Crowdsourced social product development

Most of you have heard of websites such as Threadless, CafePress, and Zazzle. In a similar fashion comes Quirky, a phenomenal social product development site. The basic premise is that anyone can submit ideas that may be selected for product development. If your idea get that far.  So how does an idea get selected? Here’s an excerpt from Quirky:

Not only is Quirky exciting but they have incredible innovative products as well. Usually innovation comes at a price. On Quirky everything is fairly priced.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

Cordies cable organizers

PowerCurl MacBook Cord Wrap

Contort Flexible USB Hub

Wrapster Headphone Cord Organizer

Of course some of my favorites are all based around Apple products. What did you expect from a so-called Fan Boy. In addition, you can also find a slew of innovative products that range from Dustpans to Rubber band hooks.

As a fan of user interfaces, Quirky also hits a home run. I love the way the shopping cart works. Items placed in the cart are alway visible by rolling over the shopping cart icon in the logo box located in the top left hand corner.

Head over to Quirky and check it out.

Infographic: Scientific evidence for popular health supplements

A beautiful informatics poster created by David McCandless and Andy Perkins.

According to informationisbeautiful.net, this visualization generates itself from this Google Doc. So when new research comes out, they can quickly update the data and regenerate the image. Check out the interactive version.

Box art

Box doodle has a simple premise. Send in a jpeg of original art you made out of a box.

Check out the rest of the amazing box art at boxdoodle.com.

A car that runs 200 miles on compressed air!

A car that runs on air?

Where the hell has this technology been hiding? Surprisingly enough, the post date on this Youtube video is October, 2008.

Learn more at Motor Development International (MDI)

Star Wars Adidas Collection

Attention geeks everywhere!

Check the new Adidas Star Wars Collection. Now you can dress up that Darth Vader costume with the real deal – official Adidas Star Wars shoes. You will be the envy of the neighborhood. Imagine the possibilites … Dressing up like Chewbacca and donning a pair of Stormtrooper specials. Pretty slick, indeed.

When I first saw this collection, I almost thought I had been punked. I checked the URL and sure enough it was Adidas.com. Growing up watching the first Star Wars movies, I imagined that in 2010 we would be zooming around in flying machines circling monstrous buildings. Although that didn’t happen, the Official Adidas Star Wars collection did. My questions is, “Why did it take 33 years?”

Innovative product design from black + blum

I have been a huge fan of product designers black + blum for many years. I personally own several of their products and they have certainly stood the test of time. I first picked up a “Jimmy” in Amsterdam way back in 2000. It still hangs, or should I say ‘climbs’, on the side of the refrigerator today. Not only do they have exceptional design prowess, but they also have clever names assigned to the products.

Loo-roll holder / magazine rack

Give your bathroom a cool accent with “Loo Read”. Its wire frame holds magazines, newspapers and of course loo rolls… two of them, just in case one runs out! [I wonder if Lou Reed is aware of this special honor!]

Loose change bowl

A sculptural polished aluminium bowl for all your loose change, keys, bits and bobs. Drop everything in and then easily pour it out into your hand again.

Keyring - bottle opener

…will magnetically climb your fridge door to store your keys and also opens bottles while holding onto the top afterwards.
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The top ten Google logos of 2009

So here are the top ten Google logos of 2009 in random order (According to me!)

01 – Mar 02, 2009
Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss! Courtesy of Dr. Seuss Enterprises

02 – Feb 10, 2009
Israeli Election Day – (Israel)

03 – May 22, 2009
Mary Cassatt’s Birthday – (Global)

04 – May 07, 2009
Alexander Popov’s Invention of the Radio – (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus)

05 – Apr 27, 2009
Samuel Morse’s Birthday – (Global)

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The Periodic Table Printmaking Project

The first periodic table was published in 1869. One hundred and forty years later, the Periodic Table Printmaking Project was born. The idea is to promote both science and the arts by creating 118 prints in any medium; woodcut, linocut, monotype, etching, lithograph, silkscreen, or any combination. Each of the participating artists retain the rights to their images.

Periodic Table Printmaking ProjectBasic Rules & Guidelines
Contributing Artists
Project Blog
Official Flickr Group

Thought provoking UK graffiti artist Banksy

Banksy is a anonymous graffiti artist from the UK. His work is quite extraordinary and has a social commentary angle. According to Wikipedia:

He is believed to be a native of Yate, South Gloucestershire, near Bristol^[2] and to have been born in 1974,^[5] but there is substantial public uncertainty about his identity and personal and biographical details.^[6] According to Tristan Manco, Banksy “was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. The son of a photocopier technician, he trained as a butcher but became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s.”^[7] His artworks are often satirical pieces of art on topics such as politics, culture, and ethics. His street art, which combines graffiti writing with a distinctive stencilling technique, is similar to Blek le Rat, who began to work with stencils in 1981 in Paris and members of the anarcho-punk band Crass who maintained a graffiti stencil campaign on the London Tube System in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His art has appeared in cities around the world.^[8] Banksy’s work was born out of the Bristol underground scene which involved collaborations between artists and musicians.

One of the most impressive things about Banksy is that he doesn’t sell photos or merchandising of his work. Instead, he posts high resolution images on his Web site and encourages people to make their own stuff. He only asks that it is for non-commercial use. Very generous and true to the intention of the art work.