Fancy yourself as the next Jonathan Ive or Frank Nuovo?
Here’s a chance to prove that.
LG, Crowdspring and Autodesk have kicked off the ‘Design the Future’ event to audition for ideas on what a mobile phone should look like in the next few years.
The idea is to let users design a concept phone that could become part of the LG portfolio. "We’re not looking for a long list of specs or phone ideas that already exist," says the competition web site. "We’re looking for a cool new concept or big idea supported by usage scenario illustration."
Entrants will have to use the Autodesk Sketchbook Pro software to design their concept phone. The competition will pick 43 entries as finalists and there’s some good prize money available for the winners: $20,000 for the first place, $10,000 for the second place and $5,000 for the third place. More details of the competition are here including judging criteria. And yes, feasibility of design is a factor.
The deadline to submit their entries is June 7 and the winners are expected to be announced a month later.
Last week, we explained the difference between $100 and $100,000 speakers. But in the name of clarity, we focused on traditional loudspeakers, around longer than Keith Richards. Here are the newer crazier types.
Alright, so the way speakers generate sound is by moving air. In your standard setup, an alternating current runs through a voice, turning it into an electromagnet that is attracted to and repulsed from the permanent magnet in the driver, which moves the diaphragm (the cone) back and forth. Air is moved, sound is emitted.
But magnets aren’t the only way to generate sound, obviously. Here are a few other ways speakers can get air a-shakin’:
Electrostatic Speakers Electrostatic speakers are probably the most well-known alternative to traditional loudspeaker design. In some ways, they’re a lot like your standard speaker—a diaphragm moves back and forth. What’s different is the shape of the diaphragm and how the system makes it move.
The diaphragm is a thin film with electrically conductive material that’s stretched out between two conductive plates called “stators”—perforated steel sheets in Martin Logan’s speakers—coated with an insulator. Just as the voice coil in a regular speaker is turned into an electromagnet by a current, the diaphragm and stators here are charged, creating an electrostatic field. As the charge alternates between positive and negative the diaphragm moves back and forth, generating sound. The stronger the charge, the more dynamically the diaphragm moves, and the louder the sound.
The claimed advantage of electrostatic speakers is that the entire diaphragm is driven, not just the apex, like with a standard voice coil/cone setup, so not only do you get improved frequency range, you won’t get distortion from the diaphragm flexing. The flip side is that bass can be kinda weak—though size helps—and high volumes can pose some issues, given that the strong charges required for high volumes increases the chance for “pyrotechnical electrical discharge” (in other words, electrical fire). Oh, and they’re not cheap. But they can sound pretty good!
Plasma Speakers Plasma speakers aren’t new, but they are badass, and you can build your own. Or you know, just pay a lot of money to get some. The basic principle is, same as always, moving air. Except, instead of magnets or an electric field, a small electrical arc is manipulated, producing different pitches and volume as the intensity is shifted. Maybe not the future, but putting the word “plasma” into any tech just makes it sound future-y.
Distributed Mode Loudspeaker Distributed mode loudspeaker tech was developed by NXT. It’s different from your standard diaphragm tech because traditional speaker diaphragms have to remain rigid. They vibrate but they don’t bend, because that causes distortion. Distributed-mode diaphragms are supposed to bend. Basically, bending waves are produced in the panel by electricity, and those vibrations create sound.
One big advantage of distributed mode loudspeakers is that they can be really thin. You don’t need a big box. In fact, NXT’s big pitch is that almost anything can be a diaphragm—in 2002, somebody actually tried to market inflatable speakers based on NXT’s tech. But like other loudspeaker alternatives, it can have trouble with bass. A bigger panel helps it out there, however. Warwick Audio’s suspiciously tinfoil-like new flat, flexible loudspeaker technology actually sounds similar in principle to NXT’s DML—a thin membrane is excited and vibrates in time to the electrical signal.
Planar Magnetic Hey look, it’s another technology using a thin membrane to move air! Planar magnetic speakers use a thin film with a voice coil printed on it (think back to traditional speakers). The coil is suspended between a pair of magnets. As the current alternates, the membrane moves and back forth. As with most of these thin-diaphragm setups, you need to go bigger to get a better bass response, or just go with a separate woofer for low frequencies. Oh, and they also cost lots o’ dollars.
Carbon Nanotubes Carbon nanotubes, the trendiest near-future material around, can of course be used to make speakers too. Really thin ones. They actually work very differently, too. Nanotube speakers make use of thermoacoustics, just like thunder. The nanotubes are formed into a film with electrodes attached at the end. An electrical current is sent through the film, and as it changes, the air around the tubes heats up or cools down in response, expanding and contracting respectively. Pressure waves are created, and boom, sound. The fidelity supposedly “matches that of conventional loudspeakers.” The nanotubes themselves don’t move at all, meaning that technically, if the technology were harnessed, it could be used to make high-precision, super-low-distortion speakers.
