I just purchased a Mead notebook, and have spent 30 minutes trying to remove the sticker on the cover, and as you can see, there is still a lot of sticker left! Why do companies torment consumers with such stickers! I also had a sticker representing the dealer where I purchased my last car on its windshield, and I never could get it completely off!
Plastic packaging used for numerous electronic products also irritates me! It’s impossible to open with your hands, and even difficult with a knife or scissors! When you do cut it open, you still have to tear the package open to remove the product, and can easily cut your fingers on its sharp edges! Also, good luck returning the product with the plastic packaging ripped apart! There must be a better way to prevent theft, or deter returns, which I’m sure is its intent.
Gyration just launched a series of Air Mouses, which have gyroscopic motion sensors, so you can easily control a cursor on an Internet-enabled television from the comfort of your couch! The technology was developed by Los Gatos-based engineer Tom Quinn and took nine years and $30 million to develop!
OneCafe, a Swedish company, claims to have developed a patented coffee bag which combines the taste of regular filtered coffee with the convenience of a tea bag. In a consumer taste test, 88% of testers found the coffee to be better tasting than the coffee they normally drink. [thanks, Red Ferret]
Artistic Tile that can be easily swapped so entire walls and floors can be totally changed to suit your various moods or fit the season. The tiles adhere via magnets and require no mortar, adhesives or grout, and are durable enough for commercial settings, including hotel suites, or office lobbies, for example.
Sky Ceilings are photographic illusions of real skies that fit into standard ceiling grid systems. Fluorescent or LED lighting illuminate the translucent images from behind. Such a ceiling is perfect for any building that has multiple floors, which prohibit skylight installation, including apartments, offices, hospitals, libraries etc. to create a more vibrant and relaxing environment. [thanks, Nicole Weston]
While working at CAA, I assisted with integrating the Coke brand into American Idol, so when David at Ironic Sans suggests that there should be reverse product placement, it really resonates with me. Wouldn’t you buy Dunder Mifflin paper, the fictional company from NBC’s The Office, if it existed, for example? What other fictional products would you buy? This is essentially a derivative of movie merchandising (ie Star Wars toys), but there’s potentially a big opportunity here for design firms to collaborate with production companies and license fictional products to real companies.
Google Earth featured content, which launched last week, allows you to explore localities in a very compelling way. If you zoom in on the Great Pyramid of Egypt, for example, a screen pops up with information from Discovery Networks. There are also Turn Here videos, an Emeryville-based startup that plans to produce 25,000 short videos this year about neighborhoods and local attractions, so you can check out restaurants and other places before visiting. This is a great new platform for local businesses to relatively inexpensively advertise, and also an interesting educational tool.
The featured content in Google Earth has interesting potential implications for Google search results of the future. For example, if you search for “New York,” the search results could be segmented in such a way that you can easily explore the City via Google Earth, watch relevant videos, listen to local music, as well as discover traditional information-based and keyword relevant websites.
Toyota has developed a robot leg that can jump like a human’s, which is an evolution from stiff-jointed robots. This will potentially allow two-legged robots of the future to run faster and handle uneven or unpaved terrain.
Check out at 3:35 min how the cabin can be removed from the drivetrain and engine components platform, so conceivably there could be alternative cabin modules you could buy (or rent) for your vehicle, so one day you could drive a sedan, and the next a convertible, and the next a pickup truck!
