Bethesda's Adam Adamowicz has a great post up talking about some of the thought that went into the concept art for the upcoming videogame Fallout 3. He namechecks BBG's patron saint of design in this great little anecdote about Aliens:

Seeing Syd Mead lecture in SF was an incredibly profound lesson on design. During the Q&A I asked him how far he went on a design to make it technically believable. His advice was ‘to design with the story in mind and stay consistent with it’. Hence I learned that the Sulacco [sic] from Aliens is essentially a massive gun in space with a big nuclear reactor at one end which beautifully fits the theme of space marines exploring a planet infested with deadly hostile aliens. That answer freed me obsessing over minutiae that diverges story-wise, and focus on the broad strokes that propel the story. The addition of ensuing consistent minutiae would give it richness.

I want to see Syd lecture. I want to hold Syd in my arms while he traces invisible, tasteful whorls over my cheeks.

The concept art from Fallout 3 is pretty fantastic, too. These are some fantasy gadgets, all of which are attempts to create that strange alt-history aesthetic where technology was slightly more advanced than what we have now, but still using only '50s materials and design cues.

Conceptual Design [Fallout.Bethsoft.com via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Image: Michael Heilemann

The terrible western cartoon artwork gracing "How to Draw Manga" books are beaten in the shitstakes by the amateurish cover to "How to Cheat in Photoshop CS3: The art of creative photorealistic montages."

Looking like something tossed off in five minutes for a Worth1000 or SA forum thread, the image is a mash of ill-cropped components, sharp edges and woeful colorization, with the spatial relationships of a popsicle shadow play. And ... why is there a giant hole in his left elbow? "Photorealistic montages" indeed—fourth edition!

Be sure to read the creepy reviews at Amazon. Here's the apparent original, fished out by a commenter at the original post...

How To Cheat In Photoshop By Reason Of Mental Illness [Photoshop Disasters, via a similarly horrifying work featured at the motherboing.]

Derived from Eurobad '74 - Europe's Worst Interiors

The Octocube radiator is a sculptural concept heater by Vivien Muller that would probably be pretty good at heating up a cold room, given all that surface area. But I can't help but think that with a thin slathering of translucent gelatin and some Pollackesque splatters of red paint, I'd have a lovely Spam-like cube of quivering cerebellum heating my living room.

Octocube [Vivien Muller via Gizmodo via Yanko]

This is what the Nintendo Entertainment System would look like if it were made now, but if now was still in the 1980s. Designed by Javier Segovia of Spain, it's very much a refinement of the original, a curious speculative interpolation of two gaming zeitgeists, decades apart. But something holds it back from being truly wonderful, at least for me.

Perhaps it's the awareness that its a pretty but otherwise unoriginal rehash, all shiny 21st century case-molding and modeling techniques. A real redesigned NES could be smaller than the NES's cartridges, while a machine this large could play more than just NES games (and in fact already exists, being called the Wii.)

I think my ideal retro remake consoles would look something like an elongated pyramid, the size of a bar of Toblerone, just large enough to accommodate the cartridge slot. One could line them up in a neat (perhaps modular!) row atop thin TV sets, with identically-shaped but differently-designed models for each console.

Portfolio Page [reNESED via Kotaku]

You already know everything this does, saving the neat edge-to-edge touchscreen. Accept this post's lack of obvious specifications as a kind of half-assed minimalist reflection on this gadget blogger's bafflement at a single, simple fact—it's took the industry more than a year to start cranking the lookalikes out.

Meizu seems suddenly to have been radically agile. Coming soon: something which does what the iPhone does without looking like something from an alternative universe where Apple hired high-school kids with pirated copies of 3D Studio Max instead of Jonathan Ive.

Philips full touchscreen mobile phone [Justamp via Unwired via Engadget]

Dell is now selling their Inspiron 1525 series of laptops with designs by artist Mike Ming. They're designed to be "attuned to youth culture," which is one of those artfully clueless turns of phrase that could only be put earnestly on paper by a press release writer secretly mystified by these crazy kids today with their Dinosaur Comics and their LOLCats and their Substance D.

One Ming Inspiron will set you back about $699, although from my mother's anecdotal experience ordering what Beschizza might have called a "whore red" laptop from Dell, I wonder if the Ming design is just a sticker, in which case you're probably better off just going to Gelaskins. Hell, Dell should just team up with those guys: they're awesome.

