Tug Your Plug

A slight tug on the cord, that’s all it asks for, this Pull Lightly Plug by Choi Hyong-Suk. Why? The obvious reasons…old habit of yanking a plug die hard, so give this one a gentle tug…right till you hear a click…satisfy your sorry cravings and save some wasted standby electricity. From a design point of view – it’s clever because it works around a natural human behavior and doesn’t try to be preachy!

Designer: Choi Hyong-Suk

Yankodesign

Paper To Pencil, Just Like That!

P&P Office Waste Paper Processor is one of those things that you wish you knew how it works, but dang! no reasonable explanation provided at all! Maybe it’s a deliberate attempt on the designer teams’ part, because their idea is a surefire hit! What this lovely machine does is that it converts all those useless memos on your table to something useful: A Pencil! Paper goes in from one end and come out shaped like a sexy writing tool! Sexy enough an idea to bag a Liteon Award as well!

Pencil lead, power and glue are the only other things that it requires.

Designers: Chengzhu Ruan, Yuanyuan Liu, Xinwei Yuan & Chao Chen

Yankodesign

Cubish Audio Blasters

This project goes by the name “Edge” and it comes in a bunch of different colors and works wirelessly. What more could anyone want? Let’s talk about what it actually does – it’s an audio player. It’s got a USB plug and an audio jack in the back for digital music formats as well as stereo sound. Edge has the ability to play audio over Bluetooth via AirPlay. Dynamic bass for voluminous amounts of deep sound. Big open surface spaces for customizability to the max.

As you can see, the first collaboration for the Edge system is with graphics group Dauerfeuer. Lots of pretty colors and arrangement of super pretty fabulous pics. Get all jacked up and blast some musical beats or movie audio or any other kind of sounds you can think of all over the place!

Designers: FORMBOTEN

Yankodesign

Chilling Outside The Window

It’s interesting to so how cultural practices can trigger off inspiration to design a product that can be an extension of the same. For instance in India we usually keep pickles on our window sill, to marinate and cook them in the natural heat. Whereas in China, because of their cold conditions, food is kept outside the window to preserve it, plus it frees up the kitchen space. This Chinese practice inspired Frenchman Nicolas Hubert to design the External Refrigerator. A fridge that hangs on the external wall of your home. The win-win situation here is that during winters the low temperatures help in conserving energy and keeping the fridge-items cold. And during summer, solar energy is harnessed via the solar panels, to power the fridge.

If you think this concept is worth the shot, you may want to vote for it here, External Refrigerator (and 7 others) is vying for the top spot the Electrolux Design Labs Competition. The results will be announced on the 23rd September @ 100% Design London. And Yanko Design will be there to bring you the results! LIVE!

Designer: Nicolas Hubert

Yankodesign

Ấn tượng Opel Corsa 2011

Opel Corsa 2011 với nhiều lựa chọn về động cơ, khung xe tốt hơn, khả năng lái được nâng cấp, bên cạnh đó Corsa sẽ có một số phiên bản với màu sơn tuyệt đẹp phù hợp với mọi sở thích và phong cách.

Loạt động cơ xăng mới của Corsa sẽ có công suất từ 65 mã lực đến 192 mã lực. Động cơ ecoFlex 1,3 lít mới với công suất 95 mã lực có lượng khí thải CO2 rất thấp, đạt 98 g/km. Nếu muốn tiết kiệm nhiên liệu hơn nữa, khách hàng có thể trang bị thêm công nghệ Start/Stop.

Opel Corsa OPC - phiên bản mạnh nhất với động cơ xăng tăng áp 1,6 lít, công suất 192 mã lực cùng với hộp số sàn 6 cấp có lượng tiêu thụ nhiên liệu trung bình 7,3 lít/100km và lượng khí thải CO2 đạt 172 g/km.

Loạt động cơ Diesel CDTI có 2 loại dung tích 1,3 lít và 1,7 lít cho công suất từ 75 mã lực đến 130 mã lực. Những động cơ diesel này có lượng tiêu thụ nhiên liệu trung bình ở mức dưới 4,5 lít/100km.

Động cơ diesel CDTI dung tích 1,7 lít có công suất 130 mã lực, tốc độ tối đa 200km/h và tăng tốc từ 0-100km/h trong vòng 9,5 giây. Phiên bản Corsa 3 cửa sử dụng động này có lượng tiêu thụ nhiên liệu trung bình ấn tượng 4,5 lít/100km và lượng khí thải CO2 là 118 g/km.

Phiên bản Corsa đặc biệt có tên gọi "Color Line" với vành hợp kim 17 inch và nước sơn tuyệt đẹp. Ngoài ra, phiên bản này còn được trang bị khung xe thể thao, ghế ngồi thể thao, hệ thống bàn đạp bằng hợp kim, ống xả hình bầu dục...

Theo Giaoducthoidai

The 2 fastest bikes in the U.S.

