Well, he's no Amron, but Dave Hakkens' also happened to generate a bit of design-for-hygiene buzz with his "Breaksoap" concept from last April. The Design Academy Eindhoven student is back with another household product—one that doesn't snap off or even leave you feeling oh-so-fresh-and-so-clean afterward.
Nevertheless, the "Plugbook" is designed to keep your pad tidy in other ways: it's essentially a retractable extension cord (bear with me here) in which the spool is concealed in a rather conspicuous plastic housing... so conspicuous, in fact, that Hakkens was inspired to highlight the chunky form factor.
Thus, the "Plugbook" is more or less impossible to misplace:
My goal was to create a little extension cord to use for small in-house jobs. Like charging your laptop, drilling a hole, connecting a lamp etc. I wanted it to be just there, in the middle of your living room without being obstructive and with a good working cable. If you need it, you now where it is and you can just take it, without a hassle.
The plugbook is made in the shape of a book which hides itself between your other books. When you need it, just take it out and pull the cord. Simple as that! Inside the book is 10 ft (3m) of cable. We also added an extra power socket and 2 USB ports to easily charge your iPad, iPhone, Smartphone, Camera and many other devices. And when you don't need it anymore you press the button and the cord automatically rewinds itself (like in a vacuum cleaner). And just put it back on the bookshelf ready to go for next time.
There must be a joke about taking up the shelf space that you saved with your Kindle/iPad/Nook somewhere in there...
(more...)