Design

Transparent smartphone prototype is clearly cool

Many smartphones look the same from afar. I bet most of you own one that's thin, rectangular, and features a big screen. Boooring!

A fully transparent conceptual smartphone, developed by Taiwanese company Polytron Technologies, gives me hope for a future full of fancy smartphones far different from the common designs seen today.… Read more

Kickstarted 3Doodler: It's a pen, it's a 3D printer

If 3D printers seem too expensive, or too technically complex, WobbleWorks' 3Doodler 3D printing pen looks like a budget- and user-friendly alternative. It also looks like a ton of fun.

The idea behind the 3Doodler is that it takes the core functionality of a 3D printer, essentially an extruder and a heat source, and jams it into a pen-shaped handheld device. Loaded with either ABS or PLA plastic, common feedstock for traditional 3D printers, the 3Doodler "prints" plastic objects by letting you draw them in freehand in three-dimensional space.

The brainchild of WobbleWorks, a robotic toy company formed … Read more

How Apple got serious about style

When Frog Design founder Hartmut Esslinger met Steve Jobs in 1982, it sparked a chain of events that monumentally changed Apple's design philosophy forever. It wasn't just a change in how future products would look -- Esslinger ushered in a change of mindset and a unified design language across products.

Esslinger's new book, "Design Forward: Creative Strategies for Sustainable Change," available today in the U.S., delivers some fascinating insights into those crucial early years at Apple.… Read more

Turn a 35mm film canister into a greeting card

Instead of throwing away spent film canisters, a resourceful San Francisco nerd who goes by the moniker Doctor Popular managed to transform one into an interactive greeting card for his Valentine.

The idea is a simple: The greeting card -- made from paper -- mimics a strip of 35mm film with a personal greeting written on it alongside a little bit of creative decorating. The "film" is then inserted into the canister and can be read with a pull of a tab. … Read more

Light up your life with a giant Nikon lens lamp

If you're looking for a photography-related conversation starter for your home, this accessory could be one to shoot for.

Measuring a little over a foot across and roughly 19.5 inches high when the hood's attached, the lamp is a larger-than-life replica of Nikon's 14-24mm F2.8 ultra-wide-angle full-frame zoom lens. This unique decorative piece is constructed from white cedar wood that's coated with a water-based varnish and then finished with beeswax. … Read more

Gorgeous Alfa Romeo 4C to to enter U.S. market

It was love at first sight when Alfa Romeo debuted the 4C concept car at the 2011 Geneva auto show. At that time, Alfa Romeo said it would put the car into production, but it has been an excruciating two years waiting for any news of the car.

Now the wait is over, as Alfa Romeo announced it would not only show the production car at the 2013 Geneva auto show, but will also sell this beautiful little two-seater in the United States.

The 4C is a mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive car, a perfect formula for excellent handling. The production vehicle will … Read more

A keyboard that rises up from flat touch screens

A few weeks ago, right before the new BlackBerry 10 phones were announced, I dragged a cameraman to San Francisco's Financial District during lunch hour and asked random strangers to name BlackBerry's best feature. Care to guess what the results of my highly unscientific poll were? Even iPhone and Android users agreed -- the famed keyboard is BlackBerry's top trait.

Increasingly, we "mobile device addicts" are favoring our smartphones and tablets over our traditional computers to meet our digital demands. Trouble is, a lot of us still despise typing on these beloved touch-screen devices. One Silicon Valley startup has created a new kind of keyboard that could help reduce typos and other fat-fingered mistakes.

Fremont, Calif.-based, Tactus Technology uses microfluidics to make physical keys bubble up from the surface of a touch screen when you need to type and disappear, when you don't. Microfluidics may sound foreign, but if you've operated an inkjet printer you've used the technology. … Read more

Behind the scenes with the world's largest LED art project

SAN FRANCISCO--I'm standing behind Leo Villareal, watching the well-known artist calibrate settings in the software running on his screen. Each time he moves a slider, one of the world's largest art installations -- mounted on one of the world's most-famous landmarks -- changes in an instant.

It's a gorgeous evening on the Embarcadero, San Francisco's eastern waterfront, with the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge dominating the landscape in front of us, and a near-full moon doing its best to overcome the typical evening fog cover. Lights from the city, and from Oakland on the other side of the bay reflect brilliantly in the water. And with just the most subtle adjustments in his custom-designed software, Villareal makes thousands of LEDs strung out over the 1.8 mile-long western span of the bridge almost instantaneously change what they're doing, and how they're interacting with each other. … Read more

Here's the 3D-printing institute in Obama's State of the Union

A little over a year ago, 3D printing was a funky new technology that you might find at modestly sized booths in the basement level of the Las Vegas Convention Center at CES. Tonight, President Obama mentioned it in the same breath as Apple and Intel during his State of the Union address, while talking about ways to create new jobs and manufacturing in the United States. Here's the passage from the transcript:

After shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three. Caterpillar is bringing jobs back from … Read more