Category archives: General

RISD graduation tomorrow

29May09

I know i have not been blogging much… I seriously been working hard on my personal work… inspirations come first. but this is brought to my attention for tomorrow… gotta love twitter.

Sir ken robinson  and johnathan ives will be at risd graduation ceremony tomorrow, when do you see this? an english event!!! So for those who don’t know RISD graduation and how it is done… usually involves rain on you… in a parking lot… or baking hot… in a parking lot… for the guests… lets say you are standing for 4 hours straight so bring some lawn furniture :D

but see these these two great inspirators…. it is a master card priceless moment!

RISD to honor creative knight at graduation | Rhode Island news | projo.com | The Providence Journal.

Sir Ken Robinson, knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 for his achievements as a writer and arts advocate, is considered one of the world’s leading thinkers on creativity. His concepts about adapting creativity to the ever-shifting global economy have been embraced by education, government and business leaders, as well as by the arts world. From 1989 to 2001, Robinson taught at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. He now lives in Los Angeles.

Robinson will receive an honorary doctor of fine arts degree, along with four other “exceptional individuals who have made groundbreaking contributions to the world of art and design,”

•Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr, an online photo-sharing Web site, made Time magazine’s list of the world’s most 100 influential people. Fake, 40, now works as chief product officer at Hunch, a customized decision-making Web site that “gets smarter the more you use it.”

•Jonathan Ive is the senior vice president of industrial design at Apple and leads the team behind the iMac, iPod and iPhone. In 2003, he was named designer of the year by the Design Museum London and was awarded the title Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts.

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A long over due quippit – lets support DesignSojourn Mentorship

27May09

I have not “quippit” in a long time, and for good reasons… when do people see me writing endless and not get anything done? I prefer to be mute (or talk when I need to) and just do! Of course this is my work mode… get me out of the office and you will see an entire different experience.

–I think it has to do with my two identities of being a PA Dutchman verses a RISDer. They are the same but complete opposites. Oh well that is another topic theory all together–

I guess I need a reflection cause well, 2006 I was burnt out from school, 2007 sort woke up and pick up interest in design research/strategy/ethnography, then 2008 addictive to web exploration (how to use the web like how I researched RISD style – it may have to do with a new laptop too), and finally 2009 woke up! But it is still morning for me this year. Still groggy, needing some tea, need to look around my studio and my mind saying “what the heck did I do late last night.”

So this is where I am at:

Few years fresh from school with tons of personal questions and these are questions that no one can really give an answer for them. Or they can be answer but I know what the answer would be and yet don’t wish to hear it… But like others I am sure you have questions about design and so I came across this Designer Mentoring Program

Reading it, I was left with this question, what is a mentor? No really, what makes people a mentor to others? What does a mentor means to someone?

Cause think, what makes a mentor different than a lecturer? A lecturer just tells you their statement and expects you to apply it. UH? Don’t you ever feel from some people that you are “told” to do something their way without questioning or debating? …that is lecturing… and you have no say or objection.

But a mentor… well, to me a good mentor is a person who you come to with a question and you ended up not really answering the question but creating an renewal sense of inspirations of newer questions for you to figure out.

So if you are curious about this program just as much as I am, you just need to be an industrial designer or in that field of product design with little or exponential amount of experience. And from my perspective it is no fun if you don’t already have a baggage of questions to get started on the journey.

The other side of my curiosity is the “how” it works and maintaining that relationship. First it is a global situation so you will be using the “IN” thing these days… social media… yeah, I am intrigue with the whole social media because for me it makes my job easier and cost effective.

Lets face it, many American clients does not see the insight of design research yet. I don’t blame them, since I am having difficulties understanding how non – visualizing researchers translate their findings to the egocentric visualizing designers for product innovation. It is that part of the design process still not easy to cross. Of I don’t forget the other bridges in the design process that is difficult to cross either.

Maybe my next quippit will be my conflicting personalities… I have to ponder on that some more it might sound like I need to go to a mental institution or something.

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Algae…BioFuel…What are the possiblities?

12May09

There are some signs that the algae-based fuel industry might be ready to bloom.

One of the nascent industry’s biggest and most well-heeled players, Sapphire Energy, announced last week that it would be producing 1 million gallons of diesel and jet fuel a year by 2011, double its initial estimates.

The La Jolla, Calif.-based company – with big-name backers like Bill Gates and the Rockefeller family – says it will be producing more than 100 million gallons a year by 2018 and 1 billion gallons a year by 2020 – enough to meet almost 3 percent of the U.S. renewable fuel standard RFS of 36 billion gallons.

But there’s a hitch: Federal law makes no room for algae-based fuel in the RFS. The 2007 energy law caps corn ethanol production at 15 billion gallons a year by 2015 and has the remaining 21 billion gallons of renewable fuels coming from advanced biofuels, including 17 billion gallons from cellulosic biofuels and biodiesel.

via Is Algae the Biofuel of the Future?: Scientific American.

