function-load – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Jaasta: Is This E-Ink Keyboard (Finally) The End For Time-Honored Design Tradition?

There’s a certain respect afforded to the rare designer who has reached the highest levels of keyboard shortcuttery—a masterfulness attained only when the self and the software (be it CAD or Adobe) become one. Whilst effortless key stroke knowledge of a chosen tool can be achieved through years of dedicated daily practice—young devotees required to spend many consecutive days and nights in intimate communion with their keyboards in pursuit of perfection—only true touch typing demi-gods can commit multiple program key combinations to memory, laying down one set and picking up another in the time it takes to switch between screen. This ancient art and time-honored tradition (handed down across generations for millennia decades) could, however, be about to fade into insignificance. Jaasta is a promising customisable E-Ink auxiliary keyboard soon to run the gauntlet of a crowdfunding campaign. Whilst customizable keyboards are really nothing new (see ’05 , ’09 and ’13 ) this challenge to QWERTY conformity— simple and use-case driven in it’s vision; enabled by rapid developments in E-Ink technology—could be the most convincing yet. (more…)

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Jaasta: Is This E-Ink Keyboard (Finally) The End For Time-Honored Design Tradition?

China’s 3D-Printed Housing on the Rise. Literally

Remember last year, when the Chinese engineering firm WinSun 3D printed a bunch of houses? It made the news because they printed them so quickly—ten structures in less than 24 hours. The structures themselves weren’t huge, just 200-square-meter, one-story bungalows. But now WinSun’s set their goals higher, literally. They’ve 3D printed the structures you see here, which include a freaking five-story apartment building and a 1, 100-square-meter (roughly 12, 000-square-foot) villa. To be clear, they didn’t print the structures out in one shot. As with the earlier 10-house batch, they printed out individual panels which were then knocked together by conventional construction workers, and in this case they didn’t even print on-site, but back at the factory. (more…)

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China’s 3D-Printed Housing on the Rise. Literally

Pforzheim Design Students and Hankook Tire Team Up for Futuristic Wheel Concepts

It’s time again for Hankook Tire’s biennial design school team-up, where they task ID students with developing futuristic tire concepts. Last time ’round they paired up with Cincinnati’s DAAP , and this year they’re at Germany’s University of Design, Engineering and Business in Pforzheim. And once again, not only did the students did not disappoint, but pulled off some real socks-knockers! The central trend is to stop looking at the tire as a rubber cladding for a wheel, and to think of it instead as something that works together with an actively transforming wheel to create some ker-azy functionality. Now maybe I’m biased because I know ID students were involved, but the following video showing the three winning concepts in action is more exciting than any action movie trailer you’ll see: (more…)

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Pforzheim Design Students and Hankook Tire Team Up for Futuristic Wheel Concepts

The Light Bandit Lets You Plug Sunlight Directly Into a No-Electricity Lamp

It seems absurd to be burning energy by using lightbulbs while the sun is shining, but buildings can only have so many windows, and sunlight can only penetrate so far. MIT’s Solar Bottle Bulb and Ross Lovegrove’s Sun Tunnel are two ways to get sunlight inside, but both solutions require piercing a roof for installation. This new system called the Light Bandit , in contrast, is a no-construction-required solution. And it’s brilliant: “Sunlight is the fuel that powers all life on Earth, yet our lifestyles block most of it out, ” the developers write. “Between work, school and home we spend most of our time indoors under artificial lighting that lacks important benefits of natural lighting. The Light Bandit changes that.” What’s fascinating is that the coating on the reflectors filters out UV and infrared, delivering only visible light; this means you won’t fade out the part of your couch that’s got a Light Bandit lamp over it. The Light Bandit Kickstarter is no foregone conclusion, by the way; these guys need help and publicity. At press time they’d clocked under six grand out of a $200, 000 target, and there’s just 21 days left to go. But we’ve seen less impressive projects hit higher targets in a shorter stretch of time, so we’re hoping this product becomes a reality. (more…)

