Feb 15
Hansel and Gretel would have gladly given themselves over to death by hungry witch if it meant they could have spent their last days gorging on this incredible cotton candy house. More »
Feb 14
Paint Your Pizza Lets You Design Deliciously Ugly Made-To-Order Pizzas On the Web
Posted in: Today's Chili
Fancy yourself an artist? Well if you’re in need of a medium, you could always opt for “pizza.” A new website called “Paint Your Pizza” lets you turn horrendously impressionist MSPaint-inspired masterworks into theoretically delicious pizzas for the sophisticated stomach. More »
Feb 14
This week the design environment known as Adobe Edge Reflow is available as a first public preview download for Abobe Creative Cloud members, made specifically for those that want to create fabulous web content with Adobe-level finesse. This tool allow you to create web-ready designs – webpages, in other words – that are able to be viewed in a variety of different ways. Everything you do in this environment will be translated perfectly and precisely to the web as you see it right in front of you before you put it there.
This update from Adobe includes several feature updates for Adobe Edge Animate, Adobe Edge Code preview, and Adobe Dreamweaver as well. With Edge Animate you’ve got a whole new set of CSS-based features like filters, gradients, and font support more powerful than ever before. You’ll be able to preview Edge Web Fonts live, work with blur, grayscale, sepia, brightness, invert, hue-rotate, contrast, and saturate – each of these filters that have previously been unavailable in Edge Animate.
Dreamweaver’s update allows it to work better with the Adobe Edge Tools and Services family and allows use of the fluid grid layout – Edge Web Fonts are here, too! Adobe Edge Code’s update allows instant updates with Quick Edit and adds code hinting for CSS properties as well as HTML tags and attributes.
The big news is the availability of Adobe Edge Reflow for Adobe Creative Cloud members though, this service having been introduced a while ago and just now ready for action. With Adobe Edge Reflow you’ll be working with a lovely intuitive resizable design environment with the ability to show you how your designs will look on the web at any size. You’ll be able to instantly design with CSS-code backing, making what Adobe calls “high fidelity web designs” with the applications “native web surface.”
There’s an Edge Inspect extension included with Adobe Edge Reflow that allows you to preview your designs in your browser, and work on your layouts in real-time. CSS is extracted with any code editor you have on hand – Edge Code and Dreamweaver amongst them.
During the Preview period for Adobe Edge Reflow, Adobe is asking that users respond to the many ups and downs of using said service at the official Github for the project, that being https://github.com/edge-reflow/issues. Make sure to use it wisely! And continue down to the timeline below for more insight on Adobe products without a doubt – have fun!
Adobe Edge Reflow hits free preview download for web designers is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Feb 13
In my experience, battery packs for smartphones can be quite useful, though they have a tendency to add a lot of bulk to your phone. That being said, if you run out of power very often, a battery case can still be a wise precaution. This new battery pack from Mophie aims to boost battery power for the iPhone 5, while not adding too much weight or thickness.
The Mophie Juice Pack Helium for iPhone 5 packs a 1500 mAh battery, which matches the one inside of your phone. It will allow for an additional six hours of talk time on 3G, or six hours of browsing while using either LTE or 3G. It’s also 13% thinner than the Air Juice Pack they had for the iPhone 4/4S. Total dimensions for the Juice Pack Helium are x 5.49″(H) x 2.49″(W) x 0.59″(D) – about double the thickness of a stock iPhone 5, about 5/8″ taller, and barely wider.
One really nice feature is that you can charge both the battery case and your iPhone simultaneously, thanks to a single Lightning connector, which is great because having to charge them separately would be a pain.
The Mophie Juice Pack Helium sells for $79.95(USD), with the next batch of dark metallic units shipping out on February 25th, and the light metallic model shipping in early March.
Feb 13
Feb 13
The traditional drum set is one of the least portable musical instruments, which is why beginners are usually left with practice pads while their bandmates are out wooing tone deaf chicks just by showing up with a guitar and unwashed clothes. This portable drum set could change all that if it became a real product.
