I’ve always wanted a ping pong table in a main room without looking too nerdy…. boom… make the ping pong table ultra plush fancy, and make it a convertible… awesome work Hunn Wai!
more pics after jump. Continue Reading
thoughts
I love it when an everyday object is turned into an entirely different emotional object. A bar of soap, foaming gel, or perhaps some soap leaves!
via BookofJoe
Buy at Wrapables, 20 soap leaves, $13
Oh my! I don’ think I’ll be buying packaged orange juice ever again! A must read! Shakes me up just as Supersize Me or FastFoodNation did.
Buy her book “Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice” here.
“IDEAS: What isn’t straightforward about orange juice?
HAMILTON: It’s a heavily processed product. It’s heavily engineered as well. In the process of pasteurizing, juice is heated and stripped of oxygen, a process called deaeration, so it doesn’t oxidize. Then it’s put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year. It gets stripped of flavor-providing chemicals, which are volatile. When it’s ready for packaging, companies such as Tropicana hire flavor companies such as Firmenich to engineer flavor packs to make it taste fresh. People think not-from-concentrate is a fresher product, but it also sits in storage for quite a long time.”
Read the rest of the article at Boston.com or after the jump!
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Give this 4 minute video a watch as it’s so very true. “Everything’s Amazing, yet nobody’s happy!”, Louis CK.
I agree, too many people complain too much when life is pretty damn amazing.
I stopped by Brown Univesities EP (Entrepreneurship Program) this weekend in providence and was plesantly inspired by the 4 speakers who spoke. A few mental notes:
– Kiva.org: I learned from co-founder Matt Flannery that he worked at Tivo before, wrote down an idea a day for about a month, then quit his job to work at a donut shop, while starting up Kiva, with several people saying you can’t just loan money to outside countries legally. Anyone can be your business partner! Kiva now get over 1Million dollars in loans every 10 days! via BrownEP
– Starbucks: Ted Garcia (Ex VP). Starbucks went from having 17 stores total to 5 stores opening each day up to an astounding 16,000 stores total in about 10 years! Starbucks success comes from 3 things. Performance, People, and Luck. Starbucks success was in having a constant open dialogue with all employees, and bringing up issues when employees did not perform as needed. via BrownEP
– Mark Victor Hansen: Spend, create ideas, do ideas, only you can make something happen. Don’t wait for it to come to you. Don’t do something to make money, or save the world. Do it to make the world better. via BrownEP
– David Shrier: old school marketing techniques still work and can easily be measured in all channels. Some of the best examples are Ronco and Proactiv. Advertising money is not just to get to consumers, but also to reach largers distributions. I’m not a huge believer in older techniques, but David gave some very convincing examples. via BrownEP
” I wish you would use all means at your disposal — films! expeditions! the web! more! — to ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas, hope spots large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of the planet.”
– Sylvia Earle
This is the TEDwish that made me promise to cut back on seafood (and sushi consumption) this year, though I’ve learned it’s better to eat smaller fish that reproduce faster from a previous lecture on ocean life as well. Also helping out will be the free release in the astonishing documentary OCEANS (youtube) by Jacques Perrin (Winged Migration) to help educate people about the ocean sometime this year.
via TEDprize
Snow is melting, birds are chirping, and warmth is near. Hello spring, bye bye winter.
Gaming: Real air pilots race simulated pilots.
Art: Matthew Chambers sculptures. Pretty neat.
Art: The drawings of James Jean.
Tech: Storytlr.com, recompiling your feeds to make sense.
Object: A pretty cool scale with large text!
Tech: Spreednews.com, reading text fast without page turns via your pda.
Tech: DingItUp.com, be informed when a webpage is up or down!
Science: Visualizing Invisible Magnetic Waves. Very cool!
Art: Toilet roll cutout art work by Yuken Teruya.
Dan Ariely speaks at EG about his rather mind boggling book Predictably Irrational siting examples on how we humans make some rather odd decisions based on what we see and already know. I’d highly recommend buying this book or following his work! (ps, he also spoke at TED last week)
I’m off for the week to TED2009 for this years theme “The Great Unveiling”, but this round I’ll be in the satilite space in the new Palm Springs location. I won’t be blogging too much, but you can follow me on twitter, or if your there, let me know and we’ll meet up. Check out the full TED schedule here or my previous TED adventures.
I’ve just discovered a rather dizzying unbelievable tumbling routine called “Power Tumbling”. Watch the video above and wonder how do you not get dizzy, as the gymnast or even as a watcher! I’ve always been amused with break dancing but this form in tumbling really has me saying, our bodies can do what! If your eye want more, simple do a Youtube search for “power tumbling”.
Okay, it’s late, I’m a bit tired, but this grabbed my attention. GetPeek, the thin simple mobile device that let’s you email and text message (through email) that usually cost $100 with a $20 monthly service fee is going all out and offering a 1 day lifetime service purchase for $300! Yes, I said Lifetime!
I’m not sure what to think, besides this is tempting… but then again, do I need it, do they need it, why are they doing this. Anyhow, it’s a 1 day deal, so I’ll let your mind make up a decision. As far as I know, if it’s a lifetime purchase and I can change the email several times, then I might just get it and pop it in the car, or hand down many generations, or, just use for some bizarre project.
Kudos to GetPeek for doing something first… or at least this is a first I think…is it? Buy it here.
Gary Hustwit, creator of the incredible documentary Helvetica, brings to us his journey in discovering the world of Industrial Designer in Objectified, premiering in March 2009.
“Objectified is a feature-length independent documentary about industrial design. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the people who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability. It’s about our relationship to mass-produced objects and, by extension, the people who design them.
Through vérité footage and in-depth conversations, the film documents the creative processes of some of the world’s most influential designers, and looks at how the things they make impact our lives. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?”
Some appearing in the film are Paola Antonelli (MoMa), Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, Naoto Fukasawa, IDEO, Jonathan Ive (apple), Marc Newson, Karim Rashid, Smart Design, and more…
This line up already tells a tale of what to expect from the film (more of a euro flavor about objects, furniture, materials, service, space, and the simple obsession with emotional design.), but I’m sure it’ll be just as good as Helvetica, and if so, bravo! I cant wait to watch it! Watch the trailer above or here.