I just noticed this message from Facebook wondering if I’d like to get involved with translating the Facebook service from English (US) to English (UK) - I guess that’s because I just logged in from the English south coast. Facebook’s new Translations application allows users all over the world to translate Facebook into different languages. Their Application’s About Page reads:

Join our community of translators and make Facebook available in your language.

Add the Translations Application to translate, review, and vote on translations in your language.

Once the translations for your language are complete and their quality has been verified by the community, your language will be launched for all Facebook users. After your language has been launched, you may continue to use the Translations application to translate and vote on translations for new Facebook features.

63 languages are currently open for translation by the Facebook community. Soon, we will be supporting translation for these right-to-left languages: Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Urdu, Yiddish and Divehi.

Faecbook Translations

By Piers Fawkes | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Uncategorized and Facebook, facebook translations

Sony Europe announced today that it will power its 32 largest sites throughout Europe, large meaning more than 100 employees, entirely from renewable resources. In a press release, Serge Foucher, Executive Vice President of Sony Europe, stated that the company has reduced its Co2 emission from fiscal year 2000 - 2008 by 90%.

The company has achieved these reduction through energy saving programs on all sites, “eco-thinking” as well as looking at shipping, reducing packaging and product energy use.

Via Environmental Leader

By Ebba Akerman | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Electronics & Gadgets, Environmental, Work & Business and Renewable energy, Serge Foucher, sony

Despite a general downturn for most retailers this year, affordable Swedish denim purveyors Cheap Monday have seen dramatic rises in not just their sales, but also in an overall interest in their brand. Rumored to have been bought by H&M, Cheap Mondays were orginally a capsule collection for Stockholm based counter-culture fashion mecca Weekdays and it hasn’t been until recently that they’ve started invested their resources into their beloved cult- women’s line- which  in NYC is almost impossible to find except at Urban Outfitters and Greenpoint- boutique Alter. In order to expand their collection, Cheap Monday has recruited proto-goth designer Ann-Sofie Back as their new creative director to help “create a stronger identity for Cheap Monday Products”. While Back won’t officially take over the position full time until spring/summer 2011, currently you can catch a sneak peak at some of her pieces for the Spring 2010 line at fashionologie.com.  In the meantime, Back will continue production on her solo line and her BACK diffusion line for autumn winter 2009/2010. For those few (and lucky) Swedish speakers, you can read a full interview with the designer about her upcoming plans at rodeo magazine online. However, for those who are fans of the circulation impairingly tight jeans-don’t worry, founder Orjan Andersson will still be holding the reins over at the denim department.

By Laura Feinstein | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Fashion and Cheap Monday, Sofie-Ann Back, Sweden

Artist 1chord & a fib has created a wonderful series of “infographics” that don’t contain any information. Playing off of information design’s current wave of popularity, the fake infographics maintain all the beauty of the medium but lack actual meaning or content.

[via GOOD]

By Dan Gould | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Arts & Culture, Design and art, Design, infographics

While the state of the economy is having a negative effect on most areas of the retail sector, more than a few industries are experiencing an uptick. Time examines recent trends in consumer spending, discovering that products and services that fulfill needs like escapism, inexpensive luxury and stress relief are reaping the most benefits.

Though it’s not exactly clear what methodology the magazine used to draw their conclusions, it’s interesting to note the contrast between purchases that reflect a desire for personal improvement - yoga classes, gardening supplies and mobile devices - versus those that seem to be indicative of temporary “guilty pleasures” - romance novels, ridiculous comedies and donuts. And because the stock market appears to be a bigger gamble than Vegas, more and more people are willing to risk their hard earned dollars on the chance to hit it big in the lottery. 

What are you buying at the checkout counter these days? 

