A team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a computer program that reveals colors and motions in video that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye.
The Sounds of Radiolab
Radiolab, one of my favorite radio shows, is known for its striking sound effects to communicate big ideas. You can currently listen to excerpts in this sonic gallery over on The New York Times. My favorite is ‘the sleeping cat’s brain”.
I am a bit sad they didn’t include the crazy audio metaphor of the episode where they explained with a chorus how Mantis Shrimp can see more colors than we can. Well, I dug it up, here it is:
Sleeping Bag with Legs
The Camp Daybed by Stephanie Hornig is a sleeping bag with legs. Brilliant.
Alphaberry
My three year old, letter obsessed Tilo, is seriously in love with his Alphaberry by B. Toys. I am usually not a big fan of toys that teach the alphabet, but this one won me over.
Children Should Be Allowed to Get Bored
“When children have nothing to do now, they immediately switch on the TV, the computer, the phone or some kind of screen. The time they spend on these things has increased.
But children need to have stand-and-stare time, time imagining and pursuing their own thinking processes or assimilating their experiences through play or just observing the world around them.”
(via Kottke)
Bottle Opener
This is definitely not your usual looking bottle opener. It’s the hipster of all bottle openers. Congrats to the designer Brendan Ravenhill. My favorite feature is the magnet that lets you keep the opener attached to your fridge door, ready to tackle the next bottle. All kinds of smart.
Pebble Coffee Table
I spent the last 60 minutes looking at outdoor furniture. I am ready for summer. And this Pebble Coffee Table made me look.
Please pay…
Please Pay fine art lithograph, by Brian Garner. The image came from a stamp he found at a thrift shop in College Park, Maryland.
(I really want that stamp. You can buy it here.)
Meta Easter Egg
Our friend Sarah used the Tattly Rooster to decorate an Easter egg. All kinds of meta and fantastic.
Make Something
Yes, to this banner.
The Pocket Spotlight
The Pocket Spotlight is the next best thing to sun-controlling superpowers. It is a a continuous light source you can mount to your phone’s headphone jack, your camera’s hot shoe or off-camera in your hand.
♥ / Undercoat
A big thank you to Undercoat for sponsoring this week’s RSS Feed.
Undercoat is an online community dedicated to collecting and sharing the most beautiful, inspiring and innovative content from creative students and graduates. It aims to provide exposure for the work coming out of universities, art and design institutions operating around the world. It is a platform designed to honour creativity as an essential trade. We welcome contributions from all current or recently graduated students of all ages who are working their way towards a career in a creative field.
The fifth issue of our magazine, Overcoat, will be released later this week.
(Interested in sponsoring a week of my RSS feed? Learn more here.)
Friday Link Pack
Physicist David Neevel built an OREO separator machine. I kid you not.
- This blog made me laugh: Real tough guys don’t need guns, they just need a positive, can-do attitude. (via)
- nbt.fm, hacker news for music articles and songs. (via)
- Thanks to my friend Ted I discovered Help Scout. It has streamlined our Tattly and Teuxdeux customer support. A real pleasure to use.
- Crafts project for the weekend: Painted Egg Cartons.
- Quarterly is a subscription service to wonderful things. And I am one of their contributors.
- Collaborative Consumption just launched their new site.
- My studiomate Sawyer is up for a .net Awards in the young designers category. He is one of the most talented young folks I’ve ever met. Let’s make sure he wins. Submit your vote.
- It’s been an exciting week. We released a brand neux TeuxDeux. If you like keeping lists, you should check out our simple to-do app.
- Don’t use Google Glasses too much. Else…
- Real actors read Yelp reviews.
- Christoph Niemann tells the story of his lovely app. My son is crazy about it. Get it here.
- The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten. Here.
- Cool: Vimeo now lets you add filters and music to your videos right on their site.
- My friends over at spoonsisters.com have a super crazy sale going on. 50% on everything. Use discount code: enjoy50.
- Amazon Launches ‘Send to Kindle’ Button For Web Developers & WordPress Blogs
- The fine folks at Happy Cog Austin are looking to hire an Interactive Designer.
