Starting from the package I received, a cool sleek package with the heading “Audio Revolution in a Box”, which really enhances the attention. I have opened the package and yeah I got a bit disappointed since almost all the portable speakers come in a pair. Well I must say this feeling got away as soon as I plugged in the little monster with my iPod. But still, I wish I had 2 X-Mini 2nd Generation speakers to make better comparison with X-Mini Max. [Buy it here]

The compact, innovative, capsule shaped design combining with the superb sound clarity it delivers through its large 40mm driver; this is a perfect audio enhancement that can make any sort of music or video player into an individual or group entertainment point. If features high capacity rechargeable battery that can offer around 11 hours of continuous playback which is three times more than its predecessors.

Since I have only one X-Mini 2nd Generation, I couldn’t check but found online in several reviews of this speaker that it can be connected to another and so on, forming a bass-enhanced, self-powered chain of speaker system. This is obviously a cool feature which is quite rare too. In fact to get the experience, I am already searching if any of my friends bought it. It features a built-in volume control too which I personally prefer to keep in max and adjust the volume as much I want from my media player. The LED light shows that it’s turned on.

When it comes about the cables, it is handy in many ways. The main connecting cable has three ports; the mini-USB end goes to the speaker, the 2.0 one goes to the pc and the 3.5mm jack to the media player, whether it’s an iPod, MP3 player or a laptop. Aside from that, the speaker contains a tiny audio connecting cable that can be neatly tucked into the base. Even though, the minimum use of wire has eliminated the hassle a lot, I just wondered a wireless connection using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi or any other means would have made the gadget out of the world.

The size of the speaker is really tiny. I’ve compared with few other portable speakers online, say for an example its cousin X-Mini Max II, and have found it the tiniest among all others of the same range. Moreover, the balance of convenient portability and great sound quality has been done perfectly and accordingly a user would like. The thing I like most of my X-Mini 2nd Generation speaker is its extendable vacuum that imitates the feel of a sub-woofer; you can feel the vibration distinctly when it is playing on your hand, which is able to produce bass and volume over around ten times of its physical size.

Overall, the X-Mini 2nd Generation speaker seems very much stylish with me and everyone I’ve shown it has praised its design and performance. I really loved the speaker and considering the tiny shape and reasonable price, I will surely consider buying one more to get louder sound experience. [Buy it here]

From : X-Mini

The outsider container has a series of heating panels that can be adjusted easily for a less or more intense heat as required for a particular type of food. For lower temperature cooking, tow containers are added together with the help of a clump forming a shape of a binocular. When its time to cook something in higher temperature, only one container remains functional. Rolly Cook is offering great convenience to the users with its compact shape, easily moveable and rechargeable features and will be appreciated by all range of people. This product is an ideal choice for outdoor use to enhance the enjoyment of a camping.

Designer : Jin-Young Lee

[Press Release]

DRAGONFLY, A METABOLIC FARM FOR URBAN AGRICULTURE

2009 : 800 MILLION OF URBAN FARMERS FOR RESPONSIBLE ECO-CITIES

The world of fast-food and frozen food is over! The urban keen interest of the beginning of our Century turns toward the garden flat bringing back the countryside in our overcrowded cities fighting from now on for a community urban agriculture able to contribute to the durability of the city and to rethink the food production.

On the roofs, terraces, balconies, in the hollow of the non-built public spaces, in the interior yards and the suspended greenhouses, the eco-warrior aspires to escape from its competitive and consumeristic universe imposed by the laws of the market. He desires to cultivate its immediate landscape so as to better take root in the ground by creating his own ecologic and alimentary biodiversity. The consumer becomes from then on producer and the garden inhabitant !

From the Parisian « worker gardens » to the « community gardens » of New York going though Muscovite « vegetable squares », eight hundred million of urban farmers, i.e. more than one human being out of ten, consume nowadays chlorophyllous products from these cosmopolitan kitchen gardens. These new gardens, aware of the emergency to reduce our fuel consumption and the necessity to modify our behaviour facing the climatic changes, decrease thus their environmental impact and build eco-responsible cities on a community way.

