Anything can be folded nowadays: bicycles, tents, kitchen utensils, furniture and much much more. Now we’ve found a completely foldable boat that you can easily store inside your house.
It’s called Fold-a-boat and the secret behind its success is that it is made of one sole piece of plastic flexible enough to fold into 150cm x 60cm, but sturdy enough to navigate calm waters.
Seen on Yankodesign
Surely you’ve already seen cellphone designs for children or the elderly, which are kept simple and limited to key features only.
Why not do the same with laptop computers? That must have been the question on Ryan Klinger’s mind when he came up with a concept that will make laptop computers much more user-friendly for anyone who finds normal computers intimidating.
This laptop has huge letters and numbers, and all its icons are well differentiated and visible. Nothing is hidden. It is easy to carry thanks to its handle and can be opened with a single touch.
We are back with a new competition, and this time it’s for you developers. We’re looking for new applications, tools, widgets and games that are original, useful and practical for the ideas4all community. All applications must be developed with freeware.
If you are a software developer, you can take part in our competition from November 22, 2011 to January 17, 2012.
There are 3 grand prizes that will be awarded by an expert jury:
- 1st Prize, 3000$
- 2nd Prize, 2000$
- 3rd Prize, 1000$
And 10 200$ prizes for the applications that receive the most community votes.
Enter here and find all the information you need to participate.
What are you waiting for!
Here are three curious ideas that will make better containers out of bottles.
The first is truly peculiar, and uses the seal on bottle-caps, which breaks when the bottle is opened, transforming it into a small straw that makes drinking that little bit more hygienic.
This second idea is called Easy Drink, and what is does is exactly that: it makes drinking and refilling your bottle much easier. All they needed to introduce is a 45º change in the angle of the bottle-cap.
Finally, this other idea also modifies the bottle-cap’s shape to make it easier to open the bottle.
In Barcelona, the Museu d’Idees i Invents (Museum of Ideas and Inventions) has organized an interesting competition whereby they intend to create real prototypes of inventions by children. After all, they are the most creative among us.
The project is known as Mini Miba. Participating children are between 5 and 12 years old, and are asked to draw their idea on a sheet of paper, and wait to see if they can see it become reality. The 30 winning ideas, 3 ideas being chosen every month during a period of 10 months, will be patented under the name of their small inventors and a prototype will be built.
Those 30 winning ideas will then travel around the world, to international invention fairs. A great challenge to show us what can come out of a child’s mind.
October’s Challenge ended with a total of 165 ideas participating with fantastic suggestions to make the most popular of vehicles, cars, a much safer and more comfortable way of taking us where we want to go.
Here are some very good ideas:
(107402) Fire protection for engines, by ideator Pepette
(106969) Steering wheel that measures heartbeat, by ideator trex
(107533) Driver’s card, by ideator odysx
(107331) Anti-sleep alarm, by ideator publicifel
Two good ideas by ELTELERA
(106959) Seatbelts that unfasten automatically after impact.
(106958) Light and acceleration, for vehicles.
(110357) Create safe routes in gps, by ideator BRAIN CREATOR
…And there are many more like these. You can read all of the ideas that participated in this Challenge of the Month here.
Another one of those ideas that seem to have sprung up in different versions among our ideators: solar windows. Each ideator explains his or her own point of view, sharing ideas such as these:
(1815) With a view to… ANYWHERE YOU LIKE! – Solar windows by ideator edugilweb
(75690) Saving electricity in office buildings by ideator enduwe
(37047) solar windows by ideator darius78
(31568) System for window blinds with solar panels by ideator masual
Today’s idea could be another version of how to make solar windows become a reality. The concept you see here, Solar Window, is a simple design made of a solar panel on the outside, but what is really new is how the power obtained is transformed, using plugs on the inside, where any device can be connected directly to the current.
We all own USB pen drives that we use to save documents for work, school, give photos to friends, save movies, music. Today, there are thousands of available designs, formats, sizes, that have made these little memory-holders indispensible. The idea we bring you today is a new design that improves the traditional pen drives we are used to. It is simply transformed into a double pen drive that can be used on either side.
The one pictured can hold up to 32GB, but the drive’s memory can vary, and we could even use one side for work and the other for entertainment.
With a gadget like this, running out of memory is a thing of the past.
Seen on Yankodesign
This idea may not be particularly useful, but it certainly is creative, especially in a country where it rains for the better part of the year.
Green Trace is a metallic tray with a grille under which seeds of grass are planted. Just leave objects like an umbrella, wet shoes, or anything else in the house that’s wet, and the grass will grow little by little, making your home that little bit greener.
Seen on Decorablog