[via Time]

[image via emdot on Flickr]

By Scott Lachut | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Finance & Money, Retail, Trends In The US, Work & Business and buying, consumer habits, purchasing trends, recession, Spending Habits

Those with both a fistful of money to burn on an iPhone app and deep nostalgia for retro Hewlitt Packard calculators may be a slim cohort, but if they’re out there, HP has them covered. Two vintage designs—the HP 12C financial calculator and HP 15C scientific calculator—have been carefully rendered via touchscreen, costing $15 and $30 respectively. There’s no doubt the buttons are wonderful looking, and the nerd chic aesthetic has its charms, but we would advise waiting for the price to drop a bit before replacing the iPhone’s already more than adequate built-in calculator.

[via Cool Hunting]

By Sam Biddle | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Electronics & Gadgets and calculator, hewlitt packard, Retro, Vintage

Hoping to do something about the less than 0.05% of milk and juice cartons in the US that ever end up recycled, Portland industrial designer John Schreiber created Milkmuny, producing highly-functional wallets from the familiar paper cartons we regularly discard. Milkmuny pays local groups seeking to raise funds for the cartons they collect, and after washing them, create wonderful multi-pocketed wallets through an intricate folding process—$10 each, with a 45 day warranty and a percentage of sales donated to environmental groups. Schreiber explains that

“I wanted to challenge traditional design thinking and create a mass produced product that didn’t expend more energy to create or require more resources to produce but was also aesthetically pleasing and uncompromisingly functional.”

[via TreeHugger]

By Sam Biddle | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Design, Environmental and carton, milkmuny, Paper, recycling, wallet

In a summer season filled with outdoor BBQ’s and picnics in the park, a level of convenience and disposability goes a long way. Unfortunately, for most of us that generally means trash bags overflowing with plastic cups and utensils, paper plates and napkins destined for the dump.

Enter Branch’s Biodegradable Party Kit, an all-in-one package with everything you need to serve 50 at your next gathering. The plates, cups and bowls are made from 100% sugar cane fiber (bagasse), the utensils are produced with potato starch and the napkins are from recycled paper. And while it can’t match the sustainability of reusing your dishes at every event, as an alternative, this kit just might be the next best thing.

[via Inhabitat]

By Scott Lachut | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Environmental, Food & Drink, Home & Garden and biodegradable, biodegradable party kit, eco-friendly products

PSFK recently asked our global network of experts, The Purple List for their thoughts on the future of journalism. We received answers that imagine a variety of possible scenarios, though a common theme emerged which points to a system that combines crowd-sourcing with some kind of editorial curation and professional reporting. If you want to share your ideas about where news reporting is heading, leave your thoughts in the comments.

What is the Future of Journalism?

“I’d go with fragmented tribal media. Ground up, Wikipedia-style editing. Private philanthropy will support institutions like The New York Times, if they exist as printed media. Everything goes digital in the next 10 years.”

Erik Johanson

“I envision the future of Journalism to be collaborative and social made up of citizen journalist much like newsvine.com combined with features of craislist and twitter where one can search and contribute by zip code and topic, upload photos, videos and share or retweet content.”

Yesenia Hernandez

“The future of journalism is the the future of music production - independent, modular, self-resourced, entrepeneurial. Sometimes relevant, mostly on the cutting edge.”

Constantine Frantzeskos

“The future of journalism is information written, or passed on, from your friends. The tipping point will be when the line between gossip and news is drawn. (as most of my friends choose not to share gossip via electronic media)”

Matt Carr

“Journalism will inevitably be a multi-media, multi-platform discipline. With all the tools freely available to pull the “reader” in and with the need of bleeding publishers to extract more value from its payroll, simply writing about something on a single format will not be good enough.

Competing online requires sacrificing profit margins in the hopes of capturing a wider target audience. Not competing online will mean irrelevance, which is journalism’s equivalent of death. A volume game tends to always demand more from its players because of the high stakes and the low margin for error. Journalists with broader communication skills will be able to tailor their offerings better to create a broader base and survive this transitional era of new media natural selection.”