I wasn’t sure about the order, but before the USA Cycling Pro Championship time trial started this morning, I had a pretty good idea who would end up on the top two steps of the podium. I knew it was going to be a great race, and it certainly didn’t disappoint with Taylor Phinney edging out Levi Leipheimer to win the Stars and Stripes jersey by less than a second. You can read more about the race elsewhere, but I want to share a few of my shots of the two bikes that were fastest today.

Below, you can see Taylor Phinney’s race winning Trek Livestrong Equinox TTX

The second fastest bike today was another Trek, this one belonging to Radio Shack’s Levi Leipheimer.

I have many more pictures from the time trial to post soon…and I’ll have photos from the road race tomorrow. Look for those in my Flickr stream soon.

Posted in Road.

Bike day at Design*Sponge

I have mentionedDesign*Sponge on this blog a couple times before. In a 2005 post, I referred to it as “one of my favorite non-bike blogs”. Five years later that is still true, so I was really glad to see that all of the D*S posts yesterday were dedicated to bikes.

To kick off the bike themed day, Grace ran an interview with Julie Hirschfeld, owner of New York bike boutique Adeline Adeline. Prior to founding the shop, Julie worked in entertainment and fashion… and she definitely brings her background in design and aesthetics to the world of bike retail. It is great to hear Julie’s thoughts on bicycle style and trends; it really makes you understand why her classic bike oriented shop is successful in the U.S.’s biggest urban market. Next was a ‘best of bikes’ post featuring many great photos of bicycles in nicely designed interior environments. Design*Sponge closed out the bike themed day yesterdaywith a product roundup featuring over 55 bikes, bike-related accessories, and bike inspired home décor products. I really enjoyed Grace’s perspective as a self-proclaimed “cycling novice” and I hope we will see more bike content on her blog in the future.

Personally, I always love to see bicycles featured prominently on a blog or other media source that is not cycling related. Though there are more well-designed bicycles and products on the market now than ever before that appeal to customers who are not interested in “sport” cycling, the bicycle industry for the most part is still largely made up of bike enthusiasts designing and marketing products for other enthusiasts. The passion that people in the industry have for the products they produce is great, but posts like these at Design*Sponge (and the associated reader comments) provide great insight into a segment of the market that still has huge potential for growth (that Blue Oceanidea again). As much as I love lightweight road bikes and expensive carbon bits, I still truly believe that stylish (and fun) urban bike categories have the most potential for future growth.

On the subject of bikes for the Blue Ocean, I’ll close with a link to a recent article that Mark Sanders wrote for the Eurobike Show Daily titled ‘Cycling Posture- Upright is Right’. After you read the article, check out EcoVelo’s follow-up post, which not surprisingly has generated some debate in the comments section. I’ll save my thoughts on the subject for another post, but for now I encourage you to vote in the riding position poll and join the discussion over at EcoVelo.

Posted in Commuter.

Eurobike Student Award Winners

I briefly mentioned the Eurobike Student Design Awards in my previouspost about the show. After seeing the photos of the 12 winners though, I thought it was worth pointing them out in a separate post. Four of the twelve awarded entries were from the E-bike category, not all that surprising considering the huge presence electric bikes had at the show (readChris Matthews’ latest post for interesting commentary on that subject). The student designed e-bikes chosen by the jury were- Tribune by Florian Vecsey and Lukas Thüring, Joe Buzz by Johannes Zäuner, RinGo by Hang Hoon Choi and Sang Joon Lee, and Vorradler by Andrew Ayala,Yanping Chen, Nina Gerlach, Elena Kononova, Maria Leisch,José Luis Martinez Meyer, Enzo Peres, Evi Poxleitner, Franz Reel, Diana Schneider, and Henning Vossen.

Two other bikes were included in the top 12- Foldi-fi, a folding bike by Jungwoo Han and Ju Yeon Yoo, and Remex, a rowing bike by Jonas Villiger and Christian Schmid. A crankset by Robert Taranczewski was selected as the only component to recieve a student award.

The rest of the award winners were accessories, and a few of those were the ones I found to be the most interesting. You might remember Adiubik, a clipless pedal adapter by Christian Breig, from my last Eurobike post.

The Enos bike touring-tent by Fabian Furrer uses the bike (or 2 bikes) as a part of the support structure. I don’t know all the details, but it seems like an interesting idea for bike touring, where every bit of extra weight counts.

Lock Light by Boyeon Oh, Geunhyuk Yoo, and Seokho Hwang is another concept that I though was interesting. Combination products like that don’t always make sense, but a flashing LED cable lock seems like a pretty good idea for urban cycling. More visibility at night is always a good idea, right? Incidentally, that concept is also on the shortlist for the Seoul Cycle Design Competition.

Sling, by Nina Hoepfner, is another lock concept that fits into the bike’s handlebar.

Streetbeam, by Jungsoo Park and Hyemin Kim, is a GPS based navigation system that projects directional arrows on the pavement in front of you. Seems like an idea that would only work at night, but an interesting concept nevertheless.

Thanks to Torben from CykelPortalen, Denmark’s independent bicycle portal, for sending me photos and information about the award winners. He has some great coverage of Eurobike on his site. The content is in Danish, but I have found that Google translates it pretty well.

Posted in E-bike, Student Design, Tradeshows.