Mike Ming Inspirons [Dell via Crunchgear]

Kansas-city accessory guys Refinding scour junkyards and flea markets for improbable vintage materials and then craft them into one-of-a-kind wallets, jewelery, belts, purses and watches. The wallets, in particular, are amazing: the Garbage Pail Kid wallet to the right is exactly the style of wallet I, as an eight year old, thought I would be carrying around as an adult. Ex Libris Anonymous of fashion design.

Refinding [Official Site via Uncrate]

Let's admit it: we all like to imagine the perfect workstation. Perhaps yours is a metal slab in a stone cellar packed with blinking hardware and writhing mountains of cable; maybe it's a Mason Verger-style bed surrounded by enormous LCD displays and stock tickers. BornRich's list of luxury workstations is food for thought, packed as it is with a wild variety of overpriced desks and computer racks.

Many are nerdy. All are silly, in their own way. If you like number 3 the best, however, seek immediate help.

Luxury Workstations [Born Rich]

Is Kyle Bean's laptop design our age's equivalent of a pistol hidden in a bible? The answer is "No," but I still prefer the idea of it being a violence facilitator for literary ninjas, rather than yet another comment on the changing nature of media in an increasingly virtual world.

Next: in the thick of battle, the villain springs onto a table to grab what briefly appears to be an ornamental wall-mounted axe, but finds himself wielding a slimline iPod dock.

The Future of Books [Yanko]

Despite having nothing to do with Cheap Trick at all — except for the cheap trick we all play on ourselves believing there is anything unique or selfish about the need to love and to be loved — "I Want You to Want Me" is an interactive art project built from data mined from various dating sites, organizing into a heart-achingly beautiful touchscreen presentation where each person is represented as a balloon.

It was one of the pieces at MoMA's "Design and the Elastic Mind" show, which is apparently no longer on display. I'm kicking myself for missing it.

[via Cool Hunting]

Although certainly environmentally friendly, there are reasons not to encase your gadgets in the raw, seeping musculature of a freshly-slain bovine, no matter how many times you've seen Videodrome. Yes, it's delicious for a spell. Yes, it's a conversation starter. Yes, it will give you an in with that one goth chick who really has a hard-on for Hellraiser. Yes, it will ward off the smelliest of vegan hippies. But within a couple of weeks, all of these advantages are superseded by the drawbacks: a feeling of constant exhaustion that prevents you from brushing away the flies that keep landing on your eyeballs, the putrid kiwi-sized lumps glistening in your morning evacuations and, of course, the high cost of "freshening" up your protective iPod case every few weeks.

Enter the Mosquito Ruby Pod Rare, an iPod case that looks like you've slathered your MP3 player in glistening, marbleized flesh, but without the stench, the salmonella or the writhing of maggots. Unfortunately, the Mosquito Ruby is about as expensive as it gets for a rubber iPod case: $68 will buy you a lot of prosciutto. Perhaps it's time for the industry to start seriously examining the jerking process as a way to extend the life cycle of our gadgets' protective sheaths of flesh.

Mosquito Ruby Rod Rare [Rakuten via Dvice]

The new lids from my corner coffee joint look like Salvador Dali spitting brown juice into my mouth.

Eleven, the Beautiful Game, is table football with a difference: you can't buy it, and even if you could, you probably could not afford it.

"For many of us, table football is a game that is close to our hearts, holding cherished memories of our childhood and youth. Its popularity also reflects the passion and love that millions of people around the world share for 'the beautiful game' of football."

GRO design's chrome-tastic representation of this classic prelude to pub and family violence will be on show at Milan Design Week, from 16-21 April, and other venues listed at its news page.

The current revisions of the Table Football article at wikipedia—wherein we learn that "stoopid retard is a common name in English" and that "Steven is a man eater"—is a blast.

Product Page [Thanks, Eliot!]

With the aging, open-source GP2X platform quickly slaloming into obsolescence, the Pandora portable gaming system is trying to step forward to take its place in the hearts and minds of the emulator aficionado.

On the surface, the specs look pretty good. Crammed into a decidedly DS-Lite-style case is an 800x480 4.3 inch 16.7 million color touchscreen LCD driven by OpenGL 2.0 compliant 3D hardware, dual SDHC card slots, TV output, an ARM Cortex A8 CPU running Linux and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g capabilitiy.

But its the way that QWERTY keypad is crammed into the dual-analog joysticks, the four face buttons and the D-pad that bugs me. Really, how is text entry for a game system worth that much (decidedly non-ergonomic) real estate?

At $330USD, the Pandora is going to need a hell of a blow-out showing from the homebrew scene to get me to drop my money on it. I already have a hacked PSP, thanks: I don't think I really need another emulated vintage gaming handheld.