Jason Tan

“One future of journalism is to disintermediate the institutions that now represent them (magazines and newspapers) and create a micropayment system that allows them to get paid directly by the reader. They will have to supply their own editorial direction. They will have to fund their own initiatives, but this model could work well. It depends of course on a micropayment system. And this has been very slow in coming. And this is odd because the person who creates this system gets to be Bezos or Gates. (Good point. Who would want to be Gates.)”

Grant McCracken

“Technology, connectivity and riding the Google Wave will no doubt rapidly transform online media to “Churnalism” where everyone with a Twitter account is a journalist. Meaningful quality journalism will always require integrity as its backbone and be inspired by asking and investigating the hard questions that no-one wants to answer. The two are already in separate distinct forms catering to separate markets both of whom would probably click into a headline like “Paris under siege” but one group would be clicking out quickly, disappointed with the content.”

Tony Carne

“Print, Television and Radio and to some degree the Web supply the canvas for journalistic excellence and objective reporting. Wire services and web networks (like Twitter) are the pipes the stories flow through. The Web casts a wide net for seasoned, amateur and would-be journalists to voice positions but, at the same time, dangerously blur the lines between true journalism, soapbox antics and personal, more subjective opinion.”

Paul Benjou

“The future of journalism, and to a certain extent quality printed word, seems a little bleak from both the inside looking out and visa versa. Here in Stockholm we have precious few decent writers, those with not only a grounding in the basics of writing but also capable of more than scratching the surface of subject matter.

I popped to a seminar held by Svensk Form, the Swedish Design Council, recently where to topic of design criticism was broached. All agreed that there are a lack of emerging writers thanks to number of reasons. Firstly, the blog scene is big here but, again, due to the ease of having one the amount of decent content is limited. Plus editorial budgets have to go into features, which are the only way to earn a decent crust but, as a result, have to be undertaken by decent writers to appease the readership. So you have Editors unable to commission new writers for this reason - there is only a finite time you can write for free before you realise you need cash. Although try telling this to the poor deluded kids working grattis for Dazed & Confused.

If you want to have a career as a journalist the current market means you cannot afford to be picky about who or what you write about. Any graduates emerging thinking they are likely to get a swish job for Elle, iD or Wallpaper are seriously deluded and it’s those willing to turn their hands to every form of writing who will get far. Casting your net wide as it were seems to be the future for proper journalism, which also demonstrates you are capable of writing across the board in a number of different styles.”

Richard Prime

So to zero in on one segment of the ‘journalism’, newspapers. What’s really interesting to me is the identity crisis the newspapers are going through. Their traditional role of ‘news’ / content creation and distribution has been completely supplanted by digital. So what can they do?

Attempting to ‘own’ the news and control the ‘news agenda’ is now nearly impossible. However I think there’s a new role for them to play in ‘convening’ conversations and information. I foresee some type of aggregation model around gathering, filtering and empowering people to share/discuss ‘news’. Of course, this is what blogs have been doing, but with the exponential rise of information, the need for a ‘trusted’ brand who can meaningfully filter/curate news becomes more and more important.

For example, online is brilliant for real-time, immediacy, open engagement, widespread commenting and discussion, and for its sheer diversity of sources (ie truly ‘breaking’ news which in theory is smarter and less biased thanks to the wisdom of the crowd). So it would make sense if the ’slow’ next day print edition was more focused on deeper analysis, a top-down view of how the stories evolved, and curated snippets of filtered content. It could even track the evolution of the news throughout the previous day(s). It could also be positioned around driving people online to continue conversations, which would feed into the next day’s analysis etc. In some ways, it is the ‘letters to the editor’ concept swallowing the entire paper!

I guess this is where the market is already moving, however as long as newspapers decline to take the initiative to define a new role for themselves, they will have a new role defined for them; obsolescence.

Justin McMurray

Orli Sharaby

The goal of The Purple List is to connect experts with clients who need to know. The aim is for a client to be able to find an expert on any subject, any where, for any time. Experts can be hired just for a telephone call or for a longer projects. If you’re a freelancer and would like to be considered as a Purple List expert, just pop through to the site, hit the Sign Up button and leave enough details to convince us you’re right for the service.

