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Today's the Day: Enter the Core77 Design Awards Before the 9pm Deadline Tonight

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Today's your last chance to submit your design to the 2014 Core77 Design Awards program. If you haven't gotten a chance to meet our jury—or we haven't name-dropped enough—head on over to our site and get to know the people who will be judging your designs. For those of you who are tuning in late (which is totally ok—there's still time to put together your entry), check out a full list of our categories, from DIY and Consumer Products to Speculative and Writing & Commentary. You can submit designs until 9pm EST tonight.

It's go time, folks! Enter your work today!

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International Home + Housewares Show 2014: Ameico Thinks Spring with Y-Ply

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Content sponsored by the IHA
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Reporting by Morgan Walsh

After the cold, bitter, blustery and seemingly endless winter we've had here in Chicago—and across the country—everyone is desperate for spring. And so I went to the International Home and Housewares Show in search of products to help ring in spring.

Spotted: Ameico's Y-ply, a teeny-tiny and super lightweight back and head hammock. The size of Y-ply rivaled that of the Foodskin and I could fit both in my purse, with room for a book, for a morning at the park. Y-ply's two u-shaped legs are pushed into sand or soft ground and the body's weight holds it in place, providing support and comfort for outdoor lounging. Heaven forbid we still weeks of winter to endure, Y-ply can also be used indoors, with the assistance of a corner, to simulate a relaxing few hours outdoors.

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File Under 'There's Got to Be a Better Way!': Infinity Pedals by Sam Hunter

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Hey biker, are you plagued by fear and clumsiness caused by your own clipless pedals? Is it just too much work to snap your cleated foot into the perfectly matched pedal? Sam Hunter has an answer: the Infinity Pedal. Given that it's already more than 50% funded and there's still a month and a half left to go, people find it an attractive option. Check out this sensationally over-acted Kickstarter pitch for his "revolutionary" (cough) new system:

The key feature in this design is its "infinitely" accessible pedal surface—no fumbling between right side/wrong side at stoplights or while trucking uphill. By using lateral rather than vertical spring tension, the overall size of the pedal is reduced—ooh weight savings! Wisely, only the inboard side of the pedal is mobile so that an outboard side impact (like a brush with a rock or teammate or taxi) wouldn't immediately release your foot. The entry is similar to most pedals: a forward swiping click. The cleat fits a normal 2-bolt mountain or commuting style shoe. 5 degrees of float, 18 degree release—all pretty much standard. They claim to be the lightest "combination of function and form on the market", they come in colors, and they're working on a spring tension adjustment for us finicky riders.

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Designing for Cutting Cable Clutter, Part 1: Accessories

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You know those desks you see in magazines and on design sites—the immaculate ones with not a cable in sight? I don't have a desk like that, and my clients don't, either. We have laptops, whose power cables slither to the floor when we unplug them. My clients often have desks which don't face the wall, so the unsightly tangle or pile of cords that might otherwise be somewhat hidden down the back is instead in clear view. And since most desk designs ignore the cable issue, we're left to deal with it through various aftermarket products.

A number of those products are designed to ensure that cables not currently in use don't slip to the floor. The one above is the MOS—the Magnetic Organization System. The magnets in the MOS will hold most cables in place, but there are also magnetic cable ties for any cables which need some help.

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The MOS itself is held in place by a layer of non-sticky micro-suction padding. If you're designing (or using) a cable organizer, this might sound like the ideal way to affix your product to the desk—and in many cases, it is. Sewell even sells its AirStick tape, used in the MOS, as a separate product for other mounting uses. However, the MOS needs a clean, flat surface for that suction to work, and it won't work on something like unfinished wood, which is porous and doesn't allow the suction to form.

Also, think about the other materials you're using, not just the connection method. For example, the aluminum MOS looks fantastic—until it gets scratched up by metal connections at the end of a power cord. (The MOS also comes in plastic.)

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The Bluelounge Cable Drops each hold a single cable. These attach to the desk with an adhesive, which means the drops cannot be repositioned—end-users will need to carefully consider where they want to attach them. Although Bluelounge provides instructions for removing the adhesive, people might still be hesitant about using this on an expensive desk or an antique one. And one more design consideration: These come in a variety of colors, including white—darker colors might be a better choice for a finish which can absorb dirt.

