Good inventions find problems and fix them. The BEST inventions find problems and fix them with 3D printed solutions! This week's Friday Finds are simple 3D printed products that are useful and effective. Check it out!
Stay organized with the stamp roll holder from MrNib.
Why clean when you can illuminate? New York based industrial designer Christian Stolarz has designed two elegantly simple components for 3D printing that transform an every day broom stick into a beautiful lamp.
I was unhappy with the lighting situation in my house, thank god I'm a designer and able to fix this situation!!!
Just as Sprout, designed by Egant converted a plastic milk jug into an easy to use watering can, the Broom Stick Floor Lamp combines a few items you may already have lying around your home to transform them to more than the sum of its parts.
The 3D printed parts fit standard broomsticks with a 23.8mm diameter (available at Home Depot). You'll need 3 broom sticks, and you can cut them to the any length/configuration you like. The cable: the top part holds cables with an approx. 6.3mm diameter, most standard cables should work.
If you are looking for a 3D printed lamp to go with your new stand you may just be able to find the perfect one on Shapeways.
What does a 21st Century version of Mies van der Rhoe’s exalted Farnsworth House look like? Thanks to Manhattan architectural firm Desai/Chia, we now know. The blissfully beautiful LM Guest House in upstate New York was built for a family requesting “an analog” of Farnsworth, and lucky for them (and us voyeurs), they got it in spades.
A modest 2,000 sq feet in size, LM, like Farnsworth, retains a low, horizontal profile with an all-glass exterior. But unlike Farnsworth, state-of-the-art green technology—geothermal heating and cooling; radiant floors; motorized solar shading; photovoltaic panels; rainwater harvesting; and sensitivity to the lay of the land—was thoughtfully employed to reduce the carbon footprint of an all-glass house.
“The LM Guest House celebrates the beauty of the surrounding landscape,” says Desai/Chia. Agreed—but we think it more potently celebrates the enduring, timeless beauty of Farnsworth House.
Images: Desai/Chia; Wall Street Journal
In a sea of Apple white and tangles, CableKeeps expects to be a standout. The molded plastic sheath, with a fish-like profile, is designed to slip over any Apple cable & charger combination, ensuring that the duo stays conjoined, while allowing for a place where wires can be kept neatly in place. There’s a CableKeeps option for iPhones, iPads & iPods—each in a different color and assigned a cute fish-centric name (Goldie, Nibbles and Gulp)—with Goldie, shown here, given a bonus charging pedestal for iPhones & iPods.
Images: Nice
We've shown you how to get your Google Reader data now that the service is dead, but you don't get everything available. If you really want to sweep up all that data from Google Reader, Reader is Dead is a tool that helps you do just that.
    
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People from Karen Joy Fowler to John Crowley to Téa Obreht have been praising The Age of Ice, a debut fantasy novel by J.M. Sidorova. Now, here's your first chance to sample it for yourself. Above is a map, created by the author. And below, we've got an exclusive look at the first dozen pages.
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Standard IQ tests are problematic on many levels — not least, because they do very little to tell us about the quality of our thinking. Looking to overcome this oversight, psychologist Keith Stanovich has started to work on the first-ever Rationality Quotient test. We spoke to him to learn more.
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Today sees the release of White House Down, which is the most Emmerichian film ever produced. But meanwhile, you could also enjoy Europa Report on VOD or Byzantium in select theaters. Tons of low-budget science fiction and fantasy movies are more exciting than your average big summer blockbuster. Here are 25 of them.
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Which material is friendlier to the environment: cotton or silk? A new app from Nike can tell you.
For about eight years now, Nike has selected materials for apparel and shoe products by using an in-house sustainability index, developed by researchers from a gigantic database of scientific research and analysis of the life cycles of products. It lives as an open-source tool within the sportswear company and charts the amount of water a given material will use, or the waste produced by a certain manufacturing process. By consulting the index during its design process, Nike has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 18% from a decade ago.
As of today, these corporate gems of wisdom are accessible to designers anywhere, via the new Nike Making app, available in the iTunes store. The app is a pocket toolkit for product makers to give their projects an environmental score. Even within Nike--an R&D driven company--designers say they aren’t always sure which materials yield the greenest products, says Hannah Jones, Nike’s VP of Sustainable Business and Innovation. The Making app lets designers sort through 22 different product materials such as cotton, silk, grass-fed leather, rayon-viscose, and so on. Each material is then scored within four buckets of environmental impact: water use, energy, chemistry, and waste. To keep designers on point, the app also figures for performance and aesthetic needs.