But here’s a really brilliant idea for future speakers that’ll blow you away: Make ’em cheaper without getting crappier. Now there’s innovation!
Still something you still wanna know? Send any questions about speakers, the future or the Numa Numa kid to tips@gizmodo.com, with “Giz Explains” in the subject line.
Amazon’s Kindle 2 e-book carries a price tag of $360 but it costs the company far less to build, says research firm iSuppli.
A teardown analysis of the Kindle 2 puts the device’s price tag at $185.49 for materials and manufacturing costs. Components alone cost $176.83, and the rest stems from manufacturing expenses and the battery, says iSuppli. The bill of materials cost does not include cost of intellectual property, software, royalties and licensing fees.
The combined manufacturing and materials costs represent 51 percent of the Kindle 2’s retail price.
Amazon launched an updated version of the Kindle, the Kindle 2, in February this year. The Kindle 2 is slimmer and claims longer battery life than its predecessor but is based on the same E Ink display technology.
Not surprisingly, the display accounts for the biggest chunk of the device’s cost. iSuppli estimates that $60 or 41.5 percent of the materials bill is a result of the E Ink display.
The next most expensive component in the e-book reader is the wireless broadband module provided by Novatel Wireless. The $39.50 module accounts for 27.3 percent of the materials cost of the Kindle 2.
In the first-generation Kindle, the wireless functionality was provided by an integrated chipset that was part of the main printed circuit board, says iSuppli . In the second-generation device, the wireless functionality is separated into a module and is no longer part of the core chipset.
The move makes Kindle 2 easier to design and gives Amazon greater leverage while negotiating with suppliers, says the research firm.
Other components in the Kindle include Qualcomm’s single-chip baseband processor and Freescale Semiconductor’s multimedia application processor.
The Great Recession has been a bad trip for everyone. But look on the green side: Our collective need to shrink bills is giving birth to some of the grooviest eco-friendly gadgets yet.
Tech manufacturers big and small have gone into overdrive with their environmental campaigns, rolling out products as part of a massive "greenwashing" movement. These gadgets cover a wide array of environmental issues — from energy usage to gas efficiency to waste management. And dig this: Some of these gadgets actually do help you be kinder to Mother Earth.
In celebration of Earth Day, here’s a list of far-out products you might get to green your lifestyle. It’s like, green power, man!
Kiwi Fuel-Saving Device What better way to reduce your carbon footprint than turn it into a game? That’s what the Kiwi does to your car. The device plugs into your car’s on-board diagnostic II (OBDII) port to collect driving data. Then, the Kiwi screen, which you’d mount in a convenient place, displays a "Kiwi Score." By adjusting your driving style to obtain the highest possible score, you achieve the best gas mileage. At $290, it’s pretty pricey, but hey — gas ain’t cheap either; over the course of a few months this should help regular commuters save a good amount. (ThinkGeek, $290)
Mode All-in-One Recycling Center If you’re a responsible recycler, you might as well reward yourself by making life easier. Mode’s all-in-one recycling center contains multiple compartments to sort and store your recyclables for you. There’s even a built-in junk mail slot to collect your roommate’s annoying J. Crew catalogs that are normally left strewn around the common space. Another cool feature is a digital reminder that illuminates to alert you of recycling pick-up days. Did we mention it holds up to 13 gallons of recyclable materials? That’s some heavy responsibility. (Mode, $250)
Noon Solar Bags Here’s a way to reduce electricity bills and maybe even look cool: Greenloop’s Noon Solar bags (right). Composed of biodegradable materials, each bag contains a flexible solar panel on the outside, which connects to a lithium-ion rechargeable battery pack hidden in a pocket. The bags also include adapters for you to plug your iPod, USB-powered device or cellphone into the battery pack to keep your gadgets juiced while you bask in the sun. (GreenLoop, from $330 to $500)
What’s Fresh iPhone App
While you’re busy saving the planet, let’s not forget to keep your body healthy, too. If you have an iPhone handy, an app called What’s Fresh will tell you which fruits and vegetables are in season in your area. And if your produce of desire isn’t in season in your city, the app will point you to the nearest location where it is. (Mobile Simplicity, $1)
BlueLine Innovation’s PowerCost Monitor We’ve seen plenty of energy monitors, but what’s cool about BlueLine’s PowerCost Monitor (right) is it tracks your electricity consumption and converts it into something everybody can understand: Dollars and cents. Here’s how it works: You wrap a transmitter on the glass meter outside the house, and the collected data is wirelessly sent to a receiver on the monitor. The gadget gets a real-time feed of how much your electricity is using — and how much it costs. (Blue Line Innovations, $120)
