Hasta La Gadget!

We see plenty of sweet concept designs ’round here (not to mention some downright bizarre ones) so we’re all pretty acquainted with wanting things that we can’t have. That said, there are a couple of these Future Routers — designed by a firm called TalkTalk in conjunction with Goldsmiths, University of London — that inspire some serious techno-lust. Route O’Clock, for instance, not only keeps tabs on your bandwidth utilization, but it displays the info on the clock face itself — and looks good doing it. Also quite eye-pleasing is the Hybrid, a model that passes itself off as a hardwood side table. On the slightly more bizarre end of the spectrum is the aptly name Jellyfish, which apparently takes up a lot of space and gives off a creepy blue glow (not one for those of you in one bedroom / studio apartments). Last but not least, the Energy Saver doubles as a key holder, with the dubious benefit of shutting itself off when the last key is picked up. The rationale behind this one is that when everyone leaves the flat, no one will be using the Internets — we guess these guys have never heard of bit.torrent. Get a better look in the gallery below, and don’t forget to check out the video after the break.

Gallery: Future Routers concepts

[Via SlashGear]

Continue reading Future Routers pass themselves off as common household items: clocks, tables, jellyfish

Filed under: Household, Networking

Future Routers pass themselves off as common household items: clocks, tables, jellyfish originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Yesterday I held the new HTC Hero next to my iPhone. Not only the new Android handset has a surprisingly cool design—straight out of JJ Abrams’ Star Trek or Kubrick’s 2001—but it kicks the iPhone’s plastic ass.

Simply put, the Teflon-coated back just feels and looks a lot better than the iPhone’s—now crappy looking, I admit—plastic back. The Hero’s polytetrafluoroethylene—the technical name for DuPont’s Teflon—coating feels perfect in your hand. It doesn’t appear to get any skin oil at all. No greasy fingerprints, just a perfect matte finish no matter how much I touched it.

It feels and looks like a white thermal tile out of NASA’s shuttle.

The iPhone’s plastic finish, on the other side, is a fingerprint magnet that looks as cheap as any Chinese knockoff after holding it for a few seconds. The Hero wins hands down on appearance, even while its front is too complicated for my taste. For a company like Apple—which takes such pride in their design and manufacturing—this is bad. For a consumer like me, this sucks.

“They are getting so boring”

Once upon a time Apple used to be innovators in the use of new materials. Those were the times in which they experimented with the iMacs and PowerMacs, which finished with the arrival of aluminum. Today, apart from the unibody manufacturing—which is just a form of aluminum manufacturing, a material that has been used forever in consumer products—their use of groundbreaking materials has stagnated.

I’m not the only one saying this. About a month ago Matt Buchanan and I asked the top executive of one of the most important industrial design firms in the world about his thoughts on Apple’s design. After seing Objectified—and watching a legend like Dieter Rams glorifying Apple as the only consumer electronics company that counts when it comes to industrial design—I was expecting an ode to Jon Ive and his team. Instead, he replied:

They are great, but we [him and his colleagues in the industrial design world] think they are getting so boring. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they got the use of aluminum perfected now… but what happened with the excitement that they used to generate with new materials? We all expect a lot more from Apple.

He is right. Their use of plastics in the iMac spread to every single consumer appliance out there. And Kara Johnson, materials expert from IDEO believes it’ll be going out of style any day now (Maybe yesterday.) But now, even aluminum is the new beige. (Even if some experts believe there are few alternatives, there are a few.)

So yes, Apple should use new materials. Not for the sake of it, of course. They should use whatever materials fit the product technical needs. And for me, one of these needs as a consumer is that the product should look great at all times, and not just look great in the box or behind a store glass.

The need for new materials

The iPhone has this problem. It looks like crap with little use. They have tried to fix part of it with the oleophobic coating on the front glass—something that the HTC Hero also has—but the overall effect keeps being the same: Its back still looks cheap after some time.

One thing to note

For this reason we were all hoping for a matte back in the iPhone 3GS, but apparently Apple decided not to release it for one reason or the other.

I don’t know and I don’t care. What I do care about is that, after playing with the Hero, my iPhone now feels like cheap crap. And I don’t even like Android.

Related reading: What Beautiful Gadgets Will Be Made Of

By now, you know precisely what the Palm Pre is capable of. You know the ins and outs of the user experience, and you’ve probably got a solid idea of whether or not you’ll be lined up come June 6th to claim one as your own. But here’s a side you probably haven’t heard: the voice of the design team. At long last, the masterminds behind Palm’s comeback phone have finally sat down to talk about the build process and what drove them to create both the Pre and webOS. Not surprisingly, most of it came from the desire to truly revolutionize the mobile experience, one that’s been generally poor for far too long. In separate (but equally awesome) interviews, Michelle Koh and a gaggle of design engineers (including Matias Duarte, Mike Bell, Peter Skillman and Michael Abbott) have opened up to spill their soul on rejuvenating the company with a single product. We won’t issue any spoilers here, but we’d argue that the read links below are required reading if you’re even remotely interested in this handset.

Read – Michelle Koh interview
Read – Design team interview

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm Pre designers sit down to talk, reminisce and revel originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Via Jean Snow, the Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament will be held today at Womb in Shibuya.

See your digital heroes compete in real time on the big screen with only a mouse and some keyboard shortcuts. We’ll be there with some random streaming here and there (below) if Womb’s thick walls don’t block out our 3G signal.

UPDATE Well, as kind of expected, it didn’t work as planned. Please enjoy the Make Meeting Tokyo video below instead!

Here’s the official Tokyo event site complete with their own streaming.

Asus’s new 1008HA “Seashell” netbook is an attractive cosmetic update to its earlier 1000HE. And, if we believe Asus’ promotional video on the site linked below, it’s skinny enough that you could use one to cut through video cables tied around your wrist and set yourself free from the company storeroom.

OK, so it’s not really that sharp. But it does trade its predecessor’s somewhat ordinary-looking netbook exterior for a clean, tapered, rounded, white covering. It’s one of the better-looking netbooks we’ve seen this year.

Spec-wise, it’s nothing exceptional: 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 processor, 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, 10.1-inch screen, built-in Wi-Fi (802.11n) and Bluetooth, 1.3 megapixel webcam, and the obligatory Windows XP.

It’s available for pre-order now, and if you order it before May 25, retailers will knock $20 off its somewhat steep list price of $429.

We spent a few minutes with the 1008HA recently; scroll down for the photos.

Photos: Jonathan Snyder / Wired.com

Introducing the Eee PC 1008HA Seashell from ASUS.

The 1008HA has an unusual video-out port: It's a dongle tucked into a notch on the underside of the case.

USB, audio, and a pop-down Ethernet port are along the right edge of the computer's slim profile.

Inside, the Eee PC 1008HA is almost identical to its predecessor, the 1000HE.