Just when you thought Bjarke Ingels had conquered every last corner of his native Copenhagen, the 36-year-old starchitect has gone and unveiled plans for yet another building on home turf, this one even wilder than the last: It's an energy plant that doubles as a downhill ski resort.
It happens to me about, oh, 14 trillion times every day: I go to plug something into my computer's USB port, and it doesn't fit because I've got the plug-head upside down. Then I mutter some curse word, peer at it, and then plug it in the right way. If I added up all the seconds I waste this way in a year, it'd be... well, it'd be enough that I thank the design gods for Ma Yi Xuan, who invented a USB plug that fits both effing ways.
Before you think about mocking the bad English, ask yourself: did I think of this? No? Then STFU.
Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris has a signature style that's as instantly recognizable as Martin Scorsese's or Wes Anderson's: namely, showing his interviewees talking right into the camera lens. But I've always wondered - unless he has a video tap from his eyeball going right into the camera, how does he actually shoot that way? Here's an example of the direct-to-lens style, from his Oscar-winning The Fog of War:
And from the Apple commercials:
And from a recent documentary commissioned by IBM:
Chances are you got rid of your incandescent lights awhile ago, unless you run a twee restaurant in Brooklyn or you hate the planet (or both). But it wasn't an easy parting, was it? Those inefficient old bulbs are, in a word, gorgeous.
Studio Stadtpark, in Austria, has heard your cries and designed the next best thing: Sympathy for the Bulb, a lamp that radiates light like an incandescent, using bulbs that won't destroy the earth.
Obama did a decent job on the State of the Union address yesterday, though it didn't exactly knock our socks off (not that SOTUs ever do). Which got us wondering: What makes a speech truly great? And, since we're unrepentant infographic nerds, can you visualize it?
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You may not have noticed, but Microsoft Surface is still in the game, having gotten a big reboot at CES last month.
I keep my phone in my pocket. This has the (un)fortunate side effect of putting the entire Internet in my pants. When I get a call, I have to do a little dance to slip the phone out of my pocket and in to my hand.
I'm one of those people who thinks its rude to answer the phone in the middle of a conversation. It's worse when it's during dinner. It's even borderline rude to just check the phone to see whose calling before slipping it away. I want to know who's calling before I go pocket-diving.
Most magazines send their unread, surplus issues off to be pulped and recycled. Fast Company usually does the same, but this month we took it a step further: Designer Jens Praet used 27-pounds of shredded Fast Company's and turned them into a single, six-foot long dining table. The Fast Company table, along with several new pieces by Praet, will be on view (and on sale) at Industry Gallery in Washington, D.C., through February 26th.
Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that we've been eagerly anticipating the day when infographics finally crossover into everyday life, as a first-class tool. Well then, today brings something of a watershed moment: LinkedIn, the work focused social-networking site, has unveiled InMaps, a tool that maps your entire social network, color coded by associations. The idea is that the maps will allow you to see the prime connectors in your network -- and spot areas ripe for connecting, given the right introductions.
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