The Purple List

By Dan Gould | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Featured Articles, Media & Publishing, TV & Film, Web & Technology, Work & Business and Citizen Journalism, crowdsourcing, journalism, Twitter

Some are impressed that the site could be purchased for $7.8 million because it’s one of the top 100 most visited websites in the world, but the obvious legal troubles associated with its “business” dampen the investment prospects.  The team behind it promise to continue fighting for the “openess of the nets” and for freedom of speech and information through a foundation built on the money from the sale, but we’ll see how that works out given their recent legal troubles.  Reuters reports that the new owners hope to make the site completely legal and “introduce (business) models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site.”  Mark Mulligan, the VP at Forrester, noted that the transition would likely alienate the Pirate Bay’s 20 million users.  He predicts,

“The bottom line is that most people who use file-sharing networks use it because it’s free. They are not likely to start paying just because the owners have a new business model.  There has not yet been a single example of a legal file-sharing network which has made a successful transition to a legal business.”

It is unclear what direction The Pirate Bay will go after this sale, but a new business model and leadership will certainly change the site.

[via Mashable]

By Nicko Margolies | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Advertising & Branding, Finance & Money, Global Community, Media & Publishing, Web & Technology, Work & Business and Bittorrent, business deals, global gaming factory X AB, Piracy, Sweden, the pirate bay, torrent

Foot Pump Phone Chargers

Festival goers at Glastonbury, in the U.K., can charge their cell-phones through using a standard airbed foot pump, the type normally found all over festival sites. The Orange Gotwind power pump’s turbine is rotated at speeds of up to 2000 rpm from the air flow generated by the foot pump, this turbine then directly drives the small but powerful alternator. A 5 minute phone call will require approximately 1 minute of foot pumping.

Learn more here.

Green Applications

T-Mobile introduces Green Perks, a free downloadable application that delivers exclusive discounts on green products and services directly to your phone. Just scroll through the offers on your phone, flash your Green Perks coupon when you check out, and you’re done. Featured offers include a 20% discount off Method home care and personal care products, as well as Jamba Juice, Quiksilver and Volcom.

Find out more here.

Standardized Phone Chargers

Ten leading mobile phone and chip makers have agreed to develop a universal standard micro-USB phone charger for the European market. The EU expects the first generation of standard mobile phone chargers to reach the market by 2010. The new standard charger will replace the more than 30 different kinds of charger currently in use and minimize electronic waste.

Find out more here.

Carbon Counters

In late June, Deutsche Bank place an 67-by-32-foot electronic billboard outside Madison Square Garden, where over 500,000 people see it daily. The Carbon Counter works as a meter on human-caused climate change, monitoring the real-time, cumulative pollution humans are emitting into atmosphere via data from MIT’s Global Climate Change Program and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Tracking progress through measurements and transparency.

Find out more here.

Air Purifiers

GreenAir builds on the ancient idea of purifying the indoor environment with living plants. In most cases, indoor air is more polluted than outdoor air. GreenAir absorbs contaminants from indoor air through the roots and leaves. A solar-powered fan lures the polluted air to the root region so that huge amount of contaminants can be gathered to purify in a shorter span of time. Designed by Sherly Gunawan at LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore.

Innovative Government

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency arranged its first-ever Water Quality Video Contest to engage citizens about water pollution and protection. Encouraging creativity and educating citizens about actions that they can take to reduce their impact is vital to improving the nations water quality.

See the winners here.

From Coal To Culture

If provided with the right knowledge and insights, culture is at its best a very powerful way of communicating. Global FOCUS works with Chinese artist and filmmakers, looking at the positive impacts the creative sector will gain as we move from a coal consuming society to a culture consuming society.

Find out more here.

Sustainable Automobiles

The Royal College of Art in London Summer Graduate Show is serving up fresh ideas on the future of cars. The department of Vehicle Design has produced several prototypes for sustainable automobiles to be admired and to inspire and industry in great need of innovation.

