14 Of The World’s Most Awesome and Bizarre Bathtubs

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Documented early plumbing systems for bathing go back as far as around 3300 BC with the discovery of copper water pipes beneath a palace in the Indus Valley Civilization of ancient India. Evidence of the earliest surviving personal sized bathtub was found on the Isle of Crete where a 5-foot long pedestal tub was found built from hardened pottery.

There have been bathtubs in all sorts of shapes and made from different materials. Here is a collection of the most awesome and bizarre bathtubs.

(thanks David)

30,000 Bottle Caps Decorate Russian Pensioner's Home

In the Russian village of Kamarchaga, Russian pensioner Olga Kostina has used 30,000 plastic bottle caps to adorn her home with colorful patterns and images - making it somewhat of a local landmark.

Over many years Kostina collected the lids and once she felt there was enough she created detailed murals across the walls of her home with images of traditional macrame motifs and various creatures living in the neighboring woodland.

(thanks Miss Rare)

A Brief Survey of Phone Booth Art From Around the World

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A brief survey of phone booth art from around the world. Some are functional, some are purely artistic, but all of them are interesting odes to an outdated but iconic mode of public communication.

(via Miss Cellania)

Cat Crib: A Space-Saving Cat Hammock

The Cat Crib is a space-saving hammock your feline will love. You treasure your kitty, but the pet furniture you buy makes your living room unsightly and disorderly. Your options are limited and cleaning around your cat's furnishings is difficult. With the Cat Crib cat hammock you can eliminate that clutter while keeping your furry family member happy.

(thanks Cora)

A Treehouse For Birds And People

At the 78-room 'bird apartment,' human visitors get a peek into the lives of the birds at a Nagano nature reserve. The Bird Apartment is the work of 35-year-old Japanese designer Oki Sato. It's a tree house with one facade punctured with a single human-sized entrance, which is accessed by a long stepladder. The opposite facade is made up of 78 miniature gabled houses, each just large enough to hold a bird's nest.

Visitors are invited to clamber up the ladder and into the tree house's single white room. There, they'll find 78 peepholes corresponding to the birdhouses on the other side of the wall. Through them, visitors will get a rare, up-close-and-personal glimpse of aviary wildlife.

Why Ordinary Things Go Pink

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Score one for the Internet. Not long after Bic launched its new line of 'Bic for Her' ballpoint pens - boasting an 'elegant design' that features a thin barrel to fit a women's hand - women and men alike hopped on Amazon.com to bombard the product page with hilarious and brilliantly snarky reviews.

But what did we do before the Internet? After all, this definitely is not the first time women have had pastel products shoved their faces. Between the late '40s and the early '70s, everything from golf balls and telephones to toy trains were made in hot pinks and pastel 'for her' colors and marketed toward women.

(thanks Lisa)

The Perfect Scent: Chanel No. 5

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Octogenarians are rarely described as 'seductive.' But when a 2009 poll asked 3,000 British newspaper readers to name the world's most seductive scent, the winner was no spring chicken. Nearly nine decades after its creation, Chanel No. 5 took the title.

Nearly as important is its legend within the industry. To the masses, Chanel No. 5 is synonymous with the essense of luxury and lust, trapped in a square-cut bottle. Just the name seems to carry an almost mythic power. But is Chanel No. 5's success purely the result of genius marketing? And just how did this magic potion of a scent end up at the perfume counter in the first place?

The Swan Car

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The Swan Car was commissioned by Scotsman Robert Nicholl Matthewson, who lived in India in the early 1900s and sought to emulate the opulence exhibited by some of the maharajas. The Swan Car was built on a 1910 Brooke 25/30 h.p. chassis.

The car is modeled after the majestic bird and equipped with very special features: eyes that illuminate; a beak that opens, closes and sprays steam, and an eight-tone horn. The Swan Car is home at the Louwman Car Museum in The Hague, the Netherlands.

(via Everlasting Blort)

What's New Note

Nissan has a nice way of promoting their Nissan Note Hatchback car.
Just scroll down and keep on scrolling.

(thanks Cora)

Potty Pax

Remember the last time you visited a public restroom? I think I have to say no more. The Potty Pax is a portable toilet seat cover with a front and a back flap and 2 side hanging pouches, with travel-size toiletries enclosed in each pouch for quick and convenient use when using a public toilet.



