Hasta La Gadget!

Ah, yes… the future. Remember that? That magical land of flying cars, wearable chariots and Robot Apocalypse? Well, none of that has come to pass (yet!) but if researchers at Liverpool University have their way (and all indications are that they will) the next Ford you purchase will use a laser beam ignition system instead of spark plugs. According to The Telegraph (UK), lasers can be split into multiple beams and aimed at multiple ignition points, making the new system much more reliable. In addition, the engine’s cold weather performance is improved — and as the article points out, “this is the time when around 80 per cent of the exhaust emissions are produced and the engine is at is least efficient.” And if that weren’t enough, the laser system produces more stable combustion, using less fuel in the process. Consumers can expect to see this technology hit showrooms “within the next few years.”

[Via Auto Blog]

Filed under: Transportation

Ford to swap out spark plugs for lasers, windshields for googly eyes originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re an independent musician looking for as many ways to sell and promote your music as possible, and you or a friend has some experience with software development, you’ll want to check out the upcoming Rock Band Network, for which Harmonix and MTV Games plan to begin …

Originally posted at Digital Noise: Music and Tech

MP3 players fulfill many roles for the people who use them. For some, a portable audio device is true to form as an essential commuter companion; others turn their players into home audio systems by attaching them to speakers. But one of the most popular uses for an MP3 player …

Originally posted at MP3 Insider

Hartmut Esslinger‘s Frog Design made WEGA/Sony’s electronics fetish items, and then designed the “Snow White” language the Mac used. He’s a design legend and an author. Here he tells us about the challenges of designing, then and now.

How did you shift from entertainment products to personal computers? Did you seek them out or were you pulled in? And were there others besides Apple? Was there a chance you might have ended up sharing your Snow White design language with some other company, turning a competitor of Apple into the iconic “cool computer” maker of the day?

My second client in 1970 was the German company CTM, an offspring of Nixdorf, back then a leader in making data processing affordable and usable to mid-size companies. They were quite successful and together we created the first ergonomic desktop terminal with a tilting display and detached keyboard in 1978 which won international acclaim.

Apple’s “Snow White” design language was the result of a very close relationship and collaboration with Apple, and ultimately expressed the very specific values and aspirations of Apple. The key was that Steve Jobs wanted “the very best design, not only in the computer industry but the entire World”. This allowed us to create a totally new design paradigm for “digital-convergent products” without historic precedence.

How have product considerations evolved in the same time? What was the 1979 equivalent of hardware vs. software? Or physical button vs. touch surface?

Let’s take Sony as an example: as of 1976, we were working on remote controls for multiple sources from TV to Audio-Systems and “Home-Control” with software screens, activated both by buttons and direct-touch. Even as the key problem – aside of cost – was slow processing power and LCD screens with little contrast. Our objective was to simplify usage and some products went into the market in Japan. So to your answer: we already had it in 1979.

What design trends were hot in the late 1970s that are coming back around now? Which trends from the 1970s will NEVER come back?

The late 1970s were very much defined by the shock of the oil crisis and the subsequent recession especially here in the United States. In Europe and Japan, there was a wider acceptance of energy-saving and ecologically responsible product strategies. The hot design trends were “personalization and miniaturization” – SONY’s Walkman being the best manifestation – and with the Japanese domination of electronic consumer electronics making professional-grade technology – e.g. cameras – accessible and affordable to millions. This also was a time, when the United States lost out big time in this field. The late 1970s also were the “Golden Age” of product design – and this trend will return for product experiences and hyper-convergence – which means to design how people feel.

Isn’t part of design envisioning products that use technology that doesn’t yet exist? What were the sorts of things you envisioned in the 1970s that are commonplace today but didn’t yet exist? What are you envisioning now (or what have you envisioned lately) that will take some time for technology to catch up?

This may sound a bit arrogant, but in 1968 I proposed an “Atomic-Time Radio-Wristwatch” for a watch competition. People laughed at it, but in 1986 frog designed exactly such a product for the German Junghans company.

Sometimes, technology surpasses human speed: today we are using mobile phones with more computing power then could be imagined 20 years ago – and even science fiction authors like William Gibson or Arthur C. Clarke didn’t even anticipate them – but the user interfaces are split into “old-phone-physical” and “agnostic-digital” (Apple’s iPhone succeeds because it is the first product to bridge this idiotic chasm).

Looking a the future, I think that technology and our body will grow closer together – a couple of years ago, we designed “Dattoos”, the vision of a protein-based computer “living” on human skin. Closer to reality are concepts of enhancing brain activities by electro-magnetic impulses. Already, design is expanding from “bits and atoms” to “neurons and genes” – one could call it BANG-Design.

Were there times when companies were afraid to go as far as you wanted them to? Are there any examples of companies that refused to make design improvements—perhaps because of cost—and paid a larger price for that?

Strategic design is not about “going as far as possible” but about “going the best way together”. As said above with the Apple Snow White example, the interactive relationship between client and designer is a vital element for success or failure. So, even as I may push for more advanced solutions, the client may have many reasons not to follow. At the end of a day, each jointly achieved result shall be a healthy compromise, motivated by achieving the best for the user and/or consumer. Naturally, there are some negative examples where I couldn’t convince clients, which I also describe in my book: Polaroid which stuck too long to chemical image creation, Maytag which refused to innovate in a strategic way and Motorola which missed the opportunity to create the iPhone long before Apple did.

Dr. Hartmut Esslinger, founder of Frog Design, just published a great book entitled A Fine Line, on the lessons he’s learned in his career and on the future of business informed by design. We encourage you to check it out.

Gizmodo ’79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

Averatec released a new 22-inch All in One PC today, throwing down a challenge to the other AIO makers like Apple, HP, Dell, eMachines, and Gateway. The Averatec D1005 will slot in between the 25.5-inch D1205 and the 18-inch D1133 all in one PCs Averatec already has on the market.

Having similar proportions to an all-black iMac, the D1005 comes with a Pentium Dual Core E5200 processor, 22-inch (1,680 x 1,050) widescreen LCD display, 320GB hard drive, 3GB of RAM, Windows Vista Home Premium and a DVD burner. With its Pentium Dual Core processor, more memory, and full version of Vista, the D1005 is likely to be more capable than AIO nettop systems running the Intel Atom platform in the $599-699 price range.

The D1005 is available for purchase at Best Buy.com, TigerDirect.com, Newegg.com and Onsale.com.

Will Averatec become the Vizio of all in one PCs? Time will tell.