Find out more here.

Small Luxury Cars

In the meantime, Aston Martin launches the Cygnet.  A concept that represents a creative, environmentally conscious solution, being small, yet with presence – and highly fuel efficient, now combined with the prestige of Aston Martin’s luxury brand ownership.

Find out more here.

Taxibots

Airbus and Israel Aerospace Industries is pursuing a joint venture of developing and testing environmental friendly pilot-controlled towing semi-robotic systems. Helping airplanes to taxi between the gate and runway without using their jet engines could potentially reduce CO2 emissions from 18 billion tons to 2 million tons, cut fuels costs from $8 to $2 billion and significantly reduce noise pollution.

Find out more here.

By Ebba Akerman | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Arts & Culture, Automotive, Design, Electronics & Gadgets, Environmental, Home & Garden, Luxury, TV & Film, Telecom, Transport & Travel, Work & Business and Airbus, aston martin, Cygnet, Deutsche Bank, epa, European Union, glastonbury, Global FOCUS, Gotwind, GreenAir, Greenn Perks, IAI, MIT, Royal College of Art London, Sherly Gunawan, T-Mobile, Taxibot

The Holt Renfrew Vancouver store recently paid homage to their favourite fashion blogs.  The 170 year old Canadian department store brand has dedicated each window display to a number of notorious fashion blogs, including; The Sartorialist, Bryan Boy, Garance Dore, Sea of Shoes, Jak & Jil and I want I got.

[via Style Spy]

By Claudia Cukrov | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Advertising & Branding, Design, Fashion, Trends In The US and

Conneticut Science Center opened its LEED-certified doors earlier this June. 95% of the steel used in construction is manufactured from recycled cars and during operating hours, fuel cell provides approximately two-thirds of the needed power. Once the Science Center is closed for the day, the fuel cell will transfer energy back into the grid system.  Architect Cesar Pelli has changed the Hartford skyline with the Centers signature “Magic Carpet Roof”, covering 40,000 square feet of exhibition area which accommodates Space, Invention, Energy and many other permanent and traveling exhibitions.

By Ebba Akerman | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Architecture, Arts & Culture, Design, Transport & Travel, Youth and Cesar Pelli, Conneticut Science Center, LEED

Artist Jonathan Harris has just announced the release of an interesting project he’s been working on over the last two tears with Sputnik, Inc., a NYC-based nonprofit dedicated to documenting, archiving and disseminating ideas that are shaping contemporary culture. Named Sputnik Observatory, the project is a fascinating collection of inter-connected video interviews with hundreds of leading thinkers in the arts, sciences and technology.

As one might expect, the conversations are organized into typical categories such as speaker name and subject matter, but what makes this site’s design a bit more revelatory than the standard fare, is extra functionality that enables users to easily navigate between sound bites organized around common themes. It makes the process feel a bit like searching through the shelves of library, while simultaneously fulfilling our need for abbreviated immediacy. In addition, a visual bookmarking feature allows the audience to keep track of their paths and save the results to a “playlist” so as not to get lost or waylaid on the way to an epiphany.

Harris explains:

The central premise of the Sputnik project is that everything is connected to everything else, and that topics and ideas that may seem fringe and even heretical to the mainstream world are in fact being investigated by leading thinkers working in fields as diverse as quantum physics, mathematics, neuroscience, biology, economics, architecture, digital art, video games, computer science and music. Sputnik is dedicated to bringing these crucial ideas from the fringes of thought out into the limelight, so that the world can begin to understand them.

Conducted over more than ten years and previously unavailable to the public, the interviews within the site chronicle some of the most provocative human ideas to have emerged in the last few decades. The site itself aims to highlight the interconnections between seemingly disparate thinkers and ideas, using a simple navigational system with no dead ends, where every thought leads to another thought, akin to swimming the stream of consciousness.

And for those seeking a slightly less taxing form of discovery, the site also offers a number of curated pathways.

