Deeplocal
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Time your handwashing with a do-it-yourself Spotify soap dispenser
Wash your hands thoroughly for at least 20 seconds -- that's the key advice from the World Health Organization during the coronavirus outbreak. This is commonly touted as the length of time it takes to sing "Happy Birthday" twice, and while that's a helpful and accessible metric, it's gotten old real fast. Birthdays will never be the same again. Design technology company Deeplocal has come up with an alternative, though: a DIY musical soap dispenser that'll save your sanity and give you a project to tinker with while you're stuck indoors.
Old Navy's machine turns your selfies into giant balloon art
Want to do more with your selfies than post them on Instagram for the umpteenth time? Old Navy might have a way to make them stand out... if just for a brief, glorious moment. The clothing shop is kicking off its 20th birthday by creating the Selfiebration machine, a 15 foot tall behemoth that converts Twitter photos into balloon art. All you do is tweet a photo to Old Navy with the #selfiebration hashtag -- after that, the device (co-designed by Deeplocal) rasterizes your self-portrait and displays it on a grid of nearly 1,000 balloons that inflate to different sizes.
LikeBelt concept encourages a very physical kind of Facebook liking (video)
This is the LikeBelt: a concept device that inserts an NFC chip into a belt-buckle. Instead of tapping your mobile device on a "check-in" tag, you get the belt buckle close enough to do the same. There are only two downsides: how close you have to get and where most people's belts are situated. Suffice to say, the Quagmire-style movements required to ensure a connection aren't the sort of thing you'd do in front of your parents, priest or spouse. The creators provide instructions on how to build your own at the source link, but before you consider it, we insist you watch the video of it in action after the break. No, seriously.
Toyota Prius Project's concept bike lets you shift gears with your mind
Got mind control on the mind? Check out this new concept bike from Deeplocal -- a Pittsburgh-based design house that's adding a neurological twist to the art of cycling. As part of Toyota Prius Project No. 11, the company outfitted the seat post of a Parlee PXP aero road bike with a wireless transmitter, allowing users to remotely shift gears with a smartphone. Deeplocal's designers then added a set of neuron transmitters to a helmet and re-programmed the PXP to communicate with them -- meaning, in theory, that riders could control the bike's gears by simply thinking about it. Theory, of course, isn't the same thing as practice, but perhaps the concept will become a reality if we think really hard about it.
