A great environmental marketing strategy...

I really liked these ads to promote water conservation from Denver Water, take a look at the web-site too!
http://www.useonlywhatyouneed.org/

The Very Adaptable Chair from Japan

Product design at its best...waaaaaooowww, waaaaooowww!

When a brand becomes a building...

Now this is what I really call 'brand architecture!'

Beautiful Kinetic sculpture

A really beautiful mix of art and engineering - a great ad for BMW South Africa.

Bizner is the business!

Bizner is the first European bank based in the NL which allows you to have a bank account with an integrated accounting service. It has a accounting software built into the bank account which allows entrepreneurs or small businesses to issue invoices, statements and prepare their accounts each month in conjunction with their bank accounts. What a fab idea!

I can't see France having this system for years, we still use cheques to pay for groceries etc. unheard of in much of Europe.

The other day at school I was asking our International students for a deposit cheque for their printing accounts at school, and they said "a cheque?" These don't exist in Finland anymore, we don't use cheques! It made me realise how far behind France in the banking world!

Take a look at this web site for more details in English
or this one for the NL site

And you thought developing a web-site was difficult?

Here is the 10 second web-site! Yes, give it a try, you could have one for each day of the week.
Just type some text and make a page, choose a prefix for the website address and claim it as yours, if you want to make it private, you can add a password. If not, tell everyone about your new web site development skills!
Take a look here to get started...

ORIGINAL DESIGN GANGSTA

Need I say more?

The importance of playing...

This is such a great idea.

More than a million South Africans now have safe drinking water thanks to Playpumps - a simple invention that uses the energy generated by children playing on a roundabout to pump groundwater from boreholes.

Playpumps are made from easily available windmill components and a zero-energy water pump and some 700 villages have had Playpumps installed since 1997.

Unlike traditional hand pumps that produce just 150 litres of water an hour to ground level, where it cannot be stored hygienically, Playpumps can pump 1,400 litres of water an hour into a hygienic overhead storage tank.

I came across this when reading a review of the book Design and Landscape for People: New Approaches to Renewal which shows how designers, entrepreneurs and artists are coming together to develop new products with a conscious and with a real purpose.

Great news...
Source, The Guardian

Button bookmarks for the reader who likes to make notes...

This collection of bookmarks by Jessica Pope of Peridot Press are lovely.
They not only mark your page, but come with a 16 page pad incorporated so you can make notes about the book you are reading.

The Peridot Press specialises in hand-made products, why not take a look...

Interested in yourself?

Take a look at this web-site, there are 100's of personality tests...I just took the great leader test and came out as Gandhi! Take a look

BLIND LIGHT - Antony Gormley

Fuchsy, a friend of mine went to see this exhibition today at the Hayward Gallery - it's on until the 17th August. Here's what she said..."I saw this exhibition today at the Hayward Gallery ...amazing ..but I found this exhibit really terrifying, as I felt so claustrophobic! A great statement on seeing, and not seeing, perceiving and not connecting.
fuchsy

interested in les produits equitable?

You have probably all read about the unethical practices of sports companies such as nike and adidas. Well I just saw this ball on www.nustreetwear.com. At least you can buy this ball knowing that a 7 year old boy has not been kneeling down in terrible conditions ruining his hands sewing this one!

Nice web site too!

For more interesting things see....

take a look at this blog which posts up an interesting thing every day...today cochineal!
You may not want to dwell on it, but did you know the ingredient that gives Danon boysenberry yogurt and Tropicana Ruby Red Grapefruit juice their distinctive colors comes from crushed female cochineal beetles.

Want to know your visual DNA? Take this test...

An ex-member of Conran has set up imagini, a web site which evaluates your visual DNA by asking you questions which you answer by choosing photographs, it then evaluates your personality type and puts you in contact with 'people like you'.
Try it, it's fun! http://friends.imagini.net/

Collaborative doodling...mind-mapping...shopping lists

This is great. GE have launched a new flash-based whiteboard on their web-site where you and your friends and family can doodle, think, create, whatever together...

Take a look....http://www.imaginationcubed.com/LaunchPage

How to cook the perfect boiled egg...

Worrying about over-cooked or under-cooked boiled eggs? That's now a thing of the past with this new technique developed by the UK assurance scheme Lion Quality.

After cooking begins, an invisible, temperature-sensitive thermochromic print appears in black to indicate when an egg is soft, medium or hard-boiled.

The eggs, will be sold in three different types of cartons to make it even more consumer friendly!

Books which go up in smoke?

To Ease the blow of the UK ban on smoking in public spaces that came into effect on July 1st, TankBooks have developed books packaged like cigarettes with cellophane wrapping on the outside and silver foil on the inside. Despite their size, the first series of TankBooks aren't the intellectual equivalent of Menthol Lights. Pitched as 'tales to take your breath away', the box-packed reads range from Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King" to Kafka's "Metamorphosis". While perhaps not tempting enough for every smoker to kick the habit and take up reading instead, it's a start.

TankBooks are the brain child of Tank, a British think tank, creative agency and publishing unit.

Website: www.tankmagazine.com/tankbooks
Source Springwise