Simple and cool.  The Magnus iPad stand made from pure aluminium is designed by the American design studio, Ten One Design. Now we can all enjoy streaming films on our iPad without being distracted by it’s dock nor suffer from tired arms for holding it for extended periods of time.

Magnus iPad Stand, Back

Switch claims that their bulbs, which are dimmable and can be screwed into any standard fixture, will last 25,000 hours and generate €120  in savings over their lifetime. The bulb which was showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, is set to retail for approximately €30 when it eventually goes on sale.

Currently only available for the U.S. volt system, the plan is that they will release versions for use in the U.K. and in Europe by the end of this year.

Energy efficient bulbs may have the positive aspect of being energy efficient, but unlike the traditional incadescent lightbulbs, they take much longer to brighten up. These LED liquid cooled versions however, will use a fraction of the watts to emit a brightness that matches up to its 100 watts counterpart. They make use of a coolant that also helps evenly distribute light, which emulates the 360 degree field of illumination for which incandescent bulbs are renowned.

Brett Sharenow, the strategy officer for Switch, praised the creation saying: “‘The big thing about this bulb is it uses 80 per cent less energy than an incandescent. For a commercial application, the payback is about six months. To commercial users, it is a no-brainer.”

Could it be that a small start-up has beaten the well-known corporate companies whom have failed to develop a solution to truly replace those incandescent bulbs? Looks like the future of lighting might lie with Switch and their liquid cooled LED light bulbs.

Behind the glass and stainless steel, Invoxia’s In Vivo Acoustic Technology works its magic. There are eight broadband speakers, eight digital microphones, and proprietary digital signal processing pinpoints incoming voices, cancels background sound, and projects each voice in its own separate space on the receiving end, keeping conference call conversations clear and concise.

There is also a corded handset for more traditional calling, two USB and two Ethernet ports, and a selection of colourful docks.

Invoxia NVX 610 with a selection colour docks.

Using a drawing tool, users get to add outfits, hair, faces, and facial expressions that will then be displayed in 3D for you to share. Earlier in Home Couture we featured the original Doll Lamps by French designer Ionna Vautrin for Foscarini.

Therefore allowing you to save them into digital files, which is a useful way to transfer initial ideas to continue your development work on design software on your computer.

The Moleskine and Evernote app is designed especially for use on the iPhone or iPad. The special dots on every page enables the application to detect your work.

Transform your doodles and handwriting into digitised files that will instantly become searchable and shareable to friends or colleagues.

Other features include stick Smart Stickers directly on to the paper to instantly tag specific pages to enable efficient organisation for archiving files once you take a snapshot of the page.

So how does it work?
The Evernote page camera works by detecting a specially designed dotted pattern on each page, which is optimised to work alongside the mobile software application.

The Moleskine Evernote Smart Notebook is available to pre-order now.

Smart Stickers instantly organise and archive your newly digitised pages

Hövding appears to be a funny looking collar around your neck, but what you don’t see is the folded up airbag hiding inside. When the airbag’s sensors are alerted to “abnormal movements,” a helmet-shaped hood deploys to protect your noggin.

They even took it a step further in that the collar features changeable shells that you can switch to match your outfits. So perhaps in future the Hövding might spell the end of the bog standard safe but ugly looking cycling helmet.

Helmet worn down

The app easily creates palettes for inspiration, and stores them in the “portable colour memory” section for future reference. Show your saved colour Pantone capture to designers and manufacturers worldwide, and everyone will know your exact hue.

The myPANTONE application also enables colour and mood palette creations, so capture tones whenever you get inspired. The application is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch.

The Book Chargers by Rich Neeley Designs are made from actual vintage books complete with an impressively subtle power source for an iPhone or iPod. There is an USB-compatible socket tucked neatly behind the book’s binding, and the dock itself is discreet enough to go unnoticed at quick glance.

The project involves Rich Neeley and his wife, Brenna, travelling around Southern California on what they call “book hunting” excursions. They  found copies such as a 1977 edition of “Alice in Wonderland”, a manual called “Modern Dentistry” dating back to 1975, and a cloth-bound copy of Louisa May Alcott’s “Eight Cousins” from 1914 for the antique bases they then refurbish to keep your modern technology fully juiced. The selection of books also includes contemporary releases bound in throwback past-edition covers, with titles spanning “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, “Huckleberry Finn” and more.

The Rich Neeley Book Chargers are available for purchase from Etsy shop.

iPhone Book Charger

iPhone Book Charger in Action

iPhone Book Charger

The indoor and outdoor gas fireplace manufacturer Escea has just launched a new range of gas fireplaces that features the coolest thing ever: built-in WiFi connectivity. That means the ability to control your fireplace with your smartphone.

But then the next question is, who gets priority over what temperature to set it to if everyone in the household has control?

In 1907, Leo Baekeland developed Bakelite, the first thermoset plastic. In 1911, Sankyo Company offered the first commercially available Bakelite in Japan, and the Japanese plastics industry was officially launched.

Architect and materials researcher Hiroshi Ota designed the exhibition in collaboration with curators Miki Fukuda and Yukiko Shikata, housing a collection of innovative plastic products and materials within a hexagonal plastic display structure with cells of varying scales. Although the exhibition only lasted four days, it received over 2,000 visitors—a testament to the continued adoration of polymers in this future-focused culture.  Plastic is indispensable in the product design world and in fact in our every day lives.