Android devices, two Windows Mobile devices and one iPod Touch. The app he used is called iShred and just some regular Guitar apps by Frontierdesign. iShred is an app for the iPhone which…

A new effort has Adobe attempting to bring imaging software, such as Lightroom, to the iPad and other tablet computers despite the bad blood between them and Apple. The project team leader is worried about the control Apple keeps over its software. The existence of Lightroom on the iPad could convince many photographers to make an investment in the tablet PC due to its mobility, but will Apple let Lightroom for the iPad ship? Lately, Apple has voiced its beef against Adobe’s Flash but nothing has ever been explicitly said about the Lightroom software, despite it being competition for Apple’s…

If you’ve been following Techi for the last few hours, then you’re already aware I’m all about the iPad today. Yep, today I love it. I’m even pricing them out right now. Y’know, trying to find an iPad tailored to my exacting specifications. One that screams my name. Uh, figuratively, of course. …Wouldn’t that be creepy. Anyway, you wanna give me a hand with this? Sweet, thanks, you’re the most. Alright, so check this out, I’m kinda mulling this one over in my head. I’m kind of a ‘gold’ guy, right? I think it’s totally my color, and over at Stuart Hughes they’ve got this really nice gold iPad I’m eyeing…

Today is historic. Today was never supposed to happen, yet against all odds, it did. Today marks the first time I’ve sat back and thought to myself ‘Huh. Might be nice to have an iPad.’ Now, I catch a lot of flak as Techi’s resident Apple skeptic (he said, typing this from a Mac), but this morning, I am all smiles about That Crazy-Powerful, Magical iPad. Why, might you ask? You probably mightn’t. But either way, I’m going to show you. Here, we have Tabloids, running on the iPad. Pretty well-formatted app, right? Sexy. So it’s a news feed reader, isn’t it? Actually, it isn’t. This thing’s a goddamn Twitter…

Apple really likes to tout the iPod Touch (and, by extension, the iPhone and iPad) as a gaming platform. In response, serious gamers like myself tend to laugh and point, largely due to the iPod’s lack of tactile feedback. ‘Button’ controlled iPod games are consistently a joke, and you can’t be a leading gaming platform on tilt-based games alone. But maybe there’s hope! Toshiba has gone and turned this whole tactile feedback problem on its ear by developing a technology that sounds like it fell right out of a William Gibson novel. ‘Senseg E-Sense’ works by making weak electric field changes to a special…

This one’s for the artists. Enter John Haasl, an IT guy whose hobby is fine arts. Haasl’s paintings don’t exactly revolutionize the art world, but there’s something special about them – Haasl’s painting them exclusively on the iPad. Said Haasl about his new-found pastime: “[I] only recently got into it more as Hobby using my iPad…The paintings you see done on the iPad are actually my second, third, and fourth completed paintings.” Frankly, speaking as an illustrator, that only serves to make Haasl’s work more impressive, as far as I’m concerned. Even more impressive is that without pressure…