Martin Missfeldt is a Berlin-based artist with a sense of humor, known for posting gags like asserting the Google Glass team is working on an X-ray-spec-like application (and that Apple is countering it with asbestos-lined underwear). However, Missfeldt has also released an earnest infographic showing "How Google Glass Works," based on his study of both the patent and several write-ups.

The bulkiest parts are the battery riding on the right ear and the projector, though these things will presumably shrink over time. (On the battery front, have a look at LG Chem's wire-like battery tech and UCLA's developments in supercapacitors.) The image is bounced off of a prism and focused directly onto the wearer's retina. Interestingly, the fine-tuning of the focus is apparently achieved in a primitive way: By physically adjusting the distance of the prism from the eye.

"The biggest challenge for Google will now be to make the Google Glass also usable for people with normal glasses," writes Missfeldt. That's no trivial matter, as by his reckoning that's more than 50% of the population in some countries; by your correspondent's observation, countries like South Korea and cities like Hong Kong have an insanely high percentage of children wearing eyeglasses.

"In this case the Google Glass has to be placed ahead of normal glasses—which doesn't [work well]. Or Google has to manufactor [sic] individual customized prisms, but this would be considerably more expensive than the standard production."

Click here to see the full-sized graphic.

"These extra-dangerous stairs lead right to the ceiling,
guaranteeing a concussion for your curious child."

What do you do when you love Mid-Century Modern design, but you also have kids?

Projectophile is the website of Clare, a 30-something mother of three, and it's fascinating in that she essentially documents how she uses craft to keep herself sane. "[Prior to having children] my entire adult life—including college—had been occupied by challenging jobs that were full of outlets for creativity and even humor," she writes. "I was used to sharing my days (and many evenings) with smart, passionate, funny adults. And now they were shared with stinky, whiny, endlessly needy children." So she started doing things like Studio Night, where after the tykes are asleep she turns the living room into a studio, hacking together things like a standing desk of her own design.

"My style," Clare writes, "can best be described as Mid-Century Modern meets keeping-dangerous-things-away-from-small-children." Oh yeah, don't let that "stinky, whiny, endlessly needy children" line fool you; it's clear that the woman loves her kids to death. Speaking of which, to bring it back to the first question, she put together this amusing compilation of "15 Mid-Century Modern Dream Homes that will Kill Your Children." Here are some excerpts, captions hers:

Red arrows show the direction of travel of children's bodies

That's going to require at least ten stitches.

What we thought laser weapons would look like.

What they actually look like.

More proof that the future never shakes out like you think it will: If you asked any of us during our childhoods what laser weapons would look like, our Lucasfilm-fueled imaginations would have described bolts of light that blast out of gun barrels like tracer rounds. We have a tendency to map current technology onto future technologies, which is why futuristic car concepts from the 1950s all look like '57 Chevy Impalas with no wheels.

Well, the U.S. Navy is now testing a shipborne laser cannon, and its actual application looks a lot less like blasting TIE fighters out of the sky and a lot more like burning ants with a magnifying glass. Observe:

That's called the Laser Weapon System—also known by the somewhat lame acronym LaWS—and it was developed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. As you can see in the video, it works by tracking targets and painting them with the laser until it catches fire. The concept had been tested against a small boat prior to torching the flying drone you see in the video, and will reportedly be used in the future to counter things like incoming missiles. However, there's no word yet on whether Navy engineers will be able to surmount the ultimate technical hurdle: Ensuring that it makes a really cool noise when you fire it.

[Indistinct buzzing noise.]
Meh.

"Pew pew, pew pew"
Awesome!

As people travel from around the globe to Milan for the annual design shows, Tom Dixon and adidas have teamed up to show us "everything-you-can-pack-neatly-in-a-bag-for-a-week-away."

The timely launch of The Capsule collection during the busiest travel season on the design calendar, heralds a two-year partnership between the product designer and the sportswear company. The first apparel collection from Tom Dixon, The Capsule premieres new typologies of bags, apparel and footwear. The foundation of the collection is two travel bags—a hard and soft case—"an experiment in capsule thinking in which luggage unclasps, unzips and unfolds to reveal multiple layers."

