Earth Hour 2008

Tomorrow, March 29, at 8pm is this year's Earth Hour. It was done last year in a few cities with limited participation. This year, they have put a lot more effort into raising awareness and getting global participation on both an individual and corporate scale. Participants are asked to turn out their lights between the 8 and 9pm. The idea is to demonstrate that such a small act, can make a measurable change.

Takes All Types

Takes All Types is leveraging the power of Facebook to help with blood donations. It's a Facebook application with a purpose. Users register their blood type with Takes All Types and then notifications are sent to them when blood is needed in their areas. This is one of the smartest Facebook apps I've seen. It's raising awareness and building a blood donation network by using the enormous force of a social network. If you are not a Facebook member, you can still register with Takes All Types to receive phone, text, email or fax alerts of blood shortages in your area.

Pretty Raccoon

I'm sending some ETSY love out today to the PrettyRaccoon Clothing shop. PrettyRaccoon is the clothing poetry Toronto designer, Andrea Winkler. It features conservative, yet stunning graphics printed onto some traditional, and some not-so-traditional, American Apparel shirts, dresses, scarves and bags. The average price of PrettyRaccon's pieces is in the $30 range. So many tempting choices...

Designing The News

I'm enjoying Dave Bowker's website, Designing The News. Dave describes the site as "A series of experiments which visually explore the news in various ways to encourage new ways of seeing a predominantly text based medium." David has a cool throwing-it-out-there approach to his ideas which I appreciate.

I was attracted to his most recent visualization experiment, One Week of The Guardian: Wednesday. Each circle represents a different news category, arranged from the center outwards according to each category's total word count. His idea expands out to link the category rankings from one day to another to track a whole year's worth of news stories. This is a cool overall visualization. It reminds me a bit of the Digg Labs work, but with a rockn' retro color scheme.

Bert Simons

Check out these crazy paper heads by artist Bert Simons. His sculptures strike a really cool mix of fine art and CAD. They tread an interestingly fine line between real and digital sculpting. Bert creates the heads using the dot per dot reference method to represent a real face in 3D. He then uses Blender to render and flatten the image. Pieces of the image are printed and reconstructed like a 3D puzzle. The explanation behind the methodology and thinking, as well as some of the 2D print files are up on Bert's website. (Found through Hip.Young.Thing).

Silence

The Norwegian design studio, Permafrost, has a great series of rugs entitled Stories. Each rug in the collection has a series of tracks running across the side. I think the best one is Silence. It looks like a bunny ran across a snowy lawn. The tracks add a lot of character to a simple white rug.

Threadless Spring Cleaning Sale

This week is the Threadless Spring Cleaning Sale. They have reprinted a lot of oldies but goodies, including this favorite of mine called Infinity MPG. T-Shirt prices start at $9. The sale is on until March 26. Even if you miss the sale, definitely check out Threadless. They have new t-shirts, featuring user generated designs, each week.

D/A Clock

I've seen Alvin Aronson's D/A Clock a few times. I thought it was a sleek, modern take on a digital clock, but I didn't really get the idea that it was a digital/analogue clock until I watched this YouTube video of the clock in action. The lit numbers of a digital clock have been replaced by a physical representation of the numbers. Each minute transforms into the next to show a more ongoing view of time, much the same way an analogue clock does. (Thanks Jason!)

Egg Soldier EggCup

One of the simple joys of childhood is eating soft boiled eggs with soldiers. Only, I never had an egg with SOLDIERS! What kid (or grownup for that matter) wouldn't love this Egg Soldier EggCup by designer Reiko Kaneko. (Found through MoCo Loco).

Nokia Nseries Urbanista Diaries

The Nokia Nseries has created an interesting website where they tell a tale of 4 bloggers traveling around the globe and taking pictures, to help sell the Nokia 5 megapixel, GPS enabled phones. The advertising story goes like this... "Once upon a time, 4 travelers began a global quest. They beat a path through our urban jungles to seek out untold stories - to capture time, only to release it back into the world. And they laid out a trail so we cannot lose them". You can track the bloggers' travels and view their geo-tagged photos as the post them. It's a cool, overly dramatized take on selling a phone - I like it. (Found through Comuptuerlove).

Publicis & Hal Riney Website

I've been playing around with the Publicis & Hal Riney website. They have provided the option of navigating the website through gestures picked up by your webcam. I've seen this idea demoed before, but I've never just come across it on a website. I have to admit, the first time I tried this, it wasn't working for me at all. My interpretation of the gestures was a bit too exaggerated (or their interpretation wasn't exaggerated enough). Once I figured it out, I was really enjoying the interaction experience. The novelty of the physical action (beyond my finger on the mouse) kind of snapped me out of my normal internet browsing glaze and made me pay much more attention to the content. It also kept my interest and made me explore much more of the site then I might have otherwise.

