The enemy of any manufacturing guru is variability. The obvious reason for this is that customers expect manufactured products to do what they’re marketed to do. But, there are also less apparent reasons around efficiency. For example, if step 1 of a manufacturing process introduces variability so that it actually ends up spitting out 3 [...]
As a tech nerd who currently owns a Blackberry, I’m usually primarily focused on smartphones (like the iPhone and Android phones). However, Samsung’s Blue Earth caught my eye as an example of an innovative and very green design. Notice anything different about the back? If you said, “those look like solar panels”, you’d be right. [...]
While Moore’s Law may make it harder to be a tech company, it’s steady march makes it great to be an energy-conscious consumer, as one of its effects is to drive down power consumption in generation after generation of product. Take the example of smartphones like Apple’s iPhone or Motorola’s new Droid: Moore’s Law has [...]
Back when I was still posting on Xhibiting, I was especially fond of interesting USB gadgets. Well, my good friend Anthony pointed me to this interesting gadget that he found out about through Engadget which takes my USB fascination to a whole new level: The product is from Thumbs Up! and apparently, after plugging it [...]
This little gem of an idea was shared to me via Google Reader by my friend Cat of Pizza Diavola. Spanish designer Oscar Diaz took the usually boring concept of a calendar and came up with a way to really make it pop. Through the power of capillary action (for you laypeople, what allows paper [...]
Last week, pictures surfaced of Qualcomm’s Netbook concept design, powered by their Snapdragon platform – something I’ve decided to call the QBook. I posted some technical specs and pictures over on Xhibiting: Although no specific product has been announced, Qualcomm did promise a release next year (I know what’ll be on my Coveted for Christmas [...]
Over on Xhibiting, I made a post on a couple of very interesting lamps which defy our typical conception of what a “lamp” is: If you’re like most people, all your life you’ve learned that lamps are supposed to be rigid things with no flexibility. No life. No character. They’re “supposed” to be boring, not [...]
(cross posted from Xhibiting) Eco-chic seems to be the newest thing in product design. These concept design Bonsai speakers from JVC from their Sound Garden collection carries on this trend (HT: Inhabitat). Made from some type of eco-plastic (which hopefully is as eco-friendly as it sounds), these devices are stackable speakers (as shown below) which [...]
One particular design motif I’m fond of is hiding in plain sight. (Cross-posted from Xhibiting ) I love the aesthetic here. It looks like just a commonplace eraser, but it packs a heckuva lot more functionality underneath, not to mention that it: is a simple do-it-yourself project protects the USB drive is swappable (because, seriously, the capacity on [...]
I recently started blogging with a couple of buddies over at the Xhibiting blog. The blog is basically a style blog where we post things which have caught our eye (we’re exhibiting them — get it? aren’t we clever?). While the others focus on more stylish things, I tend to populate the blog with posts [...]