Trends Updates » Team

Stumbleupon Thumbsup Icon Undergoes Revamp, Features Counts

Team — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 22:37:15 +0000

Stumbleupon, a web community that allows its readers/users to discover and vote Web pages, photos, and videos has lately revamped its thumbs up icon, thereby showcasing number of votes to each.

It seems to follow digg-way as next time you stumble on an article; you will get to see a stumbleupon icon displaying number of thumbs-ups a story has bagged since its submission. I believe stumbleupon is too late for this add-on and more potential would have been number of page-views to each submission. The latter feature and figures would have been unbeaten in inviting more eyeballs.

Deal now is to see how different it is from the service by 97thfloor? Seomoz wrote a detailed post in 2007 about a similar feature offered by 97th floor across four social media site i.e. Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and del.icio.us.

Bowlingual Voice Makes to Coolest Gadget of the Week, Courtesy Takara Tomy

Team — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:31:23 +0000

Albeit, one of the contestant in the last coolest gadget of the week episode, Bowlingual Voice gadget from Takara Tomy gave clear signals that it had no strong contender in the contest and would evolve as a winner.

And within hours, it managed to win the heart of Coolestgadget’s loyal (royal) readers. The innovation and the usability perspective attached to the development of the gadget deserve a big applause. My sincere gratitude to Takara Tomy and team for delivering such bizarre yet useful offerings.

Kudos to Gadgets for men and Zath for featuring Lego Millennium Falcon (Mid-Scale) and Flip Ultra HD – Mini Video Camera (second and third runner-ups respectively).

And above all, Hugs to Al, my dear friend for hosting such a contest without which Bowlingual Voice wouldn’t have reached its targeted audience.

Cheers!

Waterwalkerz Gives the Feel of Water Zorbing

Team — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:14:35 +0000

If you really want to try something unconventional, Waterwalkers would make up for a perfect choice. The concept is much similar to the Zorb Sport, but the fact it has to be done on water surface makes it extremely challenging. Once you’ve stepped inside the ball, it rotates continuously, thereby putting every muscle in your body to work. The makers claim that spending even 5 minutes inside this inflated plastic ball would be parallel to a good workout session.

Before the air inside the ball runs out, one can walk for as much as 30 minutes. Thermoplastic polyurethanes are used which make the balls extremely sturdy. The makers provide with repair patches to deal with instances of punctures. Even though specifications suggest a weight limit of 90 kgs or 200lbs, the ball has been used by people with 250lbs weight with no issues at all.

Unlike Zorb balls, Waterwalkerz are meant for indoor use. You just need a 25 metre pool that can accommodate 5 or more such balls and a few friends to indulge in the goodness of this innovative sport. Do check out the video after the jump that gives you a feel of what would Zorbing mean, not on slopes this time, but on water.

Check the video here:

Waterwalkers are available for $710 each including delivery to US and for the Brit buyers, the price is UKP£450. This price doesn’t include the blowers, they are to be bought separately for $199/ UKP£99. Although not bizarre, the company has wittily drawn inspiration from Zorb balls and hatched something interesting.

Via GagdetGrid

Dance Shoes and More: Designs that are Industrially Viable

Team — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:01:34 +0000

Keeping pace with changing economic and industrial trends could be hard for designers. Finnish designers Aamu Song and Johan Olin understand this predicament and thus concentrate on the industrial aspect of a design rather than the other way round, which is usually the norm. By studying what could be manufactured in factories they design products and hence there is no issue about a concept not being manufactured in factories.

In the picture one can see the “Dance Shoes, For the Father and the Daughter” which have been designed for a Finnish felt factory. Just as they aim, the shoes are not just artistically designed but can be manufactured in a factory on a wholesale basis. Perhaps one of the secret motives is to let the father dance without worries of the daughter’s little feet getting hurt accidentally. Cute indeed, but very functional as well!