- Analog is Heavy is a collection of wallpapers for sale by Able Parris, available for just a $2 bill.
- Handy: MacSafe Adapter Keyring (via)
- Where to dispose of one time use and rechargeable batteries in the US.
- Will Ferrell talking to Jeff Garlin for 90 minutes. Wonderful. (via)
- Thanks to Frank Chimero for introducing me to the Pony Mixer.
Details
“An exceptional company is the one that gets all the little details right.”
- Richard Branson
Business Lessons by Richard Branson
Hotello
Hotello is a portable space, containing all the necessary elements for a minimal room: a desk, a lamp, a stool, a shelf, a locker. Hotello consists of a metal structure that supports double curtains (translucent and sound absorbant) as well as all the furniture needed to work and rest. Designed by Roberto De Luca and Antonio Scarponi.
Oddly charming.
Free works
“When a free option is available in a market of paid alternatives, far more people will choose the free product, often by an order of magnitude or more. Asking people to pay unnecessarily is asking them to behave irrationally and against their own immediate best interests, even if it’s probably worse long-term.”
- Marco Arment
Free Works, by Marco Arment
(thank you Nate)
OpenFrame
Do you have dozens of posters that are just lying around in tubes or drawers? Then OpenFrame is for you! Custom framing can be expensive and is limited to holding one size of print. Jeff Sheldon & Matthew Smith designed OpenFrame as a simple, flexible way to hang posters, prints, and photos of various sizes and configurations.
Wearing Vegetation
This is fascinating in a refreshingly absurd way: Old People Wearing Vegetation.
Created by Riittai Konen and Karoline Hjorth.
(via bb)
Bye Punchfork. Hello Hugspoon.
I remember the sad day Punchfork announced they are going to shut down their app and site. While I am thrilled for the team for having been acquired by Pinterest, I can’t help but feel disappointed. I am tired of falling in love with services that then get acquired and shut down. I have developed a serious case of FSP (Free-Services-Paranoia).
I remember bringing this up over lunch at work which resulted in a long, philosophical conversation, and the shortly to be lauched Hugspoon. My friends at Fictive Kin realized just how incredibly disappointed and sad I was over Punchfork going away. They decided to go on a rescue mission and build Hugspoon, which aims to save all of your Punchfork recipes.
As the shut down of Punchfork is a mere few days away, my studiomates just put up the holding page for Hugspoon which will help them save your account information. If you want to be notified when they launch, just type in your email on their current homepage. If you have a Punchfork username and want them to save the recipes you liked, you can type that in, too. They’ll do their best to save your data before Punchfork disappears. If you want to learn more about why they’re doing this, check out their /purpose.
Yes:
“If you spend your life doing what you love, the speed at which the world goes on and changes around you is irrelevant.”
- Milton Glaser
From conversation between Cool Hunting and the iconic Milton Glaser
This / That
In a sea of possibility it can be hard to choose. Just remember, there’s no wrong answer: You Can Get with This, Or You Can Get with That.
Paper Jam Press posters are hand-pulled through a Vandercook letterpress, set with turn-of-the-century gothic wood type. Each poster comes out just a little bit different, and Arianna Orland likes it that way. We do too.
(You can also get some of her posters as Tattly)
Dear Tweeting Brands. This:
Smart brands favorite and reply to nice things you tweet about them vs. retweeting to followers who are already interested in their product.
— Amrit Richmond (@amrit) March 19, 2013
Learning to See
“Learning to design is, first of all, learning to see. Designers see more, and more precisely. This is a blessing and a curse — once we have learned to see design, both good and bad, we cannot un-see. The downside is that the more you learn to see, the more you lose your ‘common’ eye, the eye you design for. This can be frustrating for us designers when we work for a customer with a bad eye and strong opinions. But this is no justification for designer arrogance or eye-rolling. Part of our job is to make the invisible visible, to clearly express what we see, feel and do. You can‘t expect to sell what you can’t explain.”
Learning to See, by Oliver Reichenstein
