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oobject: 'daily user-ranked gadget lists'
What the list says - a collection of pod shaped enclosures from a health monitoring system, to a tree house, escape module, house, bed and office.

15 odd pods

Although folding bicycles have seen somewhat of a renaissance, there has not been as much innovation compared to mountain bikes, because the market is smaller. This is a shame since although there are some great products such as Bromptons or the Birdy, there is, in our opinion, no ideal foldup. An ideal foldup would be one that folds so small and is so light, that you could take it in a backpack, just in case, like carrying an umbrella in case it rains. A couple of the concept designs here come close - vote for your fave.

10 concept folding bikes

The Wienermobile is quintessentially American: pure, whimsical, 4-wheeled fun in the name of capitalism. It’s history goes rather like most design classics form Apple computers to the Coke bottle: 2 custom built homebrew prototypes (1936-40), a defining form (1958), a refinement of this to produce a classic, by a famous designer (1958, Brooks Stevens), variations on the same theme till now, with a novelty version in 2008.

all 10 wienermobiles through history

What digital cameras have the largest zoom? Three new non-SLR cameras were announced in September, with 18x Optical Zooms, here they are along with their nearest rivals.The optical zoom on a camera of a type that you can easily carry around most of the time, seems like the single most important feature, since all other principal features, like megapixels, seem to have maxed out.Our task is specific. Photographing ‘architectural details on buildings in New York'. (We can't be bothered to schlep around 15 lenses, but want to capture details, without a ladder). However, a good zoom is what you really need for most photographic tasks.Three new non-SLR cameras with 18x Optical zoom, have been announced recently. They look like the ones to beat: The Panasonic DMC FZ18, Olympus SP-560 UZ and Fujifilm Finepix S8000fd.

8 ultra zoom cameras

Henry Ford's car assembly line is a symbol modern manufacture, yet the town where it originated has become a ruin and Toyota is now worth ten times the value of both Ford and General Motors combined.Car manufacture moved to the next level with the widespread introduction of robotics, by the Japanese, however German car factories have recently created a truly futuristic vision of manufacture, where both architecture of the factory and the machinery within it, have become an integrated work of art.The Autostadt visitor center at the VW factory in Wolfsburg, which involved commissioning over 400 architects, features 200 foot tall robotic silos at the end of the production line (reminiscent of the people farms in the Movie, the Matrix), where customers can pick up their newly manufactured cars. In Dresden the VW assembly plant, designed by Hann is an eco-friendly, transparent building right in the center of the city, with glass walls and maple floors, where tourists are encouraged to view the cars being put together in pristine surroundings. Leipzig features possibly the world's most architecturally significant plant, a stunning building designed by the folks working at Zaha Hadid.

futuristic german car factories (videos)

An Alarm clock is one of those gadgets that is simple enough to warrant a thousand different design variants. Here are the ones we consider most innovative or fun.Be awoken by a muezzin or a drill sargent and switch off by feeding money, doing a puzzle, diffusing a bomb, stepping on scales or grabbing a swinging pendant. We've included everything here except the Clocky, which you can see on a hundred thousand other blogs. Vote for your faves.

15 big fun alarm clocks

Ray guns originated in the US in the 30s, from shows like Buck Rogers. What makes them a particularly interesting object is that despite, for all practical purposes, having never existed, there is an almost endless variety of designs for toy ray guns, from around the world.Here are some of the best we could find. Most are for sale, and are posted without description, since the images speak for themselves.

23 stunning ray guns

A gallery of products using radioactive materials.Because radiation was seen to be new and powerful, at the beginning of the 20th century radioactive material was used in products such as face creams, mineral water and medicine, by equating power with rejuvenation. For similar reasons it was even used in items from spark plugs to condoms. Although many of these items are from an age when the dangers of radiation were not known, radiation is obviously useful as a healing tool for cancer therapy, but it is still used in legal Chinese remedies, which are respected more because of their age rather than efficacy and quack homeopathic medicines which are tolerated while unproven, because they are harmless water.Vote on your fave examples.