YouTube link

(via Everlasting Blort)

Beer Tracker Bottle Opener

When you wake up in the morning and can't remember how many beers you drank the night before, the Beer Tracker Bottle Opener is something for you. Each time you pop the cap off with this device, a digital counter increases by one. Resets to zero when you're ready to do it all over again.

How Your Grandpa Got His LOLs

H. Fishlove & Co. is a manufacturer of novelties and gags. Toilets were Irving Fishlove's thing. Fishlove focused on toilets when, in 1924, TootsieToy started making doll-house furniture using a new injection-molding process. One of the items they made was a toilet. When Fishlove looked at that toilet, he didn't see doll-house furniture. He saw funny.

And so he started making all kinds of gags using this little toilet. The beauty of it was that Fishlove could use the same toilet in any gag box. His strategy was pretty ingenious, actually. He would just order tons of these toilets for gag boxes. All he had to do was change the wording on the box.

(thanks Ben)

Glass Tank

The Glass Tank by Japanese designer Kouichi Okamoto is a device consisting of a bulb shaped container with the glass attached. When the amount in the glass decreases, a constant amount is poured from the tank into the glass, . never overflowing from the glass because of air pressure and water pressure.

The Evolution Of Business Cards

Business cards are cards bearing business information about a company or individual. They are shared during formal introductions as a convenience and a memory aid. A business card typically includes the giver's name, company affiliation and contact information.

Traditionally many business cards were simple black text on white stock; today a professional business card will sometimes include one or more aspects of striking visual design.

The Hamilton Scotts Sky Garage Apartments

Take a look at the ultra high-tech Hamilton Scotts 'Sky Garage Apartments' on Scotts Road in Singapore, where your car is brought up to your living room floor by a biometrically controlled lift. This is the world's tallest luxury residence with en-suite elevated sky garages.



YouTube link

(thanks Cora)

Microsoft Unveils A New Logo

This week, Microsoft unveiled a new corporate logo, its first logo redesign since 1987. The logo has two components: the logotype and the symbol. For the logotype, Microsoft is using the Segoe font which is the same font they use in their products as well as their marketing communications.

Polymer Tone Shrine For Your iPad

Georg Dinkel from Germany has looked at polymer for many years in his job as a photographer for Staedtler, the maker of Fimo. This year he picked up a couple of leftover blocks and he was hooked.

Except for a wooden frame and the electronics, the rest of his Tone Shrine is polymer. Three speakers and an iPad are housed inside the structure which took three months to complete.

Man-Eater

For four years Daniel Disselkøen took the same tram to art academy. He wondered why you would look out the window with curiosity when there is no reason to expect anything new. He decided to change the daily journey for his fellow passengers and himself. He didn't move the tramway track, but he added something. Man-eater, a pedestrian-head eating creature. Man-eater is part of his graduation project 'Remake Reality' for the Royal Academy of Art in the Netherlands.



Vimeo link

(thanks Cora)

AIRPod, The Car That Runs On Air

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An AIRPod is a prototype of an alternative fuel vehicle produced by Motor Development International in cooperation with Tata Motors, that is powered by compressed air. The AIRPod comes in three models that vary the number of seats and amount of cargo storage while keeping the same basic chassis.

It is designed as an zero-emission urban vehicle. Prototypes have been tested by KLM/AirFrance for use as emission-free vehicles in airports. MDI has been promising production of the AirPod since 2000 but as of 2012 none have gone on sale. Most experts agree that compressed air cars are inefficient and impractical.

Coco Chanel

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Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel (1883 - 1971), better known as Coco Chanel, was a French fashion designer and founder of the Chanel brand. Along with Paul Poiret, Chanel is credited with liberating women from the constraints of the corseted silhouette and popularizing the acceptance of a sportive, casual chic as the feminine standard in the post-World War I era.

A prolific fashion creator, Chanel's influence extended beyond couture clothing; her design aesthetic was realized in jewelry, handbags, and fragrance. Her signature scent, Chanel No. 5 became an iconic product, one irrevocably identified with The House of Chanel.
Take a look back at the woman who changed it all.