2025 : 5.5 BILLION OF CITY SLICKERS FACING THE FOOD CHALLENGE OF THE 21ST CENTURY

According to the PNUD (Programme of the United Nations for the Development), the worldwide urban population will go from 3.1 billion of inhabitants in 2009 up to 5.5 billion of inhabitants within 2025. Looking for a positive energetic assessment, the contemporary city aims within fifteen years at producing cleanly and intensively more energy than it consumes so as to pack this urban exodus! It develops therefore the urban agriculture to become food self-sufficient by recycling at the same time its liquid waste by phyto-purification, its solid waste in fertilizers by composting and by producing energy by biomass, photovoltaic cells and other renewable energies (thermic solar, photovoltaic solar, wind, tide-turbine energies…).

In order to avoid the asphixiation of the planet and the feeding of its 9 billion of inhabitants within 2050, it deals thus with reinventing the traditional energetic pattern between the city and the countryside between western countries, emerging countries and developing countries. This sums up as following: on the one hand import of natural and food resources, and on the other hand export of waste and pollution. The ecologic city aims at reintegrating the farming function on the urban scale by emphasizing the role of the urban agriculture in the use and the reuse of natural resources and biodegradable waste so as to close the loop of ecologic flows.

The urban agriculture can feed the city without any pesticide or chemical fungicide (whose toxicity is proved on the human being : cancer, sterility…), and make it less food dependant of its backcountry or other regions of the world. Organising the distribution of fresh products in short circuits, that means linked directly with the consumer, the urban agriculture complete thus the traditional agriculture. In addition to the nutritive quality of the produced and consumed food, the urban agriculture is also a growth lever of the urban unemployment market and the local economy. It is used directly as a social link in the conciliation of the primary needs of the newcomers with the challenge of their integration in the life of the city, fighting thus against poverty and exclusion. On the sanitary level, this farm approach presents also an interesting potential for the decontamination of polluted grounds and undergrounds as well as for he purification of the polluted atmosphere in CO2.

Due to the fuel crisis and climatical change, the rural agriculture of the western countries must answer to the worldwide food crisis of the developing countries and mainly Africa. Its role is from now on to produce (with an increase estimated of 60% within 2050) all the foodstuffs transportable by boat such as cereals or corn. This is based on the evolution of the science and the most advanced biotechnologies. In addition to this nutritious role, the rural agriculture is newly challenged to recycle its own culture rebus for the green chemistry in order to produce the bio fuel called “second generation fuel” using the energy of non-consumable materials from the plants, that means fibres such as celluloses.

DRAGONFLY, A NOURISHING VERTICALY CULTIVATED CENTRAL PARK

The architecture has to be in the service of this new agriculture and to design this new social desire in this context of ecologic mutation and food autonomy! The Dragonfly project suggests therefore building a prototype of urban farm offering around a mixed programme of housing, offices and laboratories in ecological engineering, farming spaces which are vertically laid out in several floors and partly cultivated by its own inhabitants. This vertical farm sets up all the sustainable applications in organic agriculture based on the intensive production varied according to the rhythm of the seasons. This nourishing agriculture is furthermore in favour of the reuse of biodegradable waste and the keeping of energy and renewable resources for a planning of ecosystemic densification.

Floor by floor, the tower superposes not only stock farming ensuring the production of meat, milk, poultry and eggs but also farming grounds, true biological reactors continuously regenerated with organic humus. It diversifies the cultivated varieties to avoid the washing of stratums of soft substratum. Thus, the cultures succeed one another vertically according to their agronomical ability to provide some elements of the ground between the essences that are sowed and harvested. The tower, true living organism, becomes thus metabolic and self-sufficient in water, energy, and bio-fertilizing. Nothing is lost; everything is recyclable to a continuous auto-feeding!

A BIONIC AND ENERGETICALLY SELF-SUFFICIENT ARCHITECTURE
The architecture of Dragonfly prototype suggests reinventing the vertical building (that outlined the urbanistic booming of New York City since the 19th Century) as structurally and functionally as ecologically and energetically.

