S’well bottles: a hit or miss on quality?
February 1, 2012 § 23 Comments
Back in August 2011, I wrote a post on brain sugar about a new water bottle that I had recently come across and was very excited about: S’well. The design, function, and charitable contribution of the bottle and company were all things that really impressed me. I became a big fan and loudspeaker for S’well – but that didn’t last long.
At the time, I purchased two bottles for myself and my fiancé, and seeing how much I loved my bottle, a few friends of mine as well as my fiancé’s mother also purchased bottles. We live in Canada, and sourced them from a local distributor – particularly as at the time of my first order, S’well wasn’t shipping to Canada yet.
Initially, the bottle was everything I read it to be. It kept my iced water cold, and hot water hot for 24 and 12 hours. But after a few months of use, I noticed my bottle would get very hot to the touch when I put hot water in it, and the water itself become cool in a matter of one to two hours. A long cry from the 12 it once supported. Cold water resulted in condensation on the outside – which is the opposite of what should be happening – and didn’t stay cold. Somewhere along the line, my bottle no longer insulated. (Note that true to the recommended product care, I did not put the bottle through the dishwasher, or leave it immersed in water. Only the gentlest hand-washing, rinse, and air dry for my bottle!) « Read the rest of this entry »
Fruit label turns into organic soap
November 26, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Image credit: Amron Exptl.
We’ve all been there. Standing wearily at the sink, washing our beloved apples, painstakingly removing the ever-persistent fruit labels from them. First, we gently pick at and peel back the label. If we’re lucky, the process ends here. If not, we find ourselves running the apples under increasingly warm water, rubbing off the paper. Then eventually, scraping at the fruit with our fingernails in the effort to remove the sticky glue from the fruit skin, before turning, with a sigh of submission, to the knife or vegetable peeler lying on the kitchen counter.
Now, it seems, Scott Amron, an electrical engineer in training now turned designer and “engineering atelier”, has a solution that not only removes the harmful pesticides and other residues from our apples, but also the pesky fruit labels as well. The solution: Fruitwash labels. These fruit label stickers effectively dissolve into an organic fruit soap when placed under water. With this solution, gone are the chemicals and the tiresome fruit labels.
“I’ve always been discontent with fruit labels and felt they could do more than just display product info and be difficult to peel off,” Amron told Gizmag. “We buy, wash and eat fruit. So, the wash step was the next thing the label should help with.”
Unfortunately, the product is not out yet, although Amron is selling a 10% stake in the fruit label patent as an investment opportunity.
reCAPTCHA: tiny acts towards big social impact
May 1, 2011 § Leave a Comment
If you’ve ever purchased or subscribed to something online, chances are you’ve come across CAPTCHA: A series of graphically distorted letters that you need to type into a box to prove you’re not a spambot. A necessary nuisance, but a nuisance nonetheless.
Enter Luis von Ahn, one of the minds behind the original CAPTCHA. After finding out that approximately 200 million CAPTCHAs are typed in every day, with about 10 seconds used per entry, meaning humanity as a whole is generally wasting 500 thousand hours every day on filling out CAPTCHAs, Luis decided to do something about it. He created reCAPTCHA.
The significance of reCAPTCHA is that leverages the authentication process people are already completing to help digitize books one word at a time. Many online vendors and companies have switched to using reCAPTCHA in the last few years, so much so that as many as 100 million words are being digitized daily by you and I. How’s that for a tiny contribution towards big social impact? Pretty impressive.
But Luis himself speaks to all of this far better than I. Watch his TEDx talk on reCAPTCHA in the video below.
The power of open ideation: eBay’s Green Box Bags
September 5, 2010 § Leave a Comment
It never fails to inspire me when the seed of one person’s idea takes root and branches out into much more. It’s why I think it’s always so powerful to provide employees and customers the opportunity to provide feedback and suggestions on how to make status quo better in some way. There have been many examples of companies who have successfully tapped into the brain-trust of many to do this: Starbucks, Dell, and now eBay.
eBay recently held its annual Innovation Expo, which encourages all employees to contribute prototypes of ideas they have that they feel would benefit eBay’s buyers and sellers. This year over 250 employees forming almost 80 teams worked together to develop and submit their innovative product prototypes. The submissions were judged by the greater eBay employee base who were invited to show up to listen to the teams pitch their ideas, and to test the prototypes. The winning idea was called “simple green shipping”, and is now soon to be released to the market.
“Simple green shipping” is a specially designed reusable box that can be used by buyers and sellers over and over again. The idea is so simple, and perhaps that’s the beauty of it. With a service that sees many of its users playing the dual role as sellers as well as buyers, reusable packaging is a win-win solution for everyone.
Nicely done, eBay. A solution that helps your user base, reduces waste for the environment, and build employee morale around ideation and innovation.
Innovative space saving solution in a small New York studio loft
August 6, 2010 § 2 Comments
Earlier this year, a video feature on Gary Chang’s ingenious convertible home made its way around the around the interwebs.
In another example of a creative solution to a tiny space, JPDA Architects have designed a solution for a 500 squarefoot loft studio that merges both design and utility without sacrificing either. The studio includes innovative ways of working coveted storage space and shelving into the home, and arranging the “rooms” of the loft in a way that maximizes the working and living space.
The space is also featured in Freshome.
