Michael Surtees of DesignNotes started this interesting discussion about how the iPhone (and social networking) has changed the he tells stories. He says, "My blog posts from DesignNotes and my flickr photos can feed into Virb, twitter can be read in facebook, and with a simple rss I can send feeds anywhere else that I want to. It makes a crazy loop that makes my content very universal."
One of the most important responsibilities of hosting a party is making sure everybody gets home safely. That job is made much easier with these Cabbie Napkins. Just fill in your drunken guest's destination and appropriate cash stash location and file them towards a taxi. Best to order them now to make sure they arrive before New Years.
Andrew English has created a lovely twist on the common wedding band engraving. His rings come with a hand-engraved imprint of your partner's fingerprint, making each ring truly unique. (Found through Pan-dan).
I had the pleasure of interviewing the fabulous Chris Jordan today for The Greener Grass. You can find the full interview here.
The New York Times Magazine just published its 7th annual Year in Ideas. The issue features the 'many curious, inspired, perplexing and sometimes outright illegal innovations of the past 12 months'. Articles include: The Cardboard Bridge; Smog Eating Cement; Criminal Recycling; and Wireless Energy. It is a fascinating collection of articles that aren't limited to good ideas, just interesting ideas in general.
The Story of Stuff is a great 20 min animated speech by Annie Leonard examining a product's life cycle and the environmental and social side effects of each part of the process. It focuses on production and consumption trends that we have fallen into like bad habits and can't get away from. Whether you are involved in a product's development or you are just a consumer, this movie and website will definitely make you stop and think. (Found through Kaleidoscope's inspiring Greener Grass project).
If you have been dropping hints to your loved ones about all the fabulous clothes you would like for Christmas, maybe you should follow it up with this sizing cheat sheet. Created by Made in England by Gentlemen, this is a pretty ingenious piece of holiday graphic art that allows you to write down all your clothing sizes as a cheat sheet for the people buying you gifts. Available in a boys and girls version. (Found through Swissmiss).
Ha! I'm not sure this is a good idea, in fact I'm pretty sure it's not... but it totally made my day. It's wigs... for your cat. Ha! Cats are known for their big personalities. These wigs, by Kitty Wigs, just save your imagination some effort in trying to visualize that personality. Love it! (Found through NOTCOT.org).
I enjoyed this File Magazine gallery of Souvenir photos by Michael Hughes. It features small souvenir products being held in front of the real thing. The varying sense of scale and color is nice. There is something really charming about capturing the souvenir in the memory, instead of the other way around.
If you are a photographer (amateur or professional) you should check out Citizen Image. They specialize in marketing and selling the rights to photographs. Photographers can upload images they wish to sell and Citizen Image will help find a buyer. There is no fee to post photographs and photographers receive 50% of the gross proceeds from the sale of their photo. Buyers can search through the unique content online. If there are no appropriate images, buyers can set an Assignment for photographers, outlining the image(s) that they are looking for. This is a really well thought out system that benefits everyone involved.
Burst Labs is the online production music library of The Burst Collective. The site takes a refreshing approach to organizing and searching through audio files. I particularly like the Discover feature that allows you to pick from suggested descriptive words to help define the type of music you are interested in. It gives you just the right amount of tools to 'discover' the music with, depending on your level of adventurism or need to define.
Fantastique! I just listened to this TED Talk by Philippe Starck, and smiled from start to finish. He talks about his useless job of being a designer - very inspiring (seriously). Whether you think you are a Philippe Starck fan or not, this talk is well worth 18 minutes of your time.
BookScape is an interesting concept for a online library archive. It was created by Michael Chang of Yahoo's Design Innovation Team. The project focuses on creating an interface that allows access to digital versions of 2600 illustrated children's books. Images of the scanned books are arranged alphabetically. Dynamic resampling is used to efficiently show all the images at once in one zoomable space. Zooming out allows quick navigation of the entire collection. Zooming in gives you more finite navigation control. This project reminds me a bit of some of the thinking behind Microsoft's amazing Photosynth that I wrote about earlier this year.
I thoroughly enjoyed looking at these keyboards designed by a bunch of second and third graders who call themselves The Laptop Club. Their keyboards include buttons for 'private code', 'pet shop', 'family', and 'rily werd games'. It's a fascinating view into how children view computers and what a computer could be. It made me step back for a minute and reconsider my own notion of a computer. (Found through Core 77).
Ben Fry is a fabulous designer/artist/computer scientist who focuses on visualizing data. This project, called Distellamap, (a spin-off of Dismap) highlights the beauty of code. The project features the code of 6 different Atari games overlaid with curves to show its 'go to' elements. The visualization emphasizes the flow of the code, showing it off as a complex piece of poetry. (Found most recently through Pica + Pixel).
Custom 52 is kind of like Treadless, but for playing cards. Anyone can submit a graphic design for a card's face. The card number and suit is up to you, but the design you submit has to reflect that choice. Submitted designs are voted on by fellow visitors to the site. The winning designs are made into a purchasable deck.
Got too much to do? Try delegating... to your personal assistant. Sunday provides personal assistants via phone and internet for as low as $29 a month. That entitles you to 30 requests. Sunday says the spend about 20 min on your request and then get back to you. Requests can include travel bookings, setting up appointments, reminders or wake up calls, tracking down products or services, etc. Plus they are available to you 24/7. I might just get this for everyone on my Christmas list.
If you are involved in product development or just a conciencious consumer, you should take the time to read Greenpeace's latest Guide to Greener Electronics. It ranks some of the big electronics manufacturers based on their global policies, use of harmful chemicals, and on taking responsibility for products at the end of their life cycle. (Found through Engadget).
If you are thinking about redecorating (or just rearranging) your house or apartment, you should definitely check out Floor Planner. It's very easy to use and has better graphics than most floor planning software I've seen. The interface is straight forward. You just drag and drop walls, windows and other architectural elements to represent your room and then add contents from the 300+ furniture elements menu. Double clicking on different aspects of the room allow you to enter or alter dimensions. Oh, and it's free for personal use. (Found through Apartment Therapy).
If you have ever worked on an email campaign, you know that testing your flyer in all the different mail clients can be a time consuming and difficult task. Campaign Monitor has an all in one test which previews how your email will look in 17 of the most popular email clients, as well as testing it against some spam filters and firewall protection programs. Unfortunately it's not free. It's $10/test. Probably still worth it if your are working on high profile email campaigns. Way to see a need and fill it Campaign Monitor creators. (Found through Swissmiss).
