The Mir:ror by Violet

I stumbled across these two absolutely incredible devices from a company called Violet today. These things go heavily into the geeky part of my being but I’m OK with that.

1) The Nabaztag isn’t new, but is is worth bringing up again. If you haven’t seen this thing, it is rabbit. A rabbit? Well….“A Rabbit connected to the Internet that’ll bring you everything on the web and messages from your friends using coloured lights, the movements of his ears, spoken words, or songs. A Rabbit you can talk to and give orders to. A Rabbit you can ask for advice and entrust with messages to your friends. A Rabbit that reacts to and recognizes the objects that surrounds you…”

2) The Mir:ror – This came across my blog reading via the Boston Globe. The Mir:ror is basically a device that hooks to your computer via USB and then reads tiny RFID tags which you embed in your stuff and then Mir:ror reacts. So picture this: you walk in the door and you have an RFID sensor on your keys. The Mir:ror senses the RFID tag and starts reading your e-mail for you. Or, let’s say that it senses a toll pass and starts reading you the traffic report. How brilliant is that?

More about Violet…..

“Let all things be connectedViolet was inspired by a simple fact: the rift between the virtual world – everything happening on the other side of your computer screen – and the physical world we live in is growing, and growing fast.”

On the other side of the screen, in the digital world we explore with the click of a mouse, everything is possible and accessible. On the web information can be customized for each user’s needs: you can set preferences on any given page, information can be targeted and updated in real time. You can gather news from different sources, mix personal and professional, fun and utilitarian aspects in a single place. In virtual worlds such as Second Life, in computer games, in instant messaging and chat-rooms, you can become whoever you want, take on any guise you like, meet strange and nonsensical creatures. In a world of bytes, everything can be recombined, everything is flexible. Everything can be wondrous and magical.

Unfortunately, we were born on the wrong side of the screen. We are not made of bytes, but of flesh, blood and atoms. We spend the greater part of our life in a physical world that is tough, unfair, inflexible and devoid of magic. The objects that surround us have reduced, rigid, limited functions; they are unaware of our presence and are unable to adapt to us or to other objects. We can seldom define “preferences” or “options” in the real world, unlike what we are used to in most software. You can visit Amazon.com twice and it will recognize you and provide relevant and personalized advice. You can live in the same house for all your life and you will always be a “foreigner.”

So Violet proposes two questions that I think we all ask ourselves

- “Can we really go on living with such a rift, increasingly looking at the world through screens?”

- “Must we stay trapped in a kind of submarine, forever doomed to contemplate idyllic worlds through the periscope?”

Indeed

Below is our most recent email to our newsletter subscriber list announcing some cool new features to the Steelcase Store site (including our blog, Pivot). To receive the latest and greatest information about what’s going on at the Steelcase Store, sign-up for our newsletter here.

Great products are just the start of what you’ll find at the Steelcase Store.

New features on Steelcase Store – Pivot, Ideas and Floorplanner

A quick click takes you straight to our blog, Pivot, for some thoughts and tidbits about the working world along with links to articles and sites that can help your business grow.

Click on the tab we call Ideas. Filled with photos (ours and yours), it’s just the thing to spur some new thinking about creating places where people love to work.

Browse through some great workspaces and submit photos to share yours too.

Or start sketching out your latest ideas with our handy new floorplanner now displaying your layout in both two and three dimensional form.

Create a room configuration using your dimensions, select the products you are intersted in adding to your workspace and get a visual of what they layout could look like. It’s that easy!

What do we call this thing?

Since I came from a non-office-furniture background, I find the terminology around office furniture very confusing. I have actually found a lot of people outside our industry who have a similar dilemma. Why don’t you just call it what it is? Well, when we were asked to create the Steelcase Store, that is just what we did. We call a chair a chair, a table a table, etc (how novel). However, I wanted to use this blog entry to translate office furniture language into everyday language so that everyone can start getting along. Yes, there will be a quiz at the end (seriously):

- Worksurface – Dictionary.com finds no entries for such a word, so it must not exist in the typical lexicon of everyday people. What is a worksurface? It is the surface where your computer sits and where you typically do your work. Here on the Store, we have decided to call these what they are – tables and desks…because that is what you call them. By my thinking, if we were to apply the office furniture lingo to everyday life, then I would eat dinner at the ‘eatsurface’ rather than my kitchen table.

