Name: Cardboy
Artist:> Mark James
Manufacturer: Playbeast (via Strange Co)

Unfold the packaging outward to reveal the character’s legs, then turn the box inside out and you’re got your figure. good stuff.

For the man in your life who refuses to grow up, comes “The Golden Lightan”, a Transformer knockoff that looks like its a cigarette lighter except they left the lighter bit out. Also, it’s a limited edition of 3,500 so better grab one quick if you fancy it.

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Hung Hing Toys (via Strange Co)

This just in – “In an advance that could lead to lighter spacecraft and smarter cars, researchers have developed a new technique for producing a high-quality semiconductor that’s much more resistant to extreme conditions than the silicon found in most of today’s electronics. ” – Read on

As part of our diabolical plan to break our piggy banks for our readers, We’ll be travelling to Hong Kong soon and hope to dig up more sensory goodies for you kids. (Coincidently, so is Wristfashion that will be covering the Hong Kong Watch & Clock Exhibition)

So, If you’ve been to HK before and know where the action is, let us know and we’ll go looking – Art toys, fancy gadgets, you name it, we wanna see.

whisper please do comment even if you have no idea. I can’t have an empty comment box. 50,000 readers and not one comment. Its like being naked in public as far as weblogs are concerned. so embarrass me not. please. ;D

For a country that gorges on architectural monuments, the United Arab Emirates doesn’t have much as far as their local art scene is concerned, so It was noteworthy that they had their first ever public art event where they gathered local artists, both professional amateur to paint camel sculptures that at this moment can be found scaring little children all over the country.

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Camel Caravan Official Website (Tip: Esperanca)

Slate continues with its coverage of design and architecture with an article by Clive Thompson about how industrial design is becoming a weekend hobby for many and Christopher Hawthorne gives us the back story of al-Qaida’s latest New York target

Japan’s Seiko Epson unveiled their 12-gram flying micro robot last week, proclaiming it to be the world’s lightest robot, even though i suspect its really a helicopter.

It flies, its remote controlled comes with a camera and does nothing else. Yep, Sounds like a Helicopter.

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Source: Xinhauanet

If you’re one of the many female designers that took up the profession just so you could make comfortable high heels and earn the praise of millions of women that suffer quietly – its too late and yes, you got beat by a man. A podiatrist to be exact. According to the Seattle Times, Howard Dananberg was challenged by a female client to build a comfortable high heel and a comfortable high heel he built.

But first he needed to wear a tie and do some research. – He learned that first, high heels mimic the dynamics of walking downhill. “When you stand in high heels, it’s like a ramp. All the weight goes to the ball of the foot,” he said.

Second, a woman’s pelvis is broader than that of a man’s which helps to put a sway in her gait and allows her to negotiate high heels. “In-shoe” pressure testing helped Dananberg analyze how the foot bore weight inside a shoe.

The result was a molded heel that was ” an anatomically welcoming footbed and space-age this and that” and even had shock absorbers – A shoe that gave its body a softer landing and didn’t wobble. (more)

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Seattle Times: Trying to design the hurt out of High Heels

Being an Editor of a semi self important design zine means that I get invited to a lot of discussion groups and roundtables, and often while ferociously debating about the boundary between art and commerce, I’ll have a gentleman in the audience get up and start accusing me of being a fraud.

Sometimes I’ll ignore him and talk myself out of beating him senselessly, but should I be caught in one of my dreaded mood swings, I’ll slap him with my Louis Vutton hand glove and challenge him to a Russian roulette.

Usually, thats the end of it, but this one time, my bluff backfired and i found myself with a gun at my temple, my sweat at the tip of my nose and my heart in my throat. Would this be how it would end?

Luckily for me, I remembered I was chicken shit and started bawling bucket of tears. He was right. My site was nothing more than my personal wishlist. I was masquerading as a design writer. I didn’t care about the history and culture of objects.

All I really wanted was that pair of Adidas gold trainers and yes, this $400 Takashi Murakami soccer ball. sniff

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Takashi Murakami Unofficial Tribute site

Where to buy:
Moss – $400
Wakaba = $345
Unica Home – $400

Name: Soft Fan

From the same people at Priestman Goode who created the Pills to go concept, comes not one but two neat concepts:

The first is the ‘Soft Fan’ (pictured above) – An ingenious little fan with blades that use sail and kite material instead of regular metal ones.

Name: Bubble and Ripple

And the second are new pasta shapes called Bubble and Rupple that were designed to allow maximum coverage of sause so that you could get a better mouthful. Mucho respect, Priestmen sir.

Just the perfect accessory to go with the rad case i found in the computer market here – a pair of hip figurine speakers by the fun fun people at kid robot Starting from the 16” Spearhead Speaker (above) that goes for $99.95 to the $249.95 18” N-3B (the big one on the left below) that gives you 150W of output.

Get them, we say, before they sell out.

Name: Pills to Go
Designer: Priestman Goode (via Cool Hunting)
Status: Concept

You’re on the run. you feel faint. you need your meds, but you have no water. gasp cue – tense soundtrack. But then you remember, you got your ‘pills to go’ with a built in water container. Disaster averted, all thanks to the clever folks at Priestman Goode.

Our sister site talks with Douglas Irving, the creator of the clock that keeps time using sound.

We’ll return to our regular daily schedule tomorrow. We better be, otherwise we’ll keep our word and sell our editor’s kidney on ebay. That’s how we got him back. ;)