Thumbnail image for Canabalt = Raw Flow

Canabalt = Raw Flow

December 22, 2009

In Canabalt, your pixelated running man runs for his life through a dystopian world reminiscent of the Matrix, jumping from rooftop to collapsing rooftop and getting steadily faster until he either plummets into the ground, runs into the debris that’s been left lying around or is bombed into a fine mist from the sky. It’s [...]

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Erbert and Gerbert’s Candle Cannon

December 2, 2009

This a really wonderful promotion by Colle+McVoy for Erbert and Gerbert, a sandwich chain: the CandleCannon! Erbert & Gerbert’s has been making Subs Worth Discovering for 20 years. To help them celebrate, we decided to have more than just a party. So we built the world’s largest and most powerful air vortex cannon and had ourselves [...]

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Innocentive & Open Source Innovation

November 3, 2009

An recent article from the Economist made me think about how companies could learn from the distributed innovation of open source to find the great ideas within. The article is about InnoCentive, which helps connect problems with solutions: [Innocentive] is based on a simple idea: if a firm cannot solve a problem on its own, [...]

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Large Hadron Collider Lessons: Description vs Communication

October 18, 2009

October’s DISCOVER magazine has a nice article about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the colossal particle accelerator which amongst many other things may reveal the Higgs Boson and the secret of gravity. The LHC is 27km long and requires a frankly ridiculous amount of power to fulfill its single goal of making particles crash at [...]

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Miraikan – Technology, Emotions And People

October 3, 2009

Last week’s post about the Tokyo’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) showed just one of the many cool exhibits they had running this summer. Here’s a few more. Paro, the Therapeutic Robot First up, a robot created entirely to create an emotional bond with its owner. Paro the robotic seal has been [...]

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Miraikan – The Five Rivers Of Innovation

September 28, 2009

Tokyo’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan) doesn’t pull its punches. While many museums seek to entertain, this one hits you with beautifully presented information that rewards your attention with real teaching. The first exhibit I’ll mention is particularly relevant for readers of this blog. It’s dedicated to five types of innovation: Alternative: [...]

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Treating The Symptom Not The Cause: Walgreens vs Target

September 9, 2009

I saw this today in Walgreens’ pharmacy section – a magnifying lens to help customers read text on drug packaging. It was right by products aimed at elderly people, so fading eyesight would definitely be an issue. Helpful, right? Yes and no. On one hand, this tool magnifies the problem of designs which squash instructions [...]

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The Buffalo Design Ethic

August 27, 2009

In their heyday, the existence of Native American Indians revolved around the buffalo. They used every part: “The buffalo gave us everything we needed. Without it we were nothing. Our tipis were made of his skin. His hide was our bed, our blanket, our winter coat. It was our drum, throbbing through the night, alive, [...]

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Welcome To The New Site!

June 24, 2009

After this June hiatus, welcome to the new site! As always, this blog is for people who believe that you can design a better world. Stay posted, as I will be reporting back from China and Japan over the next six weeks before joining Chicago’s IIT Institute of Design in August. Please check that you [...]

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You Are What You Do

May 12, 2009

No one cares about what you think, unless you do what you think

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