Digitize Your Documents With Evernote
I can’t wait until the day we cease killing trees by printing out documents. Evernote brings us a large step closer to that paperless dream. The app can capture and store and information such as itineraries, business documents, shopping lists and so on. Here’s the best part: You can share the information with any other Evernote user. The beauty of Evernote is it’s cross-platform, so you won’t be left out so long as you own a Mac, PC, iPhone or a Windows Media smartphone, among other devices. (Evernote, free)
The Purely Anion light bulb (right) cares about the environment as much as your mental health. The fluorescent bulb reportedly lasts two years and contains a built-in negative-ion generator, which removes air pollutants, such as cigarette smoke, dust, or your roommate’s patchouli. The negative-ion generator also removes positive ions, which the manufacturer says can cause depression, fatigue and irritability. (PurelyProducts, $19) Monster Cable’s Vampire-Power Killer Environmentalists coined the phrase "vampire power" for electricity wasted by plugged-in gadgets on standby mode. Monster Cable’s MDP900 power-outlet management system addresses that issue. Plugging a device, such as a computer, into the main control outlet turns it into a master gadget of sorts. When that gadget is turned off, all the other electronics plugged in — such as peripherals — shut down, too. Not a bad idea, huh? Just don’t plug your alarm clock into this. (Monster, $130)
Photos: FredArmitage/Flickr, ThinkGeek, GreenLoop, Blue Line Innovations, PurelyProducts
Do you ever stop to realize that another human being carefully conceived and designed every object you will touch today? It’s a pretty amazing thought, and after Objectified, you’ll be thinking it more often.
And that’s exactly the point. Like Helvetica, director Gary Hustwit‘s previous documentary triumph about the most prevalent typeface on earth, Objectified sings the praises of those very people who, while not necessarily under-appreciated, definitely operate in the background—they design your stuff. It’s a secret little world, and through Objectified, we get to live in it.
Take this lamp I bought at a flea market last weekend. I Googled the only thing on the bottom that would identify it (“WINDSOR L-10”) and got zero relevant results. It’s old, pre-internet for sure, so I wasn’t surprised. But who designed it? It’s so tiny and Wall-e like (essentially a hybrid of Wall-e himself and the task lamp Pixar uses in their logo)—I want to know more! Someone designed this, and I love imagining the moment of its conception.
My lamp only cost $15, so odds are it wasn’t designed by any of the überheavyweights featured in Objectified: There’s Apple’s Jonathan Ive, Smart Design (of Flip Video fame) founders Davin Stowell and Dan Formosa, the legendary Dieter Rams of Braun, the folks at IDEO (who designed the first laptop, among many other things), Naoto Fukusawa (father of the Infobar), Chris Bangle, the infamous (and former) chief designer of BMW, and many others. It’s a star-studded group. Also featured prominently is Rob Walker, who writes my favorite New York Times column “Consumed” in the magazine every Sunday—he is a joy in every scene he is in, including where he dreams of an ad campaign encouraging people to got out and use and be satisfied with the stuff they already own.
But what’s great (and where Helvetica also ruled) is that Hustwit is a master interviewer. He gets his subjects to speak about what can be a jargon and marketing-voodoo laden industry with total clarity and comfort that folks that didn’t go to design school can comprehend freely. Ive, holding up the single aluminum block from which a unibody MacBook is hewn while trying to control his massive biceps, speaks about how designers are ultimately obsessive, borderline neurotic people. He can’t look at an object anywhere without seeing the multiple layers of intent involved-who designed it, who it’s designed for, what it does well. To Ive, it’s an illness.
To others, it’s desire. Marc Newson, who designs everything but is famous especially for aviation-related like the EADS spaceplane, puts it this way: “I want to have things that don’t exist yet,” which I think we can all relate to here.
One place where Objectified gets somewhat tripped up is in its hesitance to boldly define the inherent conflict of the designer, especially now: good design should last and improve with time, which is often directly opposed to the interests of a commercial designer’s clients who want people to keep buying things. This theme does come up in the film, but where Helvetica had the postmodernism vs. modernism conflict-in-a-bubble at its heart, which served as the perfect organizational structure to not only be entertaining, but to also school everyone in design theory, Objectified lacks a similar conflict by which everything can be defined.
