design

Google Japan – Design

June 13, 2013

My good friends Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham were contracted to design the Google offices in Japan. Google asked them to integrate design motifs from the host country and, as is their style, they re-purposed everyday objects such as Japanese Sentō murals, giant car wash brushes, and soba stand noren to great, playful effect. More [...]

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The Interest in Pinterest

March 22, 2012

By now I would imagine you’ve all heard of Pinterest. The latest site to cater to our need to collect and curate the world around us has boiled down the act of clip-n-share to it’s most basic form, the image. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then the endless scroll of the Pinterest front [...]

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Jack Dorsey the Zen Master

November 11, 2011

I had a great day yesterday at the GigaOM Roadmap conference. The agenda had a number of great speakers including Brian Cheskey of AirBnB and Tony Fadell of Nest, the red hot company that is re-defining what a thermostat should look like. The thesis the conference explored is one that Om Malik (now my boss) has [...]

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Oblong and the g-speak UI

June 23, 2011

Remember the computer UI in Minority Report? Yeah, they can do that now.

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The $8,000 dumb phone

May 2, 2011

When you can afford a personal secretary to keep track of your every need, a mobile phone is basically a piece of jewelry, much like a wrist watch or pocket watch of by-gone days. These are single-purpose devices that are a fashion statement, more form than function. Taking this approach, focused on the voice aspects [...]

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Social Decay

March 10, 2011

The money shot from yesterday’s Yahoo Research’s Like Log study is the social activity graph below showing how this activity drops off a cliff after the first 24 hours. Looking at over 100,000 articles across 45 big media sites over the course of three months, Yahoo researcher Yury Lifshits found that a vast majority of [...]

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Re-Skinning Facebook

October 10, 2010

Stumbled across a quick and dirty side project that uses Facebook’s social graph api to pull your newsfeed and present an alternate display. Try it yourself at Facebook-me.com.

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Simple Solution – Nokia Bike Charger

June 3, 2010

Sometimes it’s the simple things. Why not a dual purpose phone charger, phone mount for your bicycle? Stay above 7.5 mph and you’ll charge your phone at the same rate as if you plugged it into the wall and you’ll be able to enjoy free turn-by-turn navigation. Launching first in Kenya where it’s really needed [...]

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docomo’s designer collection

June 1, 2010

My wife just got back from Japan and picked up the latest brochure from NTT Docomo. As a member of the very desirable young female demographic, she’s always been pestering me that Nokia should focus less on whiz-bang geek features and more on the phone as a fashion statement. I would agree and, in that vein [...]

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Evolution of Cell Phone Small

November 12, 2009

Designer Kyle Bean makes Russian matryoshka dolls out of cell phones. From the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X (1983) to the Apple iPhone (2007).

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