“It’s all part of a single strategy to change the palette of the world’s materials,” Jones tells Co.Design. “If we could put information out there and empower our design community to make better choices, it would be an important lever we could pull.”
The app runs in tandem with Nike’s fourth Launch Challenge, which wrangled minds from NASA, the U.S. State Department, and USAID to help find newer sustainable materials. The need is acute: Despite the emphasis typically placed on the environmental harm of shipping (heard prominently within movements for local farming), materials account for 60% of the environmental impact incurred from a pair of Nike shoes.
We can impact the industry to think in a very different way about how it values materials.
The issue is, of course, not exclusive to Nike. “In 2010, there were 150 billion garments produced in the world. A dye house uses 200 tons of water,” Jones tells Co.Design. “We can impact the industry to think in a very different way about how it values materials.”
It’s hard not to wonder why Nike invests so much in this index when other companies are finding new ways to consume less, such as in Patagonia’s Common Threads Initiative. Jones says that’s only one of a few pathways to achieving a sustainable company: “There’s always one set of arguments that say we should all consume less. The next says let’s make better, longer, more durable products. The third is the one I think is most interesting. How do we actually close the loop? How do we create products that could be infinitely recycled?”
Nike did just that for their 2010 World Cup soccer jerseys, which were recycled from plastic water bottles. To date, the company has kept 1.1 billion plastic bottles out of landfills by developing products from recycled polyester. They’re also exploring partnerships with progressive startups that are investigating new techniques, such as dying garments without using any water. All of which will inform the Nike Materials Sustainability Index and the Making app.
The Making app rolled out first for students at London College of Fashion’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion, and a separate app for shoe designers is anticipated in the future. As much as Jones and her team intend to influence choices made by designers, by strategically putting the knowledge in the hands of a new generation of designers, it’s clear that they (smartly) aspire to plant the seed for future materials innovations. “What about alternatives to cotton that don’t impede on performance, or radical new materials that don’t generate any toxic chemicals?” she asks. This kind of thinking is “becoming intuitive for the students. Teachers can build it into classes, and a whole generation of designers will be change agents.”
Making is available through iTunes.
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Google hasn’t updated Voice in ages. Once heralded as the amazing service that would unify our phones, it now lags behind thanks to a lack of MMS support, decent voicemail transcripts, and a variety of usage quirks. With a few third-party apps and services, you can leave Voice behind, just like Google did, and have a better experience in the process.
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I love a good onion soup, but they can be a little hefty at times, so I set about creating a 'lighter' version, one that could be eaten in warmer months and came up with this combination that pays homage to the French classic, but is more broth like in… Continue reading on Curbly.com
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33% of New Yorkers can’t find north. So a new Pentagram project injects permanent city fixtures with the first-person perspective of a heads-up display.
“There’s no doubt, New Yorkers are as savvy as they come. They know which subway car to stand in to make the quickest exit at their stop, and they can micro-navigate a cabbie’s route turn-by-turn…[but] we found that even lifelong New Yorkers can get turned around the first time they hit the street outside an unfamiliar subway station, or building, or just while exploring a new neighborhood for the first time.”
That’s Janette Sadik-Khan. She’s the Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner for New York City. Her job is to learn seemingly paradoxical stats--like that 33% of NYers can’t find north--and implement solutions to fix them. In this case, the DOT teamed up with Pentagram, CityID, Billings Jackson Design, RBA Group, and T-Kartor to create WalkNYC, a new line of street maps targeted specifically at assisting the city’s pedestrians.
The maps’ most notable feature is certainly their perspective. While most public maps always depict north as being up, WalkNYC maps are oriented in the direction a user is facing, just like the first-person view of a GPS. Given that these signs each have two sides, that means the maps aren’t merely duplicated--they’re flipped to match the very specific way you’d be facing to read them.
“Orienting yourself on a static, north-oriented map is difficult when you’re not oriented yourself--which is likely why you’re looking at a map in the first place,” Sadik-Khan explains, adding that this quasi-GPS approach has already worked in cities like London.
To brand the maps as unmistakably New York, however, the signs would need more than a savvy perspective. Pentagram created a base color palette of greys, greens, and a soft-yet-distinctive yellow inspired by the city itself.
These maps aren’t decoration, they’re information.
“It’s meant to evoke the glass, steel, and concrete character of New York,” explains Pentagram Partner Michael Bierut. “I have a secret aversion to maps with pretty colors for no good reason. These [maps] aren’t decoration, they’re information.”
