Design

The Blomprakt Bluetooth speaker lamp was first announced last July as part of a new lineup following the end of Sonos and Ikea’s partnership earlier this year. It’s priced at $59.99 in the US making it much cheaper than Ikea’s $179 Sonos-compatible Symfonisk lamp speaker, but the Blomprakt lacks Wi-Fi and streaming support.

If a dedicated plate for meatballs wasn’t weird enough, Ikea created tiny beds with NFC functionality that reward you with in-store vouchers if you keep your smartphone tucked in for seven hours every night for an entire week. But the beds are only available from Ikea UAE stores when you spend over ~$200.

After first debuting last year, Casio has introduced a new version of its ring watch made from stainless steel with gold ion plating. It’s currently only available in Japan for 22,000 yen, or around $150, and you’ll have to enter a lottery that’s open until October 6th for the chance to buy one.

Inspired by the folder icon in macOS, David Delahunty originally teased their concept design for the FolderDrive on X a few weeks ago, but there was enough positive feedback for them to partner with Super Fantastic to make it a real thing.

Launching 22 years after its last major update, the latest PNG spec now includes native support for HDR, APNG animations, and Exif metadata for embedding information into image files. W3C PNG Working Group chair Chris Blume says Chrome, Safari, Firefox, iOS, macOS, and Adobe Photoshop already support the new standard, and that upcoming updates will improve compression and dynamic range support.

When I first saw the Robotaxi wordmark, I assumed someone had already vandalized the car like a Waymo caught in a protest. The creative experts consulted by Fast Company are even more critical of the cyberdork aesthetic:

The ex-Apple designer, now working on AI hardware for OpenAI, just joined the British Museum’s board of trustees. The London museum is going through a huge redevelopment, ominously dubbed “The Masterplan,” and it sounds like Ive will give guidance on how tech could be a part of that. No word yet on who he thinks should have the Parthenon sculptures.

The collaboration between Koons and Lexon Design sees the artist’s most iconic creation turned into a wireless speaker with touch controls delivering 360-degree sound and a lamp that uses tubes filled with color-changing LEDs to recreate the appearance of neon lighting.