Free Municipal Wi-Fi

I was fascinated by Wired Magazine's map of Free Municipal Wi-Fi across the United States. I knew about some of the bigger initiatives (San Fransisco, Chicago, etc.) but I had no idea how many other towns and cities are working on providing free, government-sponsored wireless access. I guess in some ways it makes sense, since free municipal Wi-Fi seems like it would be much easier to implement on a small scale. I'd love to see some global information about cities going Wi-Fi.

Help

I'm head over heals (spelling error intended) for the folks over at Help. Their product offering is pretty simple. It consists of two products: Acetaminophen tablets entitled 'Help I Have a Headache' (Ha!) and band aids entitled 'Help I've Cut Myself' (Haha!). Their product line alone totally had me sold on the company... but there's more. They also try to be socially responsible. All of their packaging is made out of 100% recycled molded paper pulp and manufactured in the US by a factory that helps adults with learning disabilities. They also have a sense of humor. You can order customized 'Help I...' t-shirts on their website, where you fill in the blank with whatever tickles your funny bone. If all that doesn't make them awesome enough, they also offer other Help activities such as Help I'm Bored, Help I'm Illiterate, or Help I'm Homesick (my personal favorite!). I'm not sure who is behind the company Help, but I've decided you are totally awesome!

New York City Garbage

It's hard to know what kind of souvenir to buy in New York City. Do you go with the Statue of Liberty foam hat, the scaled model of the Empire State Building, or the always classic, I Heart NY t-shirt? Well how about going for something completely different and with a much better story... like a cube of garbage. Artist Justin Gignac (also of Wants for Sale), specializes is collecting and selling NYC garbage in neat little smell-proof clear cubes. I love them because they are so representative of New York (and I mean that in the best possible way). You can even purchase special event garbage such as, garbage from New Year's Eve 2008 in Time Square, or garbage from the national republican convention. Brilliant! I want some.

Invisible Journeys

Oli Laurelle has created these interesting visuals to depict wireless networks along a journey. The image above shows a journey in time (starting at the 3 o'clock position and moving clockwise) from the Barcelona city center to the airport, by train. Each "pin" represents a unique WiFi source. I'm not exactly sure how to interpret these visuals as any sort of map or story, but they sure are fascinating pieces of art. (Found through Visual Complexity).

Honibe Honey Drops

Lots of people use honey to sweeten their coffee or tea. It's a nice healthy option to sugar, but it's a sticky, messy, pain in the butt. Honibe has created these convenient solid honey drops made out of 100% pure honey. This is such a good idea. (Found through Apartment Therapy).

Energy Bracelet

Canadian designer, Chet Domanski, has created these great one-off Energy Bracelets. They are made out of 'up-cycled' pieces of the Alberta natural gas line. Decommissioned pieces of the pipelines have been machined and chamfered into beautiful bracelets. Each bracelet is tagged with the geographical coordinates of the location from which the pipe was taken. (Found through Sub-Studio Design Blog).

Live Launch Coverage

Tonight I am completely enthralled by NASA's Live Mission Coverage of the space shuttle Endeavour's preparation for launch. I've already been watching for an hour and a half. I've seen all the astronauts get suited up and strapped in. They have just closed the access hatch with just over 2 hours until launch. The NASA TV feed's only audio is the team's radio communication. There are times when it's totally silent. I guess you could argue that it is not that interesting... but I'm completely memorized. Good thing I didn't have any plans tonight because I can't pull myself away!

At ETech This Week

Sorry for the slow posting this week. I'm at ETech in San Diego. There have been a ton of super interesting talks. I will write about a few of my favorites soon.

LINC - The Lifecycle Concept Phone

The amazing designers at Kaleidoscope's Greener Grass project have come up with another interesting cell phone concept. Inspired by their attendance of the Greener Gadgets Conference, the LINC phone concept was designed with the product's entire lifecycle in mind. The phone is made to be easily disassembled. When LINC's hardware becomes obsolete, users are asked to ship in back to the company in exchange for an updated phone. The manufacturer then easily disassembles the phone using a directed radiant heat beam which targets its internal memory metal latch, releasing the assembly. The phone's components (glass, metal, electronics, etc.) are all appropriately recycled, reused, or safely disposed of (in the case of hazardous materials). In the quick and ever changing world of technology that we live in, it's great to see product designers not only focusing on how the product is used, but what happens to it when it needs replacing.