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No proper toolbox is complete without a bottle opener for keeping your mind limber while on the job, and few are suited to the task like the Craftsman Bottle Opener... Visit Uncrate for the full post.

We're big fans of Sonos' wireless speakers, but they're not exactly built to handle deep bass. The Sonos Sub ($600-$700) is. This self-powered subwoofer connects effortlessly to your existing Sonos... Visit Uncrate for the full post.

In the 19th century, rural Pennsylvania became the powerhouse of the American economy. The state’s industrial infrastructure supplied the steel to build skyscrapers, the ships to fight wars, and even the glass for millions of windows. But, as America’s manufacturing economy passed away, so did the prominence of Appalachia’s industrial strongholds. If you drive across Pennsylvania today, you’ll see dozens of towering monuments to its past, rusting after decades of disuse.

In its heydey, Bethlehem Steel was the most prominent of Pennsylvania’s mills. It was the second largest producer of steel in the country, transforming the bucolic village of Bethlehem (smack dab between Pittsburgh and Brooklyn) into a vibrant industrial powerhouse. But Bethlehem Steel ultimately went bankrupt, and the town’s steel mills closed officially in 1995. In 2007, the abandoned brownfield property was sold to a corporation interested in turning it into a casino. As part of the redevelopment, part of the mill was slated for retrofitting to accommodate an arts campus of flexible galleries, shops, and community spaces.

After delays due to a (incredibly ironic) worldwide steel shortage, the 68,000-square-foot ArtsQuest campus opened to the public in 2011.

The complex is a "cultural incubator," sitting in the shadow of five 300-foot-high blast furnaces that once produced the world’s steel. Designed by Spillman Farmer Architects, the architecture speaks in a kind of updated industrial dialect. The complex’s 450-seat performance venue, a two-screen state-of-the-art cinema, and myriad flexible performance and community venues are organized by a structural steel skeleton painted in Bethlehem’s trademark International Orange shade. If the color looks familiar, that’s because it’s the same shade as the Golden Gate Bridge (built with Bethlehem Steel). The steel frame is infilled with locally produced precast panels, which lend the new buildings a rawness that echoes the old mill. Salvaged detritus from around the brownfield site is scattered throughout the spaces, note the architects: “Each major threshold is marked by a shroud, a vernacular doorway form found in many of the site’s industrial buildings.” It’s all intended to evoke a continuity between the towering past of Bethlehem and its future, say the architects, who cite Critical Regionalism (critic Ken Frampton’s argument that modern architects should prioritize local vernacular over conceptual rigor) as a guiding principle.

It’s tough to mention a project like this without talking about the originator of the genre: Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, the Ruhr Valley industrial complex converted into an arts and entertainment campus in 1991. That project, master-planned in part by OMA, inspired several American mill towns to do the same--among them Braddock, Pennsylvania, which has since become a thriving cultural destination. ArtsQuest’s rousing success (it’s hosted over 300 live performances in the past year) indicates that the industrial-site-as-cultural-center typology is a repeatable model for dozens of other dilapidated brownfield sites across the Rust Belt. Spillman Farmer, for their part, just received the AIA’s highest honor for the project.

Find out more about ArtsQuest here.

Netflix is an odd digital product. While the general idea of streaming full-screen movies is a simple enough premise, somehow, the service manages to look different on every single platform. On the iPad, Netflix is an extension of the web experience, a bloated browser UI that feels less tangible than it should. On the PS3, it’s a clickable library of icons. On the Xbox 360 (which is Netflix’s best manifestation to date), it’s always changing, having been redesigned at least three times in a few years.

Netflix’s current look on Xbox 360.

In all this, the Netflix desktop experience has been largely devoid of design innovation, which is particularly strange since its framework is the basis of their iOS app. But a new redesign has Netflix looking a lot better on desktops, building the innovation right into the player itself.

So say you’re watching a TV show but you want to check out another episode. A handy popup menu now allows you to quickly hop to any episode in the entire series, all without leaving a full-screen video. Click any episode number, and the UI extends to offer a thumbnail preview and quick synopsis. It’s great, really, really great. I hope that Netflix builds on this UI element so that, during movies, this same button leads me to other Ryan Gosling films.

Netflix’s new streaming interface for browsers.

Other controls are similarly wonderful. You can skip to the next episode with the touch of a button, add captions, change the language, or toggle HD without sorting through a mess of buttons. And in a turn to the beautiful, large typography labels the movie or TV episode you’re viewing whenever it’s paused for a while. (Remember when Zune started doing this big type trick? I’m glad to see that, even though Zune flopped, the big fonts for exploring media have stuck around.)

Big, clear text takes over a paused screen after a while. You can see summaries of other episodes, in screen.

Netflix’s general site UI remains slow and thick to explore, but once you’re actually playing media, the service shifts into something smarter and svelter. It’s exactly the same UI trend we’re seeing on the Xbox 360’s version of Netflix and HBO Go. Once you actually start watching media, the UI keeps you inside the movie screens themselves as much as possible, rather than perpetually kicking you back to the larger library to select the next episode of a show you’d like to watch.

