Apparently, the biggest sellers on Amazon’s US site this Christmas were a turntable and film for an instant camera. Why? The Verge’s Jacob Kastrenakes has a theory: Is it weird that cheap analog products beat out modern alternatives? Kind of. But as someone who ordered a physical book and a pack of film just yesterday, none […]
Monthly Archives: December 2015
Ford files patent for rear tire that converts into an electric unicycle
Ford has patented an invention that allows you to turn the back wheel in to a motor bike. The patent imagines a situation where you’d pull over (or park), lift the vehicle with the help of its automatic jack, remove the tire, and get everything else you need — seat, handlebars, motor, etc. — […]
Walking the Tube
Here’s an amusing trick you can play on people from Newfoundland or Lincolnshire. Take them to Bank Station and tell them to make their way to Mansion House. Using Beck’s map—which even people from Newfoundland can understand in a moment—they will gamely take a Central Line train to Liverpool Street, change to a Circle […]
Hashtag backlash: marketing campaigns that turned into social media disasters
In the lead-up to Anzac Day, Woolworths launched the commemoration website “Fresh in Our Memories”, a play on the supermarket’s “fresh food people” slogan. People were encouraged to upload war-related photos and tributes to the site, which would automatically add the Woolworths logo and the Fresh in Our Memories catchphrase to them. Using the […]
The British electrical plug. A design classic you either ignore, or ridicule depending on where you’re from.
Foreign visitors have been known to query the design of the British electrical plug which, compared with that of most countries, seems quite large and – if you accidentally step on one – rather painful. Well once it’s plugged in it’s not that large at all, and far less easy to accidentally kick out of […]
The Design curriculum in English schools includes… cooking
This is what design is, according to the English National Curriculum Worrying news about the state of teacher recruitment in the UK. The number of new teachers for design and technology is also more than a third below what it needs to be and there is a 10% shortfall in the number of IT […]
Hyde Park visitors “covertly tracked” via mobile phone data
The Guardian reports that: Visitors to Hyde Park, one of London’s most famous tourist spots, were covertly tracked via their mobile phone signals in a trial undertaken by the Royal Parks to analyse footfall amid drastic funding cuts. Officials were able to retrospectively locate park-goers for 12 months using anonymised mobile phone data provided by […]
Fashion lessons from Star Wars: The Force Awakens
I think this is a piss-take by Hannah Marriott for The Guardian, but you can never tell. So I’ll mostly be wearing orange and black this season Captain Phasma’s mask is sleek – very on-trend silver coupled with a sexy off-the-shoulder cape – but the storm troopers’ monochrome styling and dark glasses are unequivocally the […]
Avoiding spoilers: 1977 v 2015
Like a lot of people I spent quite a bit of 2015 both anticipating the new Star Wars movie and trying (successfully as it turns out) to avoid any spoilers. And it amazes me no end, considering the times we live in, that the film makers managed to keep one of the biggest secrets away […]
Disney No Longer Selling Toy Guns in Theme Parks
What took them so long? Disney is discontinuing the sales of toy guns of any kind at the theme parks, including bubble guns and Buzz Lightyear toy blasters. All of the gun merchandise is being pulled off the shelves and guests are encouraged to leave their own toy guns at home or not being allowed […]