Smashing Magazine we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.

10 Beautiful Things For A Beautiful Life

With this post we start to publish finalists of our guest author contest. Over three weeks 12 winning articles will be published — selected top-10-lists and discussion articles. To rate the articles we'll analyze popularity, users activity, quality of backlinks, traffic etc. You can follow our updates on Twitter — feel free to share your comments, suggestions and remarks.

We are using a lot of beautiful things every day. Once we understand how beautiful they are, the life is becoming better and more interesting... and when not... well, then they still make our life more interesting! There are some truly beautiful things to make our life a little bit more unusual and vivid. Most of them are ordinarily but they can make our life and the life of people around us a little bit more spectacular. The question is: do we need these things? – Of course we do!

Read more...

Slick Laptop Designs and Concepts

Laptop design doesn't have to be boring. Although often laptops look exactly as we expect them to look like, there is a number of design solutions and approaches which are completely different — unusual, creative, beautiful and damn useful. In fact, over the last years designers came up with a number of interesting concepts which have somehow stuck between the prototyping stage and the production stage. Nevertheless, much is possible. And this post is supposed to prove this point.

Below we present innovative laptop designs and laptop concepts. Many of the products listed below are prototypes and aren't available yet, and it's unknown whether they'll be released over the next years. However, they give us an idea of what we should expect from laptops over the years to come.

You might want to take a look at our posts

• Laptop Sleeves, Skins and Stickers
  gives some fresh ideas to spice up your environment with laptop skins, engravings, sleeves, cases and stickers,
• Innovative Designs and Devices
  presents innovative, futuristic gadgets, devices, designs and concepts,
• 25 Mind-Blowing Products and Gadgets
  showcases excellent gadgets and devices which are already available today,
• User Experience Of The Future
  covers recent developments in the field of user interface design.

Read more...

25 Mind-Blowing Gadgets

Few weeks ago we've presented a number of innovative gadgets, devices, designs and concepts. Unless explicitly specified, none of them has been officially released or produced yet, and none of them is currently available for end-users. But what about existing products? What about innovative designs which are already available in stores and can be bought straight away?

As part of our monday inspiration series we present 25 mind-blowing gadgets and devices which are already available today. Among them you'll find loudspeakers, turntables, TV sets, furniture, laptop sleeves and further accessories. Please notice: most of them aren't cheap at all, and many of them cost over $10,000.

You might want to take a look at

• the article Innovative Designs and Devices which covers innovative, futuristic gadgets, devices, designs and concepts, and
• further articles from our Monday Inspiration series.

Read more...

15 Stunning Cutting-Edge Gadgets and Technologies

We live in a spectacular time. The pace of technology steadily increases, new fields of science are heavily explored and innovative concepts emerge almost every day, resulting in stunning and overwhelming products. The impact of these products can be tremendous: in fact, new technology can completely revolutionize the way we play, communicate, work and live our lives. Some of these products are just eye-candy, some are useful, some are visionary and some may become revolutionary in the next years.

In this post we present 15 stunning examples of cutting edge technology which is already reality today or will become reality in 2008. Please notice that some videos might not provide you with a concrete idea of what the technology offers, e.g. it's impossible to display the advantages of 3D-TV using videos produced by a 2D-video-camera.

You might want to take a look at the articles

• User Experience Of The Future which covers innovative developments in field of user interface design and
• Innovative Designs and Devices which covers stunning design concepts and ideas which can become reality in the future.

You have more examples? Comment on this article!

Read more...

Innovative Designs and Devices

Steve Jobs stated once that the “design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” While this statement has proven to be crucial over thousands of years, one shouldn't misinterpret it by emphasizing the functionality despite the design. When it comes to product design, the significance of aesthetics of a given device, the way its design looks and feels, determines the choice of the customer once the functionalities of multiple devices are more or less similar. If supported by sound user interface and a well-tested, clean implementation, innovative design solutions can drastically enhance the user experience.

This article presents innovative, futuristic gadgets, devices, designs and concepts. Unless explicitly specified, none of these cut-edge concepts is currently being manufactured. None of them is available for end-users which is why neither the price nor links to the stores are mentioned.

Please keep in mind that the main idea of this article is not to do the sell-talk for trendy products, but to showcase innovative design solutions and futuristic devices which can become reality in 2008 or over the next few years.

• You can also take a look at our article User Experience Of The Future which covers recent developments in the field of user interface design.

Read more...

Google Gadgets, Widgets and Moduls

Read more...