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Sumo, also from Bluelounge, is described as a paperweight for your cables. Like the MOS, it uses micro-suction pads to stay in place and can be repositioned as needed. There are two grooves underneath to help keep the cables in place. This raises another design issue: How large of a cable should the device accommodate? Some people have said larger cables don't fit in the Sumo very well—but a product designed to accommodate larger cables might not grip smaller ones firmly enough.

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Russian Hacktographer's Crazy Cheap, Super High Quality Macro Shooting Set-Up

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How can something that beautiful (above) be captured with something this ugly (below)? Those unbelievably detailed macro photographs of snowflakes captured by Alexey Kljatov were shot with this monstrosity:

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A conventional lens set-up to achieve shots like Kljatov's could run you in the thousands, but the clever Moscow-based shooter hacked this together on the cheap, all from obsolete equipment. He took a common, unremarkable Helios 44M-5 lens (a Soviet-era Carl Zeiss derivative that can be had for less than US $30 on eBay!) and somehow figured out that if you flip it around backwards, then place it against the lens of a common Canon Powershot A650 in Macro mode, you get some pretty awesome zoom. (The A650, a camera whose heyday was the year 2007, goes for less than US $200 on eBay.)

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Kljatov then mounted his Canon to a wooden slat by drilling a single hole and driving a screw into the tripod mount. The Helios was then attached to the board with strapping tape, with the makeshift connection then "protected" from light leaks and weather using a cut-up garbage bag.

Still not impressed? Of his two shooting surfaces, one is an upside-down stool and a piece of glass, and the other is what looks like an old wool sweater. (And his lighting source, not pictured, is a freaking flashlight.)

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Yet from these most ghetto-tastic of set-ups, Kljatov can start with these...

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Quirky is Looking For a Passionate Structural Packaging Designer in New York, NY

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Work for Quirky!

The solution focused team at Quirky is looking for a Structural Packaging Designer that fits the follow mold:

"You love packaging. You find yourself judging packages as you wander through stores, thinking you could have done it better. You know the properties of packaging materials and love finding new ways to use them effectively. You've mastered designing 2D folding carton die lines as well as 3D vac forms. You can generate a structural rendering for review then turn around and make a physical mockup. You really want to work for Quirky."

Does that sound like you? If so, you're the kick-ass designer they want to join there team. Take some time to explore their site, and if you like what you see, Apply Right Now.

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Good News: The Core77 Design Awards Deadline Has Been Extended

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If 101 days wasn't enough time to put together your submission for the Core77 Design Awards—hey, we're not judging—you're in luck! We've extended our deadline to April 6 for those of you looking for a bit of extra time to submit your work. Take a few minutes (now that you have lots of those) to get to know our jury teams, rules and regulations and the 17 categories for both students and professionals.

We're happy to give you a second chance at getting your work seen by some of the coolest names in the industry. After all, there are a lot of people who've been given a second chance—just take a look at Steve Jobs or Robert Downey Jr.

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International Home + Housewares Show 2014: Martin Kastner Goes Over Some Crucial Details

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Content sponsored by the IHA
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Although he's based in Chicago, this is Martin Kastner's very first Housewares Show, and we were just as excited to see his KickstartedPorthole cocktail infuser as he was to show it. Originally designed for the Aviary, itself a spinoff of the renowned Alinea, where chef Grant Achatz brought Kastner in to design innovative tableware for presenting and serving his gastronomic masterpieces.

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Samsung to Launch Website Dedicated to Explaining Their Design Process

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Here's a welcome bit of attention for our field: Next week Samsung Electronics is launching Design.Samsung.Com, an "online platform presenting influential design stories and solutions to be shared around the world." The site's inaugural theme is "Make it Meaningful," presumably based on this video from last year, where the Galaxy S4 design team discussed their mandate of closely matching their smartphones' functionality with people's everyday lives.

But rather than trumpet their past accomplishments, the site is expected to provided glimpses at future technologies as well, if the teaser video is anything to go by:

The website will launch on March 27th.

