A few weeks back whilst in St. Andrews, I bought one of these: a Bobino. It’s soul purpose in life is to stop cables getting tangled up, and from what I have found out in the past couple of weeks from using it, it does the job perfectly. Available in three different sizes for different sized cables, I got the smallest size which is for headphones.
It is one of those simple ideas that works very effectively and you wish you had thought of it yourself.
Small update to say that I have set up a tumblr (shocker), to track daily, random musing through photographs. They are nothing important, just if I see something that I like and I use Instagram to upload it.
One of the main gripes people have about the iPhone is the battery life which they can get from it, most of the time, they need to charge it at the end of every day. Yes it is a problem since it is a smartphone and has many additional features and of course, if it has features, people will then use them, draining the battery.
One product which has come up as a solution to this ‘problem’, since the iPhone does not have a user removable battery, is separate battery packs for the phone. These have usually been incorporated into a case of some sorts, so it is on visually obvious that you have a battery attached to your phone. Essential TPE on the other hand have created an icon… Quite literally!
Called ‘The Icon”, they have taken the charging icon which appears when you are charging your phone up (or iPod Touch for that matter) and made it into a physical product. It looks just like the real thing, but in 3D. The surface of the battery pack shows you how much juice is left inside of it by how much of it is still illuminated by the use of EL film. If you’re wondering how much life it adds to the phone, for 3G talktime it increases by 3 hours, and audio playback by 18 hours. The ‘Works with iPhone’ logo is present, so it has been officially tested by Apple, which is good reassurance.
It is however only to be found in stores in Asia at the moment with no apparent plans to take it anywhere else. So if you would like one, better book a plane ticket or ask someone nicely to bring you one back.
Link: essential tpe
Anything which makes users of the road safer is always a good thing. That is why one of the best ideas relating to road safety which I have come across recently is something I am going to briefly talk about. Whilst some of you will already know that I’m a car man, you’ll be quite surprised that I am not going to talk about cars for this one, but for the greater unknown in my internal combustion life, motorbikes.
Reevu are a helmet manufacturer, more specifically, a motorbike helmet manufacturer and they have just launched an updated version of one of their products, the MSX1. A helmet yes, but this one has a rear view mirror. Something which is quite an achievement in itself, managing to contain all the necessary parts into such a confined environment, whilst keeping the general form factor of a helmet and making it compliant with a number of stringent regulations which apply to helmets. A design success in my honest opinion.
The mirror is out of the line of sight for the user, a bit like the rear view mirror in a car, and its mechanism is fully mechanical, no electronic parts which would need charged up, ultimately making it safer as there is no chance of it dying in the middle of a journey.
The combination of the mirror and the helmet is one of pure genius. Unlike the mirrors in a car, or daresay on a motorbike, it should only have to be adjusted once in the lifetime of the helmet, as the helmet tends to be used by one person and one person only. So once you get the positioning right, you’re set. It also reduces the need for the rider to turn around to check behind them, or to see behind them at certain points of their journey, though for safety, it should be used in conjunction with all of the other safety techniques taught.
It’s great when you find something which has been designed to make peoples lives safer and easier rather than just to make money.
