Printed Antimatter

Robots begin exercising their second amendment rights

Jeffrey O'Brien has a fascinating article in Fortune about some Silicon Valley geeks who have made the grave mistake of arming robots. (C'mon, guys, you've seen Terminator, do you really think this is a good idea?!) The idea is to deploy them in Iraq and get our men and women off the front lines, hence the headline "Killer Robots from Silicon Valley could replace soldiers."

Yeah, not much chance of that, as cool and deadly as the robots may be. Soldiers serve many functions besides spraying lead – That's why you can't solve every dust-up with air strikes. And a widespread deployment of robots in battle probably wouldn't even put a big dent in casualty rates, since the great majority of deaths over there are from IEDs, and a relative few are from fire fights.

Actually, the fact that the robots are going to be displayed in Blackwater's lobby gives me an idea – maybe they could replace private contractors in Iraq. That could go a long way toward reducing the number of Iraqi civilians lost to 'roid rages.

Check out this CG video of a hypothetical killer robot in action and celebrate the inevitable fusion of video games and military action.

McDonald's gets a McD-minus for advertising on report cards

Advertising Age reports on McDonald's latest attempt to recruit a new generation:

The Golden Arches picked up the $1,600 cost of printing report-card jackets for the 2007-2008 school year in Seminole County, Fla., in exchange for a Happy Meal coupon on the card's cover. With 27,000 elementary school kids taking their report-card jackets home to be signed three or four times a year, that's less than 2 cents per impression.

The plan sounds like an unmitigatedly bad idea, but surprisingly, Pizza Hut has been doing the same thing for years, advertising on those same report card jackets with nary a peep. So why the outrage now? Sounds like it was the coupon...

"My daughter worked so hard to get good grades this term and now she believes she is entitled to a prize from McDonald's," Susan Pagan, an Orlando parent, said in a press release distributed by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. "And now I'm the bad guy because I had to explain that our family does not eat at fast-food chains."

Susan Pagan, what an awesome name! But my favorite quote in the article:

Michele Simon, author of "Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines our Health and How to Fight Back," said that the school district is "selling kids' health for chump change."

"They should be embarrassed," she said. "If you're going to sell out kids' health you might as well get something good for it."

Damn straight.

(Hat tip to Anne B.)

Born again

Welcome to Printed Antimatter, a weblog about design and stuff – formerly known as Seen and Not Seen back when it was underwritten by the now-defunct Business 2.0 magazine. Now we are corporate-sponsor-free and ad-free, but just as committed to delivering incisive commentary on a sporadic basis. Subscribe to our feed so you don't miss a single juicy post! (Yes, that's the editorial we.)

Guess you won't be smashing that iPhone after all

It's only a few hours until the first iPhones go on sale, and I've been reading blog-coverage by my colleagues Phil and Michal reporting from the lines in front of the Apple Stores in SF and Palo Alto (respectively). The photos and anecdotes of eager little consumers, itching to get their hot li'l paws on a precious digi-bauble made me wonder if the dummies from Smash Some Stuff were going to make an appearance. These are the folks who wait in line for hours to be the first to buy the latest must-have electronic product using donated funds, and then smash it, in order to mock... the folks who wait in line for hours to buy the latest must-have product. Their site claims it's a social experiment, but clearly all it has revealed is how many people are willing to donate their own hard-earned money for no apparent reason. I assume they think it's a commentary on hype and consumerism, but there's no hint of that on the page-- there is plenty of spite though:

"We smash game consoles, MP3 players, TV's, and especially the hopes and dreams of fanboy's." [sic]

"Keith and I created the site on December 28, 2005 for the sole purpose of us destroying stuff."

ANYway, turns out that of the $499 they need to fulfill their iPhone-smashing fantasy, helpful suckers have donated only $117.70. And THAT includes $40 donated by the SSS guys themselves. Sorry guys, I guess your supporters have had enough of funding your Beavis-and-Butthead-meet-Gallagher antics.

This plea on the site is especially poignant:

"If someone does donate $400USD, I will be speechless and just give u the destroyed Apple iPhone and a whole lot more too."

Wow!! $400 for a destroyed iPhone?! What a deal!! You'd have to spend a whole hundred dollars more for one that was brand new and still working!!

Perhaps the Stuff Smashers can take some solace that they still out-raised their clone-rivals at smashmyiphone.com, who to date have raised one whole dollar.

The case of the perfect iPhone case

Okay, I know, you're sick of hearing about the iPhone, and I am too. But that doesn't mean I don't want one badly, so badly it hurts when I pee. However, I've decided I'm only going to drop half a grand on one if some other company comes out with the perfect case first. (You'd think Apple would come out with a good one, but look what they came up with for the iPod: a damn sock.)

Oh, there's a ton of third-party cases out there already. The iPod accessory-makers have churned out a slew of sleeves, holsters, and silicone prophylactics for the Jesus phone, even though they apparently haven't actually seen it in person yet. (Maybe they got non-functional iPhone shells to design around? I smell an eBay scam in the making.) But being the design freak that I am, I have some strict requirements:

1. It must fit in my pocket. I am a major dork, but wearing a cell phone on my belt is one facet of dorkiness I have never embraced. Nor am I such a vain prat that I want to display a gadget on my hip as a conversation piece. I keep my cell phone in my pocket, which has the added benefit of making the vibrate mode a cheap thrill. So my perfect case must have no belt clip (or at least a fully removable one), add very little bulk, and sport some structural rigidity to protect the phone's screen from flexing when sandwiched between tight denim and my rippling, bronzed quadricep.