14 radioactive products

A bottle opener is a very simple thing, to change it is re-inventing the wheel. but because its so simple there are endless versions of products (flip flops, rings, bicycles, keys, hammers) that incorporate a bottle opener.It is the archetypal form of gimmick, something that has an extra feature irrespective of the true purpose. Vote for which you think is the biggest gimmick.

15 biggest gimmick bottle openers

Here is a roundup of collectible boomboxes, currently being auctioned on ebay. The mannerist nature of 80s ghetto blasters could not be more different from today's minimalist trends in consumer audio gear, lead by Sony and Apple. Because of this, these devices now look obviously obsolete and different and are starting to become collectors items. Ugly, but interesting, and representative of their time, some are perfect examples of pointless feature driven design, something which still plagues software.

12 monster 80s boomboxes

Electric tattoo machines are based on a modified version of an engraving device invented by Edison, which had a 2 coil vibrating mechanism similar to an old fashioned electric doorbell. Samuel O'Reilly added a needle and ink reservoir to this to create a dedicated tattoo device in the 1890s.The particularly fascinating thing about these items is how their design has evolved towards the Victorian retro technology aesthetic that has now become fashionable elsewhere, however the beautiful machines designed by designers like Bernhard outclass many of the products design labeled Steampunk.The Bernhard machines are so magnificent, they warrant a list all of their own.

tattoo machines

Below is the strangest skyscraper proposal you will ever see, an upside down underground tower block lit by a giant mirror.From deflecting the suns rays with mirrors to light up an entire Austrian town which is shrouded in shadow to fiber optic channels which light underground caverns, combinations of heliostats (sun trackers) and light pipes are being increasing used to create architectural lighting effects which are entirely natural.Included here are a variety of technique, including the recent park heliostats, in New York and light pipes which channel daylight from street level to the subway in Berlin. Vote for your faves.

light pipe architecture

After having been traveling for more than 7 months in the last year, the combination of neck strain and carpal tunnel from using a laptop requires a really good stand.I needed one that is compact and portable for travel and one that is highly adjustable at home. Being super anal about these things, I looked through hundreds of web sites and so put together an oobject list. The list covers everything from wheeled out units to a truckers cab laptop stand and a wearable harness that actually manages to look undorky but several items are based on the simple premise of a compact or flat folding cheap and simple stand.In the end I chose both products from the same company, the Evo floating laptop arm, which is most like a task light adjustment system and the mini, tripod-based Cricket laptop stand.

the perfect laptop stand

Crumbling hospitals are archetypal places of creepiness, because they are ironic. An hospital is a place that is supposed to be clean, from bedding to bathing to surgery and this has been exploited for dramatic effect in films from Jacob's Ladder to 12 Monkeys and the more recent Shutter Island.Abandoned hospitals are also a popular destination for urban explorers, so here I've picked the best examples I could find from records of their adventures on Flickr. But continue to have a look there for some other great shots.The set pieces are where a few pieces of furniture and medical equipment remain in a decaying room, to the extent that some of these are obviously staged from found objects, but they're no less impressive.

12 abandoned hospitals

Bridge layers have to be about the closest thing in the real world to a Transformer, giant fold up, extendable instantly deployable bridges that are most often fixed to modified tanks. They have been around since tanks first existed, during WW1, and are one of the more bizarre and obscure forms of military hardware. There is also something incredibly circular about a vehicle that carries its own road.

