Calendar Desktop Wallpaper: December 2009

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“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Albert Einstein

This is one of my most favorite quotes of Einstein.
To me, the most common miracle I see every day is to see my kids, who wouldn’t have been born if I hadn’t met my wife. It’s a miracle to meet them among billions of souls.

By the way, I’m sorry for posting this one so late. I was busy getting things back to normal after the trip to Singapore, where I attended the awarding ceremony of red dot design concept. I posted some photos I took in Singapore on my Flickr, so check them out.

One more apology: the november calendar has the “31st”, which must not exist. Sorry!

Cobalto & Zafiro

This is something a little different from my usual posts. This time I tried to design gadgets that I want to see in a Sci-Fi movie like “Minority Report”. I love the futuristic computer and the UX in the movie, but I was wondering what it would be like if I designed those stuff. So this time I just focused on look and feel of the devices.

“Cobalto”
I don’t remember what the mobile phone is like that is used in the movie, but the glass computer screen remains vividly in my mind and I tried to use as much lucent stuff as possible.

With this deformable metal, you can have either the usual number buttons or an iPod like dial.

LIke one of my previous posts “3D Desktop PC Concept“, it would be fun if this could create 3D objects in the air. With this device, you could see 3D holography on top of a 2D screen, so it would be really exciting.

I happened to be talked to by a Russian TV program, who wanted to feature my 3D desktop concept, so I also gave them this mobile phone concept images and 3D animation. Check out the animation too!

Future Mobile Phone Concept from mac_fun on Vimeo.

“Zafiro”

The desktop is also made of a glass screen and a round rim. This is not the one that Tom Cruise makes that hand (or body) gesture to use. This is a desktop PC.

Remember that transparent disk used in Minority Report? It can be also inserted on the screen.

The keyboard has the deformable metal and the keys get flattened when not in use.

I mentioned that I wanted to try a new career on Twitter and I’ve been thinking of becoming a concept designer for movies. I’m finding a way to be one. Do you think I can be a Hollywood concept artist?

This work is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

By the way, I’ll be out of Japan next week to attend the red dot award ceremony in Singapore, so I won’t be able to post for FFFFOUND! during the week. But I’ll upload some Singapore photos in my Flickr. Oh of course I’ll be tweeting while I’m in Singapore, too.

Post-It on Desktop Icons

This is simple and it might have been used already, but I really want to paste a post-it on a desktop icon so that I won’t forget what I should do with it. So if anybody knows a plugin like this, please let me know!!

Post-it colors, font size should be customizable just like “Stickies” (a default mac application).

Quick Look (a quick preview feature) or hover the cursor to see the enlarged image of the post-it.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

red dot design concept award 2009

I can’t believe I won the red dot design concept award for the Looking Glass concept!! (I added some photos of the awarding ceremony on my Flickr.)

First of all, let me thank Radhika Seth (for everything), Mika Ueno and *momoc (for beautiful photos), Takashi Yamada (for first picking up and naming this gadget), Regina Teh (for inviting me for the competition) and my family (for letting me keep doing this crazy hobby).
This is really exciting for me because it’s the first award I won since I became a designer.

I added some new images and fixed a few old ones.

Dragging stuff like a building floor to see its floor map would be useful and fun.

And here’s the presentation sheet I submitted to the red dot.

I also appreciate all the support I’ve got from the readers and magazine/newspaper editors who wrote articles of this gadget.
I’m planning to attend the award ceremony on November 24th in Singapore, so anyone who happens to be there, please talk to me. I’ll post some photos on my Flickr if I can shoot good ones there. And of course I’ll keep twitting in Singapore, too.

Black or White or Mixed

I use black and white pepper mixed almost every time I want pepper on my food, but sometimes I want only either of them. So how about a pepper mill like this? You can use it with one hand and choose black, white or mixed.

You can also save some space on the table for a little salt container you can put on top of the mill.

And I posted my sketches of this mill in Flickr.

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This work is licensed under a
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Desktop Calendar Wallpaper: June&July 2009

Sorry for the slow update. In June we have a rainy season in Japan, so the theme is water this time.

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Those who see my Twitter might have already heard, but I was really really sick for more than a week with the severest-ever pain that lasted for a few days. The doctor told me to stop working too hard and to take it easy for a while. Recently I’ve been talked to by many people for very interesting projects and I had never been so busy in my life in the last few months. (Come to think of it, I also took part in some design competitions.) But I decided to get relaxed with much fewer projects than now. (I just remember that a designer also needs some white space in her life.) So please forgive me for declining some of the offers.

Unfortunately, there were a few people I’ve contacted for one project who took advantage of my designs, which I won’t elaborate on, so it might be a good timing to slow down.

iAcqua

Maybe I’m into projector concepts.

It’s an iPhone stand with a transparent touch screen, speaker and projector.
Dock your iPhone at the top.

Tilt it slowly to either side and your photos, songs or movies start running one after another at random like water coming out from a fountain. Each image will disappear in a few seconds. You can touch a photo to see it, a movie to play and a music icon to play the song.

Now turn up the faucet and when the dish is full, the images will be spilled on the floor, which are actually projection from the stand. You can also tilt the stand to spill images little by little to a certain direction.
And now you can play with larger images.

When you play music, you can see the visualizer working. Spill the visualizer on the floor and you see “full-screen” projected visualizer!

Behind the scenes on my Flickr.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

National Geographic Channel!

One more thing I said I was going to tell is that some of the images of my mobile phone concept were on National Geographic Channel!
It’s “Super Diamonds” of Naked Science series.

By the way, I just bought a bag online that I fell in love at the first sight and it arrived yesterday! It’s a GORGEOUS BAG!
I’m planning to get a macbook air and carry it in the bag, but I wasn’t sure about the size. If you’re interested, please visit my Flickr page, where I (just started to) upload my everyday scene photos.

Don’t Move My Cheese

It may help you find your wine glass easily.

By biting off a part of the cheese, you can make it more original.

Don’t Move My Cheese by Mac Funamizu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.1 Japan License.

Best of 2008

With so many things that happened at the end of this year, I couldn’t make many posts this month. My updating pace will be unpredictable in 2009 as well, but I hope I can have more fun than this year.
By designing stuff for this blog, I learned a lot about design, so next year, I’ll try something new again. I’m thinking of make animation of the devices I make to post them on YouTube. Not sure if I really can, but I want to try that. Oh, one more thing. I really want to do something more tangible, not just creating stuff on the web.

Anyway, I truly appreciate your support. Here are the 20 posts you liked the best in 2008.

1. Future of Internet Search: Mobile version

2. Just a Sketch: Mobile Phone

3. iPod Touch Camera?

4. iPhone / iPod Touch Desktop Calendar Wallpapers for March 2008

5. Future of Mobile Internet Search: Application

6. horizontal keyboard app for iPhone

7. My Dream Mac (Macbook Touch? Mac Nano?)

8. External Touch Screen

9. Desktop organizing wallpaper

10. iMac Calendar Wallpaper

11. Desktop Calendar Wallpaper: April Macbook Air

12. Desktop Calendar Wallpaper: March 2008

13. Future of Mobile Search for Diet

14. Look at What You Don’t See Through Glass

15. Looking Glass for iPhone

16. Desktop Calendar Wallpaper: February 2008

17. Desktop Calendar Wallpaper: May 2008

18. You Can Work It Out

19. Future of Mobile Search- Power of Visual

20. Future of Mobile Search- Search Beyond Time

Personally, I like this hygrometer and this mac-like mobile phone. And of course, I want to have this looking glass device some day.

I will be able to make a few big announcements next year, so please come back to check them out.