Billed as the ‘World’s First Full-Spec Compact’, the new Sigma DP1 digital camera was unveiled yesterday. The DP1 has been in design-mode since 1st being announced in July 2006, with camera buffs becoming restless in the interim.
The camera’s “Full-Speciness”, and main claim to fame comes from its use of the Foveon X3 Sensor, which weighs [...]

Jamie Hyneman of MythBusters fame gives product designers and manufacturers the what-for, in a new article about the woes of product complexity and incompatibility. He decries things like cordless tools with not-interchangeable battery packs, flashlights that require ‘exotic’ batteries, and, our favorite…the car that required the removal of a front wheel in order to change [...]

The World Economic Forum 2008 took place 23-27 January in Davos, Switzerland. The WEF is ambitiously “Committed to Improving the State of the World”, while their motto is the more ambiguous “Entrepreneurship in the global public interest’”.
Their agenda is extensive to say the least, with initiatives on hunger, global warming, disaster relief, energy shortages, [...]

Eager to see what your city will look like in 100 years? …you’re in luck as the History Channel-sponsored CITY OF THE FUTURE: A Design and Engineering Challenge for 2008 is happening right now, with local architectural competitions being held in Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Atlanta. The National Champion will be selected via online [...]

Dramatic irony abounds as the world’s fastest car (or close to it) gets not a speeding ticket, but rather a lowly parking violation. And as bonus, the role of traffic warden, normally that of an antagonist, gets recast as the protagonist to the cheers of dozens. Street theatre in Manchester city center.
0-60 quid in 2.5 [...]

The National Aquatics Center was unvelied in Beijing yesterday. Also known as the “Water Cube”, the unique building will host the swimming events in the 2008 summer Olympics.
The impressive Water Cube is the world’s largest membrane structure building - made of ETFE. …a building in bubble-wrap.

China View

The Wall Street Journal lends a helping hand by pondering the world of tomorrow, so that you don’t have to. They look out over the next 10 years and see things like 3D TV, self-diagnosing appliances, electronic newspapers, and the ever-popular .. more powerful computers.
Thinking About Tomorrow talks to the impact expected on 7 main [...]

A nicely done, interactive, panoramic view of an A380 cockpit by one Gilles Vidal.
via news.com

“Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market, and the war will be over”, wrote Hiroyuki Shimizu, an analyst at Gartner in Tokyo in their latest Semiconductor DQ Monday Report. Apparently those comments are based on dropping HD DVD sales.
Toshiba and it’s rival HD [...]

The Macintosh Portable was Apple’s first notebook, or perhaps more accurately a 1st attempt at a more easily portable Macintosh. The Mac Portable sold for $6,500 when it was introduced in 1989 and weighed in at a massive 15.8 lbs.
See how it stacks up to Apple’s newest notebook, the MacBook Air at the link [...]