As with Tom Dixon's design ethos for his furniture and lighting collections, removing a layer often reveals the pieces of a kit of parts—in this case, unzipping the luggage reveals foundation apparel that can be layered as a complete wardrobe for every possible occasion. Workwear and technical sportswear are clear influences on the collection. Reversible shirt-jacket, Work trousers, jumper and a boiler suit were favorites. Accessories including a folding camp bed, down coat sleeping bag, traveller wallet and compartment bag round out the collection. Suede and canvas boots, shoes and more traditional espadrilles give a traveler four-seasons of footwear to choose from.

At 30 large this isn't a watch any of us mortals will be buying anytime soon, but the design of the Ressence Type 3 is fascinating enough that you'll want to take a look. First off you'll notice there's no crown; all adjustments are made on the back of the watch, which is actually a series of concentric dials.

As if that wasn't cool enough, take a close look at the display:

It practically looks like the graphics are projected onto that curved surface, no? Reading the description of how they pulled that off clues you in as to why the price tag is so lofty.

The indications and their mechanisms are mounted inside a bubble crafted from extremely tough, anti-reflective sapphire crystal. The complication and indications follow the shape of the crystal. The mechanism (28 gears, 57 jewels) is enclosed in an upper compartment filled with a naphtha-type liquid that has a more similar index of refraction to the sapphire crystal than air does. Refraction bends light when it passes from one material to another, e.g. air-to-glass or glass-to-air. With the fluid-filled dial indications, refraction is greatly minimised, which tricks the brain into seeing the dial in two-dimensions rather than three. A thermal valve automatically adjusts for any expansion or contraction of the fluid.

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If there's an audiophile's version of kicking the tires on a used car, I'm guessing it's turning the knobs on an amp. Short of actually listening to the thing, I for one would like to feel how the knob turns, see how it feels in my fingers, and detect if it has the properly heavy amount of turning resistance that makes me think it's well-built.

Well, some guy went ahead and started a blog called KnobFeel, with the sole mission of posting "Reviews based purely on the feel of the knob." Perhaps in a bid to increase his international traffic, the anonymous poster (who hails from English-speaking Britain) has devised an interesting way to ensure his reviews hurdle any potential language barriers:

Here's yesterday's review:

The Photon 3D Scanner we mentioned last week has been overfunded by $140,000. The Photon, you'll recall, will allow you to inexpensively scan things on your desk.

A team of Heriot-Watt University researchers in Scotland, however, have developed a 3D scanner with a very different reach: It scans objects that are up to 325 meters away from it, and will reportedly be able to scan at a distance of 10 kilometers in the future. The researchers documented the results achieved with their functioning prototype in an optic science journal, and according to 3Ders,

The new system works by sweeping a low-power infrared laser beam rapidly over an object. It then records, pixel-by-pixel, the round-trip flight time of the photons in the beam as they bounce off the object and arrive back at the source. The system can resolve depth on the millimeter scale over long distances using a detector that can "count" individual photons.

However, you'll notice that while the mannequin scanned with something approaching fidelity, the face of the Asian gentleman (one of the co-authors of the research paper) is severely distorted:

This would seem to indicate that Asian people are immune to laser beams. For their part the researchers claim that human skin and perspiration muck with the scanning technology, but I think we can all agree that my explanation is more compelling.

As for applications, the team forecasts that their long-range 3D scanner could be used to scan large natural environments, like the side of a mountain, for example. They estimate that "a lightweight, fully portable scanning depth imager is possible and could be a product in less than five years."

A research report on the dynamics of crowd-sourcing music at the frog SXSW Interactive Opening Party, by Bonnie Reese and Mike Herdzina

Music shapes our experience of the world—it sets a mood, represents who we are (or who we want to be), captures memories, and defines a moment. The decision to embrace crowdsourcing as the DJ concept for the frog party was a risk in many ways. Who knew what the crowd might choose? What vibe would be created? Would it bring people together or further highlight our separate identities and divergent tastes? It was a meaningful social experiment—not only in music curation but also in social dynamics.