Monotype created a new version of Helvetica (famously used in NYC’s subway stops) called Neue Helvetica DOT. Its most easily noted distinction would be its rounded dot, an obvious play on words that references the fact that Helvetica’s dots are usually squares. From this typeface, Pentagram created a set of icons for services like bathrooms, hospitals, and transportation, mirroring curves in the lettering to construct the images.
“Obviously, this was a subtle thing that we don’t expect civilians to notice or care about,” Bierut says. “We did want the icons to seem like a direct extension of the typography, rather than another unrelated element. We were extremely conscious of the fact that we were packing an enormous amount of information into a limited area. By reducing every point of dissonance possible, I think we ended up with a more harmonious result.”
Ultimately, some may see the WalkNYC signs as relatively old school--they won’t glow, beep, or respond to your touch--but that doesn’t mean the signs are stuck in yesteryear. From their pedestrian-centric perspective to their smallest decisions of print design, WalkNYC has been designed to make native NYers feel more welcome in their own town. (And it doesn’t exactly hurt for all of us tourists, either.)
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Breather offers ultra-short-term, hyper-local access to clean, classy rooms on demand for about $20 per hour.
I work from a home office, but sometimes I want to change things up. That means parking in a coffee shop or a co-working space--neither of which offer the kind of control over my environment that a picky self-employed person comes to expect. If I still lived in New York, I’d be pretty excited for the launch of Breather, a new service that’s like Zipcar for office space. The idea is the same: Why own or rent a "second home or office" (to use Breather’s own words) when you only want to use it in tiny chunks of time, once in a while, with very little advance notice? Here’s Breather’s promo video, which explains the concept:
It’s a pretty self-serious pitch for something that’s basically designed to solve a "problem" of well-to-do urban creative types who increasingly expect to be able to reconfigure the world around them to suit their on-demand whims. But it’s still a clever idea--and just as the basic utility of Zipcar can appeal to anyone from students to traveling professionals to harried parents, the same could go for Breather. It’s not a hotel, co-working space, library, conference room, artist’s studio, or any other not-quite-right semi-private space that people in the city tend to repurpose. It’s just a clean, safe, classily designed room with a couch, a desk, fast wifi, and no one to bother you while you do whatever it is you want to do in peace and quiet.
"Originally, I was just going to rent and open a space myself in my neighborhood," CEO and founder Julien Smith tells Co.Design. But then he realized that he could co-opt unused or under-used commercial real estate for the same purpose, creating a distributed "cloud" of Breather rooms. The idea, as with Zipcar, is that instead of going to the resource you need, it (ideally) is already close to you, wherever you happen to be.
Breather 'fits into the cracks of cities.'
Smith says that he and his team took lots of inspiration from other on-demand urban service apps, especially Uber. The user experience is built around a "crazy simple" mobile app, according to Smith: "It opens to a map, you choose a space and it asks you when you want it--"now," "later," "tomorrow"--and when they arrive at the door of the room itself, the door will unlock for them at the press of a button. All the interaction occurs on the phone."
One intriguing pain point that Smith discovered in the design process was that interacting with any kind of human intermediary standing between you and access to the room--like a secretary, concierge, or office manager--could extinguish a user’s desire to use Breather at all. "We wanted to make the experience as seamless, or more so, than walking into your own home or office," Smith says. That’s why Breather rooms auto-unlock with a digital key embedded in the app on your phone. You show up, you go in--just like you own the place. If Breather can nail this microinteraction as well as they promise to, it could be the key (literally) to the app’s entire appeal.
Smith says that Breather "fits into the cracks of cities," and unsurprisingly, it’s launching in two dense, walkable, techno-savvy ones: New York and San Francisco. (Smith hopes to roll out New York offices in October, with a target rate of $20 per hour.) I figured that Breather’s basic value proposition wouldn’t make as much sense in a more spread-out metropolis like Los Angeles (the idea of spending an hour in traffic to rent a Breather for 30 minutes seems to defeat the purpose), but Smith says that "we have received several emails basically begging us to open in downtown L.A."
Could Breather catch on outside the "creative coasts"? Would Breathers in Omaha and Pittsburgh ever make sense? "The spaces make sense wherever we can make the math work," Smith asserts. "We’ll move out to smaller places as time goes on. I imagine [Starbucks CEO] Howard Schultz would not have thought there could be an espresso bar in every small town in Wisconsin, but that’s what happened."
