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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. Problems reading UnBeige on the go? Drop us an e-mail.

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

Big news from IDEO.org: the fledgling nonprofit has used a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop HCD Connect, a new platform for people who are taking a human-centered approach to poverty-related challenges around the world. Initially focused on agricultural development, the foundation’s support of HCD (human-centered design) Connect now includes a number of issues that affect low-income communities. The still-in-beta hub for discussion about problems being tackled is designed to connect people and projects, from reimagining a Philadelphia charter school to creating business models for selling water and hygiene products in Kenya. In a few months, community members will be able to apply for microgrants to initiate or implement projects. Intrigued? Arm yourself with IDEO’s handy-dandy HCD Toolkit, geared for organizations and individuals who want to use design methodology to innovate and solve problems in the social sector.

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.

Eager to show your visiting relatives that Matt Mullican mural but can’t remember at which New York City subway station you saw it? Seeking clues to the imminent apocalypse in the Mayan motif-laden ceramic tiles that greet 6 train passengers at 103rd Street? In need of cheering up by the roly-poly crew of Tom Otterness bronzes that frolic beneath 14th Street near 8th Avenue? There’s an app for that. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has teamed with the ace navigators at Meridian to put the 237 works of contemporary art found throughout the New York City Subway, Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad, and MTA Bridges and Tunnels in your pocket, provided that said pocket contains a smartphone loaded with this app. The entire collection of MTA-commissioned artwork is organized by subway (or railroad line) and by artist, from Alice Adams to Joe Zucker. In addition to information on the background, inspiration, and significance of each work—and sometimes video and audio clips featuring the artists—Meridian is touting “turn-by-turn” directions, although they won’t be of much use until reliable cell phone service comes to the subway.
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It’s a project of firsts: Marc Newson’s first crack at camera design, Pentax’s plunge into design world collaborations, and the first time a Pentax product will be sold at retail outlets other than camera stores. Behold, the Pentax K-01, a 16-megapixel digital SLR hybrid that uses sleek interchangeable lenses (the world’s thinnest, according to the company). Envisioned with “clean and simple lines that create an elegant graphical composition,” the new model was developed in line with Newson’s design themes to be “timeless, trusty, and touchable,” which translates to features such as original-design push buttons and control levers, a mode dial and power switch in his beloved machined aluminum, and a rubberized grip. Newson’s touch extends to the product logo, camera strap, and start-up screen.

“The inspiration behind this design, like many projects that I work on, is simply the desire to create something which as a consumer, I myself would like to own or would like to purchase,” says the designer, who describes the K-01 as “not gimmicky at all.” The camera has already sold out at Colette in Paris, where its release was feted by the likes of Karl Lagerfeld and Dior jewelry designer Victoire de Castellane at a bash hosted by Olympia le Tan. Take one for a test drive at A+R, which is hosting a “Shoot+See” event this Saturday, March 17, at its Venice, California store. And click below to watch Newson lovingly fondle the “compact and trim” body of the K-01 as he answers questions about its development.
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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