In order to fully embrace the experiment, frog dispatched 11 researchers to collect data at the party about music, crowdsourcing, and social dynamics. This article will both share the findings and reflect on the process that we used to take advantage of this research opportunity most efficiently and meaningfully.

Defining the Research Plan

Looking at the experiences that had been designed for the party, we realized that there was one piece of data being captured without any work required on our part—the music selections on the TouchTunes smart jukeboxes and mobile app. The crowdsourcing process would simultaneously build a data set about music preferences across the course of the evening. But like any quantitative data, this could be made more meaningful by supplementing that data with qualitative interviews and contextual observations.

As part of this experiment, we wanted to explore how to most effectively use a larger research team in a short amount of time (no one wanted to entirely miss the party to conduct research). We allocated three hours of time from each of our research team members—one hour to ramp up, one hour of research and documentation, and one hour to participate in a storytelling session. We created data capture sheets that made it easy to see the script and write down notes and quotes quickly. In addition, we created "end of shift" synthesis sheets that allowed us to quickly capture emerging patterns about social dynamics and environment from the research teams conducting research during the party. Two researchers then took the data forward to craft into the key themes.

We cast a relatively wide scope for the research, using a few focused questions that allowed the team to adapt their focus as themes emerged and the party progressed. Some of the questions we decided to explore included: What do people think of the music that's being played? What motivates engagement in the music selection process? What do people think about the value of crowdsourcing over curation? What's motivating their music choices (or their decision not to participate)? Does participation impact perceptions of the music and party environment? How do social dynamics play out when a group is asked to make a decision that is driven by personal taste? How do people go about making their decision as to what to play?

In order to answer these questions, we engaged in a range of research activities—spanning from video capture to one-on-one interviews.

We created a wall that allowed people to share their thoughts on the quality of the music at the party. They did this by using color-coded stickers, which we changed hourly hoping to see how participant's feelings of the music may have changed as the evening and crowd-sourced music progressed. We also conducted interviews in two different locations at the party; one team engaging partygoers near the Wall, another making observations and conducting intercept interviews near the TouchTunes devices. To supplement these interviews and further capture engagement over the life of the party, we had time-lapse cameras focused on all 20 TouchTunes jukeboxes and the Wall.

We were intrigued by the crowd's enthusiasm to not only play with the tech toys at the party, but to participate in our research project. We had not expected people to want to talk to researchers with clipboards and pencils, but our research team found themselves swamped with individuals wanting to share their thoughts. The team passing out dots at the Wall could hardly keep up with the demand for dots—all partygoers wanting to make their mark on the wall which would form a picture of the crowd's reaction to the quality of the music.

Okay, enough about the process. What did we learn?

FreeFly Systems is a company dedicated to designing camera-supporting tools that enable revolutionary cinematography. Their top-of-the-line product is probably their CineStar Heavy Lift, above, an eight-rotor flying camera platform; but it is their handheld MoVI M10 model, below, that is currently enjoying a press explosion.

It's easy to see why. The MoVI is a wicked piece of engineering, featuring a 3-axis gimbal that automatically, gyroscopically, digitally stabilizes the camera. Yet despite the presence of onboard motors, the thing operates completely silently and weighs less than 3.5 pounds. While a single person is meant to support it, shooting duties can also be split by having a second operator control the camera remotely via joystick. This frees the first operator up to focus on, for example, running or keeping a close eye on their footing on tricky terrain.

What does that look like to you? The cave drawings at Lascaux, maybe?

How about this one? A shield from an ancient civilization?

Nope, these are the lowest of the world's low-value coins, those forgotten bits of metal that keep lint company in our pockets or fill forgotten jars. Perhaps sensing that cents are on the way out, Martin John Callanan—self-described as "an artist researching an individual's place within systems"—is photographically preserving them for posterity with his The Fundamental Units project.

The kicker is that a regular camera wouldn't do, not for what Callanan had in mind; so he teamed up with the UK's National Physical Laboratory, which is that country's national measurement standards lab, to use their infinite focus 3D optical microscope. Callanan then captured some 4,000 exposures of each freaking coin, resulting in a series of 400 megapixel images that, blown up and hanging on a gallery wall, reveal details you'd never spot on the real deal. Every nick, scratch, dent, ding and discoloration are laid bare.

