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Follow Core77 Twitter Facebook RSS Photo Galleries Dutch Design Week DUTCH DESIGN WEEK1,000 events by 300 designers.97 images Vienna Design Week VIENNA DESIGN WEEKInternational and local design in Austria's capital city.171 images Valencia Disseny Week VALENCIA DISSENY WEEK 2010Making its mark on the design map.147 images MAKER FAIRE NYC MAKER FAIRE NYCCelebrating DIY and open-source processes.75 images Technology The Core77 Design Blog send us your tips get the RSS feed blog authors Making Globes Posted by Frank Bonomo | 12 Nov 2010 | Comments (0) Because you love how stuff is made and the planet Earth. facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Object Culture | Technology • Comments (0) Construction innovations: MEM's plug-and-play elevator system Posted by hipstomp | 12 Nov 2010 | Comments (0) 0memelev001.jpg In a bid to reduce expensive construction downtime--specifically, the delays required in submitting elevator design and engineering plans for safety approvals and inspections, and the back-and-forth this can entail--a company named Modular Elevator Manufacturing makes pre-fab elevators integrated into their own shafts that show up on-site on the back of a truck. Installation of a MEM system, which can go up to seven stories, typically takes less than a day. 0memelev002.jpg The pre-built elevator systems are pre-inspected and approved, so it's more like a plug-and-play component than, say, building a cinderblock hoistway from scratch and filling it with gear. Another neat feature of a MEM is that it can be retrofitted inside a building, provided you've got the space inside, or added to the outside of a building (with a Reverse Entrance option if you want to go from ground-floor sidewalk to second-floor interior). 0memelev003.jpg facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Object Culture | Technology • Comments (0) Stache Tags: Movember goes Twitter Posted by Sam Dunne | 10 Nov 2010 | Comments (0) The clever people at Blast Radius, in collaboration with UK illustrator and facial hair connoisseur Simon Cook of Made In England, have put together Stachetag.com (or alternatively Tachetag for the Brits/Aussies)—a brilliant little live feed of Movember mug-shots uploaded to Twitter to show their support of this year's Movember men's health month. Apparently, the inspiration for the site came from a chance stuttering mix-up of the words "hash tag". Get online and get social with your mo! facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Graphic Design | Social Design | Technology • Comments (0) Electrolytic Fluid Antenna replaces metal with jets of water Posted by hipstomp | 10 Nov 2010 | Comments (5) 0fountant001.jpg The U.S. Navy is reportedly experimenting with replacing their bristling shipside antennae arrays with another material: Salt water, shot up into a fountain. The Electrolytic Fluid Antenna, as it's called, is apparently workable and the Navy is even seeking to commercialize it. Sea water is pumped from the ocean into a stream and the width and length of the stream determine the frequency capabilities. An 80-foot-high stream could transmit and receive from 2 to 400 mHz with a relatively small footprint. The Sea Water Antenna is capable of transmitting and receiving VHF signals and has been tested at a receiving range of over 30 miles. The antennae needs of a typical Navy vessel with 80 metallic antennas could theoretically be replaced with only 10 Sea Water Antennas of varying heights and streams to cover the same frequencies. The technology could potentially be used on land with salt-supplemented water, replacing large unsightly antenna towers with fountains. Another use could be as a solar- or battery-powered emergency antenna system for watercraft. Pretty wild. If this takes off, it could turn The Bellagio into a major broadcasting center. It would also be awesome if they could adapt the technology to replace cell phone towers in those towns where nobody wants the ugly tower in their backyard, and they instead replaced them with picturesque geysers. 0fountant002.jpg facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Object Culture | Technology • Comments (5) 3D Printed Bespoke Booties Posted by core jr | 9 Nov 2010 | Comments (0) bespokeshoe.jpg Marloes ten Bhömer is an experimental shoemaker who is exploring new possibilities in fabrication and fitting provided by 3D-printing. Rapidprototypedshoe, shown here, is breated through sintered plastic plumer, into the shape of one's foot. A fantastic solution if, like many, you're two feet aren't exactly the same size. If 3D shoe printing takes off, we wonder other materials could be used to create a shoe that can stretch, bend, and be repaired? Bhömer has just started to address that by designing a shoe that comes apart in layers, allowing for different material properties and easy replacement of worn-out parts. bespoke-shoe-fabrication.jpg via ecouterre facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Fashion Design | Object Culture | Technology • Comments (0) CFLs, LEDs, now ESLs: Yet another lightbulb technology Posted by hipstomp | 9 Nov 2010 | Comments (8) 0eslbulb001.jpg Looks like we're getting spoiled for choice when it comes to replacements for the venerable incandescent lightbulb, which is due to be phased out in America by 2012. Following in the footsteps