The Incredible Folding Bike

John Hunter at Curious Cat Engineering Blog has a great post on Dominic Hargreaves’ incredible new folding bike design.  John’s post links to a You Tube video showcasing this awesome design.  Every once in a while, you see something that is so well designed, so intuitive, that it takes your breath away.  This is one of those moments and design.  Enjoy!!

MIT Students Design Wearable Computers

Wired online has a great short article on a project some MIT students have worked on that enables a person to wear a virtual computer display on his or her body.  Read “TED: MIT Students Turn Internet Into a Sixth Human Sense” by Kim Zetter, Wired Blog, Feb. 5, 2009.  The URL for the link is http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/ted-digital-six.html

Robert Scoble Roasts the Amazon Kindle

If you want to see a good dissection of poor product design, take a look at Robert Scoble’s 13 minute roasting of the new Amazon Kindle eBook reader.  Scoble’s critiques and questions are exactly the kind of things you need to think of when you are designing a product to actually be USED by REAL PEOPLE.  Note especially Scoble’s consternation at how Amazon missed the boat regarding including social networking possibilities in this device (being able to purchase and send hard copies of books to friends, or being able to see what other Kindle users are reading).  It is quite a hilarious video – very educational.  I would consider showing it to every freshman engineering design class.  The URL for the video is below:

http://www.kyte.tv/channels/view.html?uri=channels/6118/77475