I’ve been recently contacted by Mei Mah from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum – Smithsonian Institution, with word that I’ve been nominated as a candidate for Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s 2010 National Design Awards program for excellence in Product Design!
All I can say at this time is, Thank you for all of the support over the years. Love you all! Thank you!
oxo
EAM
Being a designer means being able to not only predict the future, but to have a hand in shaping it as well. In the last 10 years, however, designers also had to dramatically change the way they worked: What other industry got to weather the dot-com crash, a real estate bubble, and the death of print?
But it was not all boom and bust. The design field redesigned itself during this decade, transforming from an industry that created better objects to one that created better experiences—and endeavored to deliver them to everyone, not just the people who could afford them. Design was the place for big thinkers to cultivate new technology, and it’s where the sustainability movement found its most trusted partners. Here’s a look back on the design decade that was.
You can now purchase the Casio EXG1 Endurance Camera at all major retailers now, like Amazon. The Casio 12 MP Slim Endurance Camera is shock resistant from 8 feet and water resistant down to 10 feet. It is an excellent camera for sport goers and adventurist people alike. Get it now in time for a perfect Christmas present!
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More photos are available in the Designs gallery.
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I love these magnets and vintage sayings from Picard Creative on ArtFire. Witty and humorous, they’re all very creative. Buy a few now for $4.95!
Few more of my favorites.
SuZu is an unemployed single mother of one living in San Diego. She is an aspiring Photographer. She’s been a long time fan of my online happenings, and has bought every one of my designed products! Thank you!
Enjoy it SuZu! (Suzy)
(Posted from my Blackberry)
]]>The total value of this baby is $4,548! Fully loaded and all wrapped up in beautiful Handmade Gift Paper!
So, all you have to do is follow me on Twitter (if you have one) and leave a comment here saying why you want/need this. You must leave a comment below for you to be counted in this contest. The winning comment will be selected using a Random Number Generator! I do not count twitter DM’s or @ Replies.
Good Luck!
RULES: 13 years or older, Under 17 requires parental permission. Worldwide (Some countries may be excluded due to certain laws) ((Wherever this Macbook is sold, it’ll ship!)) and home addresses, no P.O boxes.(FedEx shipping) The Contest will end July 15th 2009 at 2pm! (Make that 2:30pm!)
]]>The Palm Pre is Palm’s ‘we’re back’ device of the year. From a nice product line up few years back, to this. First the ‘Centro’ then the ghastly ‘Treo Pro’. The last really nice Palm product was the Treo 700 series. From there it all went down hill and finally slammed into this. This black plastic pebble shaped blob they call the pre. I have to hand it to them trying to create a nice modern, industrial looking device.
I got the Palm Pre with one year of free Sprint service from a really good designer friend about two weeks ago. During those two weeks I carried the Pre around alongside my Blackberry Bold.
Up’s and Down’s
Battery Life (Down) It’s terrible, it’s worst than my old Blackberry Pearl. By midday the Pre was completely drained and nagging for a charge. Let’s hope that is a software issue and not hardware related.
Software (50/50) It’s not all that bad, the webOS is really groundbreaking. My only dislikes is that it connects to a palm server (hence the name webOS) I love the home screen’s ‘Cards’ feature. It gives the pre it’s modern edge. The Touch sensitivity is kind of off and sketchy, but that seems like an easy fix with an update. About 40% of the UI is laggy, though not as bad as the LIfedrive it’s still annoying. I’ve encountered about 4 crashes so far. After a few days of use, things started to slow down so I’m getting the impression some apps aren’t closing after a one time use.
The PDA features of the Pre are really nice and well done. Not much to say here, so lets move on to design. My specialty.
Design (50/50) Fingerprint magnet! It’s glossy black plastic and quite slippery I might add. I was shocked to feel that how plastic-y and cheap feeling it was. (It’s an $870 device!) The plastic is horrendous, I’ve used really nice glossy plastic in a few designs before, but where did they get this material from? Ick! From Palm the lovers of Metal devices in the early ‘00, like the Zire and the Tungsten series, I expect much more. Of course, since the Pre is targeting Apple’s iPhone they wouldn’t dare use metal.
The front is simple and straight forward, silver earpiece and pebble like button below the screen. Then a mole, smack dab on the bottom left is this hole for the microphone. It should’ve been moved to the bottom of piece A, or even piece B. That said, it just makes the Pre look terribly ugly.
The back of the Pre is a whole other story. The speaker grill looks like a sun, what the hell where they thinking! I can easily imagine a square or even a hidden speaker on this. The camera lens is in a good location but I would’ve put the flash around the camera lens than above it. And what’s with the Mirror on the back? Targeting pre teen girls are we? (Yes, I know it’s for the camera.) It just doesn’t fit in…
The top part is nice, with a power and ringer on/off switch. But why is the headset jack damn set in the middle? Move it to the top right corner.
The slider is just scary, when you flip it up, you freak out thinking it’s going to shoot across the room. It makes that hideous indescribable sound of a sidekick opening/closing. Though it isn’t all that flimsy, it still feels like you’re going to break it over time sliding it up and down day after day. (Give it to my assistant, she breaks every slider/flip phone she gets. She’s been through 7 Blackberry Pearl Flips, 12 sidekicks and 2 Google G1’s)
Another note, this thing and the box off gassed big time. I had to open a window for some fresh air. I don’t know if its the box and the ink they used or the device itself. But two thumbs down on that.
Keyboard (Down) Like the Centro and latest Treo’s, it sucks. Small, cramped, glossy plastic, squeaky mess this thing is. Bring back the Treo 650 or 700’s keyboard. After a few days of use, it starts to collect enough fingerprints to make the keys extremely slippery. My error count shot up while trying to type on this thing.
Camera (Up) It’s a pretty good camera, it sure beats the iPhone’s puny thing. It takes nice colorful, vivid pictures. I haven’t done too much tinkering with it, but it’s nice.
Touchstone (Up) The somewhat wireless charging base is a really nice feature, but I do prefer a dock. The back of the pre gets quite hot while after it sitting there for about and hour. At $70 for this ‘stone’ its not really desirable.
Does this bring Palm back? Surely, it's a solid competitor to the iPhone and other touch centric devices. So well done palm. Welcome back.
Well that wraps it up then, I’ll continue to carry the pre around for the coming weeks but after that it’s into the collectors box it goes. With all the other Palm devices.
Have a good weekend, and enjoy those lines at Sprint and Best Buy for me! ;)
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The Words of Evan is now available on Amazon’s Kindle. Shame you have to pay for a FREE blog. But whatever floats Amazon’s boat…
Get it here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0029ZAUHC
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