Imagine walking on a road that’s made up of a trampoline. All you’ll have to do is to jump up and down until you arrive at your desired destination. That might sound absurd and a little hard to implement, but design firm Salto is doing it anyway. Designers Maarja Kask, Karli Luik, and Ralf Lõoke unveiled a 170-foot or 51 meter trampoline called “Fast track” at the 2012 Archstoyanie festival in Nikola-Lenivets, Russia.
In case you didn’t know, Archstoyanie is basically an annual creative festival held in the forest of Nikola-Lenivets, Russia. Fast track, according to the designers, is an “attempt to create an intelligent infrastructure that is emotional and can correspond to the local context, giving the user a different experience of moving and perceiving the environment.” Salto’s 170-foot trampoline could pave the way for modern-day commuting. But it’s important to note that it is just a concept for now.
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Don’t you just hate it when at night you want to go to the toilet, or when you accidentally drop your phone and it’s too dark to see anything, especially right after you wake up and you’re all groggy? Granted that’s what bedside lamps are for, but if you’re into sustainability and solar power, then this concept device dubbed the Clip Holding might be a device you wish would be made a reality. Designed by a bunch of folks at the Shannxi University of Science and Technology, the Clip Holding is rather simplistic in nature, although chockfull of functionality.
If you’re the type of person who needs enough desk space to hold a computer and have space to write notes at the same time, then having a minimalist setup is probably a good way to go. Unfortunately full sized keyboards and mice do take up a fair bit of desk space and if you’re looking for a way to minimize that, this keyboard/touchpad concept might be worth taking a look at. Designed by Min Koo Yeo, this concept is dubbed the “Inside Out”, and as pictured above, it looks like a rather innocuous keyboard at cursory glance, but according to its designer, it is meant to serve dual purposes.
One of rather annoying features on iOS prior to iOS 5 was the notification system in which new messages or alerts showed up rather intrusively, but thankfully come iOS 5, banner notifications were introduced which were less intrusive. While banner notifications could be less intrusive, they still aren’t exactly the most ideal as it would require the user to switch apps to reply to a message or email. However Sentry over at 
Science had always drawn inspiration from nature – take flight for example. Well, the Namib Desert beetle proved to be an inspiration for NBD Nano co-founder Deckard Sorensen, where this beetle can live in an area which receives a mere 0.5” of rainfall annually, and it survives by drawing 12% of its weight in water from the air in order to prevent it from dying of thirst. Deckard Sorensen decided to work on a similar model, resulting in a self-filling water bottle that will hopefully be able to hit the worldwide market by the time 2014 arrives.
Wouldn’t it be an interesting future if one day our smartphones were interactive all over? Instead of just having a portion of the phone that we can interact with, it sounds like a nifty idea if the whole body of our smartphone was one big touchscreen, and while we’re not sure if and when such a concept will materialize, designer Wooseok Suh has come up with one himself dubbed “Another World”. As you can see in the image above, the “Another World” smartphone concept features a device whose body looks it could be interacted with. We’re not sure how it works, but it seems that the menu of the phone can be projected across the body, allowing the user to access things like the number pad to dial phone numbers, option to send messages or emails or enter the phone’s settings. We can’t help but feel that this is reminiscent of the Sony Walkman with the EL display, but given that that was a pretty good design, we think this would be interesting if made a reality as well.
We’re sure that many of you are familiar with Apple’s Smart Covers for the iPad and iPad mini, but what do you think about a Smart Cover designed for the iPhone? It’s certainly not a new concept but if you’re wondering what it could look like, designer Adrien Olczak has come up with a concept Smart Cover for the iPhone 5 and well, we have to say that it looks pretty good! It’s almost cute given that it is so small, and given that the cover is relatively thin to begin with, it shouldn’t add on to the bulk of the phone which is pretty thin and light as it is. We imagine that it can be folded to be propped up as a stand, although we have to wonder how the cover will stick to the phone given that the iPhone 5 does not come with built-in magnets unlike the iPad. Either way it’s a cool idea – what do you guys think?
Lenovo has just put up a new image of what they have called the Lenovo Pocket Yoga on their Facebook page, which is more or less a miniaturized version of the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga tablet with its full-flip display. The Pocket Yoga device is said to come with a couple of full sized USB ports, so one can only make the assumption that it is more than capable of running a full desktop operating system. What do you think of the design above? Unfortunately, it never made it off the production line and remained a concept. Assuming that Lenovo actually decided to give the nod of approval to the Pocket Yoga concept, would you have bought it if the price was right?
