-
Tech NewsDesign
Spotify, Fix Your Crooked Logo—It’s Driving Me Nuts
The Spotify logo is tilted. It took me entirely too long to know this for sure. For at least three years, I’ve been tapping and clicking the app icon and watching the logo appear as the service loads. Looking at the lime-green circle with its black, curved lines, it just seemed a little off-kilter. But … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
Next-Gen Baggies Are Transforming Legal Weed
After a recent trip to her local dispensary, my mom recalled how, when she was young, black-market cannabis was really only available by the “lid”—usually, a sandwich bag partly filled with ground-up plant, the official size of which tended to vary. Today, she can choose rich, cleverly named buds by the gram or quarter ounce … Continued
By Janet Burns -
Tech NewsDesign
This $600 Shoelace-Tying Robot Was Built on a Shoestring Budget
With a budget of just $600—a mere pittance compared to what robots like ATLAS cost to develop—students from the University of California’s Davis’ College of Engineering created a machine that’s capable of tying a shoe all by itself. After mastering the skill when you’re five years old, you probably don’t give much thought to the … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
Watch This Robotic Camera Rig Create 3D Animations With Light
Instead of repeatedly standing in front of a camera and waving an LED bulb to create long-exposure light paintings, Josh Sheldon automated the process with an impressive photography rig that takes orders directly from 3D animation software. The resulting animations, made with precise camera moves and robot-controlled lights, are like nothing you’ve ever seen. But … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
Magic Leap Gives Us a Peek at Its Interface, and It’s Not So Bad
Magic Leap has promised it’ll start shipping its mixed-reality headset by the end of the summer, and it’s going to need developers to get cranking on content. New additions to developer guide show us what its operating system will look like. The verdict: It looks pretty nice. It’s impossible to say whether the Magic Leap … Continued
By Rhett Jones -
Tech NewsDesign
This Hypnotic Machine Perfectly Juggles a Ping-Pong Ball By Listening to the Bounce
Bouncing a ping-pong ball on a paddle isn’t terribly challenging for someone with even a modicum of hand-eye coordination, but what if you were blindfolded and had to only rely on your ears? That makes the challenge almost impossible, but unexpectedly it turned out to be an effective approach for this ball-juggling contraption. Building a machine … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
The One Thing Windows Vista Did Right
Vista was bad. Coming five years after XP, it was heavily anticipated by Windows users who were impatiently awaiting something interesting from Microsoft as Apple’s star was on the rise. Yet when the OS dropped publicly in January 2007, it was immediately reviled by, well, everyone (except our expert reviewers). It was slower than XP, … Continued
By Alex Cranz -
Tech NewsDesign
‘Full Version’ of Adobe Photoshop is Reportedly Coming to iPads
Adobe is bringing the “full version” of its industry-standard Photoshop app to the iPad, and its other desktop apps may follow suit, according to a report from Bloomberg today. Get ready to unsharp mask all the things. Bloomberg reports that the “full version of its Photoshop app for Apple Inc.’s iPad” is on the way, … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
This Automated Sand Printer Is Ready to Flood Your Instagram Feed With Beach Wedding Proposals
Wedding proposals are just one of the many minefields you have to navigate on social media platforms, and Ivan Miranda isn’t making things any easier. He’s designed and built an autonomous printer that can draw messages in sand, so now’s probably a good time to brace yourself for an endless barrage of “will you marry … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
USPS Ordered to Pay $3.5 Million After Putting Artist’s Weird ‘Sexier’ Lady Liberty on Stamps
The US Postal Service will have to pay a sculptor who recreated the Statue of Liberty for a New York-themed Las Vegas hotel over $3.5 million after it used his version instead of its much more famous predecessor on Lady Liberty-themed stamps. The USPS put a Getty Images photo of artist Robert S. Davidson’s Las … Continued
By Tom McKay -
Tech NewsDesign
Why the Government Sucks at Making Websites
In April, the day before taxes were due, the IRS’ online filing system failed, just as procrastinators were settling into the annual TurboTax panic. How did this happen, especially before the most important tax day of the year? And why does this keep happening to government websites? A few days later, the glitch was figured … Continued
Caroline Sinders -
Tech NewsDesign
This Computer Actually Works Better With Windows
Wyatt Little has designed the first computer that performs much better with Windows—and lots of sunlight. In many ways, this Little Computer Planter is vastly superior to your laptop. There’s no email to deal with, no internet, no Twitter, and it will turn the CO2 you exhale with every saddened sigh into life-giving oxygen. Despite … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
The Top 7 Gadgets Shaped Like a Cube
Amazon’s announcement for its new Fire TV Cube on Thursday was a great reminder that the cube just doesn’t get enough love in gadget design. Cubes are solid as hell. They’re elegant, simple, functional, and memorable. They beg the question: “What’s in the box?” As a reminder of all that and more, we’ve pulled together … Continued
By Rhett Jones -
Tech NewsDesign
The Future Is Knit: Why the Ancient Art of Knitting Is High-Tech Again
When you think about knitting, you might picture grandmas clicking big wooden needles or something wintery, like a snow-covered lodge. But knitting is everywhere, producing just about everything you put against your skin each day, from socks and t-shirts to hoodies and beanies. And thousands of years after it was first invented, new kinds of … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
How Sex Toy Makers Pick Vibrator Colors
Scoring a color’s sexiness calls for a sketchy rubric at best: Although someone appointed it the color of romance and passion, red is also the color of blood and chaos (see: panic buttons, fire trucks). Sleek, sophisticated black does double duty as the uniform of death. Purple can communicate richness, royalty, sensuality, what have you; … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
Does the New Gmail Feel Horribly Slow, Or Is It Just Me?
Google graced us with a fancy, new Gmail.com last month, and like, great! It’s nice to have new stuff to play with, including a snooze option that should have arrived ages ago, and a smart replies feature I’ll try out but probably never consistently use. But there is one thing about the redesign that’s driving … Continued
By Harri Weber -
Tech NewsDesign
These Giant Scrolls Are the Hellish User Agreements You Probably Should Have Read (But Didn’t)
Made up of colorful scrolls cascading down a wall, artist Dima Yarovinsky’s installation “I Agree” is beautiful—at face value. If you read the fine print, however, you’ll learn that it’s a statement against our blind compliance with tech giants. Each scroll is a single tech company’s terms of service agreement, annotated at the bottom with … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
This Guy Hacked a Polaroid Camera to Print on Cheap Receipt Paper Instead of Pricey Film
Shooting on film continues to get more and more expensive, especially for fans of instant cameras like the reborn Polaroid. Sixteen bucks for just eight shots was far too pricey for Tim Alex Jacobs, so he hacked an old Polaroid camera to instead spit out images on cheap thermal paper, the same kind used in … Continued
-
Tech NewsDesign
Kernit Is the Jim Henson-Inspired Typeface Muppet Fans Deserve
Why are there so many songs about rainbows, but so few typefaces that evoke the iconic pupils of Kermit the Frog? Thankfully for Muppet fans, we now have at least one: Kernit. Kernit is a loveably bizarre, psychedelic typeface available for free in two styles: bold and outline. According to its creators, the designers at … Continued
By Harri Weber -
Tech NewsDesign
What Is HD Vinyl and Is It Legit?
Last week a nerdier segment of the music world was abuzz with the news that an Austrian company Rebeat had taken a $4.8 million dollar investment to help bring its “HD vinyl” records to market by mid 2019. Huh? HD vinyl? How does one make the last analog music storage format (that people still care … Continued
By Brent Rose