Some people think that telling the difference between day and night would be one of the easiest things you could do and being able to afford a $300 000 a mere piece of jewelry would be one of the hardest. This watch is not for them. Behold the Day & Night watch by Romain Gerome.  For those who see telling the time as a peasants hobby and for whom it is always spend o’clock.  It originally sold for $300 000 but sold out within 48 hours of launch so you’ll have to resort to the second-hand market to obtain one, likely with significant markup. But hey, if markup is of concern to you then this watch was never for you in the first place. Right?

[Romain Jerome]

It has been a couple of years since the Microsoft Live Vision Camera for the Xbox 360 landed on consumer shelves. It wasnt a totally horrible idea but for what was essentially a modified LifeCam for your Xbox, it was somewhat expensive and woefully underutilized. With a handful of exceptions hardly any popular games have used it effectively. This peice of hardware is nothing without software to take advantage of it and the unit is still struggling to justify it’s existence and relatively high price tag.

Codemasters has just published a new Zoë Mode developed game exclusively bundled with new Live Vision Cameras, seemingly in an attempt to popularize the peripheral by justifying the purchase with the addition of some casually fun software for added value. This might actually work to drive this hardware into more households and thus encourage software developers to make use of it more. With any luck Microsoft and Codemasters can use this title to push the Live Vision Camera past it’s tipping point – something video game console peripherals have always struggled with since Nintendo’s Power Glove. continue…

Apparently one of our favorite designs from the Philips Simplicity concept show we discussed a long time ago has finally been adapted for a commercial product. The Philips LivingColour mini lamp doesn’t look as good as the original concept design but instead takes the form of some kind of odd magical egg. It’s rather expensive too at £85.00 ($164.59 CAD). This really illustrates how something can start off life as a great idea and be bastardized by committee by the time it hits shelves. What a pity.

Evidently in 1947 Life magazine did this bit where they asked the celebrity cartoonists of the day to draw their famous creations while blindfolded. It is notable how many of them seem to have turned out like some kind of offset printing misalignment. What fun!

The dutch would rather live in a civil society than rely in electronic signals to mediate their conduct. To that end they have done away with (almost all) traffic lights and replaced them with courtesy. Everyone seems happier as a result. The idea seems that since people can’t rely on pretty lights then they take more care and travel more safely. They also save on electricity, maintenance resources, light pollution, signal saturation and end up having a generally more courteous community.