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Ibis hotels to have robots paint art while they track your sleep: no, that's not creepy at all (video)
First they invaded our factories, and now it's our hotel rooms. Is nowhere safe from the robots? In truth, Ibis' upcoming Sleep Art project is very slick, even if it smacks of robot voyeurism. Ibis hotels in Berlin, London and Paris will let 40 successful applicants sleep on beds that each have 80 sensors translating movements, sound and temperature into truly unique acrylic paintings by robotic arms connected through WiFi. You don't have to worry that the machines are literally watching you sleep -- there's no cameras or other visual records of the night's tossing and turning, apart from the abstract lines on the canvas. All the same, if you succeed in landing a stay in one of the Sleep Art hotel rooms between October 13th and November 23rd, you're a brave person. We all know how this ends.
Mac, iOS developer Acrylic joins Facebook design team
Sparrow isn't the only big Mac developer that's switched to a high profile project today. Mac and iOS shop Acrylic has been called away from its own projects, including the apps Pulp and Wallet, by Facebook. The company doesn't say exactly what they'll be working on, but presumably it'll be the Mac and iOS interfaces for the popular social network (which, let's be honest, can use all the help they can get). Acrylic's Dustin MacDonald says the matchup "was a natural fit." Facebook hasn't acquired any of Acrylic's projects, and those will remain available for download. Acrylic says it will post news of any updates or other work on its official blog, but helping design Facebook is probably a full-time job. Just like Sparrow, we're sorry to see a really great Mac/iOS developer move on from the projects we know and love, but we're also excited to see what work they can do on a bigger stage. [via MacStories.net]
TUAW's Daily App: Times for iPad
We posted about Times way back in April of last year. Back then, it was an RSS reader for Mac that organized your feeds into a newspaper-style page, so you could quickly and easily scan and browse a lot of information. Nowadays, of course, the iPad is one of the main devices for consumption of online content, and the team at Acrylic has finally brought that reader over to Apple's tablet (and the 2.0 Mac version is due out soon as well). It doesn't hurt, I'm sure, that apps like Flipboard have made it cool to consume RSS content in a programmatically designed form again. Times is pretty smooth, as you can see on the website. It will seamlessly bring in content from all of your feeds, as well as Facebook and Twitter, and organize them all in an easy to read newspaper/blog format. Unfortunately, it doesn't sync up with the Mac version (or any other readers that you may already have set up), so you'll probably have to rebuild whatever group of feeds you're already reading. And personally, I have the same problem with this that I have with all of these "nice" feed readers; it's cool to see your feeds all prettied up and formatted, but sometimes I just want to make sure that I see important news or hit a certain site first. But that's not the kind of reading you'd do with an app like this anyway. (Since I write for TUAW, a lot of my RSS reading is systematically combing for interesting stories and posts.) As a simple iPad reader that makes multiple feeds pretty and easy to read, Times for iPad is worth checking out if you haven't landed on a good solution yet. It's US $7.99 on the App Store right now.
Furni's ALBA wood and acrylic fashion clock
Fashion clocks aren't necessarily the highest form of technology, but that's not to say we don't value them: alarm clocks are after all one of the first things you see in the morning, so why shouldn't it be an aesthetically attractive one? Furni's ALBA beech wood and acrylic clock definitely falls into the latter category, with its minimalist mix of old and new materials being particularly pleasing on the eye. At only $88, it's also happily on the affordable end of the fashion clock chart. As part of Furni's spring '07 range, the ALBA will be shipping on June 1, and you can pre-order now.[Via MoCoLoCo]
