Phone Support For Beauty
You got to agree that the skeletal system is a genius of design; it protects the delicate organs inside while giving support to our lustrous skin. If we were to apply the same design for our mobile phones then it’s quite possible to wipe out the peripheral “phone covers and cases” industry. I’m talking about the LG Exo Smartphone Concept. The key feature in this concept is a high strength polymer exoskeleton for protecting the delicate internal components while supporting its external rubber skin.
The end result is a good-looking phone that does not require any protective case that mars its beauty. You get to enjoy the phone in its intended avatar! The reason why I relate to this concept is that my gorgeous iPhone lies hidden beneath this hideous cover, lest it falls down and cracks!
Designer: Benjamin Lotte
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Entertain Yourself: Jamo A 804 Speakers
In part 1 of our Entertain Yourself series we took a look at the Sony BRAVIA NX800 3D HDTV. It’s our pick for amazing picture quality, industrial design, and packs a wallop of future proof technologies to take you far beyond 2010. Tho the built-in speakers are a wonder in themselves we wanted dedicated speakers. Last year we came across the Jamo A 804 and have been in love ever since.
A beautiful television demands an equally beautiful speaker system. If you take a look at what’s available on the market, speakers are either 80’s industrial boxes or beautifully crafted modern exercises. The former is all performance with no thought to design and the latter is just the opposite, too much design with subpar acoustics. Is there a happy medium?
Take one look at the A 804 – it’s gorgeous! The piano black finish is accented with black leather; fluidic yet technical in appearance. The size is dominating but well suited to Sony’s new monolithic design aesthetic. It’s absolutely stunning and only enhances the entertainment area. Speakers don’t have to be hidden. They can be proudly displayed and the A 804 is more than capable of holding its own amongst the best hardware makers and designers in the industry.
Prior to installing the A 804, we were using a Yamaha Sound Bar which we LOVE. The simulated 5.1 audio system is just the ticket for something better than stereo. The A 804 can function as a single, double, or a full on 5+ speaker setup and it’s the versatility that’ll make any audio guru happy. Unlike other speaker systems, you don’t need a full blown out package to get massive sound. We only have two A 804’s and a subwoofer and we’re more than elated. You will need a receiver to drive the speakers. We’re using a Pioneer model but even when hooked up to a small Denon unit, the sound was full, crisp, and balanced between the high, mids, and lows.
The A 804 is a 3-way, bassreflex speaker. The rigid cabinet constructed from high-gloss, lacquered aluminum, steel and high-density polymer results in a stable, non-resonant cabinet with very clean sound reproduction. One of the secrets of the A 804 lies in its flow-optimized bass port, which delivers extremely clean bass, even at high volume. The silk dome midrange/tweeter is a Jamo developed co-axial unit featuring WaveGuide technology. The clever three-way construction of the A 804 produces a perfect sound dispersion pattern, giving you maximum freedom when positioning your flatscreen, surround system and sofa. Its hard to visualize but sit anywhere around the TV and you never hear the sound drop off. It’s continuous and rich from the farthest corner of our seating arrangement. Sitting dead center is no longer the hottest seat in the house. Everyone gets to enjoy the almost pliable audio experience.
Designer: Jamo (Buy it here)
Pencil Printer Part Two
The refined Pencil Printer part II comes with detailed explanations and a better understand of saving the environment from paper trash and permanency of Ink! In here we see how the lead shavings feed the cartridge toner and prints effortlessly on paper. Mistakes are easily erased, and once the crappy memo is done with…you can erase all the gibberish and re-use the paper. A true test of erasing skills!
Designers: Hoyoung Lee, Seunghwa Jeong & Jin-young Yoon
Cheers To Finger Power!
Mind you, this is not a “Green” concept and neither does it claim to be “Eco Friendly”. It’s just a helpful solution for a tricky situation. The situation being: you running out of juice on your mobile phone. So what do you do? Remove the battery from the back of the phone; give it a few good turns around your index finger and its gathered enough power to last you a conversation or a safe trip to your charger and electric point.
Designers: Song Teaho & Hyejin Lee
Posted: January 4th, 2010
at 6:04am by Radhika Seth
Topics: CellPhones, Hyejin-Lee, Mobile-Phone, Product Design, Song Teaho, Swing Your Energy, System, Technology, battery, charger
Adidas Turns the Sneaker Into an Augmented Reality Device
Can’t find your Nintendo DS? Try one of the new Adidas sneakers instead.
Adidas has created a virtual 3-D world that can be accessed using an upcoming line of five men’s sneakers in an idea that ties into one of the technology trends of the year: augmented reality.
“The foundation of augmented reality lies in adding a layer to the real world,” says Chris Barbour, head of digital marketing for Adidas Originals. “That’s what we have done. We have taken a real world item and added a fantastic virtual world on top of that”
All users have to do is go to the Adidas site and hold up their sneaker, which has a code embedded in its tongue, in front of their computer webcam. A virtual world then pops out in front of them and they can navigate it using their sneaker as a controller.
“We are not trying to mimic a real-world look, we have a more stylized, pop-up book creative approach,” says Barbour. “The neighborhood is displayed on a two dimensional computer screen, but you can use your shoe to control the angle and depth of view and zoom in and out, giving a 3-D sense of perspective.”
Over the next few months, Adidas plans to introduce three augmented reality games developed by game developer xForm into the virtual neighborhood. The sneakers will then serve not only as the key to get in, but also act as the controller for the games. Among those available will be a skateboard game, where the sneaker acts as the controller to navigate the virtual city’s alleys, a Star Wars-like game with the sneaker and a music-based game.
The shoes with the augmented reality codes will cost between $65 and $95 and will be available starting February.
Sure, a large part of this is a marketing gimmick and Adidas is not the only company to try out augmented reality in its products. But that doesn’t take away from that this is an idea that makes an ordinary physical object fun and injects some technological pizzaz to it.
See Also:
- If You’re Not Seeing Data, You’re Not Seeing
- At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry
- Augmented Reality Ghost Hunting Creeps Into App Store
- John Mayer’s Augmented Reality Video Puts Fans in Picture …
Photo: Adidas
