Wednesday, March 31, 2010


Chile fly fishing extravaganza trip. $2K a day. Someday, someday...

yeap, you got that right.

New E series wagon. Like the tail lamp design. Not sure about funny kink on rear at sides.

I am sucker for design with hole especially if it has opposing color inside...
from Web: The new Pebble table by Matthias Demacker for Bonaldo

Tuesday, March 30, 2010


Ponyo by Miyazaki. It was not fun as others or am I just getting old. Lisa drives like crazy which is not suitable with kids inside.

2 much design elements. This kind of car calls for Matte Black finish only to hide crap.

2 much design elements. This kind of car calls for Matte Black finish only to hide crap.

May be he is a Brit since the video looks like the UK but he sings like American. Once he get interviewed, brit accent get back on full swing. Funny.

Peace bike

Close but need some extra to make it into my bike hole of fame. Has a taste of Alta bike by Scandinavians.
Giant Bowery FMX Bike.

If I could not make it as ID, I would love to try Jewelry or shoe design. This is nice one. from Web: Gonçalo Campos is making jewelry from 3D-printed steel. The collection, entitled Comion Jewelry.

Strange, they do go together somehow. Mao Amazon Volvo. Peace.

Air Purifier by Patrick Norguet.  New design.

Monday, March 29, 2010


Wow, Japanese architects SANAA, who have been named 2010 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureates. Nice. Picture is for Naoshima ferry terminal. I have got to visit the island again and stay at museum hotel.

you won't be one if you keep eating this chips.

Hardy’s Bavaria German food
“ham shank” and “sausage sampler”
111 West Evelyn Avenue, Sunnyvale

Sunday, March 28, 2010


New design proposal for Coke bottle. I think I can do better.
Mobile Device Makers Samsung, Nokia Prepping Patent Play for Palm?

* March 25, 2010
* By Andy Patrizio

A patents analyst says he believes that based on Palm's patent portfolio and the cutthroat state of the smartphone industry, Samsung and Nokia are the two firms most likely to purchase the troubled maker of the Pre and Pixi.

Pundits across the Internet have been writing Palm's obituary since it reported a bad third quarter earlier this month and said the next quarter would be even worse. While Palm has said it will soldier on, it's still open to any fair offer, according to execs.

Of all the possible outcomes, purchasing Palm for patent protection is one of the worst next to bankruptcy. A smartphone vendor in need of patents to protect could buy Palm, which has a very old, rich library of patents related to phones, and keep just that as its shield against litigation by Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) or Motorola (NYSE: MOT).

But that's exactly what Anthony Mazzarella, CEO of PatentVest, thinks could happen. PatentVest scores the value of a company’s IP portfolio in many ways to come up with the company's overall value, including how often a company’s patents are cited by other companies.

"Based on our metrics, the value of Palm’s intellectual property is along the same order of magnitude as Apple," he told Investor's Business Daily. "The market is overlooking the IP value in Palm, which has great value."

Companies must cite existing patents (called "prior art") similar to their own when they submit a patent for approval. PatentVest scores a company based in part on how often a company’s patents are cited in a patent submission -- one reason that Samsung and Nokia stand out. Samsung has cited Palm patents in its patent applications more than any other company, followed by Nokia. Apple and Motorola cite Palm prior art only half as much as Samsung and Palm.

"Samsung and Nokia must be highly interested in similar technology developed by Palm," Mazzarella told IBD.
Still Time for Palm to Rally Around webOS Handhelds?

But Will Stofega, program manager for mobile research with IDC, said he doesn't see either company as being able to handle such an acquisition right now. "My instinct tells me that Nokia has its hands full with legal issues and a refresh to Symbian. Trying to fit another operating system, unless they get it really cheap -- I'm not sure that makes sense," he told InternetNews.com.
Related Articles

* Palm's Poor Quarter Raises Concerns About Its Survival
* AT&T's New Mobile Devices: Pre, Pixi, Dell Aero
* Apple Ready to Rumble with Rival Smartphone Makers

The same applies to Samsung, which has Android and its own platform, Bada. "I could be 110 percent wrong, but it seems they have Bada in place and it seems they will make do with that," Stofega said.

Also, Stofega isn't ready to give up on Palm just yet.

"Palm has some time left. Not a great deal of time to change course, but they have time," he said. "I think everyone is throwing in the towel a little too quickly. They still have a path. Some may not hold them in good standing, but I think there's a lot more to it right now."

Andy Patrizio is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.

The Old Siam in Sunnyvale.  Main food is so-so. Dessert is fabulous.


porsche 69 doing well over 69. slick engineering.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Natto loving #2

Yoroniku, BBQ in Aoyama.  Shaved Ice for dessert.
http://r.gnavi.co.jp/a388101/


another clip of Jamie at TED.

Go JAMIE OLIVER go!

A cell mobile phone store in Antwerp, Belgium. This kind a cell phone store like to visit. Check out the check out counter!