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Max Barry’s 2003 novel Jennifer Government was a spectacular, and terrifyingly possible, near-future dystopia of corporate overreach and government impotence. And his latest novel, Lexicon is a worthy followup — a crazily inventive conspiracy thriller about the abuse of language as a weapon.
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Yes, we're still disappointed that we didn't get a World War Z mockumentary. After all, science fiction and horror lend themselves quite well to the faux-documentary format. So we're kicking back with 15 speculative mockumentaries, from a silly Star Wars lark to an earnest look at Britain on the eve of nuclear war.
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Ever wonder where the touch screens from Children of Men came from? Now you know.
Designer, filmmaker, and Berg creative director Timo Arnall recently wrote that "interfaces are the dominant cultural form of our time." So much of how we experience modern popular culture, he writes, happens inside or adjacent to UI. This is no more apparent than at the multiplex, where characters in films as diverse as Fred Claus, Zero Dark Thirty, and Star Trek: Into Darkness are all shown interacting with "fantasy user interfaces," or FUIs. These interfaces don’t really exist--they’re a subset of a film’s visual effects--but the example they set about how digital devices could or should work is a fascinating barometer for UI trends. And now there’s a website called Kit FUI that gathers all this cinematic chrome into one place. Think of it like Internet Movie Database for UI nerds.
Like the IMDb, Kit FUI lets you browse by designer, company, or title. Curious about who made the creepily authentic dystopian screens in Children Of Men? That would be Mark Coleran, a designer who specialized in FUI creation before decamping for design in the real world.
Kit FUI indexes concept videos, too. Feel like sending an angry letter to the designers behind Microsoft’s brain-dead vision of the future, or Corning’s myopic paean to glassy touch screens? One click gives you all the reference material you need.
Besides its obvious appeal to nerdy specialists, Kit FUI makes an intriguing case for Arnall’s bigger point about the cultural impact of digital interfaces. Much like greenscreen visual effects, fantasy UIs don’t just turn up in science-fiction films anymore. They’re anywhere and everywhere that film and TV characters use computers. Kit FUI’s list of pop-culture products isn’t as bottomless as IMDb’s, but there’s a heck of a lot more in there than you might think, and they’re adding more all the time. Most of them wouldn’t be much good as real-life UIs, since they’re created to serve the purposes of visual storytelling rather than actual usability. On the other hand, FUIs offer an unvarnished aspirational vision of what our cultural id wants (or thinks it wants) out of digital interactions--now and in the near future.
In 30 years, the sleek screen designs in Star Trek will seem as dated as the monochrome command-line UIs in Alien do to us now. But by capturing this kind of creative wishful thinking, Kit FUI offers an intriguing lens on the evolution of one of our most un-noticed, but increasingly dominant, forms of cultural expression.
[Images: via Jorge Online, Oblivion and Ironman 3 via Kit FUI]
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Learning how to work with webbing is a useful skill, but many industrial design programs don't cover how to work with flexible materials. And if you've ever seen a production facility cranking out say, MOLLE systems for military bags, it's easy to get intimidated out of ever attempting to work with the stuff.
It is possible, however, for someone with average manual coordination to design and construct their own webbing projects using simple, affordable materials and a borrowed or thrift-store sewing machine that's been set up properly. For the design student on a budget, or the industrial designer who wants to dip their foot into the webbing pool without investing in expensive machinery, we put together this series of videos to help you get started.
In Part 1, we cover some basic materials, hardware, and terminology you'll need to know. Webbing comes in a lot of different types, and it's better to know exactly what you're working with. (It also helps to know exactly what the hardware parts are called, so you can Google for suppliers and variants.) Lastly we've included costs. Since local prices can vary, we've used the online supplier McMaster-Carr as a baseline.
Hit the jump for a review list with links to sources.
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For better or for worse, we've grown a bit skeptical about the ever-popular making/manufacturing videos that seem to be par for the course for any remotely heritage brand / artisanal crafting concern / handmade thing these days. Which is not to say that there aren't good ones out there: as a recently-launched series of short fims entitled "The Makers of Things" beautifully captures the spirit of making without compromising the integrity of its subject matter—not least because these fellows have been at it for decades longer than most, offering an intimate picture of what a "lifetime of making things looks like."
No. 1: The Scoiety
Filmmaker Anne Hollowday has spent the past year producing the series of four short films documenting the work of the remarkable Society for Model and Experimental Engineers (SMEE). "Their common tools and methods mask a huge array of interests and skills, from experimental tinkerers to woodworkers and librarians, all brought together under the roof of their South London headquarters."
