Nike Vapor Laser Talon: Football’s First 3-D Printed Shoes. The name almost sounds made up--the Nike Vapor Laser Talon--like it was spit out by some Spike TV show title generator. But the Nike Vapor Laser Talons aren’t just real, they can claim a world’s first, as they’re the first football cleats to be equipped with a 3-D printed sole. Weighing a mere 5.6 ounces, the shoes were designed to enhance a player’s “zero step,” to increase the speed of off-the-line launch, which feeds into a player’s maximum momentum.
Apparently, the sole’s mix of weight and geometry wasn’t producible by Nike’s normal manufacturing processes. So instead, the company turned to Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) technology, using lasers to melt materials into shape. Given that a laser has a fairly flexible path, the side effect of this process is that design iterations could be tested “within hours instead of months.” But of course, the most compelling possibility of such a new process is customization. See more here. [Hat tip: designboom] In The Future, You Will Eat Your Food Packaging, And It Will Be Delicious. Here’s a solution to our ever-growing plastic problem: package food and beverage items in edible packaging that’s actually good enough to eat.
Dr. David Edwards, a professor at Harvard, is working on it. After creating Breathable Foods and an energy capsule, Edwards moved on to WikiCells, an edible packaging technology. The WikiCells project began a few years ago when Edwards collaborated with French designer François Azambourg on an edible bottle that uses nature’s "natural packaging" as an inspiration for more artificial packaging. Says Edwards: "The notion [of Wikicells] is that you are englobing liquid, foam, or something else in a soft membrane held together by food particles that are being connected by electrostatic charges to each other and to a small amount of natural polymer. " The soft membrane could be surrounded by a harder egg-like shell if necessary--something made out of chocolate, rock candy, or even algae. The hygiene of edible packaging is, of course, also an issue.
No Place Like Home, GPS shoes | Dominic Wilcox. The left shoe points in the desired direction, the right shoe acts as a progress bar. Connect the shoes to the laptop via USB. Plot on the map where you wish to go and press Upload to Shoe. Sole etched with Dominic Wilcox drawing. Preparing the leather Integrating electronics. MIT's New Self-Assembly Lab Is Building A Paradigm Shift To 4-D Manufacturing. Sitting on a table in Skylar Tibbits’s lab, at MIT’s new Center for International Design, is a 200-gallon-fish tank--it's large enough to hold one of Damien Hirst’s pickled sharks. If Tibbits’s experiment goes according to plan, within the next few weeks, it will be the scene of a sort of fractal monster movie. A 50-foot-long strand of coded mystery material will be dumped into the water-filled tank, and transform--without benefit of human hands!
--into a sweet little 8-inch square Hilbert curve. How long will it take? Nobody knows. “It will probably depend on how hot the water is, or if I add a little salt,” jokes Tibbits, the 28-year-old wunderkind architect-designer-computer scientist behind what may be the next wave in manufacturing: 4-D printing. The concept of self-assembly isn’t new: It has been used at nanoscale for years. On the wall is a large aluminum and polyethylene structure called a Voltadom, bent into curves that mimic a vaulted ceiling. But Tibbits is no ordinary grunt. 3 | Students Design An AR Device To One-Up Google Glass.
The strange thing about Google Glass is and isn’t its lame design. Google has produced something that, however clumsily, genuinely attempts to alter the body’s sensory perception. But the product doesn’t fully realize its potential. Google Glass augments reality much the same way your phone or tablet already does, that is, it does little to actually amplify your senses. To do so would require moving beyond just another wearable technology--the latest in a long lineage of them--and pursuing a more "extreme" approach. Eidos, a different kind of augmented reality (AR) device, claims to do just that. Developed by a team of students at the Royal College of Art in London, the product attempts to rethink what it is to fundamentally heighten human perception.
Eidos differs from Google Glass in one fundamental way: The device lets users tune into specific perceptions, be they sounds or images, and scale their magnitude to the exclusion of rival stimuli. The Polyfloss Factory. Personal Environment Monitor by Lapka™ 7 | Dyson’s Latest Coup: A $1,500 Sink Faucet That Dries Hands, Too. It took 125 engineers three years and 3,300 prototypes to develop Dyson’s latest innovation, a hand dryer called the Airblade Tap that seeks to “reinvent the way we wash our hands.” The company unveiled the stainless-steel Tap alongside two other hand dryers: an update to their successful Airblade and a sleeker, smaller model called the Blade V.