Designs such as this and others are sold under the name “Company” by Song and Olin. Later, they sell the goods in “Secret Shops” which they hold as events across European cities including Milan, Berlin, Oslo and Helsinki. The idea also is to help traditional factories brace against the onslaught of global outsourcing by giving them a chance to manufacture functional but almost “haute-couture” industrial concepts. Song and Olin continue to design products which are viable in an industrial setting.

Via Core77

Hunch: Helping You Understand Yourself Better

Team — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:14:46 +0000

Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, recently launched an all new fun-filled website that goes by the name of Hunch. With the help of a questionnaire comprised of 20 questions, Hunch helps users in making decisions based on their answers and personality profiles.

After creating the online profile at Hunch, you can share your results and other attributes via an embedded widget.

According to the website:

“Hunch is designed to soak up collective knowledge and then organize it in a useful way to help you make smart decisions. Hunch proposes custom decision results for you that it wouldn’t necessarily give to somebody else. But at its core, Hunch’s decision making algorithm is just a mathematical framework. It’s the users of Hunch who give the algorithm proper training and personality by contributing to it and making it clever, funny, and nuanced…. but most of all very useful in helping everyone to make smart, efficient decisions.”

Inspite of the various privacy issues that are associated with any social networking website, Hunch appears to be a fun filled and a very interesting portal.

Via TechCrunch

All for Good: An Open Source Online Social Service Directory

Team — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:56:09 +0000

In an effort to create a unique and uninterrupted communication channel between various social service agencies across the globe, some of the major internet marketing firms today unveiled ‘All for Good’, that is an online social service directory.

This website provides volunteers and social service organizations with relevant information about various social service events and volunteer requirements in their specified geographical regions or interests. All for Good maintains a database of numerous organizations and local social service groups in order to assist volunteers find suitable fields of work as per their expertise.

To ensure that this website reaches to the masses, it has also been embedded with various social networking links such as Facebook, Yahoo and more. All for Good is an open-source website, along with an API that would enable third-party applications to access the database information and create more user-friendly environment.

According to Peter Deitz (founder, Social Actions): “Very powerful actors have entered the nonprofit ecosystem and created something that already existed, that is blooming, is growing, and has to accommodate a new reality.”

The seeds of this one of a kind initiative were sown by Sonal Shah (Head of White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation) and Jonathan Greenblatt (Faculty member of Anderson School of Management, University of California) during the initial of President Barrack Obama’s office term. As of now, Google is managing All for Good along with some of the most brilliant minds at Google Inc. who did an exceptional work in bringing this social service directory online. However, ‘All for Good’ is due to be transferred to ‘Our Good Works’, a non-profit entity that initiated the project.

Via OStatic

Weekly Recap: Best of Dark Roasted Blend

Team — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:26:40 +0000

The Extremes of Retro Tech, designs at par

Japanese architecture: Narrow is a word for buildings here. Slim- Even less than a meter in width

A recollection of World War II—Tribute to it for creation of many wonder Weapons!

Out-of-the-box clocks and watches—what’s the time boy?

The Pasta Ogre: Well I would call it an unusual form of food art

Morgan Motor Company has its own style of developing coupes: Handcrafted out of Wood

How about dining in abandoned Boeing 747 Restaurant? Well, DRB always offers you a choice!

Stay around to catch up with the Best of Treehugger, in our next exclusive.

Weekly Recap: Best of Inhabitat

Team — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:14:16 +0000

And it was a tough task to handpick best posts from Inhabitat. I am sure 99.99% would agree with me and that 0.11% must visit the blog and go with the flow of the posts and you will realize the truth. It is not only diversity in nature of posts, but creativity of writers, their reach and presentation and much more that brings depth to the Inhabitat community.
But we went further and gathered must-read posts of theirs. Here, you go…..

Mother’s day gift guide: Going green on this mother’s day tops their agenda. The day gives us an opportunity to show our respect for women, a humanly creator—or dear moms! The team here intelligently gathers the green gifts that would bring smile on your mom’s face and Mother Earth as well.

