Topic: Cool Products

Foxconn and GoPro recently announced an exciting new partnership. For an investment of $200 million, Foxconn now owns 9% of GoPro, which translates to a $2.25 billion valuation for the San Mateo-based[…]

We are thrilled to share the latest from our intrepid robot friends—last week, the first of the robots, “Papa Mau”, completed its journey.

When a natural disaster hits—like the recent tsunami off the coast of Japan or the devastating earthquake in Haiti—access to power becomes a premium. It enables people to communicate with loved ones,[…]

Exactly 236 years ago today, the 56 delegates of the second Continental Congress, representing the thirteen original American colonies, assembled at the Pennsylvania State House to adopt the Declaration of[…]

Late one night in a college architecture studio, Jason Lentz reached that point when fatigue and deliriousness spark an idea so far out, it just may be genius. Standing on a stool and encasing himself in a[…]

Over 40,000 people visit the emergency room each year for table saw related injuries, and almost 4,000 of those people end up losing at least one finger. That’s a table saw accident every 9 minutes. 10[…]

What if you could download and print a physical component directly to your printer? The Pirate Bay (TPB) is confident that this will soon be a reality.

With 80% of people residing within 50 miles of a coast, it’s not surprising that efforts to better understand and protect our oceans get a lot of attention. Our customer, Liquid Robotics, has been all over[…]

Whether a 6 a.m. jog around your neighborhood sounds like an ideal start to your day or the furthest thing from it, most techies can agree that incorporating the year’s most innovative and well-engineered[…]

Liquid Robotics, an Arena customer and Bay Area startup, is on a mission to change the way we understand the ocean. Although oceans cover 71% of the earth’s surface, we know very little about their[…]

I love a good opportunity to brag about Arena customers, and so I’d like to thank Lytro for giving me something to talk about.

Mobius is a small company, with fewer than 20 employees, yet it’s been able to scale by strategically using its resources. Since its launch in 2005, Mobius has survived a recession, a period of rapid[…]

It’s easy to make the assumption that a successful business requires robust infrastructure, surplus funds and a large amount of manpower. While that may be true in some cases, size and money are becoming[…]

It took ten years for Aaron LeMieux, founder and CEO of Tremont Electric, to turn his product idea into reality. LeMieux’s product—the nPower PEG (Personal Energy Generator)—is a universal charger powered[…]

Like most of us here at Arena, I am a huge fan of “the next big thing.” If you are developing new technology for the purpose of innovation, nine times out of ten I’d like to be your friend.[…] read more

We saw the bill of materials (BOM) for the iPad 2 last week and were impressed by the low costs Apple was able to achieve for its newest version of the tablet, which is considerably improved over the[…]

December can only mean one thing: holiday gift shopping. In the effort of constructing my own wish-list, I’ve spent the past few days browsing through a variety of unofficial guides denoting this year’s[…]

As I get ready to start my Thanksgiving cooking, I can’t help but wonder if I’m missing out by not having Christoph Thetard’s foot-pedal-powered kitchen appliance at my disposal. A giant pedal-powered[…]

For his final project in the University of Montréal’s design department, product designer Christophe Robillard asked, “If the bicycle is the standard bearer for sustainable transportation, shouldn’t the[…]

A robot learning to flip pancakes from Sylvain Calinon on Vimeo. Even if you put science fiction aside, it’s not hard to imagine a seemingly endless number of real-world applications for robotic[…]

The Herman Miller Mirra office chair has a lot of good things going for it: It is made of 42% recycled materials It is made with no PVC (read about PVC problems here) It is 96% recyclable It is[…]

Here’s another one in the category of products that *really* make a difference in the lives of users. Atomic physicist Joshua Silver has developed “Adspecs”—fluid-filled adjustable eyeglasses—and with his[…]

The betacup is a recently completed competition to re-imagine a coffee cup with reduced environmental impact. As many as 58 million coffee cups are discarded every year in the United States alone, and[…]

According to Marty Neumeier in his excellent book, The Brand Gap, a brand, simply put, is “a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or organization.” But all too often, when considering a product[…]

If you’re facing a tough design challenge you may want to look to nature to see how millions of years of evolution have addressed a similar problem. Biomimicry (which Marc mentioned in a blog post about[…]

If you’ve never seen the SawStop table saw in action, it’s worth watching this video for the sheer engineering vision it took to pull this off…. This is magical product design that changes lives. P.S. The[…]

Most umbrellas today are cheap – literally and figuratively. They turn inside out at the slightest of winds. They are given away to advertise everything from tequila to the World Wildlife Fund. The handles[…]

Earlier this year, I posted a video of the production process for the revolutionary Adidas Jabulani soccer ball to be introduced at the upcoming FIFA World Cup. Now, on the eve of the tournament, several[…]

Anyone connected to the construction industry has been hit hard by the economy in the past few years. And now, unless a company is part of the green revolution, the construction industry is going to[…]

Joe gave some great advice in his series of posts on how to gather and apply useful product feedback. Quirky, a “social product development start-up” that builds and sells consumer products takes it a step[…]

Two Rice University students have created a low-cost product that could allow doctors to save lives in developing countries. Sophomore Lila Kerr and freshman Lauren Theis assembled a working centrifuge out[…]

If you have ever purchased a DVD, you may have noticed a sticker with a barcode and a metallic ring of some sort attached to the DVD or packaging. That sticker is an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)[…]

At Arena our customers make such a wide range of interesting products that it’s always fun to learn what each new one does. For years we’ve been adding a growing number of customers in the clean technology[…]

Thanks to The Impossible Project, Polaroid film is back, and production of Polaroid cameras is following. In the 1960s, half the homes in America had a Polaroid camera. By the year 2000, 13 million of them[…]

If you are in the Bay Area this week, stop by the Stanford Cool Product Expo (CPX) on Wednesday, April 7, 2010, from 12–6pm at the Stanford University Arrillaga Alumni Center. The Cool Product Expo is a[…]

I returned from Vancouver a few weeks ago and unlike the NHL players, my Olympic hangover is finally gone. If you ever get a chance, I highly recommend attending the Olympic Games. It is rare and exciting[…]

To call Local Motors the designers or even the manufacturers of the Rally Fighter is not quite accurate. While the company’s badge will be on the car, it has been a facilitator more than anything else.[…]

Products that resonate with their users on an emotional level become ingrained in user’s lives and generate their own grassroots marketing buzz. These are the products that users rave about online, tell[…]

As someone who picks paper towels over electric hand dryers every time, I never would have expected to find a dryer that I not only want to use, but actually want to talk about too. Until, that is, I[…]

SolidWorks leadership issued an internal challenge to a small group of hands-on designers: design an electric vehicle using SolidWorks and build it in 9 months. The result? This hot rod, which uses an[…]