Over here at Trendera, we have been pondering the online niche dating scene for awhile now… Recently we speculated that online dating was actually shifting in a major way. It used to be that young people would go online to seek mates (or hookups as it may be) that were OUTSIDE their scene. But now people are searching for not something different, but for more of the same! Though not exactly a dating site, the new Insane Clown Posse, JuggaloBook--a Facebook for Juggalos—shows how increasingly consumers are not branching out online, but rather fortifying their Isolation Nations. 

There has been a recent wave of vintage retrofitting gadgets for every iThingy, but none so grand as the iVictrola. Created by NY’s made-craft, this charming idiosyncrasy marries a sleek walnut base with a vintage Magnavox phonograph horn to trumpet tunes from an iPad. The iVictrola will be sold at Design Within Reach in limited quantities come November for a cool $985. 

(Source: uncrate.com)

Filed Under: Shuush You!

Shuush is an interesting prototype that attempts to correct a fundamental flaw of Twitter: how to amplify voices that are often drowned in a sea of over-sharers on your dashboard. In an ideal world, the functionality of Shuush would be folded into Twitter and controlled with an On-Off button.

How it works: After you authorize the program to connect with your Twitter feed, it analyzes the profiles of everyone you follow and assigns them a “Shuush level” based on the frequency of their updates. The higher the Shuush level, the less priority they are given in the reformatted dashboard.

Shuush was created by Berg, a London based design consultancy firm behind lots of interesting and respectable projects, like SVK, a comic book with an invisible layer of text only visible in UV light and Dimensions, a browser tool created in concert with the BBC that “takes important places, events and things, and overlays them onto a map of where you are.

“The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” is part bedtime story, part interactive movie experience, all within an iPad interface. Fantastic, indeed. 

Created by brilliant ex-Pixar designer William Joyce, this ebook/app/movie/awesome thingy is as immersive as a story told through a two-dimensional surface possibly can be. Joyce has much more under his belt than an impressive stint at Pixar, though. He is also an accomplished also an accomplished illustrator, animator (he’s published New Yorker covers), won a handful of Emmys, created character designs for Pixar’s first animated classics, and worked on many others designs for Disney and Dreamworks.

Now, partnered with Moonbot Studios, Joyce is creating a revolution in how children interact with learning. Ebooks are a hot topic (paper vs. iPad—does there really have to be a winner?) in the adult realm, and an even more controversial issue for kids. Reading to your kid from a Kindle? Blasphemy! Well, the naysayers should zip it after checking out Mr. Morris Lessmore’s stunning adventure. Interactive but not instructive, the book engages readers through optional swipes that swirl tornadoes and progress the story. But to keep it (relatively) old-school, the user can easily toggle off the read-along voice and music. Certainly, Morr-is Less-more…in case you didn’t catch that the first time. 

Of course I love revisiting childhood classics like Goodnight Moon and The Giving Tree on plain ol’ paper, and having the battered copies around my parents’ home is a reminder of the simple days of mudpies and backyard forts. An app doesn’t attain an aged book smell, nor retain applesauce stains. But it does grab the attention of the stimulation-starving youth of today, and maybe this unabashed digital creativity is what it will take to keep children engaged in reading, and push them to innovate in their own right. This is not the demise of books, it’s just the next chapter.

Jawbone is a respected household name for any gadget geek for their small but beautifully designed repertoire of headsets and speakers. But their newest innovation doesn’t even make a peep—it’s a bracelet. Not jewelry, but a hi-tech monitoring bracelet (no, also not for Lindsay Lohan) that claims to make its wearer healthier by monitoring sleeping habit and every little movement. Linked with a smartphone app, you can view and analyze an aggregation of your physical habits in order to improve the bad and keep up the good.

The most beneficial data that this bracelet could give, in my opinion, is knowing what I eat when I feel depressed, bored, happy, etc., yet I’m aware that my chocolate habit persists despite my mood. Having an app tell me I don’t sleep enough is pretty trivial; I already know that. (And the WakeMate specializes in sleep.) But this has huge potential for establishing healthy habits for people that are unaware of their eating and exercise habits, or lack thereof. It will be up to Jawbone to devise the software that could make or break this gadget; users won’t want to just be told “good vs. bad” but how to improve their lifestyle decisions with new workout routines, healthier recipes, or tips for a restful night’s sleep. But do we really need a 24/7 inanimate health “bracelet babysitter” to help us say no to that late night snack or yes to a run? 

Set for later this year, the Up is intriguing enough in its claim that I may just have to see for myself. 

Ever jam out on your commute, in the shower, or in an empty aisle in the grocery store? Don’t deny it, we all have our moments of faux rock stardom. Now you can make your air guitar fantasies an augmented reality with Air Guitar Move for iPhone. Move just completed funding on Kickstarter, so the show starts soon. Plug in this unique motion sensing guitar pick into your iPhone or iPod touch, which serves as the guitar neck, and iRockOn. Like Guitar Hero, but for more impromptu virtual jam sessions. 

The creators of this awesome product are Colin and Ronald, San Francisco-based game designers with a knack for innovation. Colin created Thumbies, the first iPhone game controller to be sold in Best Buy. Back in Europe, Ronald created the award winning V-Beat AirDrums and AirGuitar music toys, the #1 best selling music toys on Amazon UK. Sweet!

Although Zipcar is a great model for those living in dense urban areas, a new peer to peer car sharing service, Getaround, enables users to borrow cars from neighbors by the hour. Members can simply rent and unlock cars with the Getaround app, which is currently being tested in beta in the San Francisco and San Diego areas. From Bugs to Beamers, the available car models range from $5 to upwards of $50 per hour. Not only is this great for borrowing, but also for earning money by renting out that car that just sits in the garage, longing to be driven. Getaround says:

We saw a common problem with the personal automobile.

Car owners invest huge amounts of time and money into an asset they barely use. Cars are driven only 8% of the time, while potential drivers walk past block after block of underutilized cars.

Getaround is a social car sharing service.

We enable car owners to safely rent out their underutilized cars to a community of trusted drivers. People in need of a car can rent one by the hour using the Getaround website or iPhone app.

Imagine a world with fewer cars, without traffic jams, and with less pollution.

We are…passionate about using mobile technology to create sustainable transportation solutions. We want to empower people to travel more efficiently and cause a shift from personal to shared transport.

With gas prices tipping the scales and my monthly parking fee in Los Angeles eating up a hefty chunk of my disposable income, I’ll seriously consider this person-to-person car sharing service if it comes around to LA anytime soon. If any city needs it, it’s this one! Not only is this an efficient, effective way to take advantage of underutilized resources, it is part of the essential new ideology as we cope with our vast overconsumption—and it looks like we’re continually turning to a peer-to-peer model to solve that problem.