RSS Feeds
|
BR DE ES FR IT JP NL UK US
Babblebaby
|
Defamer
|
Gizmodo
|
Kotaku
|
Lifehacker
This isn't the first mobile phone concept to incorporate glass, but I'll be dammed if it isn't one of the prettiest. There aren't any details on functionality, but it is clear that designer Mac Funamizu's "Glassy Glassy" concept takes minimalist design about as far as it can go without ditching the physical phone altogether and implanting communication devices directly into our brain.
Something weird must be going on in the Alps, because alien structures keep popping up like circles in the English crops and people insist on doing jacuzzi parties at 15,700 feet. Take this shiny Alpine Capsule, a beautiful--if not eerie--26-feet in diameter mountain shelter designed by Studio Lovegrove that seems to be made of mercury.
Did you know you could make glass on a regular charcoal grill? Sure it's incredibly flamey and pretty dangerous, but according to the folks at Pop Sci, it's possible! All you need to do is add washing soda, lime or borax to white-silica beach sand and a grill overclocked to reach temperatures of 2000°F. Check out Theodore Grey feeding a concoction of silica and washing room regulars into a cast-iron pot over a flaming grill and getting two pretty medallions out of it. Try to resist doing this at home afterwards. [Popsci]
One of the biggest new features in the new MacBooks that Apple just unveiled is the glass trackpad, one that ditches the button in favour of turning the entire trackpad into a button. It also works with a bunch of new gestures, using up to four fingers to make doing things like switching between applications and flipping through a photo slideshow easier. It's pretty cool, but definitely not as cool as the concepts we've seen with a screen underneath, making the whole trackpad-is-the-buttons much more logical. Where's the screen, Apple?
Jason Wells got to toy around with a few blocks of Aerogel, the fantastically light (and fantastically expensive) material made famous by its use as insulation in NASA spacecraft like the Mars Rover. Using just everyday materials from his house, he managed to test the futuristic product's strength, optical properties, reaction to different liquids and temperatures, and electrical conductivity. He concludes from the experiments that it should work really well as a fire retardant or insulation, as well as pulling moisture out of pretty much anything (including his finger!). Aerogel weighs only three times as much as air, but is even more effective than your everyday pink insulation. It may only be the world's coolest insulation material, but are you the world's coolest anything? Didn't think so. [Jason Wells via Crunchgear]
New Apple notebooks are most certainly coming in the next six to eight weeks, and they will probably have the most extensive design overhauls in years. And the long-fabled MacBook touch might finally appear on the mortal plane. But the best rumour, we think, is that the new MacBooks will have a glass, multi-touch trackpad. But, uh, why is there no mention of a screen or display underneath the glass? Why make a fancy glass trackpad that isn't a multi-touch screen?
Tea Drinkers of the Giz unite! And get me a Bodum Clara kettle for my birthday next month, please (I share it with Ringo Starr, useless-fact fans). Made of borosilicate glass, which keeps the water smell-, taste- and taint-free, it weighs less than 500 grams and holds 1.75 litres of water. The Clara has got a blue stopper on the spout which makes it whistle like a horny construction worker, and it can be used on electric and gas stoves, as well as ceramic hobs. You can even put it in the microwave if you remove the lid and whistle, but what is the point of that? Microwaves and tea bags/tea leaves should not even be in the same sentence, let alone the same process. Bodum's beautiful kettle costs US$60. [Bodum online shop via Cool Hunting]
This concept from designer Kong Fanwen lies somewhere between minimalist Apple keyboards, and projecting laser touch ones. The No-Key is very simple: just a light source, a camera and an etched sheet of glass, showing the key positions. You just type, the cam sees your contact with the glass and sends appropriate commands to your PC. It really is the antithesis of the clunky, complex steampunked one we showed the other day. And one image suggests it'd be waterproof, so... blogging from the bath? I want one please! [Yanko Design]
Sony's sci-fi looking 6-foot glass speaker is turning into an actual product: the Sountina NSA-PF1—designed for larger rooms and halls—will give you a 50Hz to 20kHz frequency response, analogue and digital audio inputs, and a blue, amber or purple-lit 3-foot organic glass tweeter for just US$10,000. [AV Watch]
With fluorescents and LEDs making major headway in the market, energy efficient alternatives to the incandescent bulb are becoming big business. That having been said, the next big thing could be coming out of a partnership between Saazs and Saint-Gobain Innovations in the form of Planilum—the "world's first light emitting glass." Planilum is only 2 cms thick and is composed of four layers of special glass, a rare gas and serigraphed phosphors—which will give you 500,000 hours or around 20 years of normal usage.