12 mobile bridges

There is nothing more creepy than the charred remains of a moth eaten victorian doll with rolling eyes and moving limbs. That is the premise for the Oobject's Halloween list, videos of the most creepy automata in action.

top 12 videos of creepy automata

The styles here represent the prosperity of the post war years when the cold war space race influenced the concept of modernity. GM and Ford created a range of space age aircraft design inspired prototypes .The Corvette Sting Ray, is perhaps the culmination of this period, with Corvette stylist, Bill Mitchell's XP-87 forming the basis of the classic Sting Ray, one of the few cars in history to go into production without losing something of the impact of the prototype.

the golden age of american concept cars

Kinetic sculptures may have been first developed by Duchamp and Moholy-Nagy, but the tradition is still very much alive. Some of the most impressive kinetic sculptures, such as those by the famous Theo Jansen are still distinctly analog, but this is an area where digital gadgetry has opened up nearly limitless possibilities. Here are a dozen of our faves, vote for yours.

12 mesmerizing kinetic sculptures (videos)

The launching of a ship after smashing a bottle of champagne against its bow is an iconic ritual. It is also one of the few things in life which is still impressive despite being relatively slow. Shown here are videos which are interesting because of the ships fame, sheer size or quirkiness of the launch, including those where huge waves drench onlookers. Our favorite is the time lapse submarine launch in a floating dock.

12 videos of ships being launched

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Category: 'featured'

Oobject/Cribcandy Favorite Source

February 11th, 2011 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Another great source for oobjecty stuff to actually buy, which we came across today: Koma Designs in Toronto

Oobject/Cribcandy Favorite Source

February 11th, 2011 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Getbackinc, have a fantastic collection of vintage industrial era furniture. We thoroughly recommend having a look around their site.

Vintage Exercise Machines

November 18th, 2010 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
A nice collection of images of exercise machines from circa 1920

The Oobject/Cribcandy Barn

November 15th, 2010 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
We've moved temporarily from New York to the Swiss-French border where we've bought a derelict barn. Although I will presumably go bankrupt doing this, its been fun re-learning my old architecture skills. I'll upload progress images here. David

Oobject favorite store: Trouvaillen am Munster

November 15th, 2010 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
On our recent trip to Bern we discovered this fantastic antique store, in the Wunderkammer tradition. It's located at 16 Munstergasse in the center of Bern, 50 yards as the crow flies from where Einstein was living in 1905.

Favorite place for Oobjects: Amberley Museum

November 1st, 2010 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Yesterday, we visited the Amberley Working Museum, in the picturesque Sussex countryside, in England. This is a great place for exotic man made objects, from phones that were struck by lightning to a great collection of obsolete electronics, including some Sinclair radios that we didn't know existed. Amberley Museum has what bigger institutions sometimes don't have - character. It's an eccentric place run by enthusiasts which give it a feeling all of its own. Enjoy!

Oobject favorite source: Architakes

October 31st, 2010 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
What I like about this site: Its an architecture blog that is about the non superficial aspects of design, rather than a Zoolanderesque blog full of signature architecture and willful posing. And I like the 'Pattern Language' style rules. Enjoy. David

Oobject favorite source: Heritage Key

September 9th, 2010 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
Unlike journalists I like to share my sources. Among the many sites we trawl through some are lesser known gems and Heritage Key is one of them. Rather than link to their front page, this link is to a particularly great story about the football pitch sized tomb of the first emperor of China - the one who made the terracotta army. amazingly people know where it is but have not opened it or looked for its fabled rivers of mercury.

(Not) Crappy Taxidermy

July 11th, 2010 link to (permalink)

1 year ago
I was looking to do a list that was taxidermy related, but this was one of those occasions where you find out that someone has created a site so great that there is no point in doing anything other than link to it. Behold, crappy taxidermy.

The Lego house is Finished

September 20th, 2009 link to (permalink)

2 years ago
Barnaby Gunning has posted the finished pictures of the Lego House

Oobject interviews Barnaby Gunning, the architect for Top Gear presenter, James May’s Lego House (with Pics)

August 24th, 2009 link to (permalink)

2 years ago

200_lego_house_01 View Slideshow of Construction Progress

bg_bwBarnaby Gunning has an unusual architectural background that makes him one of the few people who could design a real house from toy bricks. In addition to having worked for the world famous architects Renzo Piano and Norman Foster he has also worked with the UK’s rock star engineer Neil Thomas, at Atelier One.

