design

If this shower were a shoe, it'd be a Louboutin stiletto with diamonds

At Crave, we're all about living the high life, or at least pretending we can--it sure beats Hello Kitty sometimes. You know, flying cars, Ferrari phones, and speaker-equipped cocoon beds. Basically, if it's gorgeously yet somewhat-obnoxiously designed, we're all over it (vicariously).

Consequently, we are totally drooling over this shower from Signorini Design (yup, it's Italian). Not only does it pour water forth from a sleek metallic block rather than a typical shower head, but a set of colored lights can illuminate the water in your shade of choice. Which means--yes!--it's color-changey. That basically … Read more

Shredding documents with a hamster, the difficult way

As a former hamster owner, I can tell you that this concept for a hamster-powered paper shredder is really, really inefficient. Sure, it's not a mass-market product, but rather a design concept by artist Tom Ballhatchet that will be on display in Milan next week. The device works like this: the hamster runs on the wheel, which powers the shredder, which shreds the paper into hamster bedding. Clever, right?

Um, here's another idea. Just put the paper in the hamster's cage. Hamsters' teeth never stop growing, which is why they constantly need to chew on things. Consequently, … Read more

The SmartFish is sexier than your average flying car

I won't even bother making the requisite jokes about how it's well past 2000 and we should all be behind the wheels of flying cars by now--that humor is so 2006. But I'm really digging the design of the SmartFish, a Swiss prototype for a hydrogen fuel-cell mini-aircraft that will optimally be more efficient than a car and will be able to travel at 560 miles per hour. Ooh, speedy. It'll be about 20 feet long and will hold two people, though the designers hope to work on a 20-seater version yet. (Perfect for your kid'… Read more

Meet Windmill 2.0

It just had to come out of the Netherlands. These contraptions, called the "Light Wind," are manufactured by Dutch design firm Demakersvan, and they're outdoor lights powered by wind. They might look like design-savvy variations on those little propeller beanie hats that I'm sure a few people over at the Googleplex have been known to accessorize with, but I personally think these are a cool "green" idea. They even have the capacity to store up energy when it's windy so that the light will keep shining all night long. (For size comparisons, the … Read more

All-round view from the Infiniti EX concept

Infiniti is one of our favorite automakers when it comes to in-cabin gadgetry, as evidenced in our recent reviews of the 2007 M35 Sport and 2007 FX45. And here at the 2007 New York International Auto Show, the Infiniti lab coats are strutting their stuff again with the unveiling of the Infiniti EX concept. Similar in design to the space-age FX crossover, the EX concept is the forerunner to a production version due out next year. The EX concept features an arsenal of tech features that we haven't seen anywhere before.

Perhaps the most impressive is the Around View … Read more

Jimdo: Another super-simple site builder

After I covered Weebly, I got a note from the creator of Jimdo, another easy-to-use Web site creator tool. I took it for a quick spin, and I'm somewhat impressed. It has a lot of very strong features, it makes pretty sites, and it's free.

The service is especially good at handling photos. It does a great job displaying photos that you upload to it, and it also integrates beautifully with Flickr. There are good options for how the galleries are displayed, and when you zoom into a picture, it displays over the page instead of taking you … Read more

Memory card reader as jewelry

Once again, the R&D people at Japan's Elecom may be unwittingly indicating that they have too much time on their hands. Witness their latest creation: a luxury memory card reader. Granted, it looks beautiful in the company handouts--available in silver, black and white a la Apple style, according to Akihabara News--and might even be quite fetching on the end of a white gold chain around your neck, sort of like an updated retro medallion circa 1974. But if you ask us (and no one ever does, of course), the peripheral-as-jewelry craze won't exactly have Tiffany longevity.… Read more

Acid-trip-worthy robot is a better dancer than you are

Robots do a lot of fun things. They cook, clean, bartend, and save lives. Some of them even play music. But this little guy, "Keepon" from Carnegie Mellon University, is a Beatbot! He might look like something off of a trippy kids' TV show like Pokemon or the Teletubbies, but in fact, he's a "socially rhythmic robot" who can detect the beat of the music and get jiggy wit' it. He puts most of us humans to shame.

No, Keepon does not dance the Robot, but he does pump out a nice little groove to … Read more

One of the more creative iPod speakers we've seen recently

Leave it to the Museum of Modern Art's store to sell a product like this. The "Music Mug" might look like something you'd drink out of, but please don't. It's actually a speaker for portable music players, which the MoMA Store touts as "a new interpretation as the desktop coffee cup." Plug the cord into the headphone jack, drop your iPod, Zen, Zune, or what-have-you into the ceramic cup, and it'll play. Unfortunately, it doesn't charge it in the process. It's $42.

Cute, I guess. Um, next?

(Via Apartment Therapy)… Read more

I'm furnishing my dream office with a 'Wave Chaise'

OK, so, this is the "Wave Chaise," designed by Roberta Ramme and recently showcased on Born Rich. It's a gorgeous oversize comfy-chair with a flat-screen TV, storage space for CDs and DVDs, and a computer desk built into the back. The designer is touting it as a piece of furniture for tech-savvy, well-moneyed teenagers. I only fall into category #1 (and even still, I only like to think I'm tech-savvy), but I still totally want this thing. Why? This will be the centerpiece of my dream office.

The only problem is that because it's (ostensibly) … Read more