Design posts

For all the talk of being environmentally-friendly, a lot of people are hopping on fixed-gear bikes and scooters because they look cool. Well, this concept seems to roll with that vibe – and succeeds admirably. Designed by Daneil Dayag, this Urban Scooter concept boasts a very slick design and, instead of the usual spoke-hub model, seems to run by moving the wheel by its rim, giving it a futuristic look that’s much more ‘urban hispter’ than the usual ‘person who’s really too old to be riding a freaking scooter’. The electric vehicle is aimed at those who are not only looking for an easy, low-pollution…

There are painfully few options available to the trendy consumer who wants to look silly in transit. Unicycles take too much time and effort to learn. Hoverounds are for old ladies. Segways are just too silly – we’re trying to strike a balance, here, people. But now…now there is a way to look exactly one increment less ridiculous than on a Segway. Presenting…the YikeBike. Yeah, I don’t get it either. But it’s still a pretty neat idea. The Yike is all-electric, can go 6 miles on one charge (which sounds wimpy until you realize this is probably a bad choice for a long-distance road trip anyway),…

I’m not big on the whole 3D scene. Trying to fit awkward glasses over my regular ones isn’t exactly comfortable. Likewise, virtual reality is something I’m not too keen on (two words: Virtual Boy). But this, I like. The pCubee (yes, that’s “PEE-kyoo-bee”) is a new spin on an…uh…’old classic’. By utilizing five LCD screens strapped to a plastic cube and sensors worn on the head (think of your Wii, but backwards), the pCubee displays an interactive 3D diorama ‘inside’ the cube. The University of British Columbia, whose team designed this thing, are calling it FTVR, for…

Geek gadgetry has a new, previously untapped market: Women. For years, technology and geek chic has been the domain of males, typically the kind living in their parents basement with Cheeto stains on their shirts who think that corduroy is the height of fashion, but that’s set to change. Wearable technology is an evolving market in 2010, but increasingly the technology is aimed at both men and women. This dress from Abbey Liebman at Cornell University’s Textiles Nanotech Laboratory shows how a stylish dress can contain ultra-modern geek tech, including a USB charger for phones and iPods, photovoltaic…

If you’re familiar with a thing called the Internet, doubtlessly you’ve recently bore witness to indie darlings OK GO and they’re latest insanely-choreographed music video. Y’know, the one with the Rube Goldberg Machine? If you haven’t yet, go watch it. Here, I linked it for you. No, really, go ahead. I’ll wait.   Cool (read: head-explodingly badass), right? Well, even cooler is that the band have now posted an interactive floorplan of the machine’s design on their website, and inquiring minds can take an interactive tour of the product of no doubt thousands of manhours….

Let me tell you about my rig. Seriously. Grab your milk and cookies, find a spot on the carpet, and let me tell you all about my rig. My rig’s a Mac Pro, Xeon Quadcore x2 with dual crossfired Radeon 4870s and 12 sweet gigs of RAM. My rig dual-boots to Windows 7. My rig runs Photoshop like a piece of goddam paper. My …mousepad is made of… I dunno, like, felt or something. My rig is a sissy girl. If Greensforged knows one thing, it’s that steel is awesome. Hell, it’s the first thing they declare on their website. And they offer the only thing that can truly make my rig truly manly – solid steel mousepads. Unnecessary?…

Furniture these days is getting, well, boring. It’s the same stuff everywhere — the same look, the same feel, the same basic design rules. Where’s the fun in that? What does that express about you? Imagine, if you will, furniture that can morph into completely new styles and designs. Imagine being able to change a simple sofa into something far more exotic than you’ve ever seen before. The Confluences sofa may one day enable all this. Winner of the “best of the best” Red Dot Design award, the Confluences sofa is a design concept that could one day transform the way in which we think about furniture….

Sometimes, it’s a little hard to listen to dry, good-for-you messages about environmentalism. But a robot? That’s cute? Where I do start recycling?! That seems to be the idea behind the concept ‘Plant-O-Bot’, a robot that gains energy from the plants that it stores in its own body. The adorable little thing has an energy meter on the front that lets you know how the robot is doing: green and it and its plants are doing fine; red, and both the Plant-O-Bot and its green friends aren’t doing so hot. Designed by Bharoto Yekti, the concept aims to work as a kind of ‘living’ metaphor for our relationship to…

Who amongst us, the cognoscenti and intelligentsia of the world, hasn’t dreamed of doing something as incredible, sweeping and artful as melting a door with a lightsaber? Fine, maybe that’s a dream limited to a few basement-dwelling nerds. But at least we now have bookends for our dreams! (Ooh, unintentional puns FTW!) New to the Star Wars shop is a pair of bookends that display what it might look like to have a lightsaber piercing through your collection of books, comics or DVDs. Dedicated fans will note, of course, that the lightsaber blade (which lights up) is red, meaning that it probably belongs…

We did get insurance on this thing, right? We will miss Sunken, our luxury yacht that provided us numerous hours of joy and fun.  We can’t help but recall the star-filled nights with only the moon to guide us and the bright sun-shiny days that forced us to layer on the sunscreen. We lost her far too soon… Whoops. You weren’t supposed to see that! Ah, darn, the secret is out — okay, so this isn’t our yacht, and it obviously has a design flaw (or feature) built into it. You see, some guys with some creativity (or insanity) decided they would build a yacht that gave the impression that it sinking to the deep…