StartupBus

Aboard the New York City Startup Bus.

Imagine this: You and a team of strangers, on a bus, traveling at 60 miles per hour, have 72 hours to conceive, build and launch a startup. That’s StartupBus in a nutshell.

StartupBus began life as a joke, a roadtrip starting in San Francisco with friends, but with the twist of launching a startup on arrival in Austin in time for the SxSW technology conference. Somehow though, people thought Elias Bizannes (the founder) was actually serious. A few unexpected blog articles and many emails later, he was stuck with having to now make good on his pub night promise.

StartupBus has since evolved into a competition and grew six-fold with buses departing from San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, and Miami. In 2011, an impressive 156 ‘buspreneurs’ participated who produced 38 different products.

Talk about turning an experiment into an international community! I can’t help but chuckle at the term Buspreneur. To become one, apply to the StartupBus.

StartupBus – what a refreshing and charming concept! Hat tip!

An Important Time for Design

“If we want to really show what design is and what it can do, we need to get design elevated to the partner level. Partners have major equity stakes, real decision-making power, and are involved in product development from the beginning.” – Cameron Kozcon

A quote I keep coming back to. Taken from an A List Apart post written by my studiomate and friend Cameron Kozcon: An Important Time for Design.

Three Primary Colors

Three Primary Colors is a collaboration between OK Go and Sesame Street explaining the basics of color theory in stop-motion. Try to watch this without smiling.

(via Brain Pickings)

hi. postcards. ok.

There are *a lot* of people that would have every reason to send me that first card, on the left, ‘hi. i sent you an email. ok‘.

(via found it loved it)

Handwritten Love Letter



Bryn Chernoff, of Paperfinger, provides a charming love letter service: your words + her calligraphy = Happy Valentine.

The Two Things

“For every subject, there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important.”

Economist Glen Whitman on The Two Things. Make sure to check out this collection of various Two Things. I must now think about what they are for blogging…

(via bobulate)

Liquid Conversion Chart

Thank you Erik Spiekermann, for creating this US Liquid Conversion Chart from US fluid ounces to milliliters.

Magnatab

My kids are completely crazy over this Free Form Magnatab Toy. They draw and write with the magnetic stylus, which raises metal balls to the surface of the sealed Magnatab base. And erase their creation by pushing the magnets back down with the back of the stylus or their fingers.

To me, it feels like taking designing for screen, pixel constraints, to the analog world.

Custom Family Pillow

In case you keep forgetting where you live, you might want to get a Custom Family Pillow with your address on it. Great gift for someone that just recently moved.

Corkers

Next time you’re invited for dinner at a friend’s house, don’t just bring a bottle of wine, bring Corkers as well. They are a pack of adorable animal parts that turn any cork into a bunny, buffalo, bear, monkey or deer.

The Hill Approach

Repeating easy tasks again and again gets you not very far. Attacking only steep cliffs where no progress is made isn’t particularly effective either. No, the best path is an endless series of difficult (but achievable) hills.

Seth Godin’s hill approach to career development.

(via bobulate)

♥ / LOOKMATIC

A big thank you to LOOKMATIC for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed!

Your outlook is about to clear up, thanks to LOOKMATIC, the online prescription eyewear retailer that combines fashionable glasses with affordable prices.  With frames to fit any point of view, like the Jesse oversized frames for the hipster, the best-selling Andy frames for the Geek Chic, and the cat eye Marilyn frames for the retro darlings – everyone will be seeing clearer. Fancy some vintage-looking shades? They do that too. Turn any available frames into prescription sunglasses, readers or normal shades. And if you’re not sure how they’ll look, try ’em on with ‘Virtual Try On,’ their virtual mirror.

The best part about LOOKMATIC: not only are the styles for everyone, but so are the prices. All frames are $58 alone, $88 with prescription.

(Interested in sponsoring a week of my RSS feed, learn more here.)

Readmill

Readmill is a community for readers, allowing you to easily share and highlight the books you love. Read with the Readmill for App, and sync highlights from Amazon Kindle with the Readmill Bookmarklet.

This is Readmill from Readmill on Vimeo.

I love the Readmill tagline: Welcome to a world of reading.

Colin

This minimal table by Switzerland based company Colin is quite beautiful. And how fun are those random feet sticking into the photo? Made me smile.

Cycle-Skating

This Cycle-Skating video, a sport of 1923, made me smile.

(via the kids should see this)

Study No. 1+3


These prints by fellow DUMBOnian Damien Correll make me swoon. #mustorder #ordered

5-year-old Analyzes Logos

Ohio-based identity designer Adam Ladd asked his 5-year-old daughter to comment on some popular logos. Made me smile.

(via Brand New)

Clump-O-Lump

These Clump-O-Lumps made me smile: It’s a family of stuffed animals that can be mixed and matched thanks to the world’s best invention – the zipper. Oh, the fun that can be had. My favorites are Bee-o the Bee and Shark-o the Shark.

(Thank you Jake)

Kern & Burn

Kern & Burn is an online and print publication that curates discussions, interviews and essays about design entrepreneurship

An Automatic Diet Planner

Here’s an interesting site for people want to gain or loose weight: swole.me is an automated diet planter that creates meals according to your goal calorie intake and how many meals you’d like to eat per day. Completely free.

(Thank you Dave)

To All NYC Gift Fair Buyers…

Here’s a shout-out to all buyers currently in town for the NYC Gift Fair: Team Tattly unfortunately does not have a booth *but* we would like to invite you to our “Tattly Showroom” in DUMBO if you’re interested in carrying Tattly.

We just started selling wholesale and are looking forward to being in many designy stores. For more info email us.

Inside B&H conveyor system…

If you are a photo buff then you most probably know about the mothership of all photo stores, B&H, here in NYC. The most fascinating part of B&H has always been their conveyor system. Let’s say you decided to buy a new lens, you’re on the third floor, they’ll put that lens into a basket that then is being transported down to the register at the exit, silently ‘floating’ through the store.

The Lense folks secretly put a camera into one of the baskets to see how it works from the inside. Again, this might be only fascinating if you have actually been to B&H.

(via Coudal)

Vegan Recipes on Punchfork

Punchfork is my go-to-site when I need some cooking inspiration. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend you download their app. And, vegan folks rejoice, they just added a Vegan Category.

A fold

Thanks to the above graphic and this post over on brain pickings I will never look at a simple fold the same way again. Same goes for an ant.