of curly-fry CFLs and Philips' steampunk-looking LEDs, the latest bulb tech to pass UL certification is the ESL. 0eslbulb002.jpg The Electron Stimulated Luminescence bulb, by Seattle-based Vu1 Corporation (whose CEO is ironically named Philip Styles) uses "accelerated electrons to stimulate phosphor to create light, making the surface of the bulb 'glow.'" Vu1 claims their ESL is as energy-efficient and long-lived as CFLs and LEDs, but boasts superior light quality (see photo above) and is dimmable, unlike its cousins. Far as price, the bulbs will go for less than LEDs but more than CFLs: Twenty bucks a pop. facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Technology • Comments (8) Simplicity and the Future of Software Learning Posted by Willem Van Lancker | 3 Nov 2010 | Comments (1) EEScreenshot.png This past weekend, I was exploring some of the also-rans of the recent Cooper-Hewitt People's Design Award when I stumbled across a curious nominee with some interesting implications beyond its specific function. The product, Excel Everest, is a fully interactive MS Excel tutorial used for in-the-product training. I know mentioning the dreaded word "Excel" here to an audience of designers might seem off topic but the concepts of an interactive, self-grading, "in-product" tutorial complete with embedded videos and a scoreboard is very compelling. The product itself isn't a visual designer's idea of beautiful (it is still an Excel tutorial living inside of an MS Office product after all) but it solves the challenge of teaching a complicated software in a novel, simple way. Today, learning new software programs either falls in the "learn by doing" or the instructor/classroom based model. The latter often causes painful workarounds and the former is often time/cost prohibitive. While companies like Google and Apple strive to provide simple to use, intuitive systems; as designers we all know that not all software systems are best boiled down to one button and two clicks. Some programs, like Excel or the Adobe Creative Suite, are complicated for a reason and in all circumstance will formidably challenge even the most simplicity-focused designer. continued... facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Education | Technology • Comments (1) MUJI Launches Three New Apps for the iPad and iPhone Posted by Lisa Smith | 3 Nov 2010 | Comments (3) Who needs iCal when Muji Calendar promises more legibility? Or Adobe Ideas, if MUJI Notebook picks up the slack with handwriting recognition and different paper grids? Or a calculator, clock, weather display, or a currency converter, when you've got MUJI to GO? Yes, MUJI, the darling of design lifestyle brands, has just launched three apps for the iPad and iPhone. We haven't had our hands on them for very long, but if they're anything like all the other Muji products we own and love, we won't be disappointed. The launch is timely; we were just wondering how the famously "non-branded"brand's simple treatment of everyday life would translate to the consumption and production of digital information. These apps may provide a partial answer, though like any new product, there will be kinks. No biggie&mdashlin true MUJI form, the apps are free or very nearly—the Notebook app coming in at $3.99. continued... facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Object Culture | Technology • Comments (3) Today's sensationalist headline: The future of our planet depends on chickens! Posted by hipstomp | 2 Nov 2010 | Comments (5) 0chickengreen.jpg Chickens have lent their name to a funky dance and a contest of nerves in which James Dean drives his car directly at you, and next they may contribute to saving our planet, as seen in two recent posts at Inhabitat. The first points out that "eggshell membranes can absorb almost seven times their weight in C02, making them an ideal sponge for absorbing harmful greenhouse gases." I know it sounds crazy, but: Thinking of how many eggs are consumed around the world - India, for example accounts for about 1.6 million metric tons (or 2,305 pounds) of eggs annually all by themselves - if everyone was to leave their shells out after usage, they have the potential to absorb a considerable amount of Co2. A research team at the University of Calcutta is working on a way to extract the membranes from the shells, which could then presumably be used to create filters of some sort. The second post looks at the usage of chicken manure as a source of biogas, plans for which are now underway in the Netherlands and the U.K. The plan is for local farmers to collect and contribute chicken poo (among other animal waste) to nearby powerplants that will use "anaerobic digesters" to convert the stuff into biogas, which will in turn generate electricity. A question I've got about this latter one is, How the heck do you collect chicken manure? The convenient patty shape of cow manure seems it would lend itself to harvesting, but chicken waste seems challenging. I hope they're not cooping them up in a Matrix-like structure where all they do is eat and poop. facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Technology • Comments (5) Bloom laptop designed with e-recycling in mind Posted by hipstomp | 1 Nov 2010 | Comments (2) 0bloomlapt.jpg Back in July I posted a video of the laborious process of e-recycling, and posited that most product designers probably