OpenPandora [Official Site]

People often notice the wallpaper behind my bed: a fluorescent mural of softly pulsating opalescent splatters. "Wow. How did you do that?" they often ask. Experience has taught me that people don't usually like the answer when I point out the concealed black light and hold it closer to the wall to allow them a closer inspection. There's a reason they call me the Caligula of Berlin, and it's not just for my equine fetish.

Still, if you'd like a wall that looks like a 20/20 Special Report on Motel Hygiene, designer Jonas Samson has created some wonderful, light-emitting wallpaper for you. The technology hasn't been revealed, but there are no bulbs involved, which presumably means its environment friendly, as long as the effect isn't achieved with a slathering of radium.

In all seriousness, this is pretty neat. Although it raises the question, at least in my mind: "How do you turn the wall off?"

Light-Emitting Wallpaper by Jonas Samon [Inhabitat]

According to the AP, police and customs officials raided the booths of many exhibitors at Germany's CeBiT consumer electronics conference, seizing 68 boxes of knock-off gadgets, documents, and more, including phones, mp3 players, GPS units, and digital pictures frames. A good chunk of the exhibitors were from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan and are being accused patent violations.

Small booths full of cheap, Chinese (or at least Chinese-made) gear is a hallmark of these big trade shows, where vendors make business deals with...someone. I'm actually not sure who makes the purchases for these sorts of items or where they end up, but I suppose even small electronics crap vendors have to buy their goods from somewhere.

I feel sorry for the patent violators, mostly. Do people really mistake the cheap copies for the more expensive and (usually) more polished original products? I suspect my level of sympathy for them is predicated by how much I enjoy walking through those back halls at trade shows, talking to the energetic barkers, and marveling at how often the cloned devices miss the mark (as well as the ones that occasionally improve someone else's design).

Authorities seize gadgets during patent raid at German tech fair [IHT.com]

Renault's "Megane" coupe concept, currently being feted at the Geneva Auto Show, eschews gullwing doors for the far-more-futuristic dragonfly doors. Don't expect them to make it into the production cars, but they're certainly beautiful.

Geneva: Renault Megane Coupe Concept – Production Version Following Shortly! [Carscoop via Oh Gizmo]

The "LINC" is a mobile phone concept has one particularly novel idea at heart: the device is built with a one-year lifecycle in mind, designed to be easily recycled every year as upgraded versions become available. This mythical device would be leased, not owned, with yearly upgrades built into the rate.

I admire the pragmatism of the idea. We tend to toss out our phones every couple of years already. Why not account for our slavering neophilia right up front? And if a yearly upgrade cycle is too much, perhaps a slightly less expensive plan could be offered on a two-year replacement schedule?

Two trends in the mobile market portend the possibility of a LINC-like concept becoming feasible: the iPhone and its simple rate plan; the recent outpouring of all-you-can-eat plans from the big four American carriers. The iPhone is showing that the general user base is happy with a smartphone/media player hybrid with middling text input capability and clearly all the other phone manufacturers are chasing that idea at least in part.

The LINC's got a beat and you can dance to it. Too bad Kaleidoscope, the development consultancy that came up with the concept, isn't in the sort of business that will make it simple to develop the idea any further.

Linc - The Lifecycle Concept Phone [TheGreenerGrass.org]

What do you get when you cross a tech blogger with someone intelligent? Why Daniel Rutter, who has run the numbers on the Gravia Lamp concept which won second place at the Greener Gadgets competition. Turns out the gravity-powered LED lamp pretty much could never work.

22.7 kilograms falling 1.22m in gravity of 9.8 metres per second squared gives you a grand total of 271.4 joules. That, once again ignoring losses (which are likely to be considerable, seeing as there’s a ball-screw and an electrical generator in the Gravia), will by definition run a one-watt lamp for 271.4 seconds, or four and a half minutes. If you downgrade the lamp to one tiny 0.1-watt LED night-light, you get three-quarters of an hour. The maximum possible luminous efficacy for any kind of lamp that will ever exist - if every quantum of energy going into the thing is used to make visible photons that come out - is 683 lumens per watt. And that’s for a lamp that emits monochromatic 555-nanometre green light, not white (the world record for white LEDs in the lab so far is less than 150lm/W), but never mind that for now. So if your tenth-watt lamp is just such a perfect device that can never actually exist, it will emit 68.3 lumens of light.

Look at all the shiny maths! Another critic pointed out that the Gravia would either need a 4,000-kilogram mass to drop 1.5 meters to power the lamp for four hours or to extend the design's track for its 50-pound mass to 259 meters.

