In this trendwatching podcast, Nora Young talks about Flare, a cool example of a building surface that responds to its environment. Found via PSFK, where you can see a video of Flare in action.Meanwhile, Cathi Bond has been thinking about Nora’s home energy improvements. She likes the Panorama film that lies on the surface of your window, cutting out heat but still allowing you to see outside clearly.
In this trendwatching podcast, Cathi Bond talks about Big Moving Pictures, which organizes giant, moveable displays for outdoor events, which feature content and ads. It’s part of a broader trend towards monster outdoor displays.Meanwhile, Nora Young describes her recent visit to the HICKtech conference, including its commitment to reducing waste and serving 100 mile food. It reminded Nora of SPROUT, a concept for a zero waste restaurant, written up at trendhunter
In this trendwatching podcast, Cathi Bond mentions the ‘thudguard’, a British-designed ‘cap’ to protect toddlers (via gizmag). Sensible protection or yet another step in over-parenting?Meanwhile, Nora Young mentions the T3 Hub 2.0 for Macs, a sort of USB ‘hotel’ (at drbott.com, via The Cool Hunter). Who doesn’t need more USB ports?
In this trendwatching podcast, Nora Young talks about SpareSpace portable work environments (via Springwise). It’s part of the broader trend we’ve noted towards temporary spaces that can be parked on rooftops, in lofts, etc. Nora also notes the NoStore concept in Shanghai (via KissAtlanta), a rotating retail environment for different artisans.
Meanwhile Cathi Bond has been looking into the Thirst Aid Pouch, a small portable pouch for creating potable water in case of emergency.
In this trendwatching podcast, Nora Young looks at some new research that backs up what Cathi and Nora have been feeling: according to the study Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, lots of people engaged in scholarly research engage in skittish ‘power browsing’ rather than sustained deep research, and this behaviour crosses generations (via The Guardian)
Meanwhile, Cathi Bond tells us about the ergoskin shirt, designed to help people recovering from back injury. Are we likely to see these kinds of applications for sports or just general ’smart clothing’ uses? (via Medgadget)
In this trendwatching podcast, Cathi Bond finds this puzzle alarm clock, and this alarm clock that’s superloud and shakes the bed! (Both at bimbambanana) And this bible inspirational clock (via UrbanTrend). A sign that we are all really sleep-deprived?
Meanwhile, Nora sees a couple of recent notes about VOIP: Reuters reports that Japan Communications is going to start offering VOIP as part of their regular mobile phone service, and Skype is set to offer unlimited calls to land lines in 34 countries, and unlimited calls to a smaller list of countries for cell phones….all for $10/month, according to the New York Times.
In this trendwatching podcast, Nora Young talks about the virtual desktop, Jooce.Cathi Bond describes the community-based art of the British art group, Proboscis.Nora Young refers to this Cscout article on time-based products at McDonald’s in Japan.
In this trendwatching podcast, Cathi Bond points to two cool turntables: one, designed like a tiny VW van that ‘drives’ around your vinyl, and one, that converts vinyl to mp3s. (via ubergizmo)
Meanwhile, Nora Young talks about some of the trends she spotted on a recent trip to South Beach. She visited the Marimekko store, and took Cathi’s advice and went to the Base store, much cooler than the generally cartoonish, rawk star aesthetic of South Beach (though she does like Ed Hardy and bought some of his running shoes a few years ago).
Cathi also tips us off (via Gizmag) to what happens when your inner environmentalist meets your inner machismo: the electric muscle car by Dodge
In this trendwatching podcast, Nora Young takes the new search tool, seachme, out for a spin. She thinks it’s part of a bigger trend towards ’snapshot’ displays that let you better manage masses of data.Meanwhile, Cathi Bond on a product she found at medgadget: this new, commercially available test, that looks for genetic markers associated with bipolar disorder. Cathi thinks it could be part of the basket of tools used to evaluate the condition; Nora’s worried these tools are not reliable, but thinks they’re part of the trend towards body monitoring.Also, a quick update. About a month ago, Cathi and Nora discussed wi-max, and wondered why it wouldn’t be a good solution for the west. They’ve got more info from a trusted source.
In this trendwatching podcast, Cathi Bond talks about a concept for how to solve London’s booming population requirements, without resorting to urban sprawl: this “Super Tower” at popularchitecture.com
Meanwhile, Nora Young looks at an interesting concept from Simon Fraser University: the ladybag lets you know if you’ve forgotten to put your daily must-haves (phone, wallet etc) into the purse. Nora thinks it’s an intriguing example of some of the applications of RFID technology that we may see in the future. (via trendhunter)