don't consider how the things they design are eventually going to be taken apart for recycling. But a group of Stanford grad students, recognized by Autodesk, are doing that very thing. Autodesk's Inventor of the Month award for October goes to the Stanford group's Bloom laptop, which is designed to be disassembled for recycling in just two minutes, and using no tools! "We used Autodesk Inventor software often during the ideation phase to experiment with the design," said Aaron Engel-Hall, a Stanford student and team member. "We created 3D shapes to represent the hardware we had to design around, and the parametric design of Inventor software let me put in different parameters so that all the model dimensions would update immediately. I was also able to experiment with various thicknesses for the case enclosure, making it as thin as possible while maintaining structural integrity." ...Beyond recyclability, Bloom delivers other benefits for consumers. The team used the easy-to-disassemble modularity of Bloom to develop a keyboard and track pad that detach and allow for improved ergonomics. The ease of disassembly also makes it easier to repair and upgrade components over the lifetime of the product, so that buying a computer is no longer a singular investment, but a longer-term relationship between the consumer and the service provider. Check it out: facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Object Culture | Technology • Comments (2) Video visualization of a new type of traffic-improving intersection Posted by hipstomp | 28 Oct 2010 | Comments (13) 0ddinte.jpg When I used to have a car in Manhattan I considered myself an expert at navigating the traffic sprawl, as I knew the city like the back of my hand and could usually work my little five-speed VW to the front of any pack. I'd often joke to my friends that Manhattan, due to all the one-way streets and congestion, was a place where you could often get to your destination faster by initially moving in the opposite direction. (No one ever laughed.) The concept of going the wrong way to reduce overall trip duration can also be seen in the "diverging diamond interchange," a new (to the U.S.) form of highway intersection that reduces "conflict points" by asking drivers to temporarily switch to the "wrong" side of the road. It's kind of complicated, but see if you can follow along: ...The diverging diamond interchange allows for two-phase operation at all signalized intersections within the interchange. This is a significant improvement in safety, since no left turns must clear opposing traffic and all movements are discrete, with most controlled by traffic signals. Additionally, the design can improve the efficiency of an interchange, as the lost time for various phases in the cycle can be redistributed as green time; there are only two clearance intervals (the time for traffic signals to change from green to yellow to red) instead of the six or more found in other interchange designs. Still confused? Perhaps this visualization will help, where the little intersecting red lines signify traffic lights: Pioneered in France, the first U.S. diverging diamond interchange was constructed last year in Springfield, Missouri. facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Technology • Comments (13) Working Better in 3D? The New Axsotic Spheric Mouse Posted by core jr | 28 Oct 2010 | Comments (12) We just caught wind of a new kind of 3D-Interface Controller, the Axsotic 3D Spherical Mouse, which allows a user to rotate objects in modelspace as though you were holding them, while drawing and clicking with your other, an experience likened by the designers to working on a 3D tablet. In the video above, the mouse is demonstrated in a character design scenario. We'd love to hear your initial thoughts. Would this change the way you work for the better? Let us know in the comments. 1.jpg 2.jpg facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Technology • Comments (12) Canadian electric car made from hemp biocomposites to significantly reduce tooling costs Posted by hipstomp | 27 Oct 2010 | Comments (5) 0kestrel-copy.jpg One of the reasons cars cost what they do is because they're made with a lot of stamped steel and aluminum, and those materials, not to mention the tooling they require, ain't cheap. So Canadian designer Darren McKeage and his company, Motive Industries Inc., are attempting to skirt those manufacturing costs by building a car from biocomposite materials derived from hemb fiber. Called the Kestrel, the car was unveiled to the public last month. The car's design features bio-composite materials and innovative tooling and part-molding techniques that Motive says will permit profitable manufacture of the Kestrel at smaller initial volumes than traditional stamped-steel or aluminum vehicles. "The cost to tool a traditional vehicle is in the hundreds of millions [of dollars]," explains company president Nathan Armstrong. "The techniques we are using will allow us to scale up the tooling and manufacturing process as demand increases, with ramp-up costs affordable for a new company...." ...Composites also will increase impact absorption and rust resistance. "Composite materials have been used in advanced applications for many years because of [their] relative light weight and ability to absorb impact loads," says Armstrong. Designed to run on a