Back in June, London’s transit corporation decided to release all of its information about bus and train departures to the public. That way, administrators probably figured, eager developers could use that data to build better transit apps. But the move has also resulted in some pretty interesting creative projects, too—like this one, which lets users navigate through a 3D model of the Tube.
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There’s something unsatisfying about making a traditional complaint. As you’re filling out the form, you can almost see the government bureaucrat crumpling it up and throwing it away a few days later. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just yell at the pencil pushers directly? In Seoul, you can.
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Utility boxes are often an eyesore. They just sit there, at the sidewalks, taking up space and being a huge eyesore, especially if some rowdy teenagers decide to turn them into a canvas for their graffiti.
That said, I really love what artist Mona Caron did with this particular one.
She didn’t just paint a pretty mural on it. She painted a mural that gives the viewer a peek into a beautiful alternative world when viewed at the proper angle. The piece is called Manifestation Station and is found in San Francisco at the corner of Church St. and Duboce Ave.
Look closely and you might just spot another mural Caron that created called the Duboce Bikeway Mural in the background.
[via CJWHO via Colossal via Laughing Squid]
There’s still no robot that can successfully fake unconditional love or a child’s innocent laughter. But now, thanks to a team of German tinkerers, there is one that can emulate a child’s uninvited wall art.
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Ikea’s not the only place you can get a build-your-own-furniture puzzle. If you’re into the whole open source thing, there’s a new repository of completely free furniture designs that are ripe for the downloadin’. The only hurdle? You have to actually make the pieces before you can put ’em together.
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Apple’s iOS may be undergoing the biggest change since its inception, but that doesn’t mean the spirit of the operating system hasn’t been floating around designer’s heads for hundreds of years. In 1525, before the iPhone was even a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye, German polymath Albrecht Dürer was espousing similar design principles using the same, now-infamous letters: I, O, and S.
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The Human Media Lab at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in Canada just released a video showing off the FlexCam, a new panoramic camera that combines a flexible OLED viewfinder with a camera array. The lenses are located on the back of the device, allowing users to bend and flex it to take panoramic photographs. […]
Several years ago we saw Alvin Aronson’s minimalist timepiece, which used wood and ceramic to replicate the seven segment digits commonly used in LCD and LED displays.
Instructables member alstroemeria took the idea further, creating a papercraft version of Aronson’s clock.
Alstroemeria used layers of cardstock, an Arduino Uno, 28 servos and a servo controller to make a cheaper and biodegradable version of Aronson’s clock.
Alstroemeria said he’ll soon post a video showing his clock in action. But time’s a wastin’, so go ahead and check out his build process on Instructables.
[via Evil Mad Scientist]
I’m more interested about 3D printers than ink printers these days, but I couldn’t pass up sharing the Stack printer with you. It’s a concept by industrial designer Mugi Yamamoto that’s meant to save space and gives you a better idea of how much work it has done. Instead of a paper tray, it sucks up paper from its bottom then spits out printed pages on its top.
Yamamoto designed the Stack for his diploma project at ECAL. According to Wired, Stack is smaller than an A3 sheet of paper and is just about 2″ tall. It owes its compact size partly due to having no paper tray. In theory, it’s also easier to add more blank paper to Stack’s uhm, stack. I wonder if it’s okay to lift the device up and move it about while it’s printing. Aside from its practical features, Yamamoto also made Stack as a counterpoint to the “over-engineered” design of some gadgets.
Yamamoto already has a working prototype of Stack and is interested in mass producing the printer. He should make a scanner and photocopier that work like this too.
[via Mugi Yamamoto & Wired via Engadget]
A few months back, I outfitted my man-cave/media room with Philips Hue LED light bulbs in all of my recessed ceiling fixtures. This has given me the ability to set different moods in the room, and even automatically dim the lights to a warm, theater-like quality when I want to go watch a movie. However, up until now, the Hue ecosystem was pretty much limited to reflector bulbs. Recently, Philips released their first “Friends of Hue” products, which include the Hue Lightstrips and the now-Hue compatible Bloom lamp. Philips was kind enough to put both of these in my hands so I could see how well they worked alongside my other Hue lights.
