blinds

Design

These Window Blinds Are Better Than Most Views

12:50AM Jesus Diaz | I like this idea very much: Instead of normal blinds to hide horrible views—and make horrible interiors—use one of these Better Views roller blinds. You can get night cityscapes showing Paris, Tokyo, Helsinki, and Stockholm. More »
Gadgets

Alarm Clock Hack Automates Window Blinds So You Rise and Shine

8:23PM Kit Eaton | Mods don’t get much simpler and more useful than this: It’s an alarm clock that whisks open some window blinds when the alarm goes off, so the sun can tempt you out of bed. There’s a microcontroller to handle detecting the alarm signal and to drive a servo wired into the blinds, and some switches to override the alarm and open or close the blinds on command. Check the video of it in action. More »
Design

Solar Vertical Lamp Blind Charges-Up in Daylight, Lights Rooms At Night

9:10PM Kit Eaton | Sometimes a simple idea will make you react with ambivalence, but designers Yoon-Hui Kim and Eun-Kyung Kim’s Solar Vertical Lamp probably isn’t one of those. At its core it’s a solar-powered lighting system, but unusually it’s embedded in standard window blinds. During the day tiny solar panels charge up the individual lighting elements (LEDs?), and at night they light up. These guys have conceptualised the eco-friendly solution being an elegant lamp shape, but basically you could arrange the pixels however you liked. We wouldn’t recommend the legend “love palace” and a great big arrow pointing at your bed. [Yanko Design] More »