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Sure, UnBeige is published online, but we actually compose all of our posts on a pair of candy apple red Olivetti typewriters before turning them over to Eero, our technology-savvy web monkey, who somehow beams them into cyberspace (he also handles all of our links). Now Eero tells us that UnBeige and the rest of the mediabistro.com blog family have joined the future with mobile-optimized sites that are easily browsable on your iPhone, Blackberry, or other smartphone. Should you routinely carry one of these gizmos on your person, you need only type unbeige.com into the browser to be automatically redirected to our mobile-friendly page. The mobile optimizations are in beta, notes Eero, so if you have any problems reading UnBeige on the go, drop us an e-mail.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

Famed literary critic Lionel Trilling once described Henry James as a “social twitterer.” Sure, he meant it as an insult, but it makes us feel better about having signed up to twitter ourselves. Look to the official UnBeige Twitter feed, for up-to-the-minute newsbites, event snippets, links of interest, design trivia, and free candy (OK, we’re still working on the physics of that last one). The mediabistro.com tech wizards have added to the sidebar at right a handful of our most recent word bursts (limited to 140 characters), but you can sign up to follow all of our twittering, and start twittering yourself at twitter.com.

The astounding success of Nicolas Negroponte‘s One Laptop Per Child project’s XO Laptop not only provided more than 2 million children in developing countries with low-cost, easy-to-use computers, but also became one of the most talked about pieces of product design when it was first released, winning its designer, Yves Behar, a bevy of prizes and making him something of a household name. Now, some 6 months after it was originally announced, and with the tech world having embraced tablet computing with open arms, the first images of the follow up to the XO Laptop, the XO-3 tablet have been released. Unlike Apple’s insanely popular iPad, the new tablet, designed again by Behar and his fuseproject team, looks much thicker, which might be a bad thing in the ever-thin-chasing consumer market, but seems like a much sturdier positive when you consider the main user base will be children. Here’s some info on the specifics:

The first impression of the XO-3 is its extreme simplicity. The focus is on the screen, while the surrounding green rubber border provides a safe tactile grip for children’s hands. The back surface has a bumpy texture and integrates a rear-facing camera. The connectors, power switch and speakers are arranged on the bottom edge, facing the user.

The XO-3 tablet uses similar ruggedizing strategies as the original XO laptop: rubber protection, anti-scratch grip textures, and robust construction. The XO-3 takes this protection further by creating an elastomer removable cover, which is flipped from screen cover to back cover. The cover’s arced front surface allows access to ports and buttons, and shields them during transportation to further preserve the hardware. Additionally, the solar cover option can house a solar panel combined with internal batteries for outdoor or indoor charging.

The new, even-numbered year is upon us and with it a new world design capital: Helsinki (along with the Finnish cities of Espoo, Vantaa, Lahti, and Kauniainen). Following in the footsteps of Turin (World Design Capital 2008) and Seoul (2010), Helsinki kicked off its year-long designfest with a “New Year’s Eve of Design” bash in the capital city’s Senate Square and is now getting down to business with a slate of 300 events, projects, and initiatives that “explore the benefits and value of design, and showcase the various ways it can improve all of our lives.” Meanwhile, the organizers are working to improve visitors’ experiences with a mobile app. Launched today and developed in collaboration with Fjord, the WDC 2012 app provides on-the-go access to the program of events, related news, and a map, all in your choice of Finnish, Swedish, or English. So whether you want to doublecheck the dates of the Lapland Snow Design Event (read: igloo-building competition) or browse a listing of related events around the world, there’s an app for that—and, in keeping with the WDC theme of “Open Helsinki,” the app is free and available on four platforms: Meego, iOS, Symbian, and Android.

Got an app we should know about? Drop us a line at unbeige@mediabistro.com

When was the last time you can remember that Wacom‘s site was so overloaded with traffic that it was difficult to get it to load? We don’t visit the pen tablet for designers’ site often enough to be able to give that a definite answer, but we’re guessing it’s not all that frequent. However, such was the case yesterday (for us anyway) as word spread quickly about the company’s new product, the Inkling, an ink pen-based device that records your drawings as you sketch them out, again in ink, on a physical piece of paper. Even if you aren’t a regular sketcher, or have always used a tablet just fine, or are from the exact opposite direction and get by just fine with a mouse and don’t plan on ever changing your ways, even you will find this cool. And if sites like Gizmodo, which said about the Inkling that it “may become [their] favorite gadget of all time” are any judge, every designer is either going to be buying one or putting it on their wish list immediately when it’s released in the middle of next month. Here’s the promo video:

Render Me This An Audi S5 rendered from a 3D model using Numenus software.

