Khoi Vinh's Blog, page 105

Aros Window Air Conditioner

A year ago I wrote about the moribund state of window air conditioning units. Crowdsourced product platform Quirky is tackling that problem with the Avos window air conditioner, a product invented by former Department of Energy employee Garthen Leslie. The Aros brings to bear many of the technologies that are starting to become common in…

Notifications as the Next Interface

Following Apple’s huge announcements at WWDC last week, there has been a lot of talk about how changes in iOS’s notifications architecture will open a new class of apps. Over at Wired, Matt Honan writes: Once developers begin to really harness what interactive notifications can do in iOS 8—and they will—it’s going to cause one…

Interview with Type Sample’s Justin Van Slembrouck

Type Sample is like Instapaper for web fonts, and it’s one of the handiest new design tools that I’ve added to my toolbox in the past year. It debuts to the public today. Here’s how it works: a bookmarklet allows you to easily identify any web font you might come across during the course of…

Monochrome Web Browser

Monochrome is an OS X Web browser with a fixed viewport that matches the resolution of an iPhone 5; it basically puts a mobile browser on your desktop. It’s hardly an earth-shattering idea, but even in its simplicity I think it’s quietly profound. It can be really difficult to think about the mobile web when…

Sigelock Spartan Fire Hydrant

The Sigelock Spartan is the first major redesign of the fire hydrant form factor to gain traction in over a century. It was inspired by the surprisingly common failure of traditionally designed fire hydrants at times of peril. The Spartan replaces cast iron with a mixture of stainless steel and ductile iron, which purports to…

Libertad

Last December I wrote about Uruguyan type designer Feranando Díaz’s Fénix typeface, which he offers as a free download from his company TipoType. Fénix is beautiful though alas it comes in only one weight; there is no bold, light, medium, italic, etc., not even to purchase. Thankfully, Díaz also has several full-featured typefaces available for…

Kidpost Illustrations

Credit where credit is due: the beautiful illustrations for Kidpost, which we launched in public beta yesterday, were created for us by the phenomenal Keenan Cummings. We were so lucky to be able to get some of his time to produce these. Not only does he keep busy as a designer and illustrator, he’s been…

A Subway Series

This kid and his baseball stadium made from cardboard—constructed, presumably, for a school project—was the best thing I’ve seen on the subway all week. +

The Economics of Movie Reviews

The alternate title of this heartfelt essay from Dustin Rowles, founder of Pajiba, is “Why So Many Film Critics Continue to Lose Their Jobs.” It talks about the vagaries of a dedication to film criticism in the face of the form’s inherently terrible economics. While the art of film criticism is still very much appreciated,…

Kidpost Public Beta

I’m happy to announce that starting today Kidpost is in public beta! You can head over to kidpost.net right now and start using it right away. During this period, Kidpost is entirely free; when we launch we’ll be charging a nominal fee, but early adopters will get a discount. Here’s a quick refresher on what…