Via WorldChanging.com comes news of a pretty neat concept for an appliance that’s won the Electrolux Design Lab 2005 competition. Called the “Airwash”, it’s a device that uses compressed air and negative ions to clean clothing. Sounds kinda odd at first I’ll admit, but it helps to remember that air and water are both fluids. So if you think of “washing” clothes in a fluid, then using air doesn’t sound so outrageous.

Whether or not the Airwash ever makes it past the concept stage, I like that someone got me to reconsider something as basic as how we wash clothes. There are plenty of products/solutions that could use another trip through the wringer.

Interesting piece over on the MIT Technology Review site called “Social Networking 3.0“. Especially interesting because I see the same kinds of issues with Second Life that’s discussed in the article. From the piece:

“A year ago a lot of our users were pretty unclear about what they could do,” says Konstantin Guericke, co-founder and vice president of marketing at LinkedIn, a social network focusing on business connections. “They knew they were getting invitations to join the network, and they knew how to accept invitations, and sometimes they sent their own invitations — but they weren’t sure what else to do with that.”

Funny. That’s what so many new users say about Second Life. And if, as I’ve been told, Linden Lab is just as unsure what to do with their project as some of those companies were, perhaps they should be reading that article for ideas so they can mature and move SL beyond its current seemingly embryonic stage. I can think of a number of associated, revenue-generating services I’d tack onto SL… and they’re not much different than what sites like Friendster and iMeem are doing. I even suggested something like Friendster’s new p2p “Grouper” tool to Map-Center’s site owner several years ago as a way of encouraging donations and distributing content without chewing through bandwidth (he blew me off). Anyway, I expect we’ll see these ideas integrated into virtual worlds at some point. If not Second Life or There, then some other player in the market. Only a matter of time.

I’ve been wanting to look into this blog entry over on Future Feeder and this evening finally found some time. Their post includes this link to the PSP/RCA project website, and it’s got some great process shots: from concept sketches to the completed metal constructions. I especially like the seated version as it has a quality that reminds me of Rodin’s Balzac (pic). Very cool.

I’ve previously mentioned (most recently in this post and this one) that we can expect to see virtual constructs crossing over into the real, well here’s a tool – the first I’ve seen – for translating 3D models over into Google Maps: Screampoint’s 3dsMax to Google Earth Exporter v1.0 . It’s not much, but it’s a start. Just imagine when Google Earth includes the 3D data their real world scanning trucks have been collecting.

That’s my way of suggesting we may be getting excited over nothing. I’ve just read a pretty good critique of the now infamous $100+ laptop. It raises points I either mentioned in my post yesterday or started to mention (but then decided against), and then raises more points. Wish I would have seen that post earlier as I could have just quoted it and saved myself the time.

Now here’s the kicker: while looking for a permalink so I could once again update that earlier post of mine, I accidentally hit the link to the next post on the subject. And it’s a doozy. From that more recent blog entry:

A day or so after my post on “Problems with the $100 laptop” an interesting event happened. I’m posting from the World Summit on Information Technology, where OLPC is introducing the laptop. They have a balsa model with a keyboard and an LCD with a thick cable attached to a box under the counter, and Mary Lou Jeppsen, the LCD designer and the chief engineer right now, makes no bones about it not being ready yet. They seem to have added a crank about 6 inches long, made of flat balsa wood pieces.

Now I realize that it’s almost certainly not a “balsa wood” model. Design firms don’t often bother with balsa anymore. Not really. There are other, better options. However, I do know what the uninitiated take for balsa… and like balsa, it’s also not anything close to “prototype” material. So that pretty model is very much only that – a pretty model. Which also means that the way this project is being managed is, to me, a little odd.

Truth is, this story is looking more and more like the kind of thing I expect to hear from some political organization – half-truths and spin. Something is wrong here.

{* Well, this was a quick update. I’ve just read another follow-up post from author Lee Felsenstein, and it’s a beauty. Finally, someone who has put into technical terms how many industrial designers see product development. Bookmark this one.}