design

We initially blew right past the "Origami TV Remote Control" headline at Trendhunter because we'd rather waste our UMPC's pathetic battery life on something more vital than controlling our TV. But a closer look revealed that this remote control had nothing to do with the Origami Project and everything to do with actual origami--as in, folded paper.

On display at the Design Interactions Work in Progress Show in London, the paper remote control looks like the "fortune teller" you no doubt encountered in middle school. But rather than inaccurately predicting the name of your … Read more

I just completed a remodeling project on my house. While I'm pleased with the results and our contractor was conscientious, managing the information around the project was a trial. DesignIn, a new service launching here at Demo 07, is designed for people like me, and the hundreds of thousands of other folks who embark on residential remodeling and construction projects each year.

The two big elements on the site are a collaborative blueprint editing system--where you can sketch out your remodel layout--and a system that lets you collect or "clip" items from the Web and connect them … Read more

Sometimes we have our issues with, well, fitting in. No, this is not a statement about the confidence levels of gadget freaks, gamers, or nerds--everyone has their junior-high moments. Artist Alice Wang has a new project entitled "Peer Pressure," which consists of a set of gadgets that have been modified to make make cute, humorous, and even provocative statements about how we're all overly concerned about what others think of us (some of us more than others).

Wang's project, which I read about on design blog Notcot, consists of a set of tweaked tech tools that … Read more

There's really not much to say about these phones. Just look at the picture--it's too depressing to spend much time discussing them. What we will say is that, according to Gearfuse, these are Samsung 707SC handsets slathered rather disgustingly with colored stones made by Swarovski. (What a surprise!) They were just released in Asia, made for Softbank Japan. As far as we're concerned, Samsung had a better idea with its Simpsons models.

Kuler is a free tool from Adobe Labs that lets users design and share color schemes for use in Web sites or other projects. If you've ever designed a Web site or PowerPoint presentation before, you know that choosing a color scheme is often trial and error. Kuler lets you tune up to five different colors at once and makes the process surprisingly easy, allowing users to simply adjust selectors over a large color wheel. Users can then go deeper, adjusting the finer details of a color, and Kuler makes small adjustments to make sure the other colors will … Read more

A "cultural engineering" group in France, called the HeHe Association, has come up with a transportation concept that's a whole lot cooler than Segways: a "personal rail service" that puts small single-person vehicles onto abandoned light rail and tram tracks.

It's definitely conceptual, and likely will never see actual implementation, as it would hit plenty of roadblocks (ha ha). It doesn't look like they've made any concrete outline for how they'd be powered, though the creators have stressed on their Web site that it would be eco-friendly. There are also logistical … Read more

We've often wondered why decent design has eluded the Webcam. In just the last few months, for example, we've seen the blender, the floating eyeball and even the sea monster.

Finally, Mustek has come to the rescue. Its aluminum-cased offering would look equally good sitting atop your monitor or your desktop--anywhere, really. SlashGear says its all-glass auto-focus lens "delivers awesomely clear videos" in 1.3-megapixel resolution. It's enough to give our computer an inferiority complex.

We've covered some interesting customized-art endeavors on Crave before, like that company called DNA 11 that specializes in turning your genetic code or fingerprint into an aesthetic masterpiece. Here's another one: Apartment Therapy recently gave a nod to a studio that will take your photographs that you submit online, and turn them into works of art worthy of the classiest 21st-century aesthete. RRSK Studio, located in NYC's chic Meatpacking District, will take your Flickr faves and turn them into "pop portraits" or "fluid portraits." The studio can also paint a custom logo or … Read more

As monitors and keyboards have slimmed down to anorexic proportions, it was only a matter of time before the mouse began to get an inferiority complex. (Society can be so cruel, even on the desktop.) So InferPoint put its product on a crash diet and came up with the "Slimouse"--shouldn't there be two M's?--which redesigned its basic form just so it could squeeze into a Size 2.

With Picasso-like inspiration, InferPoint took the standard left-right buttons and moved them to the front and rear of the mouse. And just for good measure, the scroll … Read more