Friday, March 26, 2010

dig

Eel and pirania. When Eel fishery ships goods, they put one Pirania in the tank to keep the eels alive and fresh. I want to be a pirania in design organization.
活性化にはピラニア!?
養殖のウナギを海外から輸入する際水槽の中にピラニアを1匹いれるだけで食われまいと必死に頑張るというお話をとある方よりお聞きしました。無添加化粧品で有名なFANCL (ファンケル)のトップの池森さんが採用活動を行う際に以前キャッチコピーで使われたそうですが安定志向の社員ばかりを採用するのではなく意識改革を行うためにもある種とがった人材を採用することで活性化につながる。 こういった意味合いで、ピラニアという表現を使われたということで面白い表現だな~と思ったわけです。

Here is current Sony US product line up.
Well article from Web: How Sony Lost Its Way

[How Sony Lost Its Way] More than anything, Sony's lost its spirit, spending too much time telling us it's the greatest electronics company in the world and not nearly enough showing us.
Proprietary Formats

Sony's last huge format hit was a product called "Compact Disc". You might have heard of it. Spinning plastic wheel with pits in the bottom? Read by lasers? Co-developed with Philips?

It took a couple of years for CDs to take hold, but once they did, Sony raked in the cash. Not only by selling players, but by manufacturing CDs for themselves and others. It's a huge part of their business even today, as Sony DADC produces not just CDs, but DVDs, Blu-ray, and PlayStation discs in facilities around the world.

[How Sony Lost Its Way] Sony became spoiled. For decades, a success in a new media format meant that Sony could expect to make money selling the media itself. Through the '80s and '90s, they became less inclined to share the market. Sony developed the 3.5-inch floppy disc drive for computers which found wide adoption as blank discs were available from a variety of manufacturers. MiniDisc followed, but with less success. In 1998 as the flash memory market started to warm up, Sony introduced Memory Stick, what eventually became an entire family of expensive flash memory formats that were not compatible with devices from any other manufacturers.

And don't forget the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD war. Sony eventually won that one, but the battle continued for such a long time because neither consortium wanted to lose the market to produce media for consumers—consumers who were increasingly getting their content online.

See the problem? Time and again, Sony took an excellently engineered solution and held it tightly, the better to extract big profits. But every generation, every iteration, Sony's need to control the format became more and more of a liability. Even loyal Sony customers could tell the proprietary formats were a screw job, eroding their happiness with their Sony product every time they had to shell out a premium to buy a Sony-authorized blank.
Unwillingness to Commit

Sony is rife with good ideas. Too afraid to commit to each one fully, Sony instead releases a ridiculous number of products in an attempt to see which might take hold, making many that seem like one-off oddities that even Sony doesn't believe in.

Take "Bravia Link", the streaming media box that Sony decided to sell as a $200 aftermarket option for its televisions while Sony's competitors were integrating similar services right into the TV. Worse, Sony sells the PlayStation 3. Why not integrate the streaming service into that, adding value to the PS3 and buy-in of its customers?

Or what about the Party-shot Automatic Photographer, a dock that works with just two models of Sony's point-and-shoot cameras to automatically compose and shoot portraits of party-goers. Great idea—so why isn't it just built into every camera Sony makes?

Nintendo ate Sony's lunch with the Wii—so Sony is building a Wiimote clone for the PS3.

Netbooks were hot—so Sony built a netbook twice as expensive as its competitors with little performance difference then let it fade away in the market after spending millions on its launch campaign.

Sony released the first e-ink reader years before the Kindle—in Japan only. And it was nearly impossible to load your own content onto it. And it took years to get a solid online library and store together. According to estimates from Forrester Research, Sony had only sold about 50,000 of its Readers before Amazon entered the game with the Kindle. It took a competitor with a superior product to convince customers it was time to look at e-ink readers at all. And the non-strategic advantage of being the only reader sold in brick-and-mortar stores for Sony to get the #2 market share it had at last tally.

[How Sony Lost Its Way] Apple announced the iPad—so Sony says the tablet market is a "space [they] would like to be an active player in." I am sighing preemptively for the beautiful black slate that Sony will release in 2011, then never upgrade again. In the meantime Sony is pushing its new Chumby-based Dash device, or as you may recognize it, a five-inch thick touchscreen tablet that you have to keep plugged into a wall.

For a brief moment, Sony's Vaio notebooks were among the most beautiful and colorful around. But it didn't take long for Sony's larger notebook competitors like HP to catch up on design—while Sony continued to charge a premium for their now stock-standard "pretty" laptops. Gartner analyst Leslie Fiering put it damningly: "They've been status quo for so long that it's hard to see signs of change. If they continue on the path they're on, they're going to continue to be an also-ran."

That's today's Sony: an also-ran who wants to be respected like a market leader.

For homework, Sony could start with these three studies from Stanford School of Business: "Too Much Choice Can Hurt Brand Performance"; "Asking Consumers to Compare May Have Unintended Results"; and "For Buyers, More Choice Means Better Quality".

