Top 15 February 2008

01. The True Masters of Cradle to Cradle

by Kees Elands on Feb 3rd 10:58

We all know Africa is the garbagedump of the western world. Literally. Western companies pay African countries loads of money to import their garbage. Cars that are not allowed to ride the European roads anymore are massively shipped to Africa. What is not good enough for us, is good enough for them. Africans make the best of our stuff and try to recycle as much as possible. This recycling has reached a new peak with the assembly of a working four-seater helicopter. It was made from old car parts and parts from a crashed 747. It was build by a 24-year old undergraduate student who got his information solely from the internet, in just eight months time. This is Cradle to Cradle meets Cool Sustainability meets Cool Creators, wow! {news_summary}

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02. Vanishing ink

by Diddo Velema on Feb 3rd 10:55

Xerox introduces Ink that uses ultraviolet light and regular surrounding heat to vanish. By using this ink you can recycle the paper as many as 30 times. As soon as the printing is finished, special molecules begin reacting to the warmth in the surrounding air and gradually return to their natural state. The technology, which will not be commercially available for several years, will reduce the amount of energy required to print a single page by a factor of 200. {news_summary}

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03. Binge Chilling

by Marian Salzman on Feb 3rd 10:52

We’ve all heard of binging. Binge drinking. Binge eating. Binge shopping. The term is generally associated with overindulgence and has a negative connotation, but it isn’t always a bad thing. Introducing “binge chilling”: using one’s personal time in the most relaxed of manners desired, lazing about and re-enacting those post-exam college days by pretending all the stress is finally gone … until Monday, that is. We live in a technologically driven, always-on, always-connected society, and people who expend 110 percent during the week are finding new ways to decompress on the weekends. Today’s younger demographic in particular is inclined to relax by doing whatever they want for as long as they want, without guilt, whether it’s watching 24 back-to-back episodes of 24, playing virtual tennis on Nintendo’s Wii or updating profiles and catching up with friends on Facebook for hours on end. {news_summary}

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04. The Pain of Everyday Life

by Pim Derneden on Feb 3rd 10:49

Constrain city walks is a project/design/warning system led by Gordan Savicic.The corseted garment he created is equipped with servo motors and a WIFI-enabled Nintendo DS. If you put it on and go outside it measures the radiation around you. The higher the wireless signal strength of close encrypted networks becomes, the tighter the corset gets. Electromagnetic waves are controlling the chest strap, shaping their invisible architecture directly onto the body. Daily walks between home, work and leisure are recompiled into a "pain-map" which is fetched from GoogleMaps servers with automated scripts. {news_summary}

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05. Geek Squad City

by Joe Pine on Feb 3rd 10:45

Geek Squad City is a company that hires real 'computer geeks' to work all together fixing laptops and knock together other digital machines. Located within the walls of 345 international Boulevard in Hillview, Kentucky, Geek Squad City is the largest single Geek Squad computer repair site anywhere in the world. And it’s the only one that repairs ANY brand – no matter how old it is or where it was purchased. This IS the Home of the Problem Solvers, passionate about making technology work for everyone. {news_summary}

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06. Viral marketing?

by Enzo dal Verme on Feb 3rd 10:41

Viral marketing? I got this picture as an attachment to an email sent to me by a friend. Is this a real protester or a clever advertising campaign planned by Mastercard? If he is a real protester, well Mastercard owes him a lot. {news_summary}

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07. Niche social networks

by Josh Levine on Feb 3rd 10:31

Friendster died. MySpace is quickly becoming irrelevant. Facebook is hot now, but how long with that last? Probably not much longer than it takes for the masses to get there. What’s next: Small networks that appeal to niche interests. Blocksavvy and Iamhiphop cater to hip hop fans. That’s a start. Better yet, Ning.com (from Netscape founder Mark Andreesen) enables anyone to create their own social network. It’s free, and for a modest fee, users can control — or eliminate — the ads. Enabling people to control their own destiny, and their online experiences, may just be the future. {news_summary}