The Sputnik Observatory

By Scott Lachut | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Arts & Culture, Education, Entertainment, Environmental, Global Community, Media & Publishing, Science, Web & Technology and Science, thought leaders, video

Jeff Klarin and Rebecca Johnson make up BUGHOUSE design. The duo creates limited edition furniture (amongst other artistic pursuits) that subvert the traditional expectations placed on functional objects. Upcycling and remixing elements from such diverse areas as pharmacology, DJ culture and the occult, BUGHOUSE makes extremely unique furnishings that give new life to common objects.

BUGHOUSE Art + Design

By Dan Gould | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Architecture, Arts & Culture, Design, Electronics & Gadgets, Environmental, Home & Garden and Furniture, Remix, Upcycling

Situated somewhere between a cocktail napkin and a smartphone, this notepad concept developed by Piotr Górski is ideal for the Luddite in all of us, who secretly craves a bit of elegant, low-tech design in our lives. The slim, credit card sized tablet utilizes the qualities of rubber and foil in combination to create temporary imprints that can be made using any pointed object from an included stylus to a swizzle stick. When passed across the surface, an attached slider bar produces a clean slate that can be written on again and again. Just one of many product innovations viewable on Gorski’s site.

[via Yanko Design]

By Scott Lachut | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Arts & Culture, Design and low-tech design, notepad, Piotr Gorski, Product Design

There can be no doubt that, from the moment we roll out of bed to the screeching of our alarm (on a clock, on an iPhone, from a radio) until the moment we close our eyes again (having put down our book, our laptop, our TV remote) we are surrounded by more objects, each begging to be both purchased and manipulated, than the human mind can comfortably reconcile. We are positively inundated. ‘Things’ are supposed to be our tools as a species—ways to interact with and mediate our experiences with nature and each other as instruments to achieve some end. In the age of the ubiquitous object, when there is no escape and no easy choice, can ‘things’ still serve us in this sense, allowing for our gratification? Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his wonderful “Ode To William H. Channing,” lamented that “Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind.” The New York Times’ John Tierny put up a fascinating post on a recent study that takes on the same question and offers a nuanced response, on happiness, material purchases, and the extent to which they ever overlap.

The study was conducted by Dr. Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Miller asked New York Times readers to

List the ten most expensive things (products, services or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most happiness. Count how many items appear on both lists.

The findings of the study were a mix of both the expected and the surprising. On the ‘most expensive’ lists appeared sundry indulgences, from wine cellars to drugs. On the ‘happiest’ list of purchases were objects that spanned price ranges: a studio apartment in Paris, eyeglasses, an ant colony, and, for some unfortunate couple, “girlfriend.” Appearing frequently on both lists were expenditures on both more profound, ‘life changing’ things like houses and college degrees, as well as luxury items like BMWs and Blu-Ray players.

From here, the study’s results drift toward the cynical, and the somber. Items listed disproportionately on the ‘expensive’ lists included children (and their associated expenses), marriages (and their associated stresses), and boats—all items requiring massive time and responsibility commitments, as well as the obvious sunk money. Those items appearing far more often on the ‘happy’ list than on the ‘expensive’ list were objects such as bicycles, liquor, shared food, books, and quality bedding—items conducive to personal intimacy, shared thoughts, and personal pleasure.

Dr. Miller noted several trends among the comments left by participants in the study. First, many considered their purchased objects in line with their personal interests, so that happiness and expense were mostly congruent:

“The three things (not necessities) I have spent the most money on in the past ten years are: my cottage at Cape Cod, my Lexus, and my Rolex–and I LOVE all three, in the order of their cost. And I don’t care what that says about me,”

boasted one. Next, many participants noted that their happiest objects were those that tended to encourage or contribute to an experience, rather than the simple possession of manipulation of an object: “For the most part, the things that brought most happiness were the ones that kept me hanging out with my friends.”