At first glance, the Tap might seem like it’s trying to do too many things at once. But as James Dyson explained at a press event last night, the combination was based on a behavioral insight about restrooms. “Washing and drying your hands tends not to be a very pleasant experience,” he said. Water splashes, paper is wasted, and germs are passed along. “The Tap is a totally different experience. Along with the Tap, Dyson showed off the Blade V, a sleeker dryer that’s 60% thinner than the somewhat cartoonish first-gen Airblade.
The Tap will cost around $1,500 when it goes on pre-sale today.
Incorporated | Home. Design & Trend. Smart Kitchen Thermometer Plugs Into iPhone. You don't have to be a cooking connoisseur to master recipes in your kitchen — especially not when technology is your sous-chef. A team of Austin, Texas-based designer-engineers have recently developed a smart kitchen thermometer that plugs directly into your iPhone. As explained in the video, above, you can clip or stick the Range thermometer to a pot or oven rack, and connect the heat-resistant silicone cable to the headphone jack on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Then, with the companion Range app (currently for iOS only), you can measure your food's temperature at a detailed, quantified level. A graph of your food's temperature shows readings over time, and shaded bands indicate the ideal temperature range for whatever you're cooking.
The system lets you set up alerts for when temperatures go above or below optimal levels, and those can be pushed to other iOS devices with the Range app. The networked thermometer concept isn't new. Images: Supermechanical, Kickstarter project. UPS Offers 3D Printing in Stores. What can Brown do for you? If you work for a startup, own a small business or are an entrepreneur, the UPS Store is about to roll out a new service that could radically change the way you use the package-delivery company: 3D printing on site.
The service will first roll out to its San Diego-area locations. UPS says it's offering 3D printing so companies can quickly and inexpensively create models and prototypes of items they plan to produce. "Startups, entrepreneurs and small-business owners may not have the capital to purchase a 3D printer on their own," Michelle Van Slyke, the UPS Store's vice-president of marketing and small-business solutions, said in a release. "By offering 3D-printing capabilities in-center, we're able to help further our small-business customers' opportunities for success. " The UPS Store is currently testing the uPrint SE Plus, which — according to manufacturer Stratasys — is better equipped to print more intricate, user-generated designs than a consumer model.
How Do You Convince Your Customers To Fall In Love With Something New? It's a common problem in business: You've got the next great idea, but you don't want to alienate your loyal customer base. It's also one that Brad Smith, CEO of software company Intuit (think TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Mint) faces every day. "I have this famous joke that I use," Smith says. "Why was God able to create heaven and earth in seven days and seven nights? " "Because he didn't have installed customers and legacy technology to worry about. " Joking aside, Smith says, it's one of the most delicate, and fun, parts of developing new products. "How do you actually move an existing group of customers from what they fell in love with to the next thing that could be great?
" One such challenge is the introduction of near field communication technology (NFC) for financial transactions. It's a good bet that the technology will revolutionize our experiences at the register in years to come, but consumers still need to be persuaded to change their old habits and accept new methods. A Tiny Printer For Every Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Lover. Any kid who grew up in the '80s probably played old text adventure games, read Choose Your Own Adventure novels, or both. You probably know the drill. "You are standing in a forest with a clearing to the north and an old abandoned house to the south? Which way do you want to go? " South. "You were eaten by a grue! " The Choosatron is like someone captured the imagination of the world’s most prolific Choose Your Own Adventure novelist in a cheery palm-sized box. The idea behind the Choosatron is pretty simple.
"I was always fascinated by the game design of arcades," Belich tells Co.Design. In its earliest incarnations, the Choosatron worked just like an arcade cabinet. But pretty soon, the Choosatron started looking like more than a gag. There are a number of games available for the Choosatron already, mostly written by Belich and his friends. Another Choosatron game is called The Spy Who Killed Me.
