Window Phone

I don’t know about your city, but the weather bureau of my hometown is often sniggered at, for their in-accurate predictions. When they say it will rain (like they predicted a couple of days ago) you can be sure it will be bright and sunny. I would like to gift them this “Window Phone”, that makes accurate predictions and even changes its display to reflect the climatic conditions outdoors. Maybe I should keep the phone for myself and bug the bureau with my updates.

Designer: Seunghan Song

Samsung Blossom DPS Camera

Typical Girlie Camera
Oh come men, this could be awesome for the little girls in your life; so give it a fair chance and read on! Yea tweens can get intimidated by technology, they do find it cute that Big Daddies like Sony offer them color options like hot pinks and reds, so when a concept like Samsung Blossom DPS Camera comes up, it’s like butterfly-times again! Simple to operate and with uncomplicated features, this camera is cute-a-vicious for one feature alone, the power to photoshop the pics via the cam.

Here are the highlights:

Full touchscreen navigation with a simple menu and no complex buttons to use.
There is a touchup function that allows the user to use software like Adobe Photoshop to tweak pics. That’s how the girls get to distort the enemy’s face while making themselves look gorgeous!
On the side of the camera is a nozzle beneath the cap, when hooked to the comp via USB, this nozzle can be used to touch up photos, fix red eyes, or blur the background like DSLR photos by pressing this nozzle and touching simple applications on the screen.
The embossed logo is a comfy grab whilst clicking pics and the popped up shell protects the lens.
A typical girlie look in appropriate colors (Hint: Barbie or Hanna Montana co-branding) along with special photoshop features makes this better deal than picking up those con jobs currently available!

Designer: Hyun-mook Kang

“Tactility” Phone for Blind with Fashion

So check it out. We’ve had several cells for the blind here, and they’ve all been just lovely. This one, though, this one hits a sharper note. This one is closer to actual reality now, with the super simple 3D braille face, functionality and instant ease to produce go a long way. This one, Siwei Liu’s “Tactility” phone, uses technology we’ve already got today to make a phone that’ll be good at least until tomorrow.

And wouldn’t it just go with everything? It’s the real deal, too, you can tell by the little hole at the bottom there where you can loop a tie through to hang from you lanyard or belt or whatever else you do with that sort of thing.

Most important: it’d match my new full-body TRON outfit. That light on the side there… Trontastic.

Designer: Siwei Liu

SONEA Converts Sound to Energy

That’s no boom box! That’s no ghetto blaster! That’s a Sonea unit! It’s basically a machine which protests the waste of perfectly good noise, converting it to energy we can use to do anything! Anything at all! But probably most often such things as lighting street lamps and such.

A single Sonea unit is 450mm by 450mm by 80mm, weighing in at a whole 7kg. It converts 30 watts of power per decibel of sound it intercepts. It’s made of Poly Carbonate elements, ABS, and other more obvious components listed in the layout.

One airplane liftoff makes noise around 140dB. When taking off, the amount of energy [created with the SONEA] would be about 240kW. If we calculate with 500 airplanes per day, the amount of energy would be aproximately 120MW. If this amount of energy is generated for one year, it would be the same amount of energy that is generated by 8000tons of oil.

Humongoid possibilities. I’d lay one right outside my apartment window where sirens from the nearby fire brigade station let loose pretty darn often. Loudness for my free energy!

Designers: Jihoon Kim, Boyeon Kim, Myung-Suk Kim, and Da-Woon Chung

"ORIO" MP3 Player Karaoke Style

Watch The Video

Queue up a line because if the ORIO were real, I can see loads of blokes and blokettes wanting it. The seemingly benign MP3 player doubles as a karaoke recorder. Squint your eyes real hard and think; how often do you sing along when listening to music? Why not record that and put it all over the interweb for people to see! The ORIO even draws from a database to show you realtime lyrics and you “green” enthusiasts will be happy to know, ORIO is completely made of biodegradable plastic.

Designers: Jinsun Park & Seonkeun Park

Camcorder

The form of the camcorders has certainly toned down, but the Pioneer Hi-def seen here takes the cake. It’s palm-sized, high-def, has a lens that pivots up and down with a display that is fixed at an ideal angle. What’s nice is that the form is symmetrical, so that both lefties and right-handers can use it conveniently. And since most of the controls are accessed via the touchscreen, they come alive only when required.

Designers: Dan Harden, Sam Benavidez & Hiro Teranishi for Whipsaw Inc.