I was disappointed to not see more of the good design vs. capitalism conflict mainly because it’s going to be the most important concept in gadget design over the next few decades—not only for the environmental concerns, but because software is more than ever the representation of a gadget’s heart and soul. This is not a new concept: when fondling the Grid Compass (the world’s first laptop computer he helped design), Bill Moggridge of IDEO says it only took a few seconds for the user experience to be completely about the software interface on its 320×200 screen, with the hardware dropping away almost completely. And he designed it! As an interesting contrast, Naoto Fukasawa explains that in Japan, interactions with a tangible object are much more important, culturally, to the Japanese. Which makes sense when you see the horrid software being run by such a beautiful phone as the Infobar.
This concept also fits snugly in with a designer’s environmental concerns—since software doesn’t fill up a landfill, having hardware that can be re-upped to latest and greatest status over the web makes the earth happy too.
This choice to not hang the whole film on this idea was of course a conscious one, and it probably ensured a broader, more appealing film in the end. I just missed the elegance of everything fitting together into nice ideological halves in Helvetica.
But when judged alone, Objectified gets the job done beautifully and does for industrial designers what Helvetica did for graphic designers: lets us step into their frame of reference and greater appreciate, or at the very least notice, their omnipresent work.
Someone asked that question when the tiny shuffle came out, so we tried it. Well, we didn’t, but we found someone who did: The very sweet sword-swallower Heather Holiday, from the Coney Island Circus.
Heather is a professional sword swallower. Someone with no gag reflex—or better said, trained to suppress it while swallowing 36-inch long solid steel swords down her throat. No tricks, no smoke and mirrors. She’s the real deal. I saw her swallow an entire—and very large—soup spoon with my own eyes in a second. She didn’t even blinked. She gobbled it down like I eat maple-syrup-bathed buttermilk pancakes.
Needless to say, she had the right credentials to try our test: Swallow the tiny, 1.8 x 0.7 x 0.3-inch iPod shuffle and then take it out again, after we have listened to a couple of songs thanks to the in-cable remote control—which is a bad idea for regular use, but it’s great to play songs when someone has the iPod down the esophagus.
Unfortunately, as you will see in the video, she wasn’t able to do it for a number of reasons. First, the iPod shuffle is way too light. Apart from controlling your gag reflex, her technique for swallowing swords use the force of gravity to pull them down. She also uses her esophagus muscles to control how fast it gets in her body, but the gravity is what pull downs the sword. With the iPod shuffle—which is only 0.38 ounces or 10.7 grams—this was impossible. The iPod just hanged there and had to be pushed with her hand or a large object—like a spoon—to get into the entry of her throat. However, from there it was not possible to make it go down.
Heather thinks she can do it with more training—or maybe pushing it with something larger—so she took the iPod with her and will be back when she can do it. Until then, here’s the answer to the question: No, you can’t swallow the iPod shuffle, even if it’s small enough to get it in. If the iPod shuffle is sword-swallower proof, it’s certainly child- and moron-proof.
Frustrated with how long it takes for your computer to boot up? That could change, say researchers who have made a breakthrough that could take the PC industry closer to truly instant-on capability for computer systems.
Scientists have found a way to add ferroelectric capability to silicon, which pushes the idea of building a completely ferroelectric transistor closer to reality.
"If ferroelectric transistors are ever realized, they can be turned off and back on instantly — no reboot, no 30-second wait, no nothing," says Darrell Schlom, lead researcher on the project and professor of material sciences at Cornell University. "For the user the computer would be ready to be used again immediately when power is applied."
Ferroelectric materials provide low-power, high-efficiency electronic memory and are already used in smart cards for subways and ATMs, among other things. Integrating ferroelectrics with silicon-based circuits like those in modern electronics would enable instant-on capability, and it could also provide higher speed and lower power consumption overall, making the ferroelectric circuits an attractive alternative to flash and other memory technologies. But integrating the two materials in a transistor has eluded researchers for more than half a century.
For the project researchers from three universities — Cornell, Penn State and Northwestern University — took strontium titanate, a normally non-ferroelectric variant of the ferroelectric material used in smart cards. They deposited it on silicon in such a way that the silicon squeezed it into a ferroelectric state.
So far approaches to instant-on computing have been software-driven, with companies such as Microsoft promising to create better operating systems that would cut down boot up time from a few minutes to 30-45 seconds. Phoenix Technologies has also attacked the problem with a super-lightweight operating system called Hyperspace designed for quick and easy access to e-mail, calendar, and other basic functions without having to boot into a fullblown OS like Windows; Hyperspace has recently shown up in some netbooks.
