Neoprene Chairs

Ok, so I could only find this one neoprene chair, but I find the idea of futuristic looking flame resistant furniture interesting (outside of the whole wetsuit thing). This chair is especially great for those prone to falling asleep while smoking cigarettes (flickr).

pictured: Lander C-type Lounge Chair
1997 Fibreglass, PU Foam, Plywood and Aluminium
Designer: Charlie Davidson, London

“The Lander C-type is a low recline lounge chair coveredin a titanium coated neoprene suit. It’s inspirationcomes from a unlikely combination of natural and manmade forms fusing sharks with 1960’s sports cars.”

More about that funny, synthetic substance called neoprene (wikipedia)

Some Dupont info

Link: Charlie Davidson

Web Trend Map 2007

Originally Published on 26/06/07 by Oliver Reichenstein

Link: Web Trend Map 2007 Version 2.0

Hulu.com – bringing you internet tv by design (UPDATE: now with full episode embeds)

I was fortunate enough to get a private beta invite to hulu.com, and I must say that so far it has been this designer's delight.

EPISODES



CLIPS





The design of the site is simple and easy to navigate. The flash video player runs smoothly, full-screen looks great, the scrub bar advances and rewinds with ease, and the single-serving advertiser spots are nothing to whine about. Even when watching the video in-line on the page, I found the design elements minimal enough to be able to ignore (white space!). Extra options like opening the video in a pop-up window (picking up where you left off of course) is a must for multi-taskers like myself.

The small dots on the video scrub bar represent the 15 to 30-second spots, which, nicely enough, come with a small countdown timer in the top left corner.

The selection right now is still a bit sparse, consisting mostly of US network programming like Heroes, House, the Office, and Monk (cable, I know). There are a few classic movies on there too like the Breakfast Club and Conan the Barbarian.

UPDATE: After being on the site for a little bit, it looks like they're continuing to add some new content each week (not including adding already airing episodes).

Overall, the site's design and functionality work together very well. So far it looks like NBC's divorce with iTunes could be a step forward in the internet TV movement.

Oh Yeah, and you can embed full-length episodes/clips (above) and feature films.

Link: Get your hulu invite

J.A. Grose

I really like the use of color and line in German designer Grose’s dynamic layouts for Standard Elektrik.

Standard Elektrik Lorenz, 1959

I'm planning to update this once I find out a little more about this designer.

Link: via grainedit

Kuka the Calligraphy Bot

A robotic arm that writes calligraphy is programmed to write out the entire Martin Luther bible on a long roll of paper.

more photos on flickr

via: the ministry of type, via: bot junkie

RobotLab at the "Wolfgang von Kempelen, Mensch-[in der]-Maschine" exhibition, ZKM, Karlsruhe (D), 2007.

Link: robotlab