Now this little beauty would be absolutely perfect if I were prone to wearing only black, had a permanent glower on my face, and enjoyed listening to Death Metal and Radiohead. In such a case this lamp would perfectly summarize my miserable/angry approach on life and symbolize how society makes one become disaffected with basic realities such as life and death. Ohhhh.

It would basically be perfect for any brooding teen then, and there's something about this design that could probably see them through their college years as well. 'Look how dark he is', girls will whisper 'He's so troubled and deep...'. I doubt the creator envisaged that the owner might use this lamp to pull, but hey, its good to be open minded right?

From Enpieza [ via Elit Alice ]

For more lamps and cool home stuff see here.

If you're brave enough to pull yourself together and go running through wintry early mornings and dark afternoons, then you probably want some sort of flashlight with you to ensure you know where you're going and help you keep safe. If this concept were put into practice, you'd no longer have to, and you'd be helping the environment by avoiding disposable batteries.

Let's Peel Eggs comes to you as an unfinished lamp for you to customise. Just hack into the thin, apparently eco-friendly, plastic coating and peel it like you would an egg, revealing as much or as little of the light beneath as you want. I wonder what the returns policy on something like this is...

We're used to thinking of the world wide web, networks and other similarly intertwined visions of information exchange. But what if we thought of data as a fluid, that can be poured from cup to cup? What if we thought of a network as so many teacups, stacked up together? What if we got so collectively far up our prototype behinds that we thought the Cup PC and it's holographic projector were good ideas? I love random concept ideas, I do, but this is the kind of design that looks like it should be accompanied by a statement like "Are we not all, in some way, looking for our teacup?".

[via DVICE]

Like that? Read this: More weird and (sometimes) wonderful prototypes

Maybe you can't afford really high end speakers, or perhaps you just want to make the most of the money you spent. It's possible your hearing isn't what it was or just that you really like looking like Mickey Mouse. Whatever your reasons, you might just like looking ridiculous turning the volume up with Batphones.

Finally - officially confirmation that shopping can make you thin! Microsoft think they've developed a shopping cart that will guide you round the supermarket, speeding past the cakes and loitering round the lettuce. The software will have an exact map of all the product locations in the supermarket, and will keep a check of what you're choosing. It will also be able to keep a running tally of your spending, and suggest recipes based on what you've picked.

This isn't even a pipe dream; Microsoft have said they're hoping to get them into stores in 2009. Personally, I reckon they should concentrate on launching the Zune in the UK before they branch out into Tescos. I may email Ballmer.

[via The Inquirer]

This mixing bowl/recipe book hybrid is about five years away from hitting the shops, but I really like it as a concept.

Having asked my mother about a million times what the recipe is for spanakopitta filling and been told that the measurements need to be done "with the eye" (useful Ma, thanks), I tend to resort to cookbooks. This is a great way of following the recipe but not accidentally leaving out some crucial stage, because the present ingredients are shown on the bowl itself, which also suggests additional ingredients, combinations, cooking methods and recipes. The washable interactive bowl and spoon set was developed by students at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and just makes me think that Cooking Mama has come to life...

[via Gizmodiva]

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Waking up falls somewhere between eating cheese and filing tax returns on my list of least favourite things to do, and yet it's something I seem to find myself doing every day. This alarm clock has won the Volvo Design Award for its conceptual dealing with said waking up situation.

The idea is that it's not turned off by anything as simple as a snooze button. Instead, the motion sensor will increase the volume of your chosen track until it detects you up and lumbering around your bedroom. And by the looks of the press photos, it comes pre-loaded with William Shatner's version of Common People, which can be no bad thing.

[via Gizmodo]

Like that? Read this: Clocky - the alarm that runs away |Sonic alarm

I'm sure the last time someone actually tried to make a prototype that channelled kinetic energy into charging gadgets, it turned out to be a massive knee brace that was totally unwearable. Still, there's no harm in envisaging a future where that technology will be suitably efficient to fit into a colourful little ankle band.

This would be particularly useful to me, as I am a famous leg-jiggler who caused at least one Shiny Towers resident to confusedly look at the floor and wonder if we were over a tube line and if so, how the rumbling reached up to the third floor. Imagine being able to use that to power my iPod and BlackBerry without having to drain the world's resources further. That is my happy thought for the day. Or at least for the next two minutes.

[via DVICE]

Like that? Read this: Prototype of the week: Lightbulb - a kinetic sculpture | Three concept weighing scales for reluctant dieters | USB chocolate makes for a tasty storage concept

There are times when everyone doesn't really want to know the truth about their weight. This, despite the rather stereotypical pictures that accompany this prototype design, applies to men as much as women, but what if you feel you should be weighing yourself but can't quite face seeing the truth in the cold light of LCD?

Well, there are three ways of delaying the inevitable according to Alice Wang, who created these concepts in an exploration of Asimov's First Law. Firstly, White Lies lets you adjust your weight according to how far back you stand on it. The closer you get to the display, the closer the truth about your weight gets.

I think we've all experienced laptop thigh burn and there is a definitely a market for designing devices to reduce the heat. However, this invention makes the most of a necessary evil by using the heat to power a wireless mouse.

Instead of having to use a recharging dock, you could just place your mouse on the mousepad; this extends from under the computer, channelling the power of the heat into the mouse. Sounds a bit like a prototype, I know, and, well... it is, but the design has been submitted for the Greener Gadgets Design Competition 2008; if it wins, surely its chances of being made go up?

[via Ecofriend]

Like that? Read this: Shi Yuan heat-sensitive designs for the home | Gorgonz Exhale Gloves turn your breath into heat | CES 2008: Show us your green gadgets!