But materials science researchers have been pursuing an alternative track for decades.
In 1995, Bell Lab researchers first realized the benefits of a ferroelectric transistor. They used glue to attach various ferroelectric materials to semiconductors, says Schlom, but the result was not what they had expected because of the intervening layer of glue.
Since then attempts to get truly nonvolatile ferroelectric transitor technology haven’t succeeded. Most have resulted in ferroelectric transistors that have data retention time, also known as operational lifetime for a memory card, of few hours to a few days. That means they could hold data in memory for a few days (or less) without being powered. It’s an improvement over volatile RAM, but significantly short of the storage industry’s ten-year retention requirement for a non-volatile memory device like a flash memory card.
But that’s changed, says Schlom. "In subsequent work, the glue has been replaced by thinner intermediate layers, but ours is the first with no intermediate layer between a ferroelectric and silicon," says Schlom. "Our ferroelectric is made directly on silicon."
Schlom says the research team is still a ways off from its goal of creating a complete ferroelectric transistor. And he won’t take a shot at speculating just when these transistors could become a reality. "We have just gotten rid of all of the intermediate layers," he says. "There could still be trouble with electronic traps at the interface, electrical leakage through the ferroelectric since it is quite thin and manufacturability."
But the latest breakthrough is an important step on the road to a new kind of silicon transistor, says Schlom.
Photo: Structure of the Strontium Titanate-Silicion Interface (Jeremy Levy/ University of Pittsburgh)
This article was written on December 26, 2005 by CyberNet.
When you see those cheap computers being advertised by Dell and Gateway, and you think “geeze, at that price I should buy that computer”, you might want to read the fine print. Dell and Gateway are starting to reduce the length of their warranties from the standard 1-year down to 90-days! Of course, the 1-year warranty is still available for you to buy but at an additional cost! I recently purchased a Dell desktop computer and it came with the standard 1-year warranty even though I was thinking I should get a longer one since I upgraded to the 24″ Flat Panel monitor. Well later on after my purchase I received a letter in the mail saying that I could upgrade to the 4-year warranty at a fraction of the cost (about 75% off after the mail in rebate). So I would recommend getting the 1-year warranty and holding out for a cheaper upgrade on the warranty if you are interested in it.
Take a couple of intake valves from a Harley-Davison Shovelhead engine, a few blocks of (thick) plywood, a cheap stepper motor and a handful of other leftovers and what do you get? Why, a mellow sounding, home-made record player, of course.
The Altmann DIY turntable and tone-arm are built from such parts. The Harley valves make up the bearing, the wood goes into the base and the platter, and the stepper motor is fed a sine wave to keep it spinning at a constant speed. Wait, what? A sine wave?
Charles Altmann, for whom the setup is named, needed an analog way to run the stepper motor at a constant speed. By generating a 50Hz sine wave on a computer, running that to an old amplifier and then connecting the speaker outputs from that to the two coils of the stepper motor, Charles can get the motor running at just the right speed to turn the platter at 33 1/3 rpm. Tweaking the frequency allows fine adjustment if you need it, and you could then load the resulting sound file onto an MP3 player.
The whole project is delightfully Rube Goldberg, which is of course why we love it. Charles says the sound is pretty good, but we’re just as interested in his workbench. Take a look at the picture again and tell us you’re not jealous, too.
Stanley’s Level application for the iPhone isn’t the first leveling app, but it is the first we know of from a real tool manufacturer. Better than that, its free.
It’s an interesting move from Stanley, giving away an electronic version of its for-pay products. Of course, this isn’t a replacement for a real level — an iPhone wouldn’t last the day on a building site. And it isn’t just an application, either.
When you hit the “i” button on the main screen, you see an ad for the Stanley FatMax Lighted, a tough level with a light-up vial so you level with the lights out. The product appears to be so new that it doesn’t yet show up on Stanley’s site (or even on the Google), but the search led to the discovery that the company sells a huge range of levels — 56 in total.
It’s an interesting move. Ads are annoying, but give away something genuinely useful that just happens to have an ad on it? Smart. I still have an old apron somewhere which came through the post one day to advertise the UK online grocery shopping site Ocado. I never used it, but the apron works great.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Last week, we 
One big advantage of distributed mode loudspeakers is that 
Carbon nanotubes, the trendiest near-future material around, can of course be used to 
Do you ever stop to realize that another human being carefully conceived and designed every object you will touch today? It’s a pretty amazing thought, and after Objectified, you’ll be thinking it more often.
Someone asked that question when the 
Needless to say, she had the right credentials to try our test: Swallow the tiny, 1.8 x 0.7 x 0.3-inch 
