One of the small pleasures of life is sharing a fine Cappuccino on a weekend morning at home. The only difficulty is, you need a way to produce one, and we don’t have a professional machine at home like they have in a proper coffee shop. We do have the means to make strong espresso … Read more
We all know the raised reflector buttons on the lane divider lines of a freeway. They have white or yellow retroreflectors embedded in their edges, so that at night they shine right back at you in the light of your car’s headlamps. Safety and beauty in the same simple device. But what many may not … Read more
Sometimes one runs into elegant design in humble places… I was sitting in a meeting and fiddling idly with the remote control of the NEC LCD projector. After toying with the laser for a while, I pushed out the battery cover on the back. As expected, it unlatched and slid open, like these things always … Read more
Sometimes you find elegant design in the places you least expect it. We stayed in the Dan Carmel in Haifa, and the small supplies in the bathroom came in color-coordinated little boxes: shower cap, cotton pads, the usual stuff. Still, they failed to go all the way: they had tall bottles for the shampoo and … Read more
While touring the Spreewald in Germany we came upon the strange device in the center of this photo. In fact we saw many of them while punting in the canals of this “Germany’s Venice”. This is a leaky wooden box hanging on chains with a mechanism to raise and lower it relative to the water … Read more
My friend Jeff pointed out to me a novel implementation of a coffee-to-go carrying device, in use in a coffeeshop chain in Germany. The assembled device in use is actually less elegant than the usual little tray-with-handle cardboard carriers we’ve had for a long time; in fact you can’t even plop this one down on … Read more
A riddle: what’s rectangular and flat, can fit in your pocket, and can calculate six-variable functions? No, not a pocket calculator; I forgot to mention – it has no electronic components whatsoever. Here, check it out in the latest addition to the HOC collection on my Possibly Interesting web site.
All coffee lovers know the classic Italian “Machinetta“, or Moka pot, that 3-piece stovetop espresso maker: not a competition to the professional espresso machine of a coffee shop, but good for a fast, concentrated caffeine fix at home. These have been around since their invention in 1933 by Alfonso Bialetti, and we have a number … Read more
A humorous video review from CNET on the Lenovo Design Matters blog (yep, these guys have a blog where their designers interact with their users – a commendable idea!) compares the Thinkpad X300 to the MacBook Air. Nicely done – take a look. Interestingly, the reviewer mentions one favorite feature of mine in the recent … Read more
Everyone uses the 3M Post-it note, and it’s often used as an example of the role of serendipity in product development – and of the wisdom of maintaining a corporate culture that encourages and empowers the pursuit of such serendipity. But the Post-it note story has another interesting lesson, and it has to do with … Read more