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The Light Bandit Lets You Plug Sunlight Directly Into a No-Electricity Lamp

Sitpack and Relax on This Pocketable, Pop-Out Chair-in-a-Tube

Hot on the heel-plate-attachment-points of Noonee’s “Chairless Chair, ” the team at Mono+Mono has launched the ” Sitpack ” on Kickstarter. The Copenhagen-based design consultancy has developed what they’re calling “the world’s most compact, foldable resting device, ” and they’re looking to bring the pocketable monopod to market via a crowdfunding campaign. Designed in keeping with the seven universal design principles, the form factor looks like something made by, say, Beats, but the device itself is actually entirely mechanical: The canister splits laterally into wings (which serve as the seat), revealing a telescoping leg that extends to up to 85cm (33in). We know it’s that time of year, but don’t try this with your kid’s lightsaber toy: Originally known as “Rest”—hence the references in the video—the “Sitpack” is essentially a further reduced version of portable camp stools or those canes with a built-in tripod-stool (both of which I came across in the USPTO archive, after a commenter tipped me off about the original ‘wearable chair’ ), as they indicate in a tabulated side-by-side comparison on their Kickstarter page. They’re available for the discounted price of kr175 DKK (about $30 USD); retail will be in the kr270 DKK ($46 USD) range—not bad, considering that they’re looking to manufacture it in Denmark; see more here . Process sketches & renders The Team (more…)

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Sitpack and Relax on This Pocketable, Pop-Out Chair-in-a-Tube

LumiLor Electroluminescent Coating Has Some Serious Untapped Potential

“Everything can be a lamp with LumiLor, ” writes Darskide Scientific, the company that developed it. LumiLor is a patented coating that glows when a current is applied to it. (And yes, it’s safe to touch, as it’s sealed and insulated.) The brilliance of the system is that since it’s water-based, you can load it up into any paintspraying system or airbrush and you’re off to the races. Here’s how the process is applied: (more…)

Flotspotting: Freddie Paul’s Beer Tree

For most of us consumers, beer is something we buy in bottles and cans, its creation process something of a mystery; we have a vague notion of grains and a fermentation process being involved. Home brewers more firmly understand the science, but much of their alchemy happens inside opaque stainless steel containers, with your average home brewing set-up hewing to the Walter White Meth Lab school of design. So for his final-year design project Freddie Paul , a Product Design student at London’s South Bank University, decided to make the home brewing process more transparent. Literally. Beer Tree is a gravity fed home brewing kit for brewing craft ales. It concentrates on the brewing process as something to be enjoyed and celebrated. The process can be completely visualised from start to finish, involving the user more than traditional kits to create a strong sense of satisfaction and pride over the final product. The video gives you a better sense of what the Beer Tree looks like in action: We’re digging Paul’s use of laser-etched graphics on the control panel, his use of materials and the overall form. One commenter on the video is more critical: “It looks impossible to clean and sanitize, your mash tun will lose so much heat, it looks like you can’t vorlauf” and more brewerspeak. Another commenter is more upbeat: “My close friends and I have all agreed. We would pay good money to own one of these. Seriously consider making a Kickstarter for manufacturing of this product. I would sign up to back you TODAY.” Paul, if you’re reading this: Given that you’ve graduated and we don’t see a current employer on your Coroflot profile, perhaps the crowdsourcing is worth a go? Check out Paul’s shots of the development process after the jump. (more…)

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Flotspotting: Freddie Paul’s Beer Tree

Radinn’s Electric Powered Wakeboard Lets You Go Surfing Without the Waves

With the goal of “revolutionizing the watersport industry, ” Swedish company Radinn has released their first product: an electric powered wakeboard . The carbon fiber craft carries onboard lithium batteries and is controlled via a wireless handheld remote, allowing the rider to cruise at up to 30 miles per hour. The coolest thing about having a self-propelled board is that it frees the rider from the beach. With an EPW one could navigate rivers, lakes, public fountains in Stockholm… Want. The 64-pound board’s batteries can provide 30 minutes of runtime. Currently in its final testing stages, it’s expected to go on sale next year. And no, it won’t be cheap, but if you’ve got twenty grand to throw around, you could do a lot worse. (more…)

