The homes will be made of recycled materials – pallet flooring and framing, waterproofed cardboard walls, aluminum can roofing – and some donated materials.
Architect Arthur Dyson is working with construction management students at Fresno State to create an unprecedented “Eco-Village” of tiny homes for homeless folks. If successful, it seems [...]
Punk band Anti-Flag and useless.org released a limited edition tee shirt for Earth Day. The shirts are unwanted shirts that were gathering dust in Anti-Flag’s warehouse, that have now been repurposed with a new message. All proceeds fund a water and sanitation project in Sierra Leone.
See more details here.
A beautifully designed car by Norman E. Timbs. according to Supercars.net mechanical engineer Timbs created this dramatic streamliner in the 1940s which in many ways was the ultimate American hot rod. He designed and fabricated much of the project himself which included a custom aluminum body and steel chassis. At first the [...]
It’s like getting your first Big Wheel all over again — and you don’t even have to pedal. An innovative bicycle-design concept derived from the old-fashioned penny-farthing, the YikeBike is a folding electric bicycle out of New Zealand. The rider sits on the seat, holds on at the sides and zooms around at a top [...]
Ozzy Osbourne pretended to be his own waxwork figure at Madame Tussauds in New York as a way to promote his new album, “Scream” which is out on June 22nd.
I liked this blog post from entrepreneur Chris Dixon and decided to reproduce it in its entirety. Thanks Chris.
Developing new startup ideas
March 14th, 2010 | careers, product design, startups
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When announcing an effort to launch Googly TV head of engineering, Vic Gundotra, was making an obvious reference to Apple when he said at the press conference: “If you believe that the only way to get a good smartphone is to bet on one man, one device, one carrier, and one choice, that is [...]
Fro the New York Times magazine 9th annual year in ideas.
Nature may well be the art of God, but that isn’t keeping mere mortals from trying their hand at it. This year, a group of British engineers recommended building a forest of artificial carbon-filtering “trees” across the United Kingdom to combat climate change; and a [...]
This bulb has built-in solar panels so it can be used in places off the grid.
Made by Nokero the rain-proof light bulb is about the size of a standard incandescent bulb and contains a replaceable, rechargeable battery that can be charged during the day to provide light at night. Nokero says [...]
You will have seen the announcement earlier this year that pop sensation Lady Gaga has become the creative director for instant camera company Polaroid. The cynical amongst us might view this as a publicity stunt that won’t translate into anything more than a few column inches. After all, now that all pictures are pretty much [...]
A nice metaphor involving mice on wheels
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Mind maps are a good way of visualizing solutions to challenging problems.
From Yahoo.
Here’s a fairy tale that could only happen in the movies. Man makes YouTube video. Goes to Hollywood. Gets pots of money and a movie deal. Except this story is true.
An unknown producer from Uruguay, Fede Alvarez, shelled out about $300 to create a cool video of a robot invasion in Montevideo, the capitol [...]
A single use toilet for slums in the developing world where there are no permanent toilets .
Developed by Swedish architect Anders Wilhelmson who told the New York Times “Not only is it sanitary, they can reuse this to grow crops.” Once used, the bag can be knotted and buried, and a layer of urea [...]
It took Kutiman just two months to finish ThruYOU, the project that would make him both a musical pioneer and an Internet celebrity. Kutiman — a.k.a. Ophir Kutiel, an Israeli musician — took footage posted on YouTube by amateur musicians and mixed it together (drums, piano, synth, theremin, vocals, whatever he could find) into video [...]
From the New York Times 9th annual year in ideas
The Great Depression inspired American fashion this year, from men’s wear by John Bartlett that looked like a stylized version of Lewis Hine’s New York to frocks by Ralph Lauren that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Dorothea Lange photograph. Meanwhile, off the runways, [...]
Reap what you sow. Or, in this case, is it sow what you reap…? Whatever, it’s a good idea to have business cards that do more than clog up your wallet.
Half chair, half Vespa. And that’s all there is to it.
IDEO’s Tim Brown at a recent TED talk. Interviews with Tim appear in Business Playground, the book.
A couple of years ago, Seth Frader-Thompson was driving a Prius. Priuses have little screens on the dashboard that tell you what gas mileage you’re getting, in real time, as you drive. It crossed Frader-Thompson’s mind that houses should have something similar. So he built the EnergyHub Dashboard, a little device, with a screen, that [...]
Probably the best speech on creativity I’ve seen
Dutchman Peter van de Werken has invented and successfully developed a new kind of rose: rainbow coloured rose. By treating the stalk with natural pigments, van de Werken has managed to make each petal a different colour. Watch the Reuters story here…
Nokia has unveiled the first pedal-powered phone battery charger. According to the Financial Times cyclists will be able to plug their handsets into a charger mounted on their handlebars and connected to a dynamo that harnesses electricity from the wheels. It would take two-and-a- half hours for a cyclist riding at 15km an [...]
You can now download a free chapter from our book The Business Playground: Where Creativity and Commerce Collide.
Since time immemorial — or at least since Pong — one barrier that has stood between gamers and total Tron-like immersion in their video games has been the controller: the joystick, trackball, mouse, light gun or whatever. This year Microsoft demonstrated a technology, code-named Project Natal, that enables players to control games using only body [...]
Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. Here’s one.
The OneDown mousetrap swings upright from horizontal due to a rodent’s own weight to clearly indicate that it has been trapped. There is no risk of snapping the fingers and creating any mess or smell as the [...]
From the New York Times 9th annual year in ideas
April, the world was introduced to Ruppy, the first known fluorescent dog. In natural light, Ruppy seems to be an almost-normal beagle — though his paws look as if he has stepped in pink ink. Under ultraviolet light, the effect is quite evident: he emits an [...]
This an online video for driving direction device Tom Tom’s new selection of voices, including the Dark Lord himself.
This weekend saw the release of the latest film in the Lady Dior series starring the French Oscar winning actress, Marion Cotillard, and her Dior handbag. The latest film is directed by David Lynch and has a distinctly Twin Peaks feel to it. The previous film directed by Jonas Akerlund has the gorgeous Ms Cotillard [...]
Bad sound quality is destroying the music business.
The quality of sound delivered through typical ear bud headphones devalues the music according to Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre, who as a solution have created a line of high end headphones called Beats. In this article in the Financial Times, Iovine describes how he is trying to [...]
The Information Architects have plotted the top 140 Twitter influencers on a map akin to those showing how the universe began. The blobs are placed according to name, handle, category, influence, activity and when they joined the service. Full story here.
This ad for free WiFi in McDonald’s gets the idea across through a simple visual that sells the brand.
from the New York Times 9th annual year in ideas
Copenhagen has begun to create a system of as many as 15 extra-wide, segregated bike routes connecting the suburbs to the center of the city. The Bicycle Office of Copenhagen’s design calls for service stations (with air pumps and tools for simple repairs) and plans to [...]