Perhaps Gunning’s work with the Maverick furniture designer, Ron Arad, whose work is currently the subject of a major exhibition at MoMA, is what qualified him most. When Top Gear presenter, James May approached Arad with an unusual request, Ron Arad knew just the man. He called up Barnaby saying, “there’s a TV production team here and they want an architect to help them design a house entirely out of Lego”.

The Lego house is not an illusion, explains Barnaby, “its made of real bricks, and put together with no glue”.

Oobject: No glue?

BG: Yes, amazingly we did tests with glue and it didn’t make much difference?

Oobject: Who the blazes do you get to test Lego structural engineering?

BG: Well you need someone used to testing weird structures. Atelier One and City University ran structural tests on individual blocks, then looked at breaking loads for diffent types of Lego beams. It turned out Lego beams, the size required for a house are structurally feasible.

Oobject: What was the end solution, structurally?

BG: The structure could have been fully lego, but there is a timber ’safety frame’ inside the walls which replaces the lego joists. We designed the bottom edge of the lego beams to use three layers of thin lego plates which perform very well in tension. Three layers of these are the size of one regular course.

Oobject: So what exactly is made of Lego?

BG: Pretty much everything except the joists, the electrics and the lighting. In fact we probably could have done some of that in Lego too. Even the toilet will be in Lego.

Oobject: The toilet - right, this the thing we want to know most, how does a Lego toilet work - I mean how much of it is actually Lego?

BG: Pretty much all of it. The exact design is being specified by the interior designer and will have a Lego cistern connected to a Lego bowl via a Lego pipe. It will even have a Lego flusher.

Oobject: But can you poop in it?

BG: That’s the least of your problems. Have you ever tried sitting on pixelated plastic?

Oobject: What have been the biggest challenges so far?

BG: Making sure we don’t run out of bricks. We have 3M on site, but they are a finite supply and I have to negotiate with the interior designer, who’ll be doing furniture and art work, for bricks for the walls.

Oobject: Do you have miniature brick layer people to build the walls?

BG: Actually we have 3000 volunteers.

Oobject: Tiny little volunteers?

BG: No, ordinary members of the public. It helps when you are recruiting people for a construction project if you have the TV presenter of Top Gear to ask around.

Oobject: I guess, unless it was that miserable one.

BG: Yes, fortunately we had James May not Jeremy Clarkson.

Oobject: One of the problems with giant Lego structures we’ve seen before is that they look nasty because the designs are literal and figurative, like something from a model village. How did you manage to get the Lego house to actually look interesting architecturally?

BG: Largely that was a result of James May being on the same page as us. James realized the kitsch potential from the get go and specifically asked that we didn’t just build an overgrown standard model.

Oobject: Thanks Barnaby, one quick question, can you build us a house out of pasta?

BG: Sure, Penne or Spaghetti?

View Slideshow of Construction Progress


Snow blowers from hell

August 13th, 2009 link to (permalink)

2 years ago
A great collection of jet engines mounted on trucks from Darkroastedblend.

AT&T and Best Buy phone launch details leak: nuvifone, Omnia 2, Chocolate Touch, more

August 10th, 2009 link to (permalink)

2 years ago
Phone launch leaks a-plenty this weekend, as the Boy Genius Report scoops up a couple of interesting screenshots from Best Buy and AT&T.

The Apollo 12 Quarantine Airstream - which ended up on a fish farm

July 15th, 2009 link to (permalink)

2 years ago
Vintage Airstreams are cool enough, but imagine owning a NASA moon astronaut quarantine version. The Apollo 11 Quarantine trailer is in a museum and the never used Apollo 13 one is on board the USS Hornet, but the Apollo 12 one was sold off as surplus and ended up at a fish farm, as seen here. An amazing find.

