kpnv

Just caught this off boing boing. The Thumb Thing is just a small piece of plastic that lets you hold a book open with one hand. So you might ask, why would you need to hold a book open with one hand. Well, teachers for one certainly could use something like this and uh lonely guys for another.

Some months back, I read about Jamie Oliver's school dinners in the paper. Apparently, the UK celebrity chef hatched a plan to revolutionise school dinners in the Greenwich area in London. He made a sort of reality tv documentary hybrid of it on the UK's channel 4.

So I just caught an episode on the telly and I thought its pretty good. I appreciate the way he's covered all the angles. Not only has he come up with a healthier albeit slightly more expensive alternative, he's also come up with plans on how the whole thing works, from getting new equipment in school kitchens, to training the dinner ladies, to getting the government to pay them extra wages for the extra work (they prepare everything from scratch now as opposed to freeze dried stuff before) and a "food week" in which kids are taught about food in all subjects from math to language. To educate kids about the difference between real food and junk food, he shows them what really goes into a chicken nugget. His team also came up with an entire package, with stickers, a song, the lot. Learn more about his campaign at Feed me better.

Watching the show, I was really impressed at how he solved the various problems that cropped up and that bit made me disregard the fact that it was a show about a celebrity chef or whether or not things said by MPs or whoever in the show were honest or not. I read an article which said the some schools have got long term contracts with private firms to cater food which sort of scuppers Jamie's plans obviously but from what I gather, the government is at least outwardly supporting it. They probably have to as well, given all the media exposure.

Why didn't I come across this before? Another in a long list of stuff that I should be more attuned to. Design your own Converse Chucks and Purcells. The flash format is exactly the same as Nike iD's.

Come to think of it... I remember Nike bought up Converse not that long ago...

Check out my "custom" Chucks.

This asteroid drops onto earth in sometime during the ice age. As time progresses, the asteroid is weathered down in size and after what seems an eternity, finds a resting place on a sea bed. A hand reaches out and picks it up, the new Motorola PEBL. That's the ad on tv I keep seeing nowadays and I must say I really like the ad and the phone.

Being the sucker for clamshells that I am, the PEBL also sort of takes after the PENCK (which is only available in Japan and for use in Japanese networks anyway) so its looking very likely to take over my aging Sony Ericsson Z200 despite the fact my girlfriend thinks its ugly.

Love the way it opens itself with a single touch.

I really like the jewellery that you can find here at Studio 1A.M. From the pictured pendant to the Cork Cuff that Cool Hunting linked to, its all rather lovely modernist, minimalist objects (they do more than just accessories) wherein the material is the focus.

Elsewares is this link I got off boing boing. What they linked to was this pretty cool soda/beer can bracelet but the site itself stocks a whole bunch of interesting online shopping material.

Amkashop, linked off the ever excellent MoCo Loco, is an online store from France that retails the usual tees, posters and more stuff. Posters are printed on tarpaulin or paper.

I noticed one of the ads flashing on Gizmodo and an Eames Chair in the banner caught my eye.

Cribcandy is "a thumbnail bookmark blog with the best stuff for your home." Its powered by Wists, which is a sort of archive of people's bookmarks. You can use Wists to bookmark anything on the web and make a thumbnail and a short write up for future reference. Cribcandy justs sorts out and categorizes the interesting shopping stuff amongst these. You add tags to each of your bookmarks if you want.

So you have the chairs category and when you open it up, its like insta-mini-mega-catalogue of cool chairs, each one pictured and linked. This is categorized under interface cos its a new/old method of storing and accessing information that is constantly updated and makes for a great product design references/ideas resource and hyperlinked internet shopping fun.

Here's Jeff Ng AKA Jeff Staple's blog. A tribute to his old friend, Jeff is archiving a shoe every week
from his collection. Each shoe is up for grabs and you can also check out the little bits of Jeff's
everyday life, meeting people like Futura, KAWS, Stash, going to Timberland and NIKE offices, playing mahjong and telling it like it is.

Its nice to see all these names in pictures, presented through someone's honest eyes. Thanks to Cool Hunting for this great link.

Ps. That pic is NIKE's office lobby flooring made out of airbags.

The Design Innovation Awards are for Russian creatives. 2005 saw the winners for Architecture, Product and Graphic design.

Whilst I've seen this #1 phone by Roman Kriheli before and find it to be very pretty, I really love this reduced form of a button, an object which I've long upheld as an incredibly simple but brilliant invention.



Nikita Asadov reinteprets the traditional button and minimises it to its bare essentials, using less materials whilst keeping it strong and creating a new icon.

Via Sensory Impact.