The answer remains muddled, university study methodology notwithstanding, and the hope that we can ever fully come to terms with our daily material surfeit remains dim—to even consider the quandary is to confront the very objects in question. What sense does it even make to consider the actual happiness granted by our gadgets and tools while sitting in an ergonomic chair at a laptop? The confused nature of this question is further illustrated by one of today’s posts at Gizmodo, in which their readership is casually polled as to whether gadgets make them “happy” or “sad.” Many of the comments expressed immediate confusion: how could a site dedicated to gadget news and criticism even question the happiness associated with these things? “Isn’t that why we’re all here” seemed a common sentiment. The rest of the responses ran the gamut of “I love expensive toys” and more grim “gadgets fill a hole in my soul” answers, but perhaps the most insightful came on the first page, from Gizmodo reader dancekat1:

I admit that I’m addicted to gadgets but I also voted “sad” in the above poll. I like to think that “technological minimalism” will eventually come into vogue and advanced technology will be integrated into our lives without demanding so much of our attention.

In the end, it most likely does come down to attention. We’re finite creatures, and if it’s come to the point where we have to sort our things into lists to even consider whether or not they’re worth a place in our life, or in our pocket, our attention most likely ran out long ago.

[images via Mads Boedeker, Alan Stanton, laser2k, and joi]

By Sam Biddle | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Design, Electronics & Gadgets, Environmental, Featured Articles, Food & Drink, Health & Beauty and expensive, happiness, objects, study, things

The recently completed Musée Hergé, designed by Christian de Portzamparc, is a an odd sight in the midst of the dense Belgian forest it inhabits. The structure’s emphatic angles and wide planes jut out across an elevated footbridge, and house both permanent and temporary collections exploring the life and oeuvre of Hergé, most famous for his internationally beloved Tintin comics. But beyond the contents of the museum’s exhibits, Portzamparc worked to ensure that the building itself is a tribute to Hergé’s distinct style. Its interiors draw upon coloring and motifs from Hergé’s designs, its surfaces appearing as almost abstracted comic book pages. The museum’s rectangular windows, set in thick frames, similarly evoke the traditional structure of comic panels.

[via ArchDaily]

By Sam Biddle | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Architecture, Arts & Culture, Design and Belgium, hergre, museum

We’ve witnessed some innovative re-uses of shipping containers in the past from retail pop-up shops to portable health clinics, but the Müvbox Restaurant located in Montreal’s Old Port is particularly stunning. The website explains the modular design:

Created from an old shipping container powered by solar energy, this concept is a modern-day reinvention of the
old-fashioned canteen which creates an experience that’s environmentally-friendly, ethical and affordable. Every night, Müvbox vanishes back into its cube, redeploying early the next morning in less than two minutes, at the touch of a button!

In keeping with the underlying notion of sustainability, the restaurant dishes out high-end fast food using locally sourced products. And given the inherent mobility, adaptability and self-contained aspects of his restaurant model, owner and creator Daniel Noiseux hopes that other entrepreneurs will be interested in developing their own bistros-in-a-box from the Müvbox concept.

[via unconsumption]

By Scott Lachut | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Architecture, Design, Environmental, Food & Drink, Retail and Modular Design, Montreal, Muvbox, restaurant, shipping container

Bike Exif has posted an intriguing, obscure motorcycle concept design that Porsche came out with in 1979. The model was created to call attention to the motorcycle’s superiority in energy use, air pollution and traffic space.

Porsche describes the concept:

Comfort, safety and protection from mud and water were prime considerations, not the usual fascination with speed: The engine, running gear and wheels are carefully shielded by streamlined fairings to keep the rider clean and obviating the need for special clothing under normal weather conditions. The handlebars are heatable and adjustable. So is the seat, depending on the rider’s size or requirements. In case of collision, integrated kneepads carry the rider over the obstacle. A supplementary luggage rack may replace the passenger seat.

[Bike Exif via FFFFOUND]

By Dan Gould | © PSFK, 2009. | Article Link | Comments | More stories in: Automotive, Design, Environmental, Transport & Travel and 70's, Design, motorcycle, porsche