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Radinn’s Electric Powered Wakeboard Lets You Go Surfing Without the Waves

Insane $2 Million Naturalistic Feature-Packed Swimming Pool

Animal Planet calls Anthony Archer-Willis “the best in the world for what he does—designing and delivering the ultimate swimming experience.” That’s why they gave Archer-Willis, a British landscape architect with a specialization in swimming pool and water garden design, his own show. In ” The Poolmaster , ” he designs dream swimming pools for a handful of lucky clients. While the TV show will reveal Archer-Willis’ own creations, in the following video he shows you his appreciation for another pool designer’s work. An unnamed family in Utah commissioned this absolutely insane, mammoth $2-million-dollar swimming pool, which was designed to look all-natural. With five waterfalls, a grotto, a waterslide, hidden passageways, an integrated indoor kitchen/bathroom/showering facility, a scuba diving practice area and more, this is not the average swimming pool that most of us Americans will be hitting up this holiday weekend. Watch and be amazed: (more…)

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Insane $2 Million Naturalistic Feature-Packed Swimming Pool

A Great Product Idea Undone by Human Factors: The NoMix Toilet

When it comes to recycling, pee and poo oughtn’t mix. We think of them as the same thing—human waste—but in fact they are not mixed within the body and shouldn’t be mixed afterwards, though we often do so out of convenience and the design of modern toilets. The reason they shouldn’t mix is because urine is rich in nitrogen and phosphorous while feces are carbonaceous. Separated, these can be valuable resources, but combined they become a useless sludge that needs to undergo laborious and energy-intensive processing before anything can be reclaimed. And we are literally flushing resources down the toilet. As an article in the farmer’s information website A Growing Culture points out, it would be better if we could easily extract nitrogen and phosphorous from separated urine rather than taking it out of the Earth: Modern agriculture gets the nitrogen it needs from ammonia-producing plants that utilize fossil fuels such as natural gas, LPG or petroleum naphtha as a source of hydrogen. This energy-intensive process dumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it consumes a finite hydrocarbon resource, and it is not sustainable. Modern agriculture gets the phosphorous it needs from phosphorous-bearing rocks. But these reserves are rapidly dwindling and increasingly contaminated with pollutants such as cadmium. In as little as 25 years apatite reserves may no longer be economically exploitable and massive world-wide starvation is predicted to follow. If we are serious about achieving sustainability in this regard, our first, and perhaps most important duty, lies in not mixing urine with feces. Enter the NoMix toilet, developed in Sweden in the 1990s. The NoMix’s bowl is designed in such a way that the urine is collected in the front, the feces in the back, and both are whisked away through separate plumbing, with the latter being disposed of in the conventional manner and the former recycled. While that raises new infrastructural challenges, the concept was interesting enough for EAWAG, a Swiss aquatic research institute, to intensively explore the NoMix’s feasibility in research trials. Running from 2000 to 2006, that project was called Novaquatis , and during their seven years of testing, Eawag shrewdly realized that “An innovation for private bathrooms can only be widely implemented if it is accepted by the public”: For this reason, all Swiss NoMix pilot projects were accompanied by sociological studies. 1750 people were surveyed – and their attitudes towards urine source separation are highly favourable. Despite a number of deficiencies, the NoMix toilet is well accepted, especially in public buildings. Things looked even better by 2010, when CNET reported that “Of the 2, 700 people surveyed in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark, 80 percent say they support the idea behind the technology, and between 75 and 85 percent report that the design, hygiene, smell, and seat comfort of the NoMix toilets equal that of conventional ones.” (more…)