Apple is closed source. What do you think of the iPhone 3GS?

June 9th, 2009 link to (permalink)

2 years ago
The announcement of the iPhone guaranteed one thing - that every Apple keynote after it would be a disappointment. Yesterday, was no exception. Apple announced a go-faster version of the iPhone, with a moniker reminiscent of a 1970s Citroen car, the 3GS and a minor software upgrade. The new hardware featured a camera that was almost as good as standard issue for other phones in Europe and Japan. The new software added a few do-dads, such as a remote bleeper and software erase that only works if you sign up to the Apple software service that gives you things like an inferior version of Gmail. New apps were showcased, such as the very promising looking Tom Tom application and unpromising looking Tom Tom kit that hinted it would cost almost as much as a standalone GPS device, thus defeating the point. But the big deal was the addition of tethering, allowing you to use the iPone as a 3G modem. Something that many 3G phones already do. No matter that 3G tethering presumably costs money via the providers Apple listed, the problem was that it wouldn't work at all in the US, via the sole carrier, ATT. Although Apple could be playing passive aggressive, deliberately directing flack at ATT, this is not just an ATT problem. Apple is no longer the little guy offering a better alternative to Microsoft. Increasingly Apple's closed platform is becoming an irritating hassle, rather than a price that is worth paying for well designed and integrated products from hardware to software. Here are some of the unnecessary irritations and bad design that Apple's closed approach creates: 1. You cannot easily store your music on an external device without needless messing around with iTunes restrictions. 2. You cannot go abroad with your iPhone and slip a new SIM card in without a huge pain in the ass. 3. You cannot take advantage of many new iPhone or OS features without subscribing to a service that offers inferior versions of free online services like Gmail, that will always be better because of the resources allocated to them. 4. You cannot replace the battery in an iPod, iPhone or (now) MacBook without a screwdriver. Apple products are beautifully designed where most gadgets are useless toys, and the OS is peerless but there is a creeping sensation of needless and irritating lock in.

Inhalt

May 22nd, 2009 link to (permalink)

2 years ago
Inhalt is the multicellular caravan by Mehrzelle."Using the online Configurator, every user sets up ..(more...

Ten beautiful computers

May 14th, 2009 link to (permalink)

3 years ago
They ended their lives as museum pieces, aquariums, couches, and even at the bottom of the sea. But these are the ones that stay with us.nbsp; ZX Spectrum Flashes of prismatic color on Clive Sinclair's tiny ZX Spectrum mark the original from its vast army of clones.

A perfect folding bike design

May 12th, 2009 link to (permalink)

3 years ago
Industrial designer Mark Sanders' IF-Mode folding bike is now for sale in the U.S. Sanders stuck with a full-sized design because "people prefer larger wheels for ease of pedaling and smoothness of ride," yet the bike still folds up compact enough to fit into a suitcase that you could actually...

BUGlabs Modular Gadget Factory

May 12th, 2009 link to (permalink)

3 years ago
BUGlabs Modular Gadget Factory ThinkGeek are now selling BUGLabs. BUG’s are various items which can either secure things, track things with GPS, read barcodes, draw pictures, update Twitter and control robots.

Wonders of Jurassic Technology: Bartini Beriev

April 24th, 2009 link to (permalink)

3 years ago
The Bartini Beriev is one of those objects that scores on every level of Jurassic technology fetishism: highly unusual experimental design (check); looks like something from science fiction (check); Soviet (check); abandoned and rotting (check); looks like an enormous frightening bug (check). Although only prototypes were built, in the 1970s, the Bartini was a revolutionary hybrid vehicle. It was designed to take of vertically - from water! To fly as a real plane at high altitudes and to use the Wing in Ground Effect to skim the water somewhere between a hovercraft and a plane. This gives it another delicious feature: cool name: (WIG) vehicle, flarecraft, sea skimmer, ekranoplan. The Bartini is all of these. The image above shows it with the main wings removed (below is the original configuration). bartini From a design perspective it demonstrates the extreme difference between the boring flying cigar design of commercial aircraft and military planes. Commercial planes occupy a single species, very stable ecosystem with little evolution of form. In the military, a literal arms race creates a more varied environment, resulting in all sorts of shapes, sizes and functions of planes. The Bartini is a very good example of this, being a world apart from a Boeing or Airbus airliner. Head over to Airliners.net where they have more images of the Bartini.

