Magnetic Scissors Spring Open or Lock Shut

I love magnets in product design. They're a way to get good, clean, reliable force without the moving parts that might squeak, rattle, or break. So naturally, I agree with Gizmodo's Brian Barrett on the subject of these magnetic scissors: "Makes sense! Seems doable! So let's get out there and do it." From designers Sang-in Lee and Yun-je Sung on Yanko Design, the scissors change from springing open for easy cutting to locking shut with a slide of a switch - which simply flips a magnet (woo!) to reverse the force. Simple, brilliant... I want some!

Keyboard Leds helps consolidate notifiers...

Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock have had their own dedicated notifier spots on your physical keyboard for quite a while - little LEDs that might let you know you're in all-caps before you start typing, if you ever actually looked at your keyboard. Since the early days of computing, every other status notifier has moved on-screen, usually to designated corner reserved for exactly that, like the lower-right corner in Windows. So, why not have your keyboard status lights make the move to an area where you have a decent chance of noticing them? That's what Keyboard Leds is for - it's a tiny freeware utility that does the trick. It's a fine idea, and one that I'd like to see baked into operating systems soon!

[via DownloadSquad & Lifehacker]

iPad for Sheet Music, with Foot Page Turner...

There are a few use cases where the iPad really, truly excels - and one of those is replacing sheet music. Keep your whole library on one device instead of lugging around binders full of paper, and make (editable, scalable!) annotations using the touchscreen. All it needs is a good way to turn the pages - and it's about to get that, too. AirTurn, a maker of USB-based page-turning pedals, is developing a Bluetooth version that will connect wirelessly to the iPad. Well, that does it - so long, paper sheet music!

[via Engadget]

"Try Google Reader" - Google, you know better!

I'm an avid user of many of Google's services (heck, I'm writing this on Blogger right now), including both Gmail and Google Reader. One thing that's always bugged me is that when I get my Gmail inbox down to zero, this message appears: "Want to read updates from your favorite sites? Try Google Reader." Google, you're supposed to be smart. The whole trick behind your profitability is knowing as much as possible about every user, and targeting messages to them with surgical precision. So you know I already use Google Reader all the time! Suggesting that I "try" it just seems... dumb. Why not ask me to "check" it - or even better, ask me to try a whole new Google service that you know I haven't used yet? That'd be smart. That'd be... Googly.

iPhone Image-Resize During Send...

Part of being able to thrive in a connected world is observing what might be called "digital etiquette" - and it's tough, because this etiquette is poorly defined, not at all explicit, and always changing. Something that would be a part of any digital etiquette is image resizing: that is, one should resize images depending on both their intended use and the vector of communication. For example, a cute pic of your dog napping sent via email to all your friends should NOT be a 9MB photo so large that the dog's nose takes up your whole screen - it should be something like 800x600 pixels, which will result in an email-friendly sub-100kB file. Anyway, I'm happy to see (thanks to Lifehacker reader OS's comment on this Lifehacker post) that image-resizing has been built into the iPhone's interface when sending photos. It uses qualitative size descriptions (Small, Medium, Actual Size), but quantitative file data sizes - which likely reflects AT&T's switch to limited data plans. Let's hope this new feature gets used, and teaches the users some digital etiquette in the process!

The symmetric connector USB should have been...

USB Type A plugs - the connectors you plug directly into your computer - look symmetrical. A little rectangular hole, a little rectangular plug, that should be able to work either-side-up, right? Wrong - and I'm sure that the sum total of man-hours wasted in the 14 years since that design mistake was made would truly boggle the mind. Better late than never, along comes the UltraTek Flipper USB Plug, which despite having the worst graphic design and website I've seen in quite a while, delivers on the promise to be able to plug the damn thing in either way. Sure, it probably costs more, and it may have reliability issues. But for god's sake, from a usability standpoint, it's what USB should have been in the first place!

[via Engadget]

Wardrom: Put that mess on your wall...

Running out of room for that mess of dirty clothes on your bedroom floor? Italian design group Paula has a way for you to keep the mess, but extend it to the wall! Wardrom is a modular system of funky wall spikes designed to catch tossed clothing. So, it basically takes a bad habit, and makes it even more fun. Spectacular.

[via Dezeen]