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In the Details: Turning Stone Manufacturing Waste Into a Line of Housewares

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Francesca Gattello was completing her master's in product design at Politecnico di Milano last spring when she decided to enter Scenari di Innovazione (Innovation Scenarios), a competition that tasks students with creating new products for small artisan companies. After visiting many of the contest partners' shops, Gattello was struck by huge sacks of waste outside a marble manufacturing facility, which she learned posed a serious environmental problem. Given the expense of proper disposal, many manufacturers opt to simply pour their stone waste into streams—damaging the local ecosystem. Gattello decided to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, incorporating stone waste into pure clay sourced from another local shop to create an experimental material that could be used for a line of housewares.

Gattello's project ended up winning the Scenari di Innovazione and, as a reward, she was able to prototype the products proposed. For her line of pots, cups, vases and bowls, dubbed Calcarea, the Verona-based designer drew inspiration from her collaborators' existing products. "I chose to work with Attucci Marmi, a little stone industry, to get the waste, and Rossoramina, a family-run ceramic company, to develop the product concept, the prototypes and the collection," Gattelo says. From Rossoramina, she got the idea for the vessels' distinctive vertical grooves, as well as for using two surface finishes—"a transparent glazed one," Gattello says, "to show the complete claylike production process, and a rough one, which shows the core mixed material, its nature, its visual and tactile qualities."

FrancescaGattello-CalcareaHousewares-2.jpgGattello had to hand-sift the stone waste to remove impurities, a process she hopes to automate for the production run.

FrancescaGattello-CalcareaHousewares-3.jpgThe vessels are made via a combination of mold-casting and hand-turning on a wheel.

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Print Your Own Futureshoes with Filaflex

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So maybe the hoverboards aren't happening, but it's ok: downloadable shoes are here! And not the brittle conceptual heels of high fashion, but totally dope [read: unbelievably ugly] sneaks. The trick is printing with Filaflex, a pretty cool material from Recreus that gives a lot more flex than standard options.

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While they may look like chiseled plastic, they're surprisingly bendable—effectively combining the 3D printing community's penchants for terrible fashion and the needlessly DIY.

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Faire Play: Printable Armor for a Famous Plastic Lady

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This is by far my favorite Kickstarter find of the week. Faire Play invites you to ennoble your pampered plastic plaything and unleash her on some righteous quests. This campaign (pun intended) aims to bring you and your plastic friend a suit of creatively styled and well-fitting plate mail. Not the idiotic midriff baring, anatomically embossed armor of fantasy games, but the full-coverage cladding needed to decimate an enemy legion and come away the blood-soaked victor.

battlebarbie.jpgLet's go shopping... for broadswords!

Creator Jim Rodda (or Zheng3) settled on this project when a My Little Pony glitter cannon for his niece got too involved. Previously known for creating a printable tabletop war game, I think he's got the right chops for the task. And the demand for his carefully tailored line is high: less than 20% left to go at 20 days left. No wonder—who wouldn't rather play Brienne of Tarth? Useless simpletons, that's who.

As the inspiring pitch video shows, a fierce playroom defender is just a quick print away, and even dinosaurs don't stand a chance. Check out the Kickstarter video:

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And Now, Chicago's Flippin' Cyclist

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Some of you may already know about the fella in the picture above—after all, he makes a living by performing in a heavily trafficked intersection in Chicago, where he is colloquially known as the "Bike Flip" guy. It turns out that his full nom de guerre is "Flip Bike Travis," and while I didn't press him for further biographical details, I did have the opportunity to witness the showman in action—in a special St. Patrick's Day costume, no less. This, folks, is what the iPhone 5S slo-mo cam was made for:

Those who frequent Wicker Park have surely seen the DIYer extraordinaire at some point, though I consider myself lucky that he elected to brave the intermittent flurries (and heavily inebriated revelers) on a chilly Saturday night, layered up in his winter gear and a fantastic costume—one of my colleagues described it as "a giant koosh ball"—for the occasion. (He remarked that he thought that the slick streets would make for a nice visual effect, and that he'd actually made the costume before he built the bike itself.)

