A bit of our work
...has found its way
onto the web. These are actually a couple examples of the products from the
View of the Future project we released on YouTube earlier in the year. I like the description:
"What will you get if you take Nokia 7380 L’Amour collection phone, mix it with the design of LG SV280 “Banana” and add the “slimming” technologies applied in Ultra Edition II sliders like Samsung U700?
Well, you could get something really awful.
But if you are a talented enterprising designer, you can come up with the next generation Nokia 7480 fashion phone concept"
Labels: concepts, ID, interaction, mobile phones, nokia
Blackle update
An update on my
Blackle post from yesterday. Sadly, a little more digging suggests that (unfortunately) this will only make a difference for CRT monitors, which consume
74 Watts to display a white screen versus 59 Watts to display a black screen. The power consumption of LCDs is not affected by the colors displayed on screen. Changing the display brightness seems to be the only way to conserve energy on an LCD. On a positive note, while Blackle won't help LCD users save power, LCDs are significantly more
energy efficient than CRT's overall.Labels: search, sustainability
Help
What public spaces might learn from the internet:I landed at Washington Dulles International Airport Monday evening at about 8:50PM. The flights bags were taking longer than usual to come down the carousel than normal, but when I found myself still standing waiting at 10PM I decided it was time to assume that my bag wasn't going to be showing up. But where was the airline baggage desk? Where were the airline representatives? Fortunately, there was an information desk just near the carousel. Unfortunately, no one was there. There were no signs, explicit or otherwise, suggesting when someone would return, or if anyone would return at all. Since I was already in the presence of an information desk, the airport signage was absent of any suggestions where another desk might be. For some reason, this scenario reminded me of the claustrophobic feeling I get all too often with software help tools: the help is there, which is reassuring, but my questions remain unanswered. For even the most complete help index, it's difficult for a software provider to know every question their thousands of user might have. The internet provides an elegant solution in the form of help groups, discussion forums, etc. The smartest software makers organize and empower these groups to pick up where they leave off, linking directly to them. "Did we answer your question? No? Try here."
How does a service like this organize itself in the physical world? How could the airport help me find those knowledgeable souls that could answer my question amongst the other similarly lost tourists? Eventually, like refining a Google query, I found someone to help me out.
In the end, it turned out that the information desk was indeed closed for the night, and while most of the flight's bags came out on the announced carousel, many came out on another. I'm not too impressed with Dulles airport.
Considerate advertising
A couple years back
Jan Chipchase wrote about
a hotel nightlight that was most likely designed to be stolen and taken home. It's a cheap form of 'physical' viral marketing.
I was in Washington this week and found myself in a familiar situation: I needed to do some work but the desk in my room had a glass top. Unfortunately, my optical mouse and glass top tables do not play well together. My magazine-mousepad improvisation wasn't much better.
I understand that if hotels were to supply mousepads, they're likely to be stolen. But what if it was designed to be taken home? Would it remind me of how considerate Hotel X was to my business traveler needs? I don't usually invite advertising upon myself, but I think I'd appreciate this sort of gesture much more than the usual free soaps and facial lotions.
Labels: advertising, viral marketing
Blackle
Update on this post here.Speaking of energy savings, particularly small changes that can make a big difference,
Blackle is a take on the Google search but completely in black. Why? Because it takes
more power to display a white screen than a black one. Multiply one screen by millions and the savings become very significant. The idea is based on
a quick study from earlier this year showing that if Google was black, 750 Megawatt-hours could be saved per year. So far, by the site's estimate, 113,772.351 Watt hours have been saved.
Spread the word, use it instead of the Google homepage. Little differences add up.
via
Raph.
Labels: Google, green, search
Simple reminders
I bought this charger for my phone back in February, after my bags had been lost on a flight through Paris.
For a while, I thought it was a bit of a waste to have an LED light up whenever the charger is plugged in. LED's don't consume a significant amount of power, but over time, electronics left on standby or mobile phone chargers left plugged in to the wall
drain up to 10% of a households total energy. This little red LED was yet another tip of the energy iceberg in my apartment. After some time however, that turned out to be a good thing. The red light serves as a reminder that the charger is still drawing power and, if I'm not currently charging my phone, I should pull it out. The LED's consumption turned out to be a tiny price for a much greater savings.
Labels: green, mobilephones