In fairness, the inventor has published a retraction and will give back the $1,000 Greener Gadgets prize. And I certainly didn't realize there was anything wrong with the design. I got about as far as "Huh, I wonder why nobody ever used such a clever weighted system before?" and never gave it any more thought. I mean, if science can invent magical pipes that whistle when you invert them, surely lamps are just a step away?

STOP PRESS: Pixie dust unsuitable for household lighting [Dan's Data]

EETimes's article on the creation of the Flip Ultra video camera by Pure Digital is a great example of how learning the thought and care that goes into a product can change your mind. Or my mind, at least, having ignored the Flip Ultra as a piece of knocked-together mass market exploitation but now finding myself questioning if perhaps I wouldn't be just as happy with a little pocket-sized, all-in-one solid state camcorder instead of my fairly expensive and unpocketable HD camcorder.

To address the ease of use issue, the designers rallied around a theme: No extra buttons. "The user would always know what each button does," said Fleming. In fact, the team had a goal that within 30 seconds, the user should know how to use it. "It must be intuitive or we won't use it," he said.

...

The "Eureka" moment came with the development of proprietary damping algorithms to implement a non-linear response curve off stasis to give a smooth 'landing' quickly, without instability in the system. "For slow or little change, we keep the auto exposure stable or make very small changes which cannot easily be discerned by viewers," said Furlan. While the auto exposure has no impact on the underlying video frame rate, it does improve the perception that as the camera moves from one scene to the next, there were no significant jumps in brightness.

Under the Hood: Flip Ultra camcorder - An ode to clean design [EETimes.com via Core77]

Eschewing the form-over-function tendency of most concept designs, Bongkun Shin's "SmartGuide" drill features a nesting, retracting guide that ensures perfectly perpendicular holes. While there are certainly times when the guide would get in the way, a simple clip to keep the guide out of the way would be enough to make this useful in all situations. I wouldn't be surprised to see this on a retail product at some point in the near future.

Training Wheels For Your Drill [Yanko Design]

This is a bit far afield for a gadgets site, perhaps, but indulge me. "Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions Creative Awards" has changed their name to "Mouse," with this clever logo. There's even a slight gadget connection, since to be eligible the advertisements had to appear only on a Microsoft property like MSN or Xbox Live.

Why "Mouse?" Because the winners are entered in the Cannes Cyber Lions award competition.

The Roaring Mouse [Brand New]

My self-diagnosed mild autistic tendencies cause me to find great delight in things that express order and uniformity. I suspect that's part of what makes me love LEGO as much as I do—clicking the elements together actually calms me down. As does making pixel art, sliding elements into a zoomed-in grid. I love things that stack or that have compartments. I love airline meals, not because of the taste, but because of the way each little slab of food fits into its tray, which in turn slides into a wheeled steam compartment, which in turn snaps into a locker. (It makes me wish my belly were filled with stacks of rectangular stomachs.) If I could, I would live in a sterile white room with no corners and compartments in which to stow every item.

(Or course I'd grow tired of that bubble room in short order. I also like dirty log cabins and Marshall stacks and human genitalia. But I can feel a part of my brain that finds a sense of order soothing.)

Point is, I squealed a little when I saw "Casulo"—a small crate filled with all the furniture one needs to live a modest life—unfolded by its designers in the video below. While it's an admirable bit of prototype engineering, like a thesis project for a Doctorate of Ikea, it's the clear tone its connotive portent sends ringing in my head that makes it most laudable. To be able to cast out all one's things, step into a pregnant room, and unfold a new home in a few minutes? That's a seductive fantasy.

Project Page [Mein-Casulo.de via Treehugger via Design Spotter]

The "Plagiarius Awards" are given to the companies who make the most faithful unauthorized reproductions of gear they did not design. And while China has its fair share of knock-offs represented, many of the thieving companies operate in the same country as the original. The whole awards page is like a tasting menu for IP lawyers.

Plagiarius Award winners are not given an actual trophy, but simply given general specifications and relative heft.

Awards Page [Plagiarius.com via Core77]

This is the "Ant" model of a series of devices created by Chris Woebken and Kenichi Okada that aims to (somehow) simulate what it's like to be an ant for a tiny kid. Mostly I just like the picture.

Work in Progress at the Royal College of Art [Dezeen]

The winners of the Greener Gadgets Design Competition have been posted on the web, including the Grand Prize winning Enerjar, the "do-it-yourself power meter."