technology

Cheap, Portable Lightweight Laptop Stand (Kickstarter)

When we first saw this cardboard laptop stand we thought: Who needs that? We can just rig a stack of books to raise our laptop. Then we saw it in action and thought of all the places it would be useful.

Sharing Excerpts of Books via Text Message

The other day, a friend texted smartphone snapshots from a book she was reading: whole pages, with passages she found illuminating marked in pencil. It’s one of the best uses for SMS messaging we’ve seen, as though our friend was putting the book into our hands or reading the paragraph directly to us.

Lady Gaga’s Flying Dress

We confess to not paying much attention to Lady Gaga (is it our age, or just interest?). But we are charmed, smitten and amazed at the crazy-wondrous flying dress she had commissioned. This video about it offers a compelling overview of clear possibilities in the realm of personal travel. Will we soon each be able to…

Light Bulb Strategies: Halogen, LED, Newcandescents, More

For our money, one of the easiest ways to transform a problematic space is with good lighting. Many of the spaces we have consulted on suffered terribly —as have their inhabitants— from dim, murky lighting due to the pressure to move to energy-saving lighting. Now that manufacture of the classic warmly glowing incandescent bulb has been banned, the question “what to do?” is even more pressing. There are a number of options.

Make or See Art on the Moon via Ai WeiWei + Olafur Eliasson

It took us abandoning Safari and loading Firefox. iPads won’t run it altogether. But it is worth getting yourself to Ai Weiwei and Olafur Eliasson’s wondrous website Moon. At first you see a shimmering globe, then the sign, above, which distills in one fell swoop everything we believe and love: Ideas, wind, and air no…

skype is a tool for learning, helping, teaching, connecting

As we compile many innovative uses for Skype and FaceTime, we realize how “virtual” really CAN allow us to “be there”.

realm of possibility: custom digitallly-printed wall coverings

Having had a mother who was obsessed with busy, French-provinical wallpaper, I’ve always steered clear from any semblance of a wall covering. Until, that is, companies like HP devised a latex printer that will digitally print your own designs to make cool wall-coverings. A number of companies will help you do this…like New Era, 4walls, FlavorPaper. Apparently, the HP…

the first apple computer: great ideas start rough!

Dig this picture of the original apple computer, now known as the apple-1, designed and hand-built in 1976 by Steve Wozniak in Steve Job‘s garage. It’s one of a number of “primitive” early computers that Christie’s will auction in ‘First Bytes: Iconic Technology From the Twentieth Century’. It represents the very first step in Apple’s quite amazing history of…

refresh with zef: dazzling, relaxing color doodling site

Zef, a wonderful endlessly-improvisable color doodling program by Patakk, gif-maker extraordinaire, sent us on an unexprected psychedelic journey and we found ourselves curiously refreshed. Just go to the blank page, move your cursor, and see where it takes you….

good idea: an ipad on a fridge door

fridge + duct tape + tablet-or-phone…. A strangely swell idea, low on style (though it sure beats those ugly water dispensers.) It reminded us of the great video Jesse Rosten made showing how-to secure an ipad to just about anything using velcro, possibly a slightly more elegant and practical solution to the one above. We could see…

unexpectedly cool, relaxing visual digital ‘toys’

This swell little visual toy by Koalas to the Max came via Michael Warren of Mike and Molly’s House. If you scroll your pointer over the image above, you’ll set it in motion. Being an ardently curious soul, Michael checked out its source code and made an interesting discovery: It turns out it’s built with a javascript…

briliantly curated apps, videos, books for kids (+ adults)

We are smitten with Tinybop, a site of books, apps, videos, toys for kids. The curating is GREAT here. Many of their suggestions will help your child-in-mind (or you) to bloom. We’ve found a ton of stuff that WE want. Dig these cool apps:

lol, revisionist ‘gangnam style’ is so-o-o-o funny

(Video link here.) Gangnam Style, South Korean hip hop artist PSY’s video was so insanely over-the-top, it went viral. But the original is not nearly as funny or amazing as this brilliant hack YouTube user Moto2h made with it: he took away the music and added in some sound effects to PSY’s a capella blather. …We hope it brings…

Greek and Armenian refuges experience the sea

‘the last pictures’: what would you send into space?

(Video link here.) As an artist in residence at MIT, Trevor Paglen worked with materials scientists to develop an ultra-archival disc of images, capable of lasting in space for billions of years. He meant this disc to contain a “cultural mark”, that would portray our world long after it might have disappeared altogether. He interviewed scientists, artists,…

plydesign: an essential guide to diy plywood projects

As we’ve mentioned, ‘the improvised life’s laboratory is something of an homage to plywood. We’ve used it for many things, from window sills to cabinets to floors. We love the stuff, and are constantly hatching plots in our head for furniture, housewares, endless inventions. So we are smitten with carpenter and author Philip Schmidt new book PlyDesign which…

the healing powers of ipads…laptops…computers…

Our friend Jody Lotito Levine sent us an email filled with images, some of them really wondrous. With them came this message: …from my former boss and dear friend recovering from pancreatic cancer: he says his ipad has been so healing and connective – We mention it on the heels of our post about disconnecting…

‘tiny wings’: more on the theme of flying

(Video link here.) By now everyone knows we’re smitten with images of people leaping, jumping, flying for all the obvious symbolic meaning they can hold: liberation from old constraints, taking chances, or just grooving along. So, although we haven’t experienced the ‘Tiny Wings ‘ app that has become so wildly popular, we love this relaxing little…

diagram your life with diagram.ly

There are a lot of online drawing tools, but most of them feel too complicated to be of much use to us. Diagram.ly, on the other hand, couldn’t be easier. If you’ve ever needed to throw together a quick diagram for a report and been stymied by the lack of options or user un-friendliness of…

explore ‘the improvised life’ through images, via pinterest

At Pinterest, we’ve been creating collections of images – boards- under specific categories like Lighting, Storage Solutions , Art and Artists, Food and Cooking – even Shipping Pallets!. They allow you to navigate ‘the improvised life’ through its images, so you can poke around our vast archive in freer, more organic way. When you see an image…

how to stop junk mail

Even though it’s not our fault, the vast amounts of junk mail we get makes us feel frustrated and guilty. So much paper going to waste. Try and warp your head around this: the Wall Street Journal reports that 82.5 billion pieces of “advertising mail” were delivered by the U.S. Postal system in 2010. Years…

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