If a color-shifting, glowing rim around your television (cue Philips Ambilight) isn’t your cup of tea, Philips is hoping that a color-shifting, glowing rim on your television is. The Aurea is a successor to the Ambilight and it’s certainly glowing more than ever. I haven’t seen it in person yet, so I wouldn’t really know how good it is. My guess is that this would probably fall into the good-to-have-but-doesn’t-quite-justify-the-price camp.
Tell me which is more disturbing: the baby-head porcelain candle holder (check out the faint cheek blushes even!), or the fact that when you plop a fat candle on it and burn it, the wax drip runs down the head and becomes the … “hair”?
Little Joseph is a hand-painted, porcelain candle holder. We can’t decide if he’s sinister or sweet. Part of that will certainly depend on what you decide to do with his hair. Use dripless candles if you’d like to keep him bald, otherwise, give him pure white locks, beeswax locks, or hair in several shades of the rainbow.
Nonetheless, very cool!
[‘Little Joseph‘ by Maxim Velčovský, via Josh Spear]
Bringing the little ones on travel can really be a hair-pulling experience: while dealing with the patience-testing waits, delays, searches and security measures, you might have to soothe and pacify your kids’ (potential) tantrums, boredom and tiredness.
Trunki aims to help alleviate some of those pain: brightly colored, attractive luggage that kids can play around, sit on – basically find their own amusements within the airport. We all know how imaginative they can be – is that your little tot thinking of himself as a chivalrous prince? There’s even a long strap in which you can pull your kids as they ride on their luggage. Furthermore, it’s of a hand-luggage size, so the fun can continue all the way to boarding (hopefully, not so much on the plane itself though).
It’s a great idea really – turning a source of frustration into a source of enjoyment and fun! And there’s a nice story of determination and entrepreneurship behind this too. The inventor, Rob Law, went on the reality VC-funding show in Britain known as Dragon’s Den, hoping to get 100,000 pounds in exchange for 10% of the company as start up funding. In the show though, the judges unanimously condemned this saying that there was no market, that it was worthless, etc.
After the show aired, however, parents and viewers from everywhere went on Rob’s website to say how great the Trunki would be. So Rob’s having the last laugh, the Trunkis are selling very well, while the company he 100% owns grew beyond 1 million pounds in worth.
Well done!
I’m sure 99% of you reading this didn’t know about it – well, happy Left Hander’s Day to those of you who are (it falls on 13th August), and since apparently there’s a left-handedness bias in the creative industries, there might just be a sizeable number of you!
Here’s some trivial nuggets about left-handedness for you to live and commemorate this extremely significant day on our calendars (yar…)!
Yes, it’s a long list. Well icon (a design+architecture magazine) has decided to poll many leading architects and designers on their manifestos – what do they see and visualize happening in the design industry and the world as a whole: many heavy weights are in the midst too – click through and see if you get inspired! Maybe you’d start to consolidate your own thoughts and develop your own manifestos!
[via HiID]
Found a pretty cool music video of – well – a series of scientific (?) diagrams and illustrations explaining just about everything under the sun. Not quite sure what’s the point, but fascinating nonetheless. Maybe after studying the MTV really intensively for a few weeks, you could pass a high school science exam?
This made me chuckle a little – from no less than the Russia-based design consultancy Art Lebedev. Also made me think whether it’s possible to make them actual storage that corresponds with its labeled size… like hard disks or something, only cuter.
Like some creative outlets for your videomaking talents? Google has launched a rather interesting video campaign inviting people worldwide to join in imagining how interesting can an ‘M-velope’ (Gmail’s icon) be, when it is passed from the left to the right of the screen in 10 seconds:
Help us imagine how an email message travels around the world. Take a look at the collaborative video we started, and then film what happens next. We’ll rotate a selection of the clips we receive on this page, and add the best ones to the video. The final video will be featured on the Gmail homepage and seen by users worldwide.
All it takes is a video camera, the Gmail M-velope (
), and some creativity.
Submit your clip by August 13th, 2007 to be considered for the final collaborative video.
I certainly foresee all the bizarre and the interesting: perhaps we’d see the M-velope crossing Antarctica, passed by pet otters, or other wild adventures along the line. It’s definitely a great marketing trick by Google, utilizing Youtube (which they own) – it’s engaging and it’s great publicity for their brands. Clever!
The game is simple. You have one click to ‘explode’ a ball. As the ball explodes, those near it will also explode in a chain reaction as well. The idea is also simple. Progress through the many levels by meeting the increasingly higher number of target balls to detonate. With a nice background music too!
And, perhaps weirdly, I find myself looking at this game as an analogy to bringing a successful product/innovation in the marketplace. At the higher levels, you’d realize that chances are, if you click when there are a large number of balls already converged and congregated, you wouldn’t meet your target. Instead, you have to somewhat project your mental picture forward in time, to anticipate and spot a converging trend before it happens. That way, the chain-link gets to be more sustainable.
Maybe I’m just thinking too much?
Unmissable – CollegeHumor churns out quite a bit of funny videos, and here’s a real gem:
It’s a brilliant, hilarious take on how Minesweeper (yes, the Windows game) would look like if it was in real life – wait a minute, more like reel life – in a typical Hollywood blockbuster.
This summer, Minesweeper the Movie comes to a theater near you!