Established in the UK in 1898 by Percival Marshall, the Society has survived two world wars as well as the introduction of technology barely dreamed about at the beginning of the 20th century. It now has hundreds of members from across the world, all united by their passion for making and creating.
No. 2: The Problem Solver
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![Jet Pack by Tessel [http://www.tesselsupply.com/shop/jet-pack]](http://s3.amazonaws.com/manmadediy-uploads-production/photos/21488/The%20Jet%20Pack%20by%20TESSEL_large.jpg?1372048437 "Jet Pack by Tessel")
If you're tired of carrying around a bulky backpack that feels like a sack of potatoes, you should then upgrade to one of these bad … read more
(Editor’s note: Part I, What To Wear To a Summer Wedding via Black Lapel’s The Compass can be found here. Part II, An Argument for the Formal Wedding Celebration, can be found here.)
Hey gents,
I’m doing something a bit different today. Though I get a lot of requests, I don’t review individual products and services very often.
However, one thing I do get plenty of questions about is suiting.
Specifically: how does brand X differ from brand Y, should I go off-the-rack or Made to Measure, is ordering online worth the hassle and if so, what goes into placing an order, etc.
While I don’t have all the answers, I did get to experience Black Lapel’s service recently, and to satisfy your curiosities, I thought I’d share my experience with you!
A few disclaimers before we begin.
Black Lapel is a young upstart specializing in custom suits (as well as blazers, shirts, accessories, you name it), founded in 2011 by three gents: Warren Liao, Christopher O’Young, and Derek Tian. Their offices are located in New York, and production is based in Shanghai. Here’s a bit more about Black Lapel’s story and mission.
I first chatted with Warren a few years ago, before the official launch of BL, back when EG was still relatively new to the internet + men’s style landscape.
Back then we talked a bit about suiting and the custom game, so I’m happy I finally got a chance to peep the goods firsthand. Below you’ll see the process I went through, in case you have yet to experience ordering a custom garment online.
As with any online custom clothier, there’s a bit of initial setup. In order to complete your order from start to finish, you have to 1.) create a login, 2.) fill out some sort of profile, and 3.) input your measurements.
Taking your measurements is probably the most time-consuming part of the process, but it really isn’t difficult, and if you’ve been an EG reader for a while, you know why this is important.
In addition to your measurements, BL also asks you to input your posture (back shape), shoulder type, and shoulder angle. These general measurements give the guys a better idea of how your jacket would fit and drape.
For example, if you have one shoulder that’s lower than the other, your jacket will be constructed to accommodate that.
Regarding taking your own measurements, just do the best you can.
Not only does BL walk you through each measurement with descriptive text and video, BL double checks each individual measurement and consults with you personally to make sure everything is correct.
I measured my thigh and listed it being 5″ larger without realizing, but they caught my mistake quickly.
Now that you’ve gotten all those pesky details out of the way, here comes the fun part!
You have the option to customize practically every aspect of your suit.
Go crazy! If you’re ordering a tuxedo like I did, keep your selected options as classic as possible (one button, double vents / no vents, no cuffs, peak lapel or shawl lapel, etc.)
About four or five weeks later, I received my tuxedo, which came packaged quite nicely with a garment bag in a fancy box. There were minimal wrinkles, which was a plus. I was eager to try it on.
The tuxedo’s fit was nearly perfect. I made a few incorrect choices during my ordering process that affected the fit. I’ll touch upon this in the following section.
Construction and stitching is very clean, as expected, and I was very happy with the fabric’s feel and quality. For my particular tuxedo, it’s an all-season wool (super 110s or 130s, I believe).
Without getting all technical, it just felt good to the touch (has a soft hand) and when I put it on, it wasn’t too stiff, nor too slinky… which I’m sure has to do with construction as much as it does with the fabric itself.
Overall, the tuxedo breathes nicely, and I didn’t feel weighed down, even though I caught the last rays of the hot Hawaiian sun before it finally set in time for our dinner and reception.
I’m super thankful the BL folks checked in with me before going into production with my tux. That saved me a bunch of grief and headache.
Even though I was confident with my measurements, I still made a few mistakes. Moral of the story? Don’t be afraid to ask their honest opinion to see if your measurements sound off.
Also, take into consideration their recommendations; it’s always worth a second look. I originally chose the tailored fit instead of the slim fit, but BL suggested I go with the slim, and I’m glad I did.
Like I mentioned earlier, my tux came in pretty close to perfect. There were a few areas that needed minor alterations however.