lithium-ion battery, the lightweight car (under 2,000 lbs) is slated to see production in 2012. via composites world facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Technology • Comments (5) DARPA/Boeing's DiscRotor: A 'copter with retractable rotors Posted by hipstomp | 26 Oct 2010 | Comments (1) 0discrotor.jpg Check out this nutty video of DARPA/Boeing's DiscRotor concept, a flying craft that combines the VTOL (vertical takeoff/landing) capabilities of a helicopter with the long-range capacity of an airplane. It starts off looking like a normal 'copter, but once it hits speed the rotors retract into a low-drag disc atop the machine; then forward momentum coupled with vertical propellors or turbines mean the conventional wings can keep it aloft. Pretty darn inventive. facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Object Culture | Technology • Comments (1) Movirtu's Cloud Phone is "Mobile for the next billion" Posted by hipstomp | 26 Oct 2010 | Comments (0) 0nigelwaller.jpg CNN has an interview up with Nigel Waller, the CEO of Movirtu Limited and the man behind their Cloud Phone. Waller dropped the surprising statistic that worldwide there are one billion people who use cell phones--but don't own one; instead they share, borrow or rent them. The Cloud Phone was intended to serve this market. At first Waller tried to create a cell phone that could be manufactured for just $5 so that everyone could afford one, but he couldn't pull it off: ...There are three key components in every mobile phone today, which cost about $5 or $6. There's the display, the keyboard and there's the RF [radio frequency] chip. Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars of phones that are manufactured, they still don't seem to be able to reduce the price of those three key elements. You add up those elements and you've got $18 or whereabouts. You add $1 for the battery, $1 for the SIM-card holder and you've got $20, $25. Instead Waller went with a $25 phone, but designed it so that a village of users could share it while still maintaining individual phone numbers accounts on a single phone. Activation cost? Just 10 to 20 cents per person. Read the full interview, which is filled with interesting insights on how the other half uses their phones, here. facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Business | Object Culture | Technology • Comments (0) Video illustrating Nokia Research Centre's "Morph" concept in action Posted by hipstomp | 25 Oct 2010 | Comments (0) Earlier this month we mentioned the Nokia Research Centre's efforts in developing a stretchable electronic skin, and now an NRC concept video reportedly from 2008 suddenly makes a lot more sense: (The video feels a big long, so if you feel like skipping around, the coolest thing they show you is the morphable form factor in the very beginning, which they come back to at 3:42; the "context dependent" haptic surfaces at 4:42 are a close second in terms of tech we'd like to see developed.) via gadgetlab facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Object Culture | Technology • Comments (0) PHOLED technology: A breakthrough for flexible displays Posted by hipstomp | 18 Oct 2010 | Comments (4) 0UDCLG.jpg Right now one of the things holding back the possibility of flexible or even rollable screens is the juice required to power them. But a company called Universal Display Corporation has recently developed a display technology called PHOLED, or Phosphorescent OLED, that's reportedly four times more efficient than a regular LED display. They were able to build a 4.3" PHOLED onto a thin metal foil, in turn built by LG Display, making a flexible wrist-mounted screen that can display full motion graphics and has reportedly been ruggedized (in an unspecified way); the reduced battery requirements of the technology should lead to truly wearable displays. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. Military is getting first crack at the devices, as eight of them have just been submitted to an Army R&D branch for evaluation and testing. Presumably, soldiers will be able to use the tech to help save or take lives, depending on the situation, then down the line you'll be able to use it to Tweet that the guy next to you on the bus doesn't smell so good, or you can take us all out of suspense and finally Facebook Update on what you had for lunch, et cetera. Can't wait! facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Object Culture | Technology • Comments (4) 100 Orbs of Light Float in the Schuylkill River Posted by Lisa Smith | 18 Oct 2010 | Comments (2) lightdrift-rendering2.jpg lightdrift-overhead.jpg This past weekend in Philadelphia, 100 orbs of light floated in the Schuylkill River, glimmering and changing color in response to the activity of passers-by on shore. The installation, designed by Howeler + Yoon Architecture, is enabled by RFID tags—when a visitors sit on the landed orbs, the floating ones respond by changing the pattern of light spanning the river, without any physical tether between land and water. Sadly, the installation was only three days long, but we did find this fantastic video of what it feels like in person, peppered with some local Philadelphia perspective. continued... facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Object Culture | Technology • Comments (2) Shape Changing is Real: Blob Motility by