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All images courtesy of BBC/Darren Russell

BBC Future recently invited Conran's Jared Mankelow to rethink the camera for their series on "redesigning the everyday," Imagineering, in which "top designers rethink common objects and offer 21st Century solutions." The Senior Designer at Sir Terence's venerable company did away with the screen-based interface, hearkening back to the "retro joys of analogue photography"—namely, "that old-school feeling of waiting for your photographs to be developed before seeing how they turned out."

Mankelow's concept consists of a simple square, roughly the size of a Post-It pad, featuring a distinctive central aperture that serves as the lens and viewfinder, "with two rings at the front for the imaging sensors (black) and a ringflash (white)."

The square snapper may only be a mock-up—made by the UK's Complete Fabrications—but it includes many of the attributes Mankelow would like in a finished product. Firstly there is the weight—the design's reassuring heaviness harks back to the chunky character of models from the 1970s, when old-school film cameras arguably reached their golden age.

The lack of screen, of course, is the most radical departure from existing digital camera design. Noting the availability of wireless screens—smartphones, tablets, etc.—Mankelow has opted to relegate preview images to mobile devices via Bluetooth instead of in the camera itself. Not only does this add the element of surprise, as in film photography, but it also serves to reduce battery usage.

In design school these days, we've gone so far around the 'sustainability' bend that it seems like the word might have lost meaning all together. That's why whenever we see a unique take on the cradle-to-cradle conversation; it's a breath of fresh air. The most recent addition to the canon of sustainable design comes from the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art and Design's Hannah Dow, in her senior BFA thesis project cleverly entitled, Temp Tools.

I created Temp Tools aiming to stir up the conversation about the complete life cycle of objects; Thinking about where our items go once they leave our house in a garbage bag. I hope that with Temp Tools, I can get people thinking about other things they own that could be designed in a similar way as the tools, with sustainability in mind.

Hannah has been developing the tool line, consisting of a skewer to roast marshmallows or hotdogs, a spatula, and a shovel for nearly 8 months. Each tool in the line can be fitted to a stick to be used as a makeshift handle and will fully degrade in nature leaving only flower seeds in its wake. While sustainable design will never embrace the 'hey, just toss it out' mentality, maybe we can still do a little guilt-free littering with our Temp Tools.

We asked Hannah to share with us some insights into both the material exploration and product development leading to Temp Tools:

Core77: How did you develop a composite material strong enough to create a durable 'temp tool'?

Hannah Dow: The material the tools are made of is what comprised my first four months of the project. After trying to find a man-made, biodegradable, strong material that I could purchase and coming up empty-handed, I realized I needed to do my best at making whatever it was that I wasn't getting elsewhere. The composite material is completely natural and biodegradable after use and strong and rigid during its role as a tool. If put into production the tools would be made using a 3-4 part mold seeing that the material is a kind of liquid wood mixture.

I was excited when I first learned that crushed walnut shells could be used as blast media, to strip the paint or carbon deposits off of metal parts placed inside of a blast cabinet. I know sand is readily available, but I like the idea of something like nutshells, which ordinarily go straight into the trash, fulfulling one last useful function before taking up space in the landfill.

I've since been hard-pressed to find other uses for discarded nutshells that didn't involve making disturbingly feral-looking jewelry. But Indonesia-based product designer Arfi'an Fuadi and business partner Elonda Blount have figured out how to machine coconut shells into little rings, which they integrate into the bodies of their CoCoPen aluminum pen housings.

While it's just a small and admittedly cosmetic step towards finding practical uses for coconut shells, the duo's pens have proved popular; they swiftly received Kickstarter funding to produce their first run of 100 pens (the maximum amount Fuadi's facility in Indonesia can currently handle), but as they've doubled their funding target with nearly a month left, they'll presumably continue producing them.

I'm very curious to see what their machining process is, as a coconut shell shard doesn't exactly lend itself to being lathed or CNC milled; I can't imagine how they clamp the thing. But I hope Fuadi and Blount continue monkeying with the stuff, as I'd love to see if they can come up with a practical application for the material with mass-manufacturing implications.