- Ped - Ped is short for pedestal. Still not helping? Hmmmm….well, a pedestal is a small storage box with drawers that is usually made out of metal or wood. Peds can be mobile (i.e. wheels) or stationary, in which case it is usually bolted to your desk. I am trying to start a movement by calling these ‘storage boxes,’ but I’m not having much luck. Peds are further broken down using an arcane language:

• B/F = Box/File Ped – Box and file refer to the type of drawers that are located on the ped. A Box/File Ped consists of 1 shallow and 1 deep drawer. You would think that the box drawer would be the deeper drawer but you’d be wrong. The box drawer is the shallow drawer and the file drawer is the deeper file that you put your files and file folders in.
• B/B/F = Box/Box/File Ped – This ped is similar to the B/F ped but has an extra box-style drawer. So Box/Box/File ped has 2 shallow drawers and 1 deep drawer
• F/F = File/File Ped – This ped has 0 shallow drawers and 2 deep drawers, for those of you who like to file away a lot of material away so you don’t have to look at it
• O/B/F = Open/Box/File – This is a late entry. The Open/Box/File ped is similar to the B/B/F ped, but instead of having a shallow drawer at the top, it has an open slot (thus the ‘open’ in Open/Box/File).

- Cable Manager – This is not the person you hire to help you sort out your cable bill and manage the cable company for you. No, this is what you are looking for when you ask “where am I supposed to put all these ugly computer cords?” Unfortunately, science has not given us a good solution to this problem. Wireless mice are a good first step, but I need a place for my printer cord, power cord, monitor cord, speaker cord, USB hub cord, and my cable modem cord.

- System Furniture – Guess what this is? I actually am not sure, but I know it revolves around the cubicles that people sit in every day. I don’t know where the term came from but I am looking. Systems furniture relates to high cubes, low cubes, powered cubes, glass cubes and Rubix cubes (OK, maybe not the last one). But anything to with office ‘walls’ that surround you….high or low…that is systems furniture

Now for the quiz: Match up the following terms with their pictures below: 1) B/B/F ped, 2) B/F ped, 3) O/B/F ped, 4) Worksurface, 5) System

The Greenest City in America at night

Which city in the US do you think has the most LEED-certified buildings per capita? Portland? San Francisco? Maybe Boston?. Nope…its Grand Rapids, MI. Where is Grand Rapids you might ask? Grand Rapids is about 2 hours northwest of Detroit, and is the home for some of the largest office furniture manufacturers in the world including yours truly…Steelcase.

As you’ll see in this article by Fast Company, Steelcase has been instrumental at shaping the environmental movement in Grand Rapids which has caught on throughout the city. Here in Grand Rapids you will find the world’s first LEED-certified art museum along with LEED-certified manufacturing facilities, office buildings, restaurants, a bus station and a hospital.

You will also see Steelcase’s commitment to the environment evidenced in many of our most popular product offerings:

• Leap, our flagship product is Silver Cradle to Cradle Certified; made of up to 32% recycled content; is up to 94% recyclable and is Indoor Advantage Certified.
• Think, our most eco-friendly product is Silver Cradle to Cradle Certified; made of up to 37% recycled content; is up to 98% recyclable and is Gold Indoor Advantage Certified.
• Amia, our newest edition to the Steelcase family, is Silver Cradle to Cradle Certified; made of up to 32% recycled content; is up to 97% recyclable and is Gold Indoor Advantage Certified.

Since its inception, Steelcase has been finding ways to reduce its impact on the environment. We hope that you will do what you can as well…

$1599 for a new office

Is your home office in need of a makeover? Mine is!

Well, if you too are in dire need of a new home office, check out our newest configuration that encompasses everything that you will need in your office including the desk, two (2) storage units and the chair.

Choose the size that works best for your office and the laminate and fabric color of your preference and you are all set.

Where else can you find all these pieces and Steelcase quality for only $1599?

Oh yeah, did I mention that this includes free white glove delivery & installation? No need to worry about putting it together either!