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As for his sweet ride? Travis estimated that it weighs in at about 70lbs (let's just say it's not crafted from Reynolds 853 or Columbus SLX) and it's hard to tell from the photos, but there is a tread along the outside of the outer arc. The LEDs are powered by a NiMH battery pack under the saddle, and the switch is hidden inside of the foam, er, dongle off the front.

Travis was also confident enough to go for a double—don't try this at home:

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ThinkGeek is Looking for a LEGO Builder in Fairfax, Virginia. Yes, You Read That Right.

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Work for ThinkGeek!

Do you love LEGO? Are you a wizard when it comes to building crazy unique creations? Then come help ThinkGeek develop some brick based awesomeness with their own LEGO compatible building sets.

You'll be working with our internal GeekLabs product design team. You might even get to work on some of the top sci-fi and gaming licenses in the world including Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Portal, Game of Thrones, Minecraft, and DOTA.

If you have great hands-on LEGO building skills, expert use of LDD software and the ability to create accurate building instructions and list of parts for models, Apply Now.

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Naoto Fukasawa on the Future of Product Design (Which May or May Not Include Bentleys) - Exclusive Interview at Design Indaba 2014

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It turns out that one of the designers who I was most curious to see was scheduled to be the second to last speaker at the 2014 Design Indaba Conference: Naoto Fukasawa, the master himself. (In fact, word on the street was that 'headliner' Stefan Sagmeister himself was not particularly nervous about his own presentation but had reservations about following Fukasawa, with whom he had also shared the stage 11 years ago, at the 2003 Conference.)

Following blockbuster talks from Dean Poole and renowned photographer David Goldblatt, Fukasawa got off to a slow start. He offered a few brief introductory remarks before screening a slick promo video for the new Integrated Design degree program at Tama Art University, his alma mater, set to open next month. He then proceeded with a lecture-style explanation of his approach, defining terms such as "aesthetics" and James Gibson's notion of "affordance" (Japanese subtitles and all), presenting a series of simple infographics and gestalt tropes to illustrate his own design philosophy of "without thought."

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If skeuomorphism might be construed as a superficial means of expressing functionality, Fukasawa's insights penetrate far deeper into the heart of the matter—namely, that "the body is more focused than the mind." It is our sub- or preconscious behaviors that inform and inspire his approach to design; insofar as all behaviors are 'learned,' Fukasawa is concerned with those that are not taught. Whereas intution implies a degree of cognition, instinct is the true holy grail of interaction design—subtle but unmistakable cues about how an object is used, as well as its so-called 'fiddle factor.'

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International Home + Housewares Show 2014: Recipes for the Past and the Future - Bosign and Joseph Joseph

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Content sponsored by the IHA
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Reporting by Morgan Walsh, photos by Benjamin Gross and Ray Hu

When we came across Bosign's Kitchen Tablet Stand in the Discover Design Gallery, we couldn't help but think it looked a bit like, well, an ashtray. Cylindrically shaped and made from silicone, its five-inch base stands about an inch and a half high, with a small slit in each side. The cylinder has been 'sliced' on a diagonal to achieve the optimal viewing angle for an iPad propped inside. The screen can be set horizontally or vertically, and as its name suggests, the Tablet Stand is meant to be used while preparing food, displaying recipes while hands are otherwise occupied. Helpful during the making of a meal, its simple shape can be easily cleaned after.

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Nearby, at the busy and plentiful Joseph Joseph booth, we spotted Cookbook, the analog adversary to Bosign's digitally-geared design. Borrowing from traditional bookstand elements, Joseph Joseph's plastic iteration does however come with some updates. The dynamic form folds together, itself becoming a book; when open, the book's spine converts into an angled leg with a non-skid foot. Movable windshield-wiper-like arms hold pages in place. (Though the often-thick cookbook could nary fit into Bosign's Tablet Stand, Joseph Joseph's Cookbook was also created to support electronic tablets; the bottom lip is cut away in the center to allow a tablet to be charged.)

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Education: An Alien in Society

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When I look at schools, I walk into schools, when I interact with schools, I feel like they belong to a different universe. As soon as I set my foot in a school, it feels like I've stepped out of the real world and into a something alien and unnatural.