Eco Fashion Show 2009: Well, after spending minutes here, I happen to add quite a few terms to my long-old vocabulary. Sustainable fashion is one out of many. And I wonder the creative student designers’ behind it who are energized to showcase their offerings before intelligent jury.

The Edible House of the Future: Bringing the green vibes to your sweet home. Author Alex Frangos approached four famed architects to design a futuristic house with no budget limitations and the best one came from Los-Angeles Rios Clementi Hale Studios. To cut the long description short, it is a 3-storied estate that doubles into a vertical garden.

Planter Wall: Literally infusing life into your departed room
No, this planter wall is different from your concept of houseplant. It is elite in nature. Maruja Fuentes’ featured it at 2009 Milan Furniture Fair and bagged accolades. It sports elegant ceramic tiles affixed to any wall creating a chimera that the internal components i.e. herbs, plants, flowers is budding straight out of a room’s shell.

Eco Advertising: Choose between 50 Cars or 1 bus? A tough question that Sweden-based advertising company, Acne has asked from its targeted audience whilst promoting Flybussarna, an airport coach bus service.

And tomorrow we would digg into brewing face of Drak Roasted Blend. Avi, do let us know if you have featured any exclusive in past one week.

Weekly Recap: Best of Trend Hunter

Team — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:13:41 +0000

Starting today, early afternoon we would be showcasing the best weekly finds across fêted blogs, ensuring that our readers miss nothing while catching up with the latest trends. To begin with, we are simply floored by the inclusive compilation and presentation of trends by Jeremy Gutsche and his team, therefore we move ahead in starting our series by capturing the best of best over trend hunter in past week.

Stay around to get your daily dose of trends across various channels and do send a teaser (via comments) if you happen to discern out-of-box trends featured on established or newbie blogs, worth covering as a part of our weekly recap series.

Quilted Capelets: Dressed to Kill! Alexis Mabille warmly commemorate its 150th anniversary of making goose and down-filled fashionable stuff by offering curious collection for Pyrenex

90 Stellar Supercars: Ready for a stylish warp drive?

Vintage Slide Handbags: Designer RedCamper handbags’ collection stands at par in recalling you the origin of the slides. They are also known for creating on-demand customized work with your own vintage slides.

Solar Panel Necklaces: Kudos to Mae Yokoyama for such intelligent offering. The tiny solar powered shingles on the neck piece can be charged in the sunlight, facilitating the LEDs on it to gleam at late night parties, thereby not only rotating few eyelids but breaking heads.

Foldable Scooters: Yes, you heard it right. I stayed quiet for a while and so must be the designer as RoboScooter bagged Buckminster Fuller Prize.

19 pioneering Laptop Concepts: When did the need for laptops or netbooks to go innovative aroused? The answer lies with you my dear geeks. It was when you starting considering them as more of a lifestyle statement.

Philippe Starck’s Sleek ‘Starck K’ Collection for Duravit is eye catching and aims at adding beauty to your kichen decors.

We would bring you the best of INHABITAT in our tomorrow’s weekly recap.

CES 2009: The Best of Gadgets and Gears, Courtesy Geeks!

Team — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:49:52 +0000

Recession’s attempt to affect CES 2009 popularity meets failure as the event witnessed a visible number of visitors at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The Consumer Electronics Show (8-11 January) resumes its image as the biggest and exciting tradeshow in America. But this end of CES 2009 gives us an opportunity to highlight the best of gadgets across gaming, robots, computing, mobile and home appliances space.

Here we capture the key highligts of CES 2009.

CES 2009: Best Mobile and Computing Gadgets

CES 2009: Best Green Gadgets

CES 2009: Best Home Appliances

CES 2009: Best Lifestyle Gadgets

CES 2009: Best Robotic and Futuristic Gadgets

CES 2009: Best Gaming Gadgets

CES 2009: Best Hi-Tech Luxuries For Uber-rich

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