Amaete Umanah - Chronicles of Tech Geek » concept

Nokia Cell Phone Powered By Coca-Cola – Unusual Indeed! (Photos)

Amaete Umanah — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:17:20 +0000

I have seen some of the most unusual mobile phones in the recent past, but the latest cellphone by the Chinese designer Daizi Zheng is a remarkably strange yet sustainable mobile handset that will take you by wonder. Designed for the Finnish brand Nokia, the Eco-Friendly cellphone runs on an innovative battery which makes use of enzymes to generate electricity from carbohydrates. The new mobile phone concept apart from harnessing clean energy from sugary drinks like Coke or Pepsi, which generates water and oxygen, also works about four times longer than contemporary lithium batteries on a single charge. Moreover, the handset is fully biodegradable.

Source: Huffington Post via The Design Blog

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Are Digital Magazines Coming Soon? Mag+ Concept (HD Video)

Amaete Umanah — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:25:46 +0000

E-readers may be a hot gift this year, but the devices are still very much underdeveloped. Most can only display text and images in black and white, and page load time pales in comparison to modern computers, hand-held devices, or (gasp) even paper-based books.
Though text-based articles are increasingly readable on many modern smartphones, magazine-type content, marked by expansive layouts mixing text and photography, has yet to find a viable digital format. So Mag+, a collaboration between designers at BERG and Bonnier R&D, publisher of Popular Science, imagines how magazines could work in digital form (check out the video after the break). The concept envisions content being displayed on a touchscreen tablet that lets the user fluidly move between text, image, and video, creating an interactive reading space that is more tactile than Web exploration. Regardless of whether the issue-based magazine format — which lends itself nicely to the integrative nature of Mag+ — will survive in the digital age, we hope more companies take a ‘page’ from the BERG and Bonnier project. Make e-readers less like browsers, and more like, well, smartbooks.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

The articles run in scrolls, not pages, and are placed side-to-side in kind ofmountain range (as we call it internally). Magazines still arrive in issues: people like the sense of completion at the end of each.

You flip through by shifting focus. Tap the pictures on the left of the screen to flip through the mag, tap text on the right to dive in.

It is, we hope, like stepping into a space for quiet reading. It’s pleasant to have an uncluttered space. Let the Web be the Web. But you can heat up the words and pics to share, comment, and to dig into supplementary material.

The design has an eye to how paper magazines can re-use their editorial work without having to drastically change their workflow or add new teams. Maybe if the form is clear enough then every mag, no matter how niche, can look gorgeous, be super easy to understand, and have a great reading experience. We hope so. That gets tested in the next stage, and rolled into everything learned from this, and feedback from the world at large! Join the discussion at the Bonnier R&D Beta Lab.

Recently there have been digital magazine prototypes by Sports Illustrated, and by Wired. It’s fascinating to see the best features of all of these.

Many teams at Bonnier have been involved in Mag+. This is a synthesis of so much work, research, and ideas. But I want to say in particular it’s a pleasure to collaborate with our friends at R&D. And here at BERG let me call out some specific credits: Jack Schulze, Matt Jones, Campbell Orme and Timo Arnall. Thanks all!

(See also Bonnier R&D’s Mag+ page, where you can leave comments and contact Bonnier, and the thoughts of Kicker Studio — who will be expanding the concept to robust prototype over the next few months in San Francisco! BERG’s attention has now moved to the social and wider services around Mag+ – we’ll be mapping those out and concepting – and we’re looking forward to working with all the teams into 2010. Awesome.)

Switched

1950′s PC with Windows 7 (Video)

Amaete Umanah — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:27:33 +0000

This is looks very cool and sleek. Other than the fact that it is a “Concept”, this is a pretty nice PC to have sitting in the office or house. Designed by SchultzeWORKS design studio, this retro rig combines design elements of the 50′s classic Philco Pedictas television, antique typewriters, and just a hint of steampunk. I wonder if it comes in different colors?

The design of the “Philco PC” was inspired by the 1954 design classic Philco Predicta, as well as an eclectic mixture of modern minimalism, the steampunk movement, and antiques. As lead designer Dave Schultze explains, “The result is a design aesthetic that blends multiple elements of the familiar, but with some surprisingly fresh styling that just so happens to house a state-of-the-art Windows 7 PC.”

Philco PC from Dave Schultze on Vimeo.

Silence Amplified vacuum with iPod dock (Video)

Amaete Umanah — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:56:38 +0000

This is a very interesting concept. A vacuum cleaner that makes no noise. I personally do not find vacuuming too enthuaisatic, but Electrolux, a Swedish Company has not only produced but also conducted a study that was carried out in June 2009 with 10 randomly selected people between the ages of 20 and 40, with various tastes in music and with even numbers of men and women. In order to minimise any errors in measurements, all tests were carried out on the same day at the Electrolux test laboratory for sound?based research in Stockholm.

This “Silence Amplified” concept vacuum from Electrolux essentially promotes their “UltraSilencer” model. The gist is that the vacuum is so quiet, you can plug an iPod into it and listen to music whilst you suck your troubles away.

This study was carried out in June 2009 with 10 randomly selected people between the ages

of 20 and 40, with various tastes in music and with even numbers of men and women. In

order to minimise any errors in measurements, all tests were carried out on the same day at

the Electrolux test laboratory for sound?based research in Stockholm.

Nova DSLR concept reminds us that cameras need not be boring

Amaete Umanah — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:17:02 +0000

This is an interesting concept for a DSLR camera. Conceived by Erin Fong, the idea is to allow for all sorts of hand holds thanks to the dual movable arms, and the controls at the fingertips seems surprisingly convenient. It seems a little bit harder to use and handle. I would love to get m hands on one of these bad boys and play around with it.