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08. Think Local, Act Global

by André do Val on Feb 3rd 10:25

Don’t underestimate the ever growing pride of the Brazilians – Brasilidade it is called, or Tropicalismo – which has been ingrained in their post-colonial culture by heroes like Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. The Brazilian Vogue version does not touch that cultural string strong enough. Brazilian aficionadas want to see more of Brazil, the Brazilian way of thinking and dressing and showing off in their magazines. Here Vogue only delivers in a superficial manner. Therefore, Erika Palomino’s South American fashion magazine KEY is more clever, more sharp, more edgy, less slick. {news_summary}

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09. Blyk

by Felipe Serrao on Feb 3rd 10:21

Blyk is a new Mobile Virtual Network (MVNO) running on the Orange network in the UK, for 16 – 24s, by invite-only, which, the founders claim, will allow a control of users experience and offer advertisers real-time feedback into interaction rates for their ads. A tempting prospect both for advertisers and those young enough to go for the free calls. Over 40 brands are already supporting Blyk’s offering, and the service is available for up to 4.5 million youngsters: two thirds of the people of that age group in the UK. Brands advertising through the network include Adidas, Boots, Borders, Coca-Cola, Colgate, Ford, JJB Sports, L’Oreal, McDonalds, Mastercard, NatWest, Miss Selfridge, Penguin, Sky, STA Travel, Sony BMG, Sony Ericsson and Xbox. {news_summary}

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10. Howies

by Cool Editorial Staff on Feb 3rd 10:12

Howies are bringing out a jacket with which, if you want to buy it, you have to sign a contract saying when you have finished it you will hand it down to someone else. The company will store spare zips and so on for about 20 years in case it needs repairing. By John Grant {news_summary}

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11. The New Ugly

by Barrie Barton on Feb 3rd 10:08

They’re calling it The New Ugly. A collective term for the rapidly growing body of design work that seems to give almost no thought to traditional aesthetic principles and purposefully opts to be…ugly. Over the past 3 months a number of flagship magazines such as Germany’s 032C and Jefferson Hack’s flagship Another Magazine have emerged with re-designs that turn their past look on its head. Garish colour contrasts, counter-intuitive layouts and fonts that haven’t been touched for many years. Then there’s the London Olympics logo – derided internationally by most but held up a pink glowing example of this new design trend. {news_summary}

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12. A Playful Watch

by Shira Wollner on Feb 3rd 10:04

This wristwatch is a combination of utility and playfulness in one. Reading time becomes a game as well as a conversation piece, and the watch also has a very futuristic look, a unique expression of electronics and fashion. The red lights are the hours, the green lights represent 15 minutes each, and the orange lights represent one minute each. {news_summary}

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13. Personalisation Going Underground

by Matsume Kai on Feb 3rd 10:00

Xiao Lee, a street vendor, has a hot new product, cheap to produce and easy to sell. Simple stickers shaped to fit onto the city’s public-transport cards. (Or wherever else.) It’s the newest fad for young subway and bus commuters bored with the ugly cards they must use day in day out. The new thing is that the stickers are made by local artists and definitely cannot be bought at the usual retail places. {news_summary}

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14. Dignity Toilet

by Jan van Mol on Feb 3rd 09:51

Dignity Toilet is a portable sanitation solution, ideal for refugee camps and developing countries. This product was designed by Canadian designer Mike Loveless and engineer Terence Woodside of Cooler Solutions Inc. and recently it was awarded by the Humanitarian International Design Organisation. For all the right reasons, this is uplifting human misery in a sustainable manner. {news_summary}

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15. Self Love

by Mark Simpson on Feb 3rd 09:42

This ad for D&G jewellery, currently airing in heavy rotation on TV and in cinemas across Europe, is devilishly clever. It toys with your expectations about boys meets girls and all the love that might come from that. But then, right at the end, when you think you know what it's about, you slowly realise that yes, it's kind of about that, but actually it's much more about something else that is even more powerful and salient and unsettling. And strangely hotter. Narcissistic self love. {news_summary}