Watch Not On My Wrist

I’d much rather wear sweatbands than a watch on my wrist while playing a sport; hence this concept watch by Max Germano makes perfect sense. It fits across the back-of-the-palm and its selling points are easy access to the dial, and a clear view to the heart-rate, stats etc. The flip-side is that it could compromise the grip of the racket or whatever it is that you are holding as the straps may interfere. However, since the watchband is made from super-soft elastomer, it just may-be comfy….I’m on the fence.

Designer: Max Germano

Sony PSi aka Playstation Interactive

Sony unveiled their motion control intentions at this year’s E3 game expo so designer Anh Nguyen must be riding the same wavelength because his PSi concept also features wand-like motion controllers. The console leaves a little something to be desired but the wands are very interesting. You can stack the wands for various games like tug-o-war or add weights if you insist on the video game fitness craze going on right now. If Anh wants to really impress, he better come up with renders showing the wands as light sabers and disrupters. PEW PEW!

Designer: Anh Nguyen

Sporty Bike

I told you there was this bike conspiracy going on amongst the designers, add the Furious Sports Bike to the list. Dishy in its current avatar; the bike boasts of an aerodynamic design coupled with user-friendly ergonomics. What I really like is the ample display nestled between the handlebars. You get details like the route-map, current bike gear, temperature, time and speed displayed on it. The seat however looks tad uncomfy for me.

Designer: Nenad Kostadinov

Intel Capture180 Camera

Adding a new dimension to photography is the Intel Capture180 Camera. Taking a tangent from the mega-pixel war, and data storage issues, the Capture180 Camera brings in the news with its Virtual Reality imaging proposal. It uses a 180 degree fish-eye lens to capture 180 degree hemisphere and stores the information as meta-data within each shot, allowing the camera’s viewfinder, a digital picture frame, or your computer screen to come alive with the images.

The 180 degree fish-eye lens captures quite a wide view of the shot.

The warped photos are unwrapped in-camera into a hemisphere of image, and everything outside of the traditional picture frame is stored as meta-data. When viewing photos, position sensors allow the camera’s viewfinder to act as a window into a still moment in time. If it’s a photo of fireworks, you can point the camera over to the left see the faces of the people sitting next to you- it’s like the camera never left the place. The extra meta-data also means that photos can be recomposed long after they’ve been shot. Photos can be cropped down or up, and this pretty much eliminates the need for the user to point. The whole scene is captured with each shot, and one or multiple photos can be composed from the scene later.

Designer: Lucas Ainsworth

My Reading Light

Solar powered and good for 500 charges. First things last! Who is this product aimed at? Villagers. Impoverished or otherwise living without regular electricity. This is a light that allows people (children in school especially) read and work long after sundown where it would have been otherwise difficult to impossible.

Simple, nice.

The light is of course spelled LED and works in conjunction with a special anti-scratch coated perspex sheet. This sheet is placed on the page of the book making it possible to read in the dark.

The advanced 270mAh lithium-polymer battery provides light for 3.5 - 9 hours depending on brightness - there is a choice of high/middle/low dimming settings.

“My Reading Light” along with a slimmed down low-cost version, also in development, are expected to be available by autumn 2009. R U Down with the sheet of light?

It’s also important to mention that this particular design won an honorable mention for the 2009 Red Dot design awards. Boffo! Design: Shanghai Moma Industrial Product Design Co., Ltd., Shanghai, China (Wei Ding, Wen Gu) In-House Design: Philips Design.

Designer: Philips Design

Goodness Of Laser Lights On A Watch

I officially declare it the era of weird, whacky and un-conventional watches! Why else do think the Invisible Shot Laser Watch is here. Face of it, it’s a normal bracelet lookin thang, but press a discreet button and a laser light reflects the time on your wrist. Certainly for the night-club-hopping-teeny-boppers, who love their laser pointers.

Designer: Andy Kurovets

Molecular Telephone

Oh fabulous simplicity. Wherefor art thou, the truest form of it? Is it the newest bricks, or the never-made sculpturals without “beer compass” applications? Judge for me! This is a concept cell phone made by Tjep Design for the O2 company. It is based on the same concept as O2, the molecularity, that is. It’s a cell-cell. Get it? It’s only got a few functions, that being on and off, a telephone mode and a text mode. It’s got a number pad and even a * symbol. And a cute little tiny screen.

O2 is oxygen. Oxygen is something we humans really need to survive. What about this cell phone design? What buttons do we really need? You tell me.

Designer: Tjep Design