Most people call it an institution, in the same way that we call a hospital or a prison "an institution."

Institution—this says it all. A public or private place for the care or confinement of inmates, especially mental patients or other disabled or handicapped persons.

Throughout history, it seems like we've been dead set on designing educations and education facilities as to make the students feel locked-in, both body as well as soul.

It doesn't sound very inviting or inspiring, it normally doesn't look very inviting or inspring, and still we want students of all ages to spend a lot of time in these place, we want them to want to learn, to get inspired, to grow as human beings and to become the next generation when building our society. Yet hardly anything about the ordinary education facilities can be called inspiring, or showcase which direction we want our society to go.

For many years, one of of the questions roaming around in my mind on a daily basis has been, 'How can we create an good education that builds the sort of minds we want and need in our society, when we don't even seem to know which sort of society we want?' Which leads to: How can we go about re-arranging our education over and over and over again, without seemingly taking into account that education and society are undeniably intertwined?

This leads back to what I wrote in the very beginning: How come we have been designing institutions that separates, and in some cases, alienates, rather than intertwines education and education facilities with society? And how can we integrate education in such a way that it becomes a more natural, and less alien, base pillar of the society we want to create?

Is it just me, or is this something that we need to start a serious discussion about that crosses national, social and occupational borders...?

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Drones Are SO Over: Meet MIT's Creepy Autonomous Robot Fish

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New technology usually makes waves when it's flashy, but this project from MIT Distributed Robotics Laboratory takes place ominously under the waves. Its upshot is an independently operating fish that swims realistically and reacts with self-protective behaviors, dubbed the Autonomous Soft Robot Fish, which is a terrible acronym and awesome idea. Soft robots are robots whose bodies are powered by pressure within "flexible channels," rather than a rigid structure. They're also often literally softer, made of materials less damaging to spongy-bodied humans. What this all means is that the fish's silicone body is flexed and powered by pressurizing internal chambers, in this case long channels cut down each side of the tail. As they put it, "carbon dioxide released from a canister in the fish's abdomen causes the channel to inflate, bending the tail in the opposite direction."

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Keeping Letterpress Lively: Studio visit with KeeganMeegan & Co.

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It's not hard to love letters, they give us ideas and inspiration and connect us to the world through writing. For traditional printers that letter-love is as precise as a knife-edge. This month the Hand-Eye Supply team visited the letterpress virtuosos at Portland's KeeganMeegan & Co. to watch them work and drop off our new printer's rulers. Well-known for their traditional letterpress work and hand illustrated printing, the duo combines old-school techniques and visuals with inviting modern design.

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Letterpress, the OG method of putting squiggly lines onto paper, uses blocks of carefully aligned moveable type mounted in a bed, an inked plate or roller, and something to carefully squish the paper in. KM & Co. uses particularly epic-looking platen presses that look like they're just a generation or two removed from Gutenberg, yet are capable of producing stylish work for businesses and famous bands.

As you can imagine, their work relies on tiny adjustments, painstaking attention and a lot of patience. While computerized layout can still be a chore, it's a much longer process when doing it by hand. To shuffle type and images into the careful alignment needed, the line gauge is an invaluable tool. It has several features that give letterpress, printmaking, graphic design, zine layout and other typographic or tactile traditionalists a leg up.

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First Look: Festool's Amazing Dust-Free TSC-55 Cordless Track Saw!

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We headed up to the JLC Live show in Providence last week, so we just had to stop by Festool Connect, the awesome one-day outreach event where the company gives demos of their latest and greatest. As most of you know, Festool is a company with a reputation for unmatched product design—go through their user forums and you'll find a fervent following backing that up, if you don't already have Festool product in your own shop—and they certainly didn't disappoint for 2014.

While we had a hard time capturing video of all of their tools we wanted to show you, thankfully were able to get footage of their wicked TSC-55 cordless track saw, which somehow magically spirits the dust away without being hooked up to a vac! You have to see this thing in action:

Our European readership is in luck, as the tool will be available April 1 on that side of the pond. For us Americans, alas, the U.S. release date—if there's even going to be one—is TBD. We'll keep you posted if we hear anything.

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