Hasta La Gadget!

These days, even a cheap phone has the ability to record sights and sounds using its camera. But that’s just two of our many senses. With her concept for an “odor camera”, designer Amy Radcliffe hopes that she can encourage electronics makers to make devices that can record scent.

Amy named her scent recorder Madeleine, after the French pastry popularized in Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Time. In the novel, the pastry – combined with the taste of tea – causes a character to remember something from the past (I wonder if Amy realizes that that scene involves the sense of taste, not the sense of smell). To record a scent with Madeleine, you place its funnel over the object whose scent you want to record. Madeleine’s pump will suck the air surrounding the object and mix it with a resin. Then you send that mixture to a fragrance lab. The lab will replicate the scent and send the replica back to you.

In an interview with The Atlantic, Amy said she deliberately imagined a slow development process for the Madeleine because she wants to bring back the curation that consumers had to enforce back in the days of film photography. Nowadays we can take dozens of pictures in an hour then forget we even have them – or what’s in them – before the day ends. But with film, you had to choose which pictures to develop. In other words, you had to choose which memories to keep. Now imagine if you could keep a thousand scents in your phone. You’d be tweeting recordings of stranger’s farts every 10 seconds. #IRegretNothing.

[via Amy Radcliffe & The Atlantic via The Verge]

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It’s a jacket, it’s coat, no wait… it’s a sleeping bag and all of the above!

The Doppelganger Outdoors Wearable Sleeping Bag might seem like a confusing article of clothing at first, but it’s actually extremely useful once you’re familiar with all the possible ways you can wear it.

First of all, it’s a jacket. That’s the purple part of the Doppelganger shown above. It offers basic protection against the elements, so if you’re traveling or going on a trio outdoors, then this is one of the essentials that you should pack along with you. If it’s getting too chilly or rainy, then unzip to release the gray portion to extend the Doppelganger into a long coat.

And when you’re finally ready to turn in for the night, just unzip a couple more times to release the blue-colored extensions of the Doppelganger to turn it into a sleeping bag.

The Doppelganger jacket is a bit pricey though, but just think of it as three things in one and maybe you can justify its price. It sells for $138(USD) from the Japan Trend Shop.

[via Chip Chick]

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