Design, engineering, and entertainment software giant Autodesk extended its summer buying spree with the purchase of technology related assets from Numenus, a Koblenz, Germany-based software provider of high-end visualization technology (realtime ray tracing) used to render and review 3D datasets. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition, announced today, is the third in a sequence that began in mid-July with the purchase of Pixlr, a free online service for creating, editing, and sharing images. Earlier this month, Autodesk snapped up San Francisco-based Instructables, an online community for people who want to discover, share ,and be inspired by DIY project ideas and how-to information. The Numenus purchase is expected to boost the efficiency of Autodesk’s digital prototyping tools, specifically the company’s “ability to address high fidelity visualization for technical surfacing and advanced design reviews as part of Autodesk’s commitment to automotive design workflows.”

Hot off the heels of announcing pricing in the spring for a form of rental for their popular CS design software packages, Adobe looks to be further branching out into subscription models. Yesterday, the company launched a public beta of “Muse,” a codename for a product to be released sometime early next year, which sets to “dumb down” (as ZDnet puts it) the creation of websites by making the process visually-based, instead of requiring designers to learn to write code. The program is undergoing a public beta at the moment, wherein users can download and tinker with this early draft of the software. Most interesting is, after that ends, “Muse” is expected to only be available via subscription and not the traditional “you buy it, you own it” system that’s largely been the staple of consumer software since, well, the beginning of software. Some details:

Muse (code name) will be offered at no charge during the public beta period. It is anticipated that version 1 of Muse will be released in early 2012 at which time customers will need to purchase a license to the application if they want to continue authoring websites with Muse. Adobe anticipates that Muse will be available by subscription only. This will allow us to add new features to Muse regularly and customers will have access to the most up to date functionality which is critical when building standards-based content. Adobe anticipates that Muse will be available as a one-year or month-to-month subscription plan at the following price points:

One-year for US$180/year (or $15/month)

Month-to-month for US$20/month

Following yesterday’s news of Say Media acquiring Remodelista, this is shaping up to be the week of design-based buyouts. Early yesterday, the Denver-based publishing software company Quark announced that it has been acquired by the California-based private equity firm, Platinum Equity. Like with most purchases, the promise is immediately made that everything will stay relatively the same, thus appeasing dedicated users. “This wasn’t an exit play; it was a very specific opportunity to find an investment partner,” Quark’s CEO told the Denver Business Journal, who went on to write that “the deal won’t change Quark’s headquarters location, executives or employment numbers.” However, even with these reassurances, just the mention of an “exit move” indicates how Quark has struggled after losing its dominance in the publishing and design market to Adobe over the past decade, which seemed to have knocked it off its bearings to a considerable degree (DesignInfo has a great, quick overview of how the company has fared over the past 10+ years). Whether or not this new management can turn things around and head the company in the right direction is anyone’s guess, but it will be interesting to see how it all pans out regardless. Here’s a bit from Quark President and CEO, Ray Schiavone, in his letter about the acquisition:

As a global investment firm, Platinum Equity is well-positioned to help us continue to execute our dynamic publishing vision through their market reach, merger and acquisition experience, and operational support. Just as importantly, the firm shares Quark’s commitment to our customers. This is the natural next step in Quark’s evolution.

On behalf of the entire Quark team, I want to thank you once again for the relationship we have built and for your continued confidence in our capabilities. We look forward to earning that trust each and every day.

Although we don’t knit, we onced harbored an obsession with embroidery floss that still makes us go all tingly when in proximity to a Jo-Ann Fabrics, so when the knit-tastic Mary Beth Klatt told us that she had created an app about yarn, we said “Tell us more!” Designed for both the iPhone and the iPad, Yarn U is “an on-the-go reference guide to more than 170 yarns,” says Klatt, who has taught sewing at Chicago’s famed Vogue Fabrics and rarely leaves the house without knitting needles or crochet hooks. “It tells you on-the-spot, essential information about the yarn—such as yardage, fiber content, and stitch gauge—as well as pros and cons for the yarn.” Amateur knitters and seasoned experts alike can use the app to select the perfect yarn for a project and avoid all manner of yarn-related disappointments. The $2.99 iTunes download also includes plenty of examples to admire. Adds Klatt, “There are tons of pictures of completed projects that could be inspiring for future hats, sweaters, blankets, and more.” Put on your future hat and enroll in Yarn U today.

Got an app we should know about? Spin us a yarn at unbeige@mediabistro.com

“It’s like going to a Broadway stage crew, who are very talented at what they’re doing, and saying, ‘Can you help us create the next summer movie blockbuster?’ I think it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the way design works.

It’s obvious it wasn’t going to work. It’s only if you’re under the spell of this very traditional print-centric bias that you would ever think that this would work. I don’t know who the executive was that said this is the way we’re going to approach it, but this is not a decision that I would put on my résumé.”

-Design mind and former NYTimes.com design director Khoi Vinh on Condé Nast’s print-centric, ‘magazine replica’ approach to the tablet—which made existing art and production staffers from the print side responsible for making iPad layouts on Adobe’s platform—in a story by Nitasha Tiku in The New York Observer