the Wakita Lab Posted by Lisa Smith | 15 Oct 2010 | Comments (1) A friend of ours loves to joke that the future will have no hard edges; experience will be defined in pastel-colored gels, foams and mists that deliver your voicemail and bring you milk. Probably to his dismay, this new project from the Wakita Laboratoray at Keio University may one day prove him right. Blob Motility is an early phase of a new "actuated shape display using programmable matter." With it, A gel substance can be programmed to a specific geometry and topology, resulting in organic shape-changing in real space—not unlike a "metaball" in computer graphics, as the lab points out. continued... facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Object Culture | Technology • Comments (1) SolTech Energy integrates solar, beautifully Posted by hipstomp | 14 Oct 2010 | Comments (8) 0soltechen.jpg Nothing says "afterthought" like a rectangle of solar panels slapped onto the roof of a house with no visual relationship with the rest of the structure. Swedish company SolTech Energy brings solar in a different direction with their roofing tiles, made from ordinary glass in the shape of (gasp) ordinary roofing tiles. Why has no one thought of this sooner? The attractive tiles--which heat pockets of air that in turn heat water--were named "Hottest New Material 2010" by a Swedish construction industry magazine that, frankly, you've never heard of, but the proof's in the pudding; stack these up next to any other roof-based solar system and tell us which looks better. via inhabitat facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Object Culture | Technology • Comments (8) Dario Jandrijic's KLEXL lets your kids go Sistine Chapel on the walls Posted by hipstomp | 14 Oct 2010 | Comments (8) Before there was "Shit My Dad Says" there was "Shit My Kids Ruined." More than a few parents have discovered that a few minutes of divided attention is all it takes for their tyke to blaze a graffiti burner across the living room wall. Junior's gotta express himself, so what to do? University of Wuppertal ID student Dario Jandrijic's KLEXL Interactive Painting concept is for a projector that allows digital wall painting by means of an IR tracking camera. 0jandrijic.jpg Light pens take the place of crayons, light pixels take the place of those Neo-Expressionist smears, and plugging this thing into the wall'd be a damn sight easier than laying down a tarp and rolling over your child's masterpiece. Plus you can presumably save the images, and reproject them years later when you want to humiliate your child, now in design school, for his poor sense of composition and line quality. facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Object Culture | Technology • Comments (8) Lexus' wickedly huge driving simulator, "World's most advanced" Posted by hipstomp | 12 Oct 2010 | Comments (1) 0lexusdrivingsim.jpg This 56-foot-diameter pod sits on a tiltable turntable resting on tracks that can move in both axes, like a huge CNC router; but it's not a manufacturing device, it's Lexus' insanely complex new driving simulator, billed as the world's most advanced. Full 360-degree projections inside the dome provide a convincingly immersive environment, and as the dome pitches and yaws the driver inside can be fooled into thinking he's turning, braking and accelerating at speeds of up to 186 miles per hour! continued... facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Technology • Comments (1) This Just Inbox: Patrick Hyland's Copper Phone Uses Heat for Power Posted by Lisa Smith | 8 Oct 2010 | Comments (24) ecu-radiate.jpg Patrick Hyland is working on creating a "charger-free cell phone future." This means that, in addition to lowering electricity consumption, we won't have to mess with annoying chargers anymore and can stop throwing them away (because we won't have them in the first place). According to Hyland, discarded chargers produce 51,000 tons of waste annually. To address this problem, he's proposed a cell phone that charges with heat. A conductive copper skin transmits heat to a thermogenerator inside, producing electricity when the phone is placed on a radiator or inside a pocket. The skin is engraved with small heatsinks, mimicking a sun-baked, dry earth pattern. ecu-2.jpg continued... facebook delicious stumbleupon digg More: Object Culture | Technology • Comments (24) Whipsaw-designed Pano Device (computerless computer) is smaller, greener, and award-winning

The Pano Device is like a computer with nothing inside it. You plug your monitor, keyboard and mouse into the back, but it contains no CPU, no memory, and no software; all of that stuff resides on a Pano Manager server, which hosts the OS and virtualizes it to the Pano Device.
So what's inside the thing? Damned if I know, I think if you dropped it and it shattered there'd be little leprechaun bodies all over your floor. But the bottom line is this two-inch tall device is projected to cut business computing costs by 70%; "compared to a PC it consumes 3% of the energy, uses 4% of the material to make it, and is one hundred times smaller."
Designed by ID consultancy Whipsaw, the Pano Device has won a 2010 Green Good Design Award, which is conferred by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies. (Sadly, the Good Design website was not working properly at press time so no direct link is available.)