To ensure the social diversity and a permanent life cycle (24h/24) in the tower, the mixed programmation is mainly laid out around two poles of housing and work places. Around housings, offices and research laboratories as well as the most private to the most public agricultural and leisure spaces are designed in gardens, kitchen gardens, orchards, meadows, rice fields, farms and suspended fields. The distribution of flows is made around a true safe spine spreading in loop the numerous elevators, the goods elevators and stair wells serving all the levels by separating simultaneously the inputs and the outputs recycled from plants, animals and human beings.

Architecturally, the functional organisation is represented by two oblong towers symetrically arranged in pair around a huge climatic greenhouse that links them and deploys itself between two crystalline wings. These very light wings in glass and steel retake the loads of the building and are directly inspired from the structure of the dragonfly wings coming from the family of “Odonata Anisoptera” whose transparent membrane is very finely nervured. Two inhabited rings buttress around these wings. Their organically chiselled exo-structure accommodates the inter-climatic spaces that receive the agrarian cultures. They buttress.

The whole set forms «double layer» architecture in bee nest mesh that exploits the solar passive energy at its maximum level, by accumulating the warm air in the winter in the thickness of the exo-structure, and by cooling the atmosphere by natural ventilation and by evapo-perpiration of the plants in the summer. Protecting thus the cultures from climatic changes in New York (from -25.5°C in the winter to +41°C in the summer), these plug spaces are useful to reflect on the agriculture not anymore in terms of surface area but really in terms of volume. Actually, whereas grounds nourish orchards, each wall and each ceiling are metamorphosed into three-dimensional kitchen gardens. The interior frontages of the housing and offices throw towards the skyline of New York the cantilever of their hydrophonic balconies with hexagonal section thanks to what it multiplies the culture layers by floors. The vegetation abounds, the earth is swarming of insects and animals are freely brought up in holding tanks by urban consumers with low income. The architecture becomes eatable!

Designer : Vincent Callebaut Architect

From Patrik:

The Reason Why
In Sweden, inviting friends over to one’s home for coffee is a very common social gathering. During my research, I found that people who have espresso machines don’t use them during these social coffee gatherings but serve conventional coffee instead because it’s more simple, more time efficient, allows easy refills, and it brews at a touch of a button which doesn’t take the host away from the party.

The making of an espresso beverage is a procedure that is traditionally taken with much pride and joy. Originating in Italy, espresso drinks have grown popularity all over the modern world. I wanted to create an espresso machine that will allow all participants to experience this procedure of creating their own espresso drink, rather than the host being in charge of everyone’s beverages and be left out of the conversations. And the procedure should be simple enough so that all people, regardless of knowledge of espresso making, can use and enjoy.

How It Works

Docking mode
The barista espresso machine consists of a docking station, brewing unit and five espresso cups. One of the main features with the Barista is that it allows multiple users to be in charge of their own espresso brewing, instead of just only one person in conventional espresso makers. To enhance the portability and make it easier to carry, the Barista works in two modes, carry mode (collapsed) and brewing mode (raised). The Barista is connected to the wall outlet when in docking mode, and functions as conventional espresso machine, where beans are grounded for each individual cup in the kitchen.

Portable mode
To make it portable some task are divided up to optimize the power consumption; the coffee beans gets pre-grounded in the kitchen and the water is pre-heated into a thermos at the same time to eliminate unnecessary energy consumption. Collapse the brew unit by pressing down the top part, to raise it, give the handle a push and the machine will raise by itself to brewing mode. The turning top allows the users to access the machine from all directions. Place cups on the tray and rotate the turning top part to move the nozzle over to the other cups.

Designer : Patrik Petersson

From the website :

The Versadome combines the grace of traditional arches and domes found in ancient architecture with the smooth form and clean details of a yacht. Aesthetically modern and sophisticated, the Versadome’s innovative design is also functional and utilitarian.

The Versadome building system is uniquely designed for easy and affordable transportation, assembly and expansion. It is energy efficient and low-maintenance. The adaptability and flexibility create limitless possibilities for a wide range of multi-purpose usages, meeting the needs of many in search of a light and open space solution.

Designer : Deger Cengiz via IGreenSpot

Designer : Jukka Roitto, Miska Väisänen & Jordan Siegler

Designer : Nikola Knezevic