Design elegance: How USB took over the world.

April 20th, 2009 link to (permalink)

3 years ago
Belkin released a trivial looking gadget today which demonstrates how USB has become the universal standard interface. It turns the car cigarette lighter, which in turn had morphed into a universal charging interface, into a USB one.

There are many features which made USB a successful standard but there are 2 which stand out and made it truly elegant:

1. software and drivers could be stored in peripherals themselves, and transferred, finally removing the headache of configuring external devices.

2. both data and power are carried across USB allowing things such as external drives to have one less cable and a lot less fuss.


ASUS Eee Keyboard video touchscreen demo

March 24th, 2009 link to (permalink)

3 years ago
The ASUS’ Eee Keyboard will, no doubt, generate lots of bloggery interest, as all gimmick keyboards seem to. But it is juts that - a gimmick.

Why Skype Phones Look Obsolete

March 23rd, 2009 link to (permalink)

3 years ago
There are a few of these devices around and they all share one thing in common - they look like obsolete cellphones. The reason for this is, of course, that nobody developing a Skye phone has the economy of scale to create an innovative up to date handset, while no carrier will allow a device like the iPhone to have Skype. The end result is pure farce.
If you’re looking for an alternative to using your computer’s built-in mic and speakers or a wired headset for use with Skype then Ipevo’s handset could be right for you. It has one simple purpose and works quite well.

What Apple got wrong with the Shuffle.

March 13th, 2009 link to (permalink)

3 years ago
This device which adds a usb socket to the end of the new iPod shuffle shows exactly why the second and third generation versions aren't as good as the original. The first iPod shuffle pioneered the form factor that became the USB key - a stick of gum shaped item that carried tunes. It was magnificent and simple. The second version then made the form factor smaller, for no good reason, but required carrying around a separate docking cradle. Then came version three which has the stick of gum form factor AND the cradle. Leading to third party devices like this one, to cobble together the original elegance.

Truly Horrible Gresso Skeleton Gold Luxury Phone

February 25th, 2009 link to (permalink)

3 years ago
You would think that the credit crisis would have made crass badly designed objects like this, disappear. Sadly no, this hideous Gresso phone offers you inferior design and features for a premium price.

Why We Don’t Rate the Optimus Keyboard

February 25th, 2009 link to (permalink)

3 years ago
The Optimus keyboard shares something in common with the Segway. It is an idea which requires an overly complicated design solution to a problem that may be marginal but requires sophisticated engineering to solve. The proper term for this is a gimmick and gadgets which are innovative gimmicks have a curious property, they generate lots of discussion on blogs etc. but few people actually buy them. Despite the hype the Optimus keyboard looks like an expensive failure, and nothing quite shows it in the worst light than this tacky and predictable World of Warcraft theme.

oobject - the kindle 2 from a design perspective

February 9th, 2009 link to (permalink)

3 years ago

Superficially the Kindle 2 is a marked improvement over its origami-like, unconventional shaped predecessor, it looks like a large minimalist paper Blackberry with obligatory rounded corners.

More »


BlackBerry with OLED Keyboard [Concept]

February 6th, 2009 link to (permalink)

3 years ago
Remember the legendary Optimus Maximus keyboard that you’ve never bought? Billy May had an idea to adopt the technology into BlackBerry. He proposed the concept for MozPhone project, a design effort initiated by him.