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Cell-o-redito debate

05May09

Is this idea new or old? Five years working within a team for intel’s future tech trends we predicted that phones should have credit card info…and of course the big debate is how dangerous to put everything in one basket.

Already there are countries (finland + Japan) that allow you to wave your phone to pay for food and transportation. but in America our major fault is security. The lawsuit of misplace phones+devices that has your information in it. And worst the psychology of your mind to perceive money from a phone verses a card. one of the many reasons why people are in debt with their credit card. the weight and feeling of giving cash leaves a higher impact of you spending your hard earn money than handing a weightless piece of plastic that never change in weight or size when you earn or lose money.

but overall this is a new avenue of wireless currency that will not replace credit cards or cash but compliment it for improving local business or local convenience like parking meters. I have not read it but heard about the book Everyware by Adam Greenfield which goes into further exploration into this subject.

so in reminder: “a great idea is simply an idea on paper… innovation is not just about ideas but the ability to turn great ideas into reality… ”

via yankodesign

The device in size of a credit card 54×85,6 mm will replace all those. Moreover it can work as:

- Video phone. Before making a call you can choose an operator of a mobile communication.
- All credit and discount cards that you have. The built in program will prompt an optimum variant for discounts at the given payment place.
- The remote control for any device. It can simultaneously display a teleschedule and recommendations of your favourite site.
- Keys from doors of houses and cars you have an authorization to.
- GPS-system that can automatically upload aerial photos from the Internet.
- Library, video- and music shop. You can read, listen to and watch all that at your choice. Go to a public online library or buy all that you want in any shop of the world.
- Gaming device with support of network gaming (remember that you have a GPS and the virtual reality becomes quite real).
- Even your computer that works with any operational system that is being uploaded through the Internet.

For any actions connected with safety (payment, opening of a door, …) the device authorizes you by reading your fingerprints.

Designer: Dima Komissarov

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Focus less when tagging articles

01May09

I think i found my reason to stop tagging… amazing how intuitive thinking is better than over-thinking.

via LINK for full article.

When I was at South by Southwest last month, I couldn’t help wondering how much of a presentation someone can really be watching while also paying attention to a Twitter stream and blogging, as most of the audience seemed to be doing. I was the Luddite taking notes on paper (to save my laptop battery). I also believe that social media doesn’t always enhance experience–sometimes, it takes you out of the experience to be had.

So I was interested today when, during one presentation at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Boston, Raluca Budiu, a user-experience specialist for the Nielsen Norman Group, asked the audience whether typing in tags for articles would help them remember key concepts. The answer, according to her research, is no. Users remembered less after typing in tags than after simply reading an article online.

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Change in theme

01May09

so, software gliche… had to change the theme because of hidden coding embeded in several pictures… and no those pictures above are not mine…give me some time to get use to this layout and change it eventually.

-thegwen

yeah i shall figure something out for the tags…

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Cat got eaten?

28Apr09
clipped from www.nerve.com
I can already tell you how my cats would feel about napping inside of a fish, but I love this goldfish cat bed and if they ever want another can of Fancy Feast again, they’ll learn to love it too.
Kitty home…. the fish conquers in this one.
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Music Phone Concept

23Apr09
clipped from www.cameraphonesplaza.com
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The phone is known under the name of Ondo and it was created by Pilotfish, “a progressive industrial design and product development studio” that is headquartered in three important cities of the world, Munich, Amsterdam and Taipei.

This is just a concept, for the moment, and it’s in fact a dedicated music editing phone concept. From now on, people can enjoy an entirely different music experience, as they have the possibility to benefit an interactive capture and editing of sounds.

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Full Cell Phone Concepts

23Apr09
old news recycled –

Also called Flask, the NEC phone concept is coming in an innovative design and rumors say that it will be released later this year.

The spectacular part of it is the fact that it is powered by a liquid fuel cell that is disappearing when power is drained away and the model is featuring also a touch-sensitive display.

It is known that fuel cells differ from standard batteries in that they consume reactant which must be replenished and on the other hand, the standard types store electrical energy chemically in a closed system.
The electrodes in the fuel cells are catalytic and more stable while a battery’s electrodes are reacting and changing when the battery is charged and discharged.
clipped from www.cameraphonesplaza.com
NEC Fuel Cell Phone Concept
NEC Fuel Cell Phone Concept
  blog it
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Touchscreen TouchPad

23Apr09
clipped from techon.nikkeibp.co.jp
Displaying a slideshow of photos. Thumbnails are being displayed on the optical sensor LCD panel at the bottom. In line with the slideshow on the main display, the thumbnails slide from the right to the left.
ages ago i wanted this, pretty much when wacom created drawing tablets with a screen.

via techon

Sharp Corp announced the “PC-NJ70A,” a new product in its “Mebius” series of notebook PCs, whose touchpad, “optical sensor LCD panel,” has touch panel and scanner functions.

The PC-NJ70A is the first product for which Sharp employed such a touchpad, the company said. With Intel Corp’s Atom microprocessor, for example, it has specifications equivalent to so-called “netbooks.”
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