"People are getting so overwhelmed by the digital. This New Coffee Shop Is Staffed By Robots. If you’ve ever been stuck at a hospital long enough to be tempted into one of those automated cups of coffee--you know, the ones with the poker cards on the cups--you’ve probably come to appreciate a big scary corporation like Starbucks in a new way. But many public areas don’t have room for coffee shops. And even if they do, their hours won’t be 24/7. The Briggo Coffee Haus is a consumer-savvy alternative to the coffee models of yore.
Staffed by a series of coffee-brewing robots created at Briggo, and designed by Yves Behar and co. at Fuseproject, the Coffee Haus can receive your order via web, iOS app, or a touch-screen kiosk. And from there, it will grind and brew your custom drink on command (or have it waiting for you to arrive at a certain time). What you’ll notice immediately is that, even though the system is technologically advanced, it’s not designed like a spaceship. “Good baristas are in good coffee shops, no doubt," Behar tells Co.Design. Briggo. Smart Toilets Vulnerable to Hackers. This post has been updated to include the video above. Maybe some technologies should just be left without smart capabilities. Consider this: the "Satis" smart toilet can allegedly be compromised by an attacker. The Atlantic reported that information security company Trustwave Holdings' SpiderLabs has issued an advisory pertaining to these fancy thrones.
Since the Satis smart toilet can be controlled with an Android app, Trustwave SpiderLabs warns that an attacker could compromise those controls via Bluetooth. The Satis is made by LIXIL, a Japaense toilet manufacturer. The toilet — which retails for between $4,212 and $5,686, depending on the variation — boasts features like an automatic toilet seat, a power deodorizer, automatic flushing, cleansing nozzles, built-in lighting and an embedded speaker for music. The Satis' Android app connects to the toilet with a hard-coded Bluetooth PIN: "0000.
" As such, any person using the "My Satis" application can control any Satis toilet. Solar Tent Charges Your Gadgets in the Wild. Are you a gear junkie when it comes to camping? Just you the wilderness and a whole bunch of different gadgets. Well, now you will need less gear. Camping will no longer be analog and you will be able to enjoy nature in your mini powered home with the new Katabatic solar-powered tent for hardcore campers.
Released by Eddie Bauer in collaboration with Goal Zero it offers a sun-soaking fabric on top which absorbs light all day that powers an outlet inside into which campers can plug in their gadgets. Joe Atkin, President and CEO of Goal Zero says: Technology plays big role in the time we spend outdoors. It allows us to track, photograph, and share our adventures with friends and family. This all weather tent is 92 inches tall and an awesome integration of green technology. Wires transfer power gathered from the roof to the inside of the tent. The tent is priced upwards of $800, but for easy access to electricity in the outdoors the price might be worth every volt. Katabatic. Trend reports. Masculinity was more clearly defined when “men were men,” as the phrase goes.
Today, as gender conventions blur, men are formulating more nuanced ideas of what it means to be a man. The household in particular is becoming more gender-neutral as men both embrace a more active role and get pushed into it out of necessity. “The State of Men” examines shifts in male roles, behavior, attitudes and mindsets, focusing on how masculinity is being redefined circa 2013, how men’s role in the home is changing and how men are navigating the new gender order. The report is the result of quantitative, qualitative and desk research conducted by JWTIntelligence throughout the year. JWT: 10 Trends for 2013 - Executive Summary. Tableware as Sensorial Stimuli cutlery by Jinhyun Jeon.
Can the shape, texture and colour of cutlery change the way food tastes? Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Jinhyun Jeon created this set of knobbly, bulbous and serrated cutlery to stimulate diners' full range of senses at the table (+ slideshow). Jinhyun Jeon, a graduate of the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands, made Tableware as Sensorial Stimuli as part of her MA thesis about the relationship between food and the senses. The project was inspired by the phenomenon of synesthesia, a neurological condition in which stimuli like taste, colour and hearing are affected and triggered by each other. People with synesthesia often report seeing a certain colour when they hear a particular word, for example.
To find out whether this "sensory cross-wiring" could be encouraged and used to enhance taste, Jeon created cutlery based on five sensory elements: colour, tactility, temperature, volume and weight, and form. Above: photograph by Femke Riierman Tactility: According to Dr. Vibrating 'smart fork' for weight loss launches at CES. Glass - Home. Electrolux Design Lab. This Wi-Fi-Enabled Tooth Sensor Knows If You're Still Smoking Or Overeating.