Tag Archives: Prevention

Design: It’s All About Alarm Clocks

Business writer and entrepreneur Seth Godin throws out product ideas like other people throw out orange juice cartons: For twenty cents or so, alarm clock manufacturers can add a chip that not only knows the time (via a radio signal) but knows what day it is too. Which means that they can add a switch… Read More »

A Show of Unwashed Hands

Ever been grossed out, a la Seinfeld, by someone who visits the bathroom but doesn’t seem to know what washbasins are for? You need the iGene:  i-Gene [sic] is designed for washrooms or areas where hand hygiene is critical. It detects movement and after a given period of time (pre-delay setting) will play the following… Read More »

The Hot Air War

Are the days of the wet hand over? A few months ago I wrote in the WSJ about the Mitsubishi Jet Towel (subscription only; I did a version of the piece for the BBC World Service which you can download as a podcast here), which has been drying hands effectively around Asia for some time, now… Read More »

Indonesia’s Quake

For anyone interested in helping the victims of the Yogyakarta earthquake, in which thousands of people have been killed inside their heavy stone and slate homes, here’s Indonesia Help – Earthquake and Tsunami Victims. Sadly, this website was originally set up for the tsunami, now 17 months ago, but has been quickly resurrected to provide… Read More »

Well-Meaning Pressure Group Or Sleazy Promotional Gimmick?

Maybe I’m getting too wary, but when I received a press release from something called the Internet Security Foundation, I wasn’t convinced. And I’m still not. The email was provocative enough: The headline ran “Microsoft’s Policy Leaves Millions Open to Identity Theft; Internet Security Foundation Releases Free Protection Tool”. An explanation followed that users were… Read More »