Back in October of last year, we stopped by BUNDSHOP's Shanghai HQ, a month prior to the launch of their e-commerce platform. In my conversation with Diana, Stephany, Michael and Donnie, they mentioned that they were considering a 24-hour flash sale model, but ultimately went with a traditional online storefront for their holiday season debut.

Now, just five months later, BUNDSHOP is pleased to announce that they're relaunching with the more exclusive approach, featuring a new design from China every day. Billed as "the first and only E2 (Experience + E-Commerce) platform to bring the emerging independent designers of Asia to the world," the international upstarts are poised to become the definitive online portal for "not only products, but also news, interviews and industry opinions to keep our global community informed about a rapidly accelerating design revolution." Hence the tagline, "Made in China is dead—Designed in China killed it."

Wine Bottle Lamp by John Meng

Although the site is currently invite-only, Diana and Stephany are pleased to offer our readers a VIP hookup: Head over to BUNDSHOP.com, click "Get Immediate Access" at the bottom of the center column, and enter "Core" as the first name and "77" as the last name (and your personal e-mail as well, of course).

In Global Domination, Step 1 we showed you aspiring Bond villains several sources where you could order large steel globes to decorate your lair with. Turns out we missed one: Rick Wittrig's Third Rock model may not be as large as some of his globemaking colleagues', but it has the added bonus of containing a roaring fire. At this point, a jaded 007 has seen his share of global domination plans, so you can really freshen up your threats with this symbolic pyrotechnical display.

Wittrig, a.k.a. "Fire Pit Rick," is a Tennessee-based metalworker raised in a small Mennonite community, where he learned to work materials by hand. After purchasing a retail fire pit that fell apart and set his lawn on fire, Wittrig set about building his own, more solid versions, which quickly became popular enough to sell.

[My fire pits are] made from one quarter inch thick mild carbon steel and [have] an applied iron oxide patina on the outside. The interiors are hand rolled with a dense high temperature resistant coating and have a one and one half inch diameter rain drain in the bottom. All designs are easily adapted to propane or natural gas equipment.

Starting next month, Quirky contributors are going to be able to pick a lot more than each others' brains: When the Quirky Inspiration Platform launches in May, contributors will suddenly be able to access thousands of GE-owned patents and technologies that they can freely integrate into their designs.

The spin is that "GE will open thousands of its most promising patents and new technologies"—i.e. the ones we're not currently using—"to the Quirky community for the development of new consumer products." New designs created through the partnership will fall under the Quirky/GE co-brand "Wink: Instantly Connected."

We're eager to see the full list of patents green-lit for the team-up. In the meantime, GE's released a teaser list of some of the patent categories that will become available:

- Optical systems, including holographic and fast-focusing lens technologies - GE's holographic storage technology can be used for archiving large amounts of data and fast-focusing optics technology enables rapid, high resolution 2D image capture of 3D images, currently applicable to markets ranging from contactless fingerprinting, to semi-conductor quality control and medical optics.

- Barrier coatings - GE's Ultra-High Barrier technology enables thinner, lighter electronic devices including smartphones, televisions and solar panels by using thin film encapsulation to protect electronic devices from degradation by moisture and oxygen.

- Telematics and asset tracking technology - Modules used for commercial fleet tracking and vehicle navigation systems, which are used to monitor the location, movement, and behavior of a vehicle or fleet of vehicles.

All images via building.am

Well, the title sort of gives it away, but I recently came across this wacky edifice that's made web rounds at least a couple times since it surfaced a few years ago. According to Building.am, the Piano Violin House was built in the Anhui District of Huainan City, China, back in 2007.

This romantic house was designed by the students of the architectural design faculty of Hefey University of Technology with the designers of the company Huainan Fangkai Decoration Project Co.... a breadboard model inside [the] house displays various city plans and development prospects in an effort to draw interest into the recently developed area.

The pair of instruments reportedly comes in at 50:1 scale to their playable counterparts, but this fact strikes me as patently false: at relative scale, the stringed instrument is more likely to be modeled after a cello than a violin, and even then it comes in at what looks like upwards of 50% too big.

Of course, the 'keys' are also completely out of proportion as well.

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