iPhone coffee table, complete with app coasters

iphone-coffee-table.jpg

This is the rather beautiful iPhone coffee table. Three facts that might surprise you – firstly, it’s made entirely out of cardboard. No poncy wood here. Secondly, you can swap the Apps around, and when you pull one out of its space, it acts nicely as a coaster. Last of all, there’s unfortunately no tutorial to build your own. That’s a shame. It’d fit in brilliantly on Thingiverse.

iLounge (via Bornrich)

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Thingiverse – share your digital designs for physical objects

This morning, while investigating a rather awesome-looking steampunk laptop stand, I came across the brilliance that is Thingiverse. It’s a site that allows you to share your designs and plans for the building of real-world physical objects. The idea is that you can use digital cutters and fabricators to cut out the object relatively easily, and voila – a new.. er.. thing.

The best bit about Thingiverse is that it uses Creative Commons licenses, and encourages people to use them. Combined with a recently-added ‘derivatives’ function, it’s incredibly easy to create designs based on other people’s work, or improve existing objects. The steampunk laptop stand was a regular laptop stand before someone added the gear design.

Thingiverse is a great site if you’re remotely interested in making things in the physical world. Although it’s a little clunky at the egdes, there’s tonnes of potential, especially as the tools for easily making the objects on the site become cheaper. If you’ve invented a revolutionary new coathanger, then head over to Thingiverse and tell people about it.

Thingiverse (via Likecool)

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