Focus + Context

I came across a great illustration of what happens when something is designed without considering the context in which it will be used.

In the Macy’s department store in New York City, stationed throughout the store are these little stations where you can either scan a gift card to see the remaning balance, or scan the [...]

One of the things that I love about living in a city is that I can walk everywhere.  Walk to the grocery store, walk to a restaurant, walk to work, walk wherever. During the summer, when it’s nice to run outside, I’m even able to integrate such errands into my runs, choosing a location suitably far [...]

Dyson AirBlade
Originally uploaded by ante10pe
 
This is the best hand dryer you’ve never used. Puts the old fashioned-one, non-directional leaf blower models to shame. Seriously, this thing will make paper towels go the way of the stegosaurus or the polar bear.
I CAN’T WAIT until the AssBlade comes out. See ya’ later, toilet paper.

Android for the people
Originally uploaded by ante10pe

There’s nothing like the mall at Christmastime. Especially when that mall is on LONG ISLAND.
Saw this huuuuge advert hanging from the ceiling of Roosevelt Field shopping mall. There’s the little Android dude in the lower left hand banner of the banner. Is there a comparable iPhone app?
Interesting for a [...]

img224.jpg
Originally uploaded by ante10pe

This is a photo of my coffee cup from lunch today.  Why is this interesting, you ask?
It’s hard to see from my blurry cameraphone photo, but the text on the top says “Place Cup ↑ Seam Here.”
I checked underneath and there’s no special molding on the underside to combat seam-leakage.
While it’s not [...]

I’ve really enjoyed browsing through a bunch of old photos posted to Flickr by the New York Public Library (thanks to BoingBoing for posting).

This seems to be part of a recent trend. Not too long ago, The Library of Congress released a bunch of photos to Flickr, as have The Smithsonian Institute, and many other [...]

It’s completely unfair for me to say this. I’ve  never met the guy, but I get the sense that if I were to, he’d be an utter douchebag.
You can’t see the screen of his Palm Centro in this photo, but he’s simultaneoulsy juggling text conversations with two chicks he roofied in a bar last night [...]

I’m not sure how long it’s been around for, but I just came across an exciting new service called Twilio.
I think it’s easiest to think of it as glue between a voice call and a server-side application. So I call up an assigned, and my called is ‘handled’ by a script written in TwiML (Twilio’s [...]

Hexceptionally Delicious
Originally uploaded by ante10pe

From Ralston, the makers of ‘Powdered Parallelograms’ and ‘Munch, Munch Moebius Strips’ comes a new product, ‘Crispy Hexagons.’
If my memory sewrves me correctly, aren’t Chex (of Chex Mix fame) hexagonally shaped as well? I’m sure the good folks over at Chex wanted to name their cereal ‘Crispy Hexagons,’ but [...]

Brrrrrrrrr.
Originally uploaded by ante10pe

I awake with a tryptophan hangover, from a four-day long turkey-bender, shirt drenched in some ungodly combination of sweat and gravy, giblets stuck to the ceiling, to find that winter in chicago is finally upon us.
But there are so many more questions than answers. How long was i asleep for? Why am [...]