I do find it quite scary that there will undoubtedly be some children who don't know how to find information in a book, but at the same time I think it is splendiferously wonderful that whatever I want to know, whenever I want to know it, I can generally find it at the press of a button. What if you could take that power and make it more visual and elegant?

Forget whipping out your phone's browser or powering up a laptop; you could just point this transparent tablet at whatever you needed to know about, be it a picture hanging in a gallery, a building, or a word in the paper, and the information would come to you. Incorporating a camera / scanner, GPS and WiFi connectivity, it would be a brilliantly Minority Report way to frame the world as you see it. Someone needs to make Mac Funamizu's concept. NOW.

[via Yanko Design]

Wallow in concept designs for the future here.

Nokia are at great pains to point out that whilst this is a concept handset, it's a concept with real research backing it up. In fact, it's so real that they displayed it at New York's Museum of Modern Art, albeit without it having any functionality whatsoever. And it's called Morph.

The idea is that it's so thin and flexible it's possible to use it in a number of different ways. It can be used as a keyboard when it's laid flat, as a traditional mobile when folded in half, and when you wrap it round your wrist and use it as a bracelet, it can be paired with a headset for calls.

We're all looking for the next interesting eco-friendly offering, but I don't think many of us considered the role gravity might have to play in lighting... except Virginia Tech's Clay Moulton, designer of the Gravia lamp.

In basic terms, it makes use of a slow-falling mass to turn a rotor. This powers the 10 high-output LEDs which are diffused by an acrylic lens. Silent, cord free, soft lighting with an output equivalent to about 40 watts, just by moving some weights from the bottom of the elegant casing to the top.

Not only that, but as the acrylic lens deteriorates and yellows, it will give an even more natural hue to the blueish, otherworldly glow you get from LEDs. The catch?

We might have had a whole slug of new and actual phone announcements earlier this month, but there's always a bit of Friday room for a pretty looking concept. This is a design by Chris Owen, and features a mammoth screen on the top, out of which a glass dialpad slides out the bottom. Since it's a concept, there's no need to report on such paltry details such as whether the screen has any touchscreen capabilities, or whether there's a camera or MP3 player. So, for the record, I reckon it not only has touchscreen magic, but also is the first phone to feature a magic mirror, in which a fairy godmother appears to advise on make-up and accessories. Nifty, huh?

[via Gizmodo]

Like that? Read this: Soft mobile concept|Panasonic art nouveau concept phone

I'm mostly writing about this concept because I think the artwork is pretty. Even though if I actually had it, I would get bored by it really, really quickly.

Apart from anything else, it's not massively new. Basically, it translates music into pootling lights. Didn't Steven Spielberg do that in the 1970s in that film where the Pepperami-shaped aliens responded to music by stealing someone's mental, dirt-sculpting dad? Apparently what makes this different from existing flashing lights is that the pulses move up and down, rippling and shifting colours. I think maybe we should just look at the pretty lights after a morning of consumer guilt and property searches and then move on.

[via Yanko Design]

Dial-a-Phone has decided that the idea of a Google / Dell Android phone is far too dull to countenance; much though you might love the customisable, budget-friendly laptops the computer company offers, would you buy a phone from it? Probably not.

However, Dell has recently acquired Alienware, and that's a brand that could deliver handset gold. So DAP got its designer on the case to produce this mock-up of how an Alienware-designed, Android-running handset might look. Would you get something like this? To me it looks like some sort of smartphone / navigator film prop from Alien vs Predator...

Alienware

Like that? Read this: CES 2008 Video: Alienware gaming monitor embraces its curves | Shiny Video Review: Panasonic, Skullcandy and Alienware headphones

There is basically only one thing that put people off making the decision to tidy up their lives and pick up a few green habits. It's a misplaced belief that it's all a bit more complicated than it really is. Now, you can educate people and try and get them to understand that they can still do things like recycle even if they don't grow their own veg and become vegan, but that requires them to listen. Or you can develop concept designs like this and try to encourage companies to use technology that makes recycling so easy there's not even a slight excuse.

The Barcode Trashcan by Woo Seok Park would scan barcodes for information on the material content of the packaging, and then open the correct lid. No more trying to work out if a plastic tub is recyclable or not - if it is, the lid opens. Simple as. Hopefully going-green-o-phobia will cure itself without the need for this, but it's a nice idea anyway.

[via Yanko Design]

Check out our eco-friendly gadget category for more.

I am ludicrously obsessed with fountain pens. From old-style calligraphy stick-with-a-nib styles to those wonderfully skewed wooden Waterman numbers, if it makes a scratchy noise on paper then it's ink porn for me. This particular pen is cleverer than most, putting sparkly modern technology into a device that's been around since at least the 10th century CE. (Not BCE as I absent-mindedly typed earlier... thanks for the typo comment!)

Well, if anyone ever got round to making it, as it is a concept. The D:Scribe is a design from Reuben Png; like those Bluetooth pens, it tracks as you write, and then when you circle the person's name the text or email is sent digitally via a Bluetooth phone. You can also later access everything you've written as it'll all have been stored on the pen. The message status is recorded on a OLED screen.

D:Scribe [via Tech Digest]

Like that? Read this: Writhe while you write with the Vibra Pen | Try before you buy with the tattoo pen | Let's make a calculator (pen)!

LG have some watches behind a case, above which says 'Phone Watch'. How's it communicate via your phone? No idea. Does it have any internal storage (it looked like it was playing music)? Not a clue. But stick a watch behind some glass, give it a futuristic name, and journalists/Ashley is putty in your hands.