2. It must have screen protection. An irony of the iPhone is that the most vulnerable part of it must remain uncovered. There are films and thin shields that protect its screen from scratches while you caress and fondle it, but I want something tougher, to protect it from impacts and cracking. (After all, you never know when someone's going to kick you in your rippling quadricep.) But this protection also has to get out of the way quickly when I need to use the phone. It occurs to me the flip-back cover of the Newton is close to my ideal. Or the cover on the original Star Trek's communicator. (Told you I was a major dork.)

3. It can't be ugly. Apple products are beautiful. Most cases are -- how shall I say this? -- not. It pains me to wrap my current iPod in a protective case that makes it look like a cheap pool toy or an old lady's eyeglass case. That's why it's scratched up worse than Roy after a few rounds with Montecore. Similarly, most of the cases I've seen for the iPhone are heinous, which is a terrible insult to the phone itself. Should the iPhone ever attain self-awareness (which I think is planned for revision 2), it will vomit with rage at the thought of being dressed in such tawdry dreck. I think it's too much to hope that a case actually be handsome in its own right, but it has to at least be inoffensive.

I have trolled through many cases to see if any lived up to my ideal. (If you want to troll too, check out ilounge and the google.) I've only found one that seems to satisfy my standards: the FLiP by iQase. Mind you, I haven't actually seen one in person, nor tried it out with an iPhone (they're not out yet, you know), but the FLiP seems pretty well-thought out. All the ports are accessible, although the camera lens is blocked. I'm not completely a fan of the stitched leather look, but it's not a dealbreaker. And at only 30 bucks, it would make my bank account feel slightly less like it was hemorrhaging.

Now, if it were made of rubberized aluminum, it might just be perfect...

If you still haven't had enough iPhone blather, check out blog-cousins Third Screen and Apple 2.0

UPDATE: I take it all back. PC World tried scratching, gouging, and dropping the iPhone, and nothing happened to it. Looks (so far) like a case is not necessary after all...

More toy-soldier-based design

Turns out you can use plastic toy soldiers to make not just fonts but expensive housewares. The War Bowl by Dominic Wilcox melts what seems like a company of fighting men into a charnel but clever bit of decoration. Since the soldiers are from the Battle of Waterloo and English Civil War, you don't get quite the feeling of commentary on current events that you got from Fire in the Hole. Also, it costs about 300 bucks.

AOL and Yahoo: The sincerest form of flattery?

  someone at AOL is in troooouuuuble!! 
  Originally uploaded by skampy.

My friend Dana notices that AOL's new homepage design looks awfully familiar...

One can imagine that webpages that have the same function will tend to look similar, but this is practically a pixel for pixel duplication.

It's so blatant it makes me wonder whether AOL isn't licensing the template from Yahoo or something... But that doesn't make sense, does it?

UPDATE: Actually, it is AOL's beta design. A lot can change between beta and launch, I suppose...

(Disclosure: That's AOL as in AOL Time Warner as in Time Inc. as in the owner of Business 2.0. Also, I stole the headline of this post from Dana.)

A t-shirt I designed gets BoingBoinged

Check it out:

Tripod dog T-shirts are awesome

Talented arteeste Amanda Visell says: "I'm trying to spread the word for this site. This girl Sonia started it to pay for her dog's medical treatment as well as other dogs that are diagnosed with osteosarcoma and require leg amputation. So she makes these cute shirts and other stuff. My dog actually just came back from his week long stay at the vet today, he got his front leg amputated for the same reason, so of course I'm all emotional and trying to help."  Link

Sonia is an old friend of mine, and her dog Lulu is too, so I was very excited and honored when Sonia  tapped me to design the official Lulu tripod logo. Check out Sonia and Lulu's blog, I Heart Tripods, and what the heck, buy something! It's for a good cause.

Something I've always loved about dogs is that they have very little capacity for self-pity. A three-legged dog acts no different from when it was four-legged, and Lulu is no exception. Even still, I think it would be fun if Sonia gave Lu the Grindhouse treatment...

The typeface George W. Bush doesn't want you to see

Designer Oliver Munday created this typeface, Fire in the Hole, from burned and dismembered toy soldiers. (Click the link for a full-size image.) It's clever and well-crafted, but considering how thousands of young American soldiers are coming back from Iraq similarly burned and dismembered, it makes me somewhat queasy. I have no idea what Oliver's intention was with this piece-- whether it was intended as a serious statement or just to be funny-- and his site doesn't say. If it's the former, kudos to him. Type is supposed to be a tool to convey a message; It's not often that type has the message baked in.

Wristwatch lust

I fear for the wristwatch. These days there are clocks built into every electronic device. My computer tells me the time. My cell phone tells me the time. Even my stove tells me the time. The wristwatch is almost at the point of redundancy, its only value-add being that it's on my wrist, and therefore easily viewable. Someday soon we'll all be wearing video goggles with heads-up displays that constantly beam the current time into our retinas, and wristeatches will be completely obsolete. (It could happen.)

But even on that day I will be reading the Watchismo Times, a blog about amazing and beautiful wristwatches, past and present. WT is the bloggy face of Watchismo.com, a vintage watch retailer. Reading Watchismo Times you see the epitome of watch as functional, wearable art. I'm a big fan of this Jules-Verne-inspired piece, the Vulcania. (Just one problem... It's only water resistant to 50 meters. It's not going to make it a whole 20,000 leagues under the sea at that depth.)

If you're in the market for some timepiece fantasticness, take a look at this drool-inducing page. I thought I had a couple of strange watches but this is like a fantastic taxonomy of machines I may have dreamed while asleep in the welcoming warmth of a laudanum haze. This guy in particular (left) belongs on my wrist, but no price is listed. If I have to ask...? What the hell, watches like this may one day be redundant, but they'll never be replaceable. (Via Metafilter.)