One was the center back. I had accidentally selected a hunched posture when I should’ve chosen a standard posture. (Not sure why I thought I had a hunched posture.) 
This resulted in extra fabric in the back panel that caused rippling (bottom right photo). Easily fixable by a skilled tailor.
Another issue was my pants length. Again, not a big deal at all, as a tailor can easily alter it so I have the perfect break.
My last issue was in the chest area; the tailor had to take in about 1/2″ on both sides. Another minor alteration.
As you can see, for a tuxedo I ordered online, it came out practically perfect, save for a few minor corrections… most of which were my fault in the first place.
Again, the follow-up email regarding my self-made measurements made all the difference. I probably would’ve had a very ill-fitting custom tux hadn’t they followed up with me.
BL does give customers a $75 alteration credit per suit, so that should help when getting your custom job to 100% perfect.
Once your alterations are complete, you can go into your BL profile and update your measurements. Just take note of the changes that were made so you can update accordingly.
If you’re unsure about exactly what to change, reach out to BL and let them help you. Better to make sure any measurement profile updates are done right, otherwise, future orders will be all messed up instead of fitting perfectly out of the box.
Overall, super happy with the experience. I love the idea that any future suits I order will arrive fitting perfectly every single time. Filling out the measurement profile was easier and surprisingly more fun than I imagined. Maybe it’s just me.
My experience with BL itself was great. I’m not just saying this because I know Warren personally, but because I appreciate the attention to detail the company provides.
I really can’t get over how BL takes the time to double check measurements. An actual person looked at them, compared them with the standard measurements of someone my height and weight combination (or so I assume), and let me know if any of my numbers were outliers.
This simple touch alone saved me so much headache of sending product back and forth to get remade. I also love the fact that I could email them post-alterations if I needed help updating my measurements, just to make sure I didn’t F up.
no full-body photos yet, but here’s a screenshot from our video preview
While I can’t speak for all fabrics BL carries, I love my tuxedo and the navy wool it is constructed from, and if all suiting fabric is at least as good as this, you’d be golden no matter what choice you make.
If you’re looking for a new suit in the $500-$700 range to keep in your regular rotation, and want something several levels beyond your typical budget off-the-rack options in your local shopping mall, Black Lapel is your jam.
Not only will you have a sizable selection of fabric and styles, you can also rest assured you’re in good hands with the BL team as they guide you through the whole process, from profile creation all the way to final alterations.
I’ll do my best to answer. If I can’t, I’ll ask the guys at BL to answer. Let’s hear em below!
Les 2 designers et fondateurs du studio anglais Splinter Works, Miles Hartwell et Matt Withington présentent leur dernière création : Vessel, une baignoire suspendue toute en carbone inspirée du design des hamacs. Une invention futuriste et design à découvrir en images dans la suite.
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Perhaps more so than with other design industries, we love seeing the kooky stuff that sneaker designers come up with. It's an industry backed by well-financed corporations that give designers access to all sorts of materials, a bit like the auto industry. But unlike the auto industry, sneakers are relatively short-lived products with retail prices in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands, so designers have more leeway to try crazy stuff; and if it doesn't stick, it'll wash away in a few more product cycles. That's good for experimentation and increasing the possibility of achieving some kind of radical breakthrough.
On August 1st Adidas will be releasing their $180 Springblade sneakers, which feature "individually tuned blades engineered to help propel runners forward with one of the most effective energy returns in the industry." These have to be the wildest-looking footwear design since Reebok's knobby ATV 19+. The Springblade's sixteen polymer fins, blades, flaps, whatever you want to call them, are meant to help turn downward force into forward motion, and Adidas' Innovation Team reportedly tested "hundreds of materials" to get the desired bounce.
Skeptics will devise reasons for why Springblades wouldn't work; we'd respond that we don't care. It's the experimentation and latitude afforded to designers that turns us on. What other design industry has such high visibility, accessibility, high-end production, and is willing to take such risks?
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Over at Wired, there's a great piece by former io9 editor Graeme McMillan about the rise of science fiction e-books. And through conversations with publishing insiders, McMillan basically confirms what we already suspected — e-book readers are creating a new boom in science fiction publishing.
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Moving is always a challenge. Home ownership is always a challenge. But moving into your first new home after being a renter brings both challenges and exciting opportunities. How do you transition into being a home owner and what cool possibilities does that new ownership present?
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ParkertrowExplore Options.
Google is closing Google Reader's doors on July 1st, meaning you'll need to find a new way to get your news fix. Here's how to export all your feeds and put them into a new reader (and which ones you should check out).
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