The Dyson Air Multiplier™ Fan is the latest from James Dyson, the British inventor famous for making ordinary household appliances like vacuum cleaners better through technology and engineering. The Air Multiplier™ technology was discovered almost by accident. When working on the Airblade the team noticed that the device was dragging a large amount of the surrounding air along with it, something that fluid dynamics people call "inducement."
The Air Multiplyer draws air in through the bottom of the unit and "is accelerated through an annular aperture. This creates a jet of air that passes over a 16° airfoil-shaped ramp, channeling its direction. Using an airfoil-shaped ramp (like a cross-section through an airplane wing), airflow is amplified 15 times." There are no blades, so there is no danger of children hurting themselves by accident. The Air Multiplyer is not cheap, but Dyson believes the technology could be put to use in other appliances.
More British design news, Andrew Ritchie, designer of the Brompton folding bicycle, has won the 2009 Prince Philip Designers Prize. Brompton, which first developed its folding bicycle design has remained fundamentally unchanged for more than 20 years but compared to other types of folding bicycles, the Brompton is frequently held up as the winner. 22 000 bicycles are made in London annually with 70% being exported.
Ritchie spends more time on designing the manufacturing process than the bike itself. "It’s all very well designing the product, but it has to be makeable."
The Wikireader is one of those devices that does on thing really well, it is a simple device that has the whole of Wikipedia loaded. The small, durable and very energy efficient product is the latest from Openmoko with design from Thomas Meyerhoffer. Wikipedia is stored on an 8 gig SD card, which can be updated for a fee, the reader will retail for $99. Via DesignBoom.
It seems that Gizmodo has the lowdown on the Barnes and Noble Athena or ebook. Nice looking design that has an e-ink display and a touch sensitive color screen for navigation and input. Rumors are that it will have a direct link to 1 million Google Books. The product was designed by Ammunition Partners, a San Francisco firm headed by former Apple design chief Robert Brunner although there is no confirmation from any parties regarding the product.
Last week Tasos was a speaker at the University of Johannesburg’s two-day colloquium on Practice-Led Research in creative production. Tasos talked on Readymade's approach to design thinking. And yesterday he talked some more when the SABS Design Institute filmed at Readymade HQ for a new video featuring some of South Africa’s successful designers of the last 40 years.
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