That last one might seem bolster Sony's shotgun marketing plan until you read this warning: "In one study, for example, consumers gave top ratings to a restaurant that offered a wide variety of dishes in one category—Thai food. But when that restaurant was portrayed as offering not only Thai food but also food in other categories, consumer ratings went down. 'In some cases, having a lot of unrelated options is a signal to the consumer that the brand is not focused, and therefore can't be very good.'"
Arrogance

There's no better example of the arrogance of the modern Sony than the launch of the PlayStation 3. It was the last of the current generation of game consoles to market. It cost more than all its competitors. Kaz Hirai, then president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America and now the head of the entire ball of wax worldwide, said infamously, "The next generation doesn't start until we say it does."

People were rolling their eyes at Sony even as Hirai and his executive team made those lofty statements—but our eyes flipped all the way into the backs of our skulls after Sony spent the next three years struggling in a videogame market they once dominated.

Why Sony would present this cocky face to the world is impossible to understand, until you realize that it's the sort of self-delusional bluster, pre-game trash talk, from a team that hasn't won a championship in years.

It's clear in their marketing and press relations, too. Sony is always quick to throw a big party, launch some laptop with a silly event like a fashion show, or hand press review units out to lifestyle magazines but not technical publications. Having had one accidental lifestyle product success with the Walkman, Sony mistakenly believes that its products are stylish—when in fact the Walkman became a style icon despite its often garish or pedestrian looks.

[How Sony Lost Its Way]

If you think this is too harsh an appraisal, think about the many Sony products that arbitrarily ended up in our 50 Worst Gadgets of the Decade roundup. Almost all of them are guilty of more than one of the above infractions, and some—such as the $1900 solid-brass MiniDisc player above, a key device in the short-lived Qualia luxury line—are the glorious embodiment of all three.

I believe Sony has the chutzpah to do more than make me-too products—they're capable of making market-expanding products that become household names. But until they take a hard look at themselves in an honest light, Sony will continue to embarrass themselves by remaining the company that says they're bringing us the future—then sells us products even they don't believe in.

–With reporting by Brian Barrett and Don Nguyen

Looks like Ikuzawa restored his Porsche 69 Targa at Stuttgart. Nice!! From Car Magazine May 2010.

darn, Uniqlo is in Moscow. come here pls.

Thursday, March 25, 2010


fav porsche trio

cool to drive 73 RS in rain.

Bar in Aoyama called Number A.
3-12-2, Kita-Aoyama, Minato-ku 81-3-6427-4038

Try here next time in HKG.
http://www.east-hongkong.com/en/

I do like Radio Flyer classic heritage design but this one is cool too.
From web: Designed by Scot Herbst, the Zen super wagon from Kaiku allows two children 18 months and up to sit facing one other in style. Non-toxic finishes are used on the birch wagon that has a sensibly placed dip in the centre for kids to put their feet.

Lenovo new thinkpad. May be they graduated from Sapper era finally... I wonder where it was conceived. US, JP or China.

KTM eletric bike. somehow I do not want to ride this design in rain or wet dirt but still looks shocking.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010


exercise bike. I am pretty sure i have seen this design layout before somewhere else....

london: aesop store. Like this retro and simple mash but I think lacks a bit of design twist.

I never spent too much time looking at it when they came out but now I stare at it, the fundamental design is not that bad. May be Giugiaro helped them?

Tokujin Yoshioka might be doing Swarovski Crystal ball like he did a chair at 21_21 museum in Roppongi at Milano. If it is a similar process, no need for me fly out and see it but he always gives me goose bumps so I hope he keep that up.

Taken 2008. Some said Luc is involved a bit in it. Story wise it is straight no BS kind but it is so straight that kind a boring too.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010


This Benz is major design mistake no matter what they do to it.

Close. Borderline between being tasteless and tasteful.
from web: artist Paul Villinski comes this mind blowing interior butterfly pattern that challenges the idea of conventional designs. Made from beer cans gathered off the streets of New York City

Close. Borderline between being tasteless and tasteful.
from web: artist Paul Villinski comes this mind blowing interior butterfly pattern that challenges the idea of conventional designs. Made from beer cans gathered off the streets of New York City

Monday, March 22, 2010


In Tokyo, the Capsule Inn. Love it gonna try it.

Lexus, you had huge opportunity to make this one tight but no cigar. well not even close.
Sublime

Cenote in Yucatan


We could not take good picture like this National Geographic dude but if any of you happen to be near Yucatan, you should definitely go swim in Cenote. Our favorite one was in Cuzama.
From Web: The Maya believed natural wells, such as the Xkeken cenote in Mexico's Yucatan, led to the underworld. (John Stanmeyer, VII, © National Geographic)

I am no fan of weaponry at all but very much fan of creativity like this. From Death Spray Custom web site. F-117

Color accented wheels are definitely in.

Brilliant revolving shelves as front door idea.
Livraria de Vila is a bookshop in São Paulo with a store-front made of revolving bookcases, designed by Brazilian studio Isay Weinfeld Architecture.

Smolenicky & Partner Architektur of Zurich did this architecture. Reminds me of Gaudi park basement in Barcelona and Tyrell CEO office from Bladerunner.

I still think RCA has the best grad show but this is not that bad too from Finns.

Sunday, March 21, 2010


Kira eating

thin leftover in HKG