designapalooza’s posterous

The Volt is Chevy's great white hope. This serial hybrid runs entirely on an electric motor, using gas only to power an onboard generator, or "range-extender". This gives the Volt comparable range to current non-hybrid vehicles. The cars lithium ion batteries allow for roughly 40 miles of pure electric drive before the range extender kicks on. The Volt is a plug-in hybrid, meaning a nightly charge could keep you away from the pump indefinitely, as long as you keep your daily driving under 40 miles like most Americans. Quite a cool looking car as well, far from the dumpy looking compact Prius. If gas goes up again before the cars release in 2010, it should be a hot item. However, the car does have its drawbacks. Energy from the grid is not necessarily "clean", so the Volt's environmental contribution will likely be negligible. Also, for those who drive in the colder northern states where your heat is blasting all winter, the Volt will need to run its gas engine at all times to keep the warm air flowing. This will put a dent in your impeccable gas mileage.

While the Volt is not perfect, it represents a giant step in the right direction as the world moves toward more sustainable and green transportation.

Gavin

[I'm using Dove, because it's widely available and pretty representative.]
 
Body wash bottles are generally pretty similar. They are meant to be stored upright, and you must tip them upside-down to dispense the soap, while giving the bottle a squeeze. The major problem with these bottles is that when the bottle starts becoming empty, the remaining soap collects at the bottom of the bottle, and the few seconds of tipping it upside-down during your shower are not sufficient to get it to flow down to the spout. And you also have to squeeze vigorously and shake it (just like the getting-ketchup-out-of-a-Heinz-bottle struggle).
 
Obviously, there are several ways to get around this. If your bottle's top is flat (as shown below in an older incarnation of Dove), you can simply store the near-empty bottle upside-down all the time (and let gravity do the work for you). If the bottle top is round (as shown in the current incarnation of Dove below), you're out of luck.
 
Better body wash bottle designs exist - including the pump-top (like for many hand soaps) and the bottom-dispensing types (shown below for Pantene conditioner).

Note that bottles are used for other things such as lotions, condiments, adhesives, etc. and many of these products share packaging and packaging shortcomings.
 
--Alice

   

Click here to download:

Generic_Body_Wash_Bottles.zip (39 KB)

The "flix" system turn on the watch's backlight when the user quickly flicks their wrist.
 
The system is very convenient, as if you are doing work in the dark, you don't need two hands to activate the backlight. The problem, however, is that, to not accidentally turn on when, you must activate the system in advance. If you forget to do so, the system is useless. To fix this, I would add a small light sensor to automatically activate the system, fixing the most significant problem with the system.
 
David Anderson

Iphone is one of the greatest inventions in the world of cellphone. It caught our attentions early on and exceeded our expectations when it was introduced to the mainstream. I was one of those early-adopters who was blinded by the promise of iPhone. After two years of continuous use, my honest opinion about iPhone is that it has certainly kept up with my expectations in order to meet my needs. However, there are design issues with iPhone that must be addressed and deserve much attention on behalf of Apple. The most critical aspect about iPhone's design that requires much improvement and attention is file transferring capabilities. In other words, iPhone is very powerful in communicating with iTunes or iPhoto, but it is difficult to manage file sharing directly with one's hard drive. If I were to improve the product I would enhance the file transferring interface by advancing the bluetooth technology (or network streaming) in order to use the 8GB or 16GB or storage on iPhone as a backup for critical documents and files, if need may be.
 
Avid
 
P.S. My observation about iPhone is prone to my prejudice generated by my personal observation; I fully understand that this design issue could not be of much importance to others

Having recently attended a couple hockey games and free skates, I was inspired to look up exactly how ice rinks work. I always thought there was essentially a large refrigerator embedded in the concrete layer under the ice. This idea was not too far off, although there's a little more to it. A brinewater mixture is used, which has a much lower freezing temperature, keeping the slab underneath the ice at about 15 degrees. This allows for rapid freezing of new ice through conduction, even on the top layer of the ice. The indoor rink has allowed for the evolution and growth of sports such as hockey, figure skating, curling, and speed skating. One drawback however is that indoor rinks are frequently quite chilly for the spectator, as well as requiring large amounts of energy to cool and maintain. Perhaps some creative engineering could mitigate these drawbacks. While nothing quite beats a good game of mid-winter outdoor pond hockey, the indoor rink allows for a longer season even in places where the ponds never freeze.



-Gavin

Simply amazing. The adhesives allows me to pull it up, get my cookie, and seal
it back up to preserve freshness. It is simply genius. The design is rather
simple, and it looks easy to make. I have nothing to add except for Kudos to
this product.
 
- Jose

I purchased this assuming it was a VGA cable, but when I tried to use it,
noticed that it was a VGA cable extender instead. I find it odd that someone
would fix the problem of length of VGA cable by getting an extender that
further complicates the set up, rather than getting a new VGA cable that is
just longer. It seems rather impractical.
 
- Jose