Tag: CONCEPT

Challenge.gov is a new site, created by the U.S. General Services Administration to serve as a one-stop shop for government-run contests, challenges and prizes. Federal agencies are able to post contests to the clearinghouse in an effort to increase visibility and increase citizen engagement. Most of the challenges offer prize money to citizens who are able to provide compelling content, such as ...

Bike computers are a must-have accessory for avid cyclists. But, sadly, for many of the hipsters here in New York who ride around on vintage fixies, their in-board gadgets seem to be made of cheap plastic and aren't aesthetically appealing. This concept from Redfish Creative ditches the plastic and digital watch-quality LCD display for leather, brushed metal and a retro dial gauge. The main gauge ...

The Web is teeming with the unrealized ideas of both students and established designers who set out to produce astonishing renderings and prototypes for unusual products. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time, money, or technology, many of those products never progress from the planning stages to the mass market. But that doesn't mean we can't salivate over them, nevertheless. We saw a lot ...

The Web is teeming with the unrealized ideas of both students and established designers who set out to produce astonishing renderings and prototypes for unusual products. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time, money, or technology, many of those products never progress from the planning stages to the mass market. But that doesn't mean we can't salivate over them, nevertheless. This week we ...

A U.K. industrial design student has discovered a way to harness energy each time a toilet is flushed or a bathtub is drained. According to Creative Boom, Tom Broadbent's HighDro Power works much like a miniature hydroelectric dam, inside your building's sewage pipes. When water drains from a toilet, tub, sink or any other appliance, it travels down the pipes, through the device and spins four ...

The Web is teeming with the unrealized ideas of both students and established designers who set out to produce astonishing renderings and prototypes for unusual products. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time, money, or technology, many of those products never progress from the planning stages to the mass market. But that doesn't mean we can't salivate over them, nevertheless. In 1855, ...

Some of the Switched team take to two wheels for the daily commute, and, although the streets of New York are hardly the safest place to be biking, we're usually more concerned about bike theft than we are swerving taxi drivers. Most of us use the low-tech approach of riding a cheap-o road bike, and lugging around a heavy chain to lock it up, but we're now considering the Halo bike lock concept. ...

Designer Kim Mi Ran hates tangled cords. Who doesn't? (Oh yeah, this dude.) We've run across some novel solutions to maddening cable issues in the past, and we've seen our fair share of quick, DIY fixes, from zip-ties to external sheaths. But all these answers are merely a Band-Aid for the tangled mess that has proven itself the digital era's 'Yellow Wallpaper.' ("I get positively angry with the ...

After decades of failed promises, flying cars may soon crowd the nation's streets and airspaces -- as long as shoppers can afford those $200,000 price tags. The FAA recently approved the Terrifugia Transition two-seater for takeoff, but another company's design may allow even unlicensed consumers to drive and fly, without the federal agency's stringent pilot requirements. Logi AeroSpace's ...

While they aren't full-blown 'Transformers,' ultra-thin smart sheets developed by MIT and Harvard researchers could pave the way for machines that fold into different shapes. According to Popular Science, the fiberglass sheets, which are made from .5-inch wide, .5-millimeter thick, triangular tiles, are dubbed 'programmable matter.' The researchers equipped the smart sheets with ultra-thin, ...

We've always been told to never pull a plug from its socket by yanking on the cord. Doing so, rather than grabbing the housing and gently tugging, can expose dangerous wires. Line up a U.S. wire and strategically pull (not that we've ever done that!), and most plugs will pop out. The unmanageably large sockets and housings in the U.K., though, simply can't be detached in one piece from the wall ...

As much as we love digital technology here at Switched, we still cling to a certain amount of nostalgia for the simpler days; when the photorealism of a video game didn't matter and when we all enjoyed full-length albums instead of shuffling on our iPods like we have extreme cases of ADHD. While we're not about to pay for our hundreds of gigabytes worth of music to be converted to vinyl, we're ...

Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design students Jennifer Kay, Jacek Barcikowski and Martina Pagura are concerned that people who work from home (such as yours truly) aren't getting enough stimulation throughout the day. In response, the students came up with a prototype for the Sidetrack table, a piece of dynamic furniture that's supposed to encourage breaks between spreadsheets -- or blog ...

Share The Web is teeming with the unrealized ideas of both students and established designers who set out to produce astonishing renderings and prototypes for unusual products. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time, money or technology, many of those products never progress from the planning stages to the mass market. But that doesn't mean we can't salivate over them, nevertheless. ...

Laura Boffi, a design student in Copenhagen, and her team have created a special jacket that allows rescue dogs to relay messages from survivors while tagging their location. According to DVICE and the video after the jump, the jacket plays music while the dog searches for a victim in the wake of an earthquake or other disaster. An accelerometer detects when the dog sits, and then, the victim can ...