inspiration

ha, these are awesome. I’ll have to get some of these for my next wine party.

“These made my day. Corkers are a design collaboration between Oded Friedland and Reddish Studio forMonkey Business are push pins that you can prick into wine/champagne corks to turn them into little creatures! The options are ?Monkey?, ?Deer?, ?Buffalo?, ?Bear?, ?Bunny? ?&? ?Crow. The packaging turns it into a fun wine bottle hang tag/gift ~ perfect for the next bottle of wine… Take a peek at more details up close on the next page.”

via notcot 

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For those unfamiliar with SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), you must read and dig into this crazy Act that can and will pretty much screw up any freedom and innovation like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Reddit, etc if it happens. Please sign up to petition against it HERE. Learn more about it from the video above from Chris Hayes.


Ooo, STEM is a simple design for a whimsical functional outcome. For a fresh zest of citrus on your food or drink, no need to cut it open…just stick it in and zap away (though I seem to recall zest being better from the fruits skin)

“A brilliant Quirky object currently undergoing production is the Stem, a quick, novel and efficient way to get that citrus zing without breaking out the knives.

Spray it, don’t squeeze it! Stem is designed to allow a cook to spray juice directly from a citrus fruit. No longer do you have to cut and squeeze your fruit to get the juice out like a common cook. With only one finger you can now spray citrus juice on your favorite foods evenly. Let Stem add a little zest in your kitchen and on your food!
Price and release date is TBA, and while you can’t do anything about the latter, they’re taking a survey on the former at the link above.”

via core77

This blew my mind away. NeverWet is a treatment to makes any surface liquid resistant. It’s a Hydrophobiccoating that repels any liquid, even thick liquids like syrup, paint, ketchup, etc and repels them off any surface (much like you see on plant leaves). Check out the video above and be awed when you see the white shoes come out of the muddy wet pool. Imagine all the crazy magical applications.

They even applied it to an iphone and let it sit under water for an hour and it was fine.  Personally I want to treat all my furniture with this stuff, then treat my car, shoes, rugs, etc…. No word on if it is toxic or not, and the product is expected to be available to consumers in 2012.

“At Ross Nanotechnology, we have developed a super hydrophobic coating that completely repels water and heavy oils. Any object coated with our NeverWet  coating literally cannot be touched by liquid. Any liquid placed on this coating is repelled and simply rolls off without touching the underlying surface. Not only is this amazing to see, but it solves a myriad of problems.”

via NeverWet

awesome!

“Sebastian Schmieg of the Netherlands created this video by feeding a transparent image to Google Image Search and asking it to find similar images, and then taking the top result and feeding it back into the similarity algorithm, 2951 times. It’s a wonderful look at an evolutionary process.”

via boingboing
Search by Image, Recursively, Transparent PNG, #1 (via Kottke)

Over the summer,  at my first FooCamp, I was asked “What does Education mean to you” by the amazing team over at Vittana which you should look into.

I knew Education was incredibly important in my life and one of my thoughts made it into the Vimeo video above (with some other awesome individuals), but I thought this would be a good time to reflecte into this question a bit more for the holiday break.

What does Education mean to me?

Education is the opportunity to learn from the world and discover myself to share with others.
Education gives me the ability to breath, to grow, to be curious, to be wrong, and at times be right.
Without Education, I’d never learn, I’d  never try, I’d never know myself, nor would I  even question if I were wrong or right.
Education enables life.
Education is what makes us human.

If you have some thoughts on What does Education mean to you, drop a note over to the team at Vittana… I’m sure they would appreciate it.

A must watch video…who knew playing it safe could actually be the dangerous decision. Aspirin and salt would not be approved to this day. How would life be without those?

Juan Enriquez discusses current regulatory hurdles to introducing new drugs, why aspirin would never make it to market today, and the hidden costs of missing out.”

via tedmed 


Some words of wisdom by the one and great Steve Jobs:

“When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money.

That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

via youtube


My inner geek in robotics and knowledge in the complexities that come along in making a 2 footed robot walk naturally yet alone survive a big shove to the side while maintaining balance has just been remedied by Boston Dynamics demo video of Petman! Watch it here and perhaps be amazed as I was. This is hard stuff, next come the petdog that will run around chasing after a ball and withstand cars and all obstacles only to bring you back your ball with a wagging tail (for balance) and a smile (programmed in).

via youtube. Thanks Chuck Pell!
BostonDynamics

Olafur Grimsson: Iceland Bounces Back from PopTech on Vimeo.

“The President of Iceland describes how his country encountered social and democratic upheaval after the economic crisis of 2008. Over the last three years, by combining wide-scale systemic inquiry into governance and judicial systems as well as a long-standing investment in clean energy and technology, Iceland has been able to bounce back with a remarkable economic vitality.”

poptech blog