This wooden, yet digital, concept ruler combines “values of a traditional ruler, with advantages of a digital interface.” I think it still needs lines, but how cool is it that it sets the zero point wherever you start measuring? [ noquedanblogs via notcot ]

Yesterday I held the new HTC Hero next to my iPhone. Not only the new Android handset has a surprisingly cool design—straight out of JJ Abrams’ Star Trek or Kubrick’s 2001—but it kicks the iPhone’s plastic ass. Simply put, the Teflon-coated back just feels and looks a lot better than the iPhone’s—now crappy looking, I admit—plastic back. The Hero’s polytetrafluoroethylene—the technical name for DuPont’s Teflon—coating feels perfect in your hand. It doesn’t appear to get any skin oil at all. No greasy fingerprints, just a perfect matte finish no matter how much I touched it.

Somewhere, as I transitioned from being a proud desktop user with parts scattered around my room, to the being a dedicated laptop user, I forgot how to use a mouse. And today, I embrace the swiftness of the trackpad. Is it a matter of preference and practice? Yes, but no. Think about it.

Here’s one way to raise energy consciousness: Share Aware lights are connected to each other by radio, and share a finite amount of energy. When you make one brighter, the others get proportionately dimmer, but dim yours, and the rest get brighter. I can’t see any problem with that. Oh wait, yes I can. Say I’m downstairs reading and my wife is upstairs reading, and I’m all like, damn, this light is too dim! And then she’s like, no, my light is now too dim

It takes a connoisseur to pay a fortune for a sculpture, but it takes a maniacal boozehound with major ducats to burn to buy one to stash his (or her) liquor. Core77 says Liquor Master was conceived by Atelier Van Lieshout , and made from foam, fiberglass and metal, and is intended to be part of a furniture collection that “uses the human form as a jumping-off point for process-based, sculptural furniture.” (Pardon me for one quick second while I get this out of my system, but doesn’t all furniture by definition use the human form as a jumping-off point? And isn’t all furniture sculptural? And while we’re at it, doesn’t Champagne need to be chilled?) Pseudo-intellectual yammering aside, Atelier Van Lieshout is my new favorite Dutch art posse. (Sean already knew about them .) If you think the man-shaped liquor cabinet is wacko, check out Lieshout’s inhabitable large purple sperm (named Darwin ), or CasAnus , another house modeled—anatomically correctly—after the human digestive tract, or the extra large BikiniBar , or the sculpted entity simply known as Dickhead Baby , all thumbnailed for your pleasure below

Objectified rocked my fucking world, making me so much more appreciative of the effort that goes into every device, giving me a video interview of Jonny Ive and Dieter Rams . It also made me feel very guilty and self conscious for peddling all this crap on our site. In a good way! The movie is playing in NYC all week, and Jesús and Matt and I are going right now. If you love Gizmodo, please go see this movie for yourself and to support Gary Hustwit . It’s amazing. [ Objectified ]

The NYTimes has a post on Vertical Circuits , a company that has developed a 3d circuit stacking technology using a silver based epoxy—goo, basically—to closer fuse flash memory chips together. The goo surpasses other 3d circuit technologies based on wires or solid material because it saves even more space. In that case, we’re talking about 1.6mm of height, but that’s enough to fit in a bigger screen or battery in something as thin as an mp3 player or slim phone. The piece is pegged to ex CEO of Seagate Bill Watkins’ arrival there. [ NYT ]

Today was a bad day. Unrelated, gadgets were misbehaving. Someone had to pay for it. I was rushing off to meet with Owen from Valleywag, and I was late. I forgot that a surfboard on my roof was not tied down on my roof rack and as I stopped for a stop sign at the bottom of a steep hill, it just slid off and jammed itself under a car

Furniture doesn’t usually make me want to throw up. But this desk-and-chair set, from designer Nacho Carbonell ’s titillating Skin collection , makes me think about the stuff inside me that I don’t like to think about. Technically, the elastic membrane covering the desk and chair is to stretch so that you can stash your own stuff, whether it’s books or silverware or hashish. But in the example, Carbonell apparently chose something a little close to mammalian intestines for my taste. The rest of the furniture is just cool, in an organic Buckaroo Banzai 8th-dimensional sort of way, all with little pockets to store your bidness

Do you ever stop to realize that another human being carefully conceived and designed every object you will touch today? It’s a pretty amazing thought, and after Objectified , you’ll be thinking it more often. And that’s exactly the point. Like Helvetica , director Gary Hustwitt ’s previous documentary triumph about the most prevalent typeface on earth, Objectified sings the praises of those very people who, while not necessarily under-appreciated, definitely operate in the background—they design your stuff. It’s a secret little world, and through Objectified , we get to live in it.