kandaka » Design

Prefab House Pod from Eco Mods

admin — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:38:35 +0000

“Eco Mods, a manufacturing company based in Mid Wales, has developed the “House Pod” – a pre-built home that can be put together in five days for as little as £20,000…..The basic concept is very similar to a timber-frame house commonly seen on any building site, but instead of being built on site with a timber frame which in then infilled, it is built in a factory environment using structurally-insulated panels,…These panels give the strength to the building plus the outstanding thermal properties”….

Spray-on Liquid Glass

admin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 03:12:34 +0000

“The liquid glass coating is breathable, which means it can be used on plants and seeds. Trials in vineyards have found spraying vines increases their resistance to fungal diseases, while other tests have shown sprayed seeds germinate and grow faster than untreated seeds, and coated wood is not attacked by termites. Other vineyard applications include coating corks with liquid glass to prevent “corking” and contamination of wine. The spray cannot be seen by the naked eye, which means it could also be used to treat clothing and other materials to make them stain-resistant”….

Lenovo’s Skylight: The Smartphone Netbook

admin — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:04:47 +0000

From Lenovo’s Website “Skylight combines the long battery life and connectivity of a smartphone with the full web browsing and multimedia experience of a netbook…. high definition 10 inch screen ….full size keyboard makes typing easy….Skylight has over 10 hours of active battery life,¹…. charges like a mobile phone….and Skylight will seamlessly handoff between the WiFi and 3G…Powered by the Qualcomm 1GHz Snapdragon chipset platform and featuring 20 GB of standard flash and 2 GB of cloud storage”….

Apple’s iPad Hands On Videos

admin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 20:39:34 +0000

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

“User experience wise, it’s the iPhone at its core. Which is not a bad thing–as Jobs said, 75 million iPod touch and iPhone owners will intuitively dive right into the iPad. You touch something, and it responds. But look closer, and it’s the subtle tweaks like flipping a page in an e-book, complete with the reflection of the next page on the back–that make it probably the most fluid and thought-out implementation of a touchscreen we’ve yet seen.

Surprisingly, Apple themselves engineered the iPad’s brain, a 1GHz chip they’re calling the A4. And it’s fast. The iPad’s heavily graphic interface moves with buttery smoothness, even upscaling 3-D games”….

Prefab LumenHaus: Responsive Architecture

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:20:19 +0000

“Where most energy-conscious houses are closed with strategic openings to resist heat transfer, LUMENHAUS has open, flowing spaces linking occupants to each other within the house and to nature outside….On the cutting edge of responsive architecture, LUMENHAUS can operate completely self sufficiently, responding to environmental changes automatically to balance energy efficiency with user comfort. LUMENHAUS is a zero-energy home that is completely powered by the sun. Other sustainable features include the use of passive energy systems, radiant heating and building materials that are from renewable and/or recyclable sources”….

Motorola BackFlip Android phone with MotoBlur

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 11:24:05 +0000

From the Motorola website: “BACKFLIP comes fully equipped with the MOTOBLUR features you know and love. The full HTML browser on BACKFLIP’s 3.1” high-res, touch display will be sure to impress, and, with 3G speed and Wi Fi access, you will never be out of the loop. Android Market™ gives you access to more than 18,000 apps and widgets, so you are free to customize BACKFLIP to your liking. Capture the moment with BACKFLIP’s 5 MP camera with flash and easily upload to your favorite photo sharing or social site. Additional extras such as aGPS and stereo Bluetooth¹ make BACKFLIP the complete package…MOTOBLUR is Motorola’s Android-powered content delivery service created to make phones more personal and socially smart. It is the first and only solution to sync contacts, posts, messages, photos and much more—from sources such as Facebook®, MySpace, Twitter, Gmail™, work and personal e-mail, and LastFM—and automatically deliver them to the home screen. Content is fed into easy-to-manage streams allowing you to spend less time managing your life and more time living it”.

via Motorola BACKFLIP – MOTOBLUR – Android phone – Motorola USA.

Apple’s iPad Launch: Video & Specs

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:37:25 +0000

Display

9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology
1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi)
Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating
Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously

Wi-Fi
Digital compass
Assisted GPS (Wi-Fi + 3G model)
Cellular (Wi-Fi + 3G model)
16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash drive”>>>>>>>

LG’s GW990 HD Smart Phone with 2 Cameras

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 06:01:02 +0000

Check out the video hands on
“As the first smart phone powered by Intel’s Moorestown processor, the LG GW990 definitely pushes the boundaries of smart phone capabilities–and their dimensions….One of the hallmark features of this device is that it plays 720p video. But as you’ll see in our video demonstration, it’s not only possible to play that 720p video without a hiccup, it’s possible to play the video with other apps open, such as the calendar and browser, without a single misplaced pixel in the video. Turn the GW990 horizontally and you can scroll through panes of your open applications, including a playing video, three at a time.

Slideshow:Communications of Tomorow Circa the 1940s

admin — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 10:27:00 +0000

Back in the mid-1940s, Seagram’s advertised its VO Canadian whiskey with a series of extremely manly magazine ads about “Men Who Plan Beyond Tomorrow” — unspecified futuristic thinkers who liked the fact that Seagram’s was patient enough to age VO for six years. They’re entertaining when they sort-of-accurately predict scenarios that eventually came to be, such as the rise of the cell phon”….

Slideshow: The Residential Architecture of Steven Holl

admin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:25:07 +0000

“For years I have been trying to write a manifesto, ” he says. “What is important today is the ’specific’. Each site and each circumstance are unique, and an architect must try to have his own style and (it) in different sites. To attain this style an architect has to understand the idea of the phenomenological in architecture_Stephen Holl”…StevenHoll.Com