Friday, July 25, 2008

Drinking From A Drop

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/yankodesign/~3/343737692/

DROPPA is a carafe designed to bridge the gap between form, function, and space. It expands the feeling of liquidity out of an object that looks like a water droplet frozen just at the moment of impact. It’s organic and extremely architectural. The top of the drop is actually the cup by where you invert the stem to pour water into. 

Designer: Ozgur Onal

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'Improve' Great Works of Art by Adding in Gadgets [Photoshop Contest]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/344826225/improve-great-works-of-art-by-adding-in-gadgets

For this week's Photoshop Contest, I want you to insert gadgets or modern technology into famous works of art, be they paintings, drawings or photographs. A pretty straightforward challenge, but I'm looking for some real quality this time around. Don't just slap a photo of a Bluetooth headset on the Mona Lisa. Make it look like it's part of the painting. Come on, I know you've got the chops.

When you have your work of art perfected, send it to me at contests@gizmodo.com with gadget art in the subject line. Only JPGs and PNGs, please. Name your file FirstnameLastname.jpg using whatever name you want credited on the site. I'll post the winners in the Gallery of Champions next Tuesday. Get to it!


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Cowon P5 Portable Media Player Has 5-inch Touchscreen, Haptics, Usual Cowon Goodness [PMP]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/345065376/cowon-p5-portable-media-player-has-5+inch-touchscreen-haptics-usual-cowon-goodness

Cowon's upcoming P5 will improve on their A3 and Q5W portable media players (which we've both reviewed) with the addition of a haptics touch-feedback feature. The rest is fairly similar: a 800x480 screen, FM radio, stereo Bluetooth, TV-out, stereo speakers, USB, extreme codec support and 40GB-80GB sizes. There will still be Wi-Fi, but you'll have to get it tacked on after the fact with a dongle. The Korean price is $430ish by the end of the month. No US info yet as far as we know. Maybe we can trade them an early sneak peek at Starcraft 3 for this? [Cowon via CNET]


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NASA's First Solar-Sail Powered Craft Set to Ride on a Stream of Photons Next Week [Come Sail Away]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/345065372/nasas-first-solar+sail-powered-craft-set-to-ride-on-a-stream-of-photons-next-week

NASA's getting set to launch the NanoSail-D next week, its first solar-sail powered spacecraft which catches photons like wind on a 10 square-meter sail made of a thin metallic polymer. The craft uses a crazy Rube Goldberg-like method to deploy the sail that involves burning fishing line at critical moments to release the spring-loaded sail, which is getting shown off in the video here.


It is hoped that sails many times larger (we're talking football fields) will eventually propel long-range missions into deep space, with the help of lasers here on Earth firing light into their sails. The NanoSail-D is sticking in near-Earth orbit to perform its tests, which will inform later uses of the tech.

One caveat is that the launch is scheduled for July 29 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket, which like to go ka-boom and have yet to deliver a payload into orbit successfully. Our fingers are crossed for the little sailor. [Technology Review]


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Lancer's Laqa3 Waterproof MP3 Player Takes Design Simplicity to New Levels [Mp3]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/345485459/lancers-laqa3-waterproof-mp3-player-takes-design-simplicity-to-new-levels

Maybe I'm not a slope-wise skier, but when I'm hurtling down a mountain I love to hear wind sounds—not music from my iPod. Other people are different, and this waterproof MP3 player from Lancer certainly fits the "rugged enough for big snowboard crashes" bill. The Laqa3's design is a plain metal tube. And... well, that's it. There's a headphone connector, and presumably controls somewhere, but other than that it's a plain metal tube. You may dig its industrial-look, or not, but it weighs just 25g, has IPX7 waterproofing so it's good for swimming, and comes with IPX7 silicon ear buds. It plays MP3s and WMAs, has an eight-hour lithium battery. It's released July 25th in Japan for about $185, which is lots considering it's 1GB. [AVWatch]


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