I first cracked open the Hue Lightstrips, which allow you to add colorful accent lighting under furniture, on top of shelves or in other locations where you can conceal a strip of lights. Each Lightstrip is a 2-meter-long (~6.56 feet) bendy strip covered with LEDs about every 1-1/2 inches. The strip itself is covered with a flexible, optically transparent cover to protect the delicate LEDs and circuitry.
Each strip is connected to a cord which has a small wireless receiver pack and a small power adapter on the end. The strips can be cut at pre-marked locations about every 4 inches, but there’s no way to reconnect sections once cut, so you need to be careful to only trim off sections of LEDs you don’t ever plan to use again. Once you pick a location to install your Lightstrips, you can stick them in place using the sticky 3M adhesive on the back of the strip, or for less permanent installations, you can just lay the Lightstrip in place, and use cord clips to hold it in position.
One thing to keep in mind is that the Lightstrips are best used in straight lines or very large curves. It’s basically impossible to bend them into sharp angles, so if you want to achieve that sort of effect, you’ll need to buy multiple Lightstrips and cut them to length. I’m hoping that down the road Philips offers some sort of angle connectors so you can splice cut segments to each other.
The strip itself produces bright and saturated accent colors, though it can’t really achieve the pastels and whites of Hue light bulbs. That’s just fine by me, since these are really meant to be accent lights. Each LED can produce a range of 16 million colors and is quite bright.
Once plugged in, the Lightstrips work like any other Hue bulb. They can be easily paired with the base station using the Hue app, and also worked brilliantly with the LivingColors remote I have from an older Philips lamp I have in my room. Of course, it’s also compatible with the Hue API and 3rd party Hue apps too. Hue also works with IFTTT recipes, so you can do things like trigger your lights to change colors when you receive an email from a specific person, or based on the weather forecast.
In my case, I ended up installing the Lightstrips under the front lip of my custom arcade cabinet, adding bright and colorful illumination to the artwork on the base of the cabinet. I suppose if I had more strips, I would have put underside lighting on my couch, but a single Lightstrip wasn’t enough for my sectional.
Next up is the Bloom lamp. This lamp has actually been around for a little while as a LivingColors product, but is now being sold as a member of the Hue family, so it works out of the box with the Hue bridge and apps with no fiddling about. It’s also about $10 cheaper, since there’s no LivingColors remote included with the Hue version. The 120-lumen Hue Bloom is a 16 million color RGB accent light, delivering punchy colors, and is great as a wall wash lamp.
It was hard to tell, but the lamp appears to be made from metal, so it’s substantial for its size. This little 4-inch diameter lamp is bright enough to splash colors which can be seen clearly from the back of my 30-foot-long basement media room.
I placed the lamp behind one of my media towers, but it would also work great behind a television to increase perceived contrast, or just to make it look cool, like I’m doing with my older LivingColors Gen. 2 lamp.
Here are a few pics of my room, with all of my Hue lamps in action:
Overall, I’m impressed with everything about the Hue ecosystem, and am happy that Philips is starting to add new lamps to the series. Lightstrips can really add colorful accent lighting behind pictures, under sofas, and under cabinets – though their inability to be bent at sharp angles is a little limiting.
The complete Hue lineup is available from Apple Store locations. Lightstrips sell for $89.95(USD), and the Bloom lamp sells for $79.95. Keep in mind that all Hue products require the Hue bridge, which is only available in the $199.95 Hue starter kit, which also include three Hue bulbs.
Disclosure: Philips provided the products for review in this article. However, all reviews are the unbiased views of our editorial staff, and we will only recommend products or services we have used personally, and believe will be good for our readers.
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.