Industrial designer Kevin Depape is the one who came up with the set, which he calls the Y-Drum. It consists of 9 pads, 2 cymbals, a Bluetooth module and a companion app, either mobile or desktop. Just lay out the pads, link them to the app, select a drum kit and you’re ready to practice. All of the hardware is stored in a box that doubles as an amplifier.
I like how the drumsticks are used as the handle of the box. Clever.
It sounds like it would be a blast to own, but Yanko Design commenter the great vashhhnu points out a possible flaw: the user can’t just play it on any surface, not unless they’re okay with shoulder pains. It may not be much of an issue if you’re just going to whack on one of the pads for 15 minutes, but for extended sessions, the great – and helpful – vashhhnu suggests either including pedestals for the Y-Drum or requiring the user to find a knee-high surface for the pads to minimize pain and the risk of injury.
You can read more a bit more about the Y-Drum on page 25 of Kevin’s Issuu portfolio.
[via Yanko Design & Kevin Depape]
Feb 13
If you’re like me, you probably spend way too much time staring at a computer screen. There are some ways to reduce eyestrain, but I have to say that using IKEA’s Dioder LED light strips is one of the most effective since it’s kind of a low-tech, low-cost way of hacking your monitor into a Philips Ambilight.
IKEA Hacker Skipernicus did this, by mounting the $30 Dioder lights on the back of his monitor. He used an Ergotron arm to prop his monitor up, but this should work with any type of monitor, including HDTVs. He also Velcroed the controller the back of the monitor, for easy access, and zip-ties were used to connect the wiring to the monitor arm.
While they won’t match the on-screen colors like an actual Ambilight, the Dioder strips can cycle through colors, and the the backlighting can reduce eyestrain, which is definitely a plus.
And for those of you who are more electronically-inclined, there actually is a color-matching hack available here.
[via Ikeahackers]
Feb 13
DropTag Bluetooth Sensor Checks if Your Parcel Was Actually Handled with Care
Posted in: Today's ChiliWe’re seeing more and more tiny Bluetooth devices that are good at keeping track of useful information, such as your heart rate, electric consumption or the whereabouts of your wallet. The DropTag on the other hand tracks a closely guarded secret: whether or not a delivery package was mishandled before it got to its recipient.
Invented by Cambridge Consultants, the DropTag has an accelerometer that can sense, track and relay if the package was dropped or vigorously shaken. As you’ll see in the video below, it will work with mobile apps that could interpret the data in a simple way – it’ll just say if your package is in good or bad condition – as well as display more detailed graphs and timelines.
Cambridge Consultants is also looking at adding more sensors – such as one that measures temperature – to the DropTag to increase its functionality. But the company is also adamant in keeping its final price down, both for ordinary folks like you and me and for enterprise users, which is why they want to make the DropTag to last for weeks on a single coin-cell battery and be reusable. Delivery guys may have met their match.
[via Cambridge Consultants via OhGizmo!]
Feb 12
Dyson Airblade Tap: Wash and Dry
Posted in: Today's ChiliWhile it’s been designed for use in public spaces, I’m pretty sure that I’d like to have a Dyson Airblade Tap at home. This water faucet is combined with a very powerful hand dryer, which will dry your hands in a matter of seconds.
Anyone who’s ever used a Dyson Airblade knows that they dry hands very quickly, but there’s still the problem of all the water from people’s hands puddling on the floor of the bathroom as they walk from the sink to the dryer. So it’s definitely a smart idea to combine a hand dryer with a faucet, letting you dry your hands without dripping water all over the floor.
The Airblade Tap’s fully-integrated 1400W motor is housed under the sink and draws in air through a HEPA filter before blasting it out. It uses photo sensors to detect when your hands are placed beneath the tap or under the drying jets. After washing your hands, it will dry them in just 14 seconds.
The Dyson Airblade Tap will retail for £999.99 (~$1,569 USD). Dyson claims that it can dry the hands of 15 people for the cost of only one paper towel. Now that’s efficient.
[via Uncrate]
Feb 12
Designed for impoverished students and those who couldn’t care less about posture, the bean bag chair is rarely regarded as a stylish addition to a well-appointed room. That is, until designer Antoinette Bader managed to turn the lowly specimen into a throne fit for a criminal mastermind, an evil dictator, or your average CEO. More »
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