NapTV - Keeping kids comfy and antisocial...

From designer Sung-kyu Nam, this concept for a child's multipurpose TV/stool/plaything isn't bad; little Jimmy will certainly grow up with a relaxed back (thanks to the fully-reclined viewing position), as well as an appreciation for late-2000's clean/angular, white/pastel industrial design. However, he might also miss out on a bit of socialization with his playmates - when he's under the NapTV, he's literally walled off from the rest of the world. I'd like to see a version with open sides, and maybe synchronized TV programs across several units in the same playspace, to let the kids share an experience with each other. There's plenty of time to use electronics to cut off social interaction when you're older...
[via Bornrich, Uberreview, and Gizmodo]

Label Your Thumbdrive

Lifehacker recently featured a reader-submitted idea that makes great sense, but unfortunately is just a little tougher to execute than it should be: label your thumbdrive with your name and phone number, so "lost" becomes "found" ASAP. This is the kind of behavior that designs should want to encourage people to adopt - but instead, it requires finding and renaming icon files, creating nasty-looking script files, hiding those files... not things that any novice would feel comfortable doing. So whose responsibility would it be do make these things easy? The operating system designer, which might recognize a new thumbdrive on first insertion? The thumbdrive maker, who might run proprietary software from the product? Or a third-party software company, offering a product they hope (against all odds) will be adopted for this purpose? And that's probably the problem - it's nobody's job, except that very astute reader on Lifehacker!

Freedom! (From your internet addiction...)

Sometimes the toughest hurdle to overcome on the way to productivity isn't a tool that's difficult to use, it's the tool that's too tempting to use - and derails users from productivity and into procrastination. The Internet, for all its productivity gains, can be distracting as all get-out: email, IM, Facebook, games, news, blogs (not this one, of course) - they're all trying to pry your attention away from the invariably-less-interesting tasks at hand. Well, Mac users have a bit of software they can enlist to conquer their demons - Freedom is an application which disables all of the computer's networking hardware for an amount of time that you specifty, allowing you to focus when you need to. The genius of this little program? Quitting it will not re-enable the hardware - you have to restart the whole computer! It's that little extra bit - not letting you cheat - that makes me confident that it'll actually get the job done... and make you get yours done as well.
[via Download Squad and Lifehacker]

Upcycling: Packaging is the Product (is the packaging)...

It's been a while since I've come across a good example of upcycling, so here's a refresher: "upcycling" is where materials are recycled into a product, use, or purpose which is of higher quality or value than the original. This is as opposed to "downcycling," which most recycling is, where the reused material becomes lower and lower quality with each cycle. Anyway, here's a radical upcycle: designer David Gardener presents this lamp which is made of the same paper pulp material as many egg cartons - a very low-quality substance which represents the last stop before landfill in the paper cycle. Not only that, but the lamp halves fold to become their own packaging. Say what you may about the looks of the lamp (hmm), but the concept is really something!
[via Treehugger, Dezeen, & Gizmodo]

You've Got Upgrades - Email innovations to hope for...

Gina Trapani over at Lifehacker has a neat little list of email innovations she'd like to see - and I've got to agree! Email has been around for quite a while but has been pretty stagnant for most of its life, so I think it's time for an overhaul. Read her whole list, but here are three I'm a fan of:

-Undo Sent Message- The ultimate fantasy feature, because it requires the system to work in a way that it's just not designed to! There are ways to approximate this function, but they all involve simply delaying the actual "send" of the mail.

-Snooze- Heh heh, I know the feeling! Pretend like you haven't even received the message, "for just a few more hours..."

-Attachment Reminder- A nickel for every time I've forgotten to attach a file, or received an email without a mentioned attachment, would make me a rich man! This existed as an add-on script for Gmail, which would give you a reminder message if you hit "send" without an attachment and you mentioned "attachment," "attached," etc, in the message. A must-have!

Auto-Flush Toilets: Useful or wasteful?

I'm in the Phoenix airport as I'm writing this post, inspired by a product I've encountered in airports the world over: automatic-flush toilets. When they first came out, they packed some "wow" factor - but now that they're thoroughly passe, what to make of them? Are they really performing a useful service to users? Let's check it out: the only two useful functions this product serves is to make sure that a flush occurs after each use, and not require the user to touch anything. These services, however nice, certainly aren't necessary - the next user can remedy a non-flush quite easily, and hands should be washed after each use regardless of whether you've had to touch a handle. And what are the costs of the convenience? Well, the hardware almost certainly costs more than a manual flush setup; electricity is consumed running the flush actuator and sensor (which presumably drains power 24/7); and my personal pet peeve, false triggers. By the time I've left the stall, I'm not surprised to have had the darn thing actuate 4 or 5 times, wasting gallons of water! No, I don't think it's worth it. We can do better for ourselves, our money, and our resources. Now if only those auto-flushers could flush themselves down the can...

Bluetooth Phone in Snowboarding Gloves

Dude - it's not easy keepin tabs on your bros when you're shreddin' a mountain. Ahem - seriously, phones have to be kept safe from ice and snow, and gloved hands can't use tiny mobile handsets or headsets. So, Swany is offering something of a solution: a Bluetooth headset built into a pair of snow gloves. It vibrates when the phone rings - a handy (get it?) feature - and a button on top of the hand answers phone calls. However, the product description has this detail: "speaker and listening device integrated into palm and thumb." I hope they have that backwards - just try simultaneously holding your palm to your ear and your thumb to your mouth! The other way around is definitely preferable - and would be quite literally talking to the hand.
[via bookofjoe and Engadget]