(Xbox Netflix does this so much so, in fact, that it will begin auto-streaming your next episode right within the show’s general information screen as soon as you finish the last one, assuming that you’re looking to binge on Battlestar Galactica or Breaking Bad--which you should be.)

The Xbox 360's addictive take on TV-binge playback controls.

With video services packing more and more options into the players themselves, it will be interesting to see how our viewing habits change. I, for one, tend to get overwhelmed by all of the dusty choices in my own Netflix queue--so much so that I often just shut it down before I watch anything.

But when I make the plunge to stream some Archer, and Netflix teases me with the next episode without ever pulling me from the playback experience? I can only think two things: I really like Archer. And sure, I’ll watch another.

[Hat tip: GigaOM]

It’s easy to convince yourself that working until your eyes bleed and your fingers cramp is simply what must be done when starting something new.

You can dangle yourself the carrot that it’s just until you get out of the first hole: “Once we’re live, it’ll all calm down and I’ll be able to relax”.

But that’s rarely how it goes. The reality is that you’re never going to be done. There’s always more work. New initiatives, new customers, new competition, new technology, new ideas.

Unless you learn to set healthy boundaries early on, human biology will set in and carve those habits into your psyche. Double so if you enjoy success. You put in all this pain, it worked, and now you can enjoy the pleasure; it’s too tempting for your brain to pass that up as anything but causality.

One pattern to help yourself fight the mad dash for the mirage of being done is to think of a good day’s work. Look at the progress of the day towards the end and ask yourself: “Have I done a good day’s work?”

Answering that question is liberating. Often, if the answer is an easy “yes,” you can leave your desk feeling like you accomplished something important, if not entirely “done”. And should the answer be no, you can treat it as an off-day and explore the 5 why’s.

It feels good to be productive. If yesterday was a good day’s work, chances are you’ll keep the roll. And if you can keep the roll, everything else will probably take care of itself.

Attention high-end Nikon and Canon DSLR shooters: the Pentax K-30 Camera ($850) will be arriving soon with plans on crashing your rain-soaked photo party. The K-30 boasts 81 seals that... Visit Uncrate for the full post.

Forget Kinect — if you're looking for a way to control your computer via natural movements, look no farther than the Leap Motion Control Device ($70). Based on proprietary technology,... Visit Uncrate for the full post.

In a recent issue of The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik wondered if there’s a “sweet spot” for retro-nostalgia. He calls it the Golden Forty Year Rule: whatever was popular around the time you were born is what you’ll end up mimicking later in life. Gopnik’s rule holds up for a ton of cultural phenomena, including Mad Men, Fleet Foxes, and this ridiculous hair salon by Slovenian architects Kitsch Nitsch.

The architects, who self-identify as “aspiring commercial sluts,” were asked by a Slovenian salon chain to design the interior of their newest shop, Young Mič Styling (or YMS), which targets a younger clientele. Kitsch Nitsch responded by skewing really young--like, back to the time when the intended customers were still in diapers.

“We believe design is taken too seriously, life is taken too seriously and styling is not taken seriously enough,” say the designers, who have crafted the space into a veritable encyclopedia of 80s visual ephemera. Every surface is covered in a different pattern, collapsing space into an Atari-esque flatness. Some of these patterns look like MTV’s old logo, some look like David Hockney paintings, and still others are reminiscent of the sassy model decals you still find in older nail salons. Custom-fabricated mirrors seem referential to a lost era of clip art, where squiggles and zig-zags were it. Pastel supergraphics and furniture that only Charles Moore could love round out the space, which ultimately ends up looking like a three-dimensional GIF.

Speaking as a child of the '80s, Kitsch Nitsch succeeds in doing a pretty dead-on caricature of the era. I can’t look at these images without feeling déjà vu. And true to their generation, the duo have this to add about their work: “We dabble in recent retro, which is still a hell of a lot better than the present. And we are genuinely afraid of the future.”

Read more about YMS Salon here.

In 1905, the "superintendent of the children's department" at Brooklyn Public Library ordered that all copies of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn be removed from the room, due to their characters' "coarseness, deceitfulness and mischievous practices." Soon after, unhappy with the development, the librarian in charge of the "Department for the Blind," Asa Don Dickinson, wrote to Mark Twain to inform him of the ban. His letter and Twain's wonderfully sarcastic reply can be read below. (Source: Mark Twain's Autobiography, Part 2)

SHEEPSHEAD BAY BRANCH BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY 1657 SHORE ROAD BROOKLYN-NEW YORK, Nov. 19th, '05 DEAR SIR: I happened to be present the other day at a meeting of the children's librarians of the Brooklyn Public Library. In the course of the meeting it was stated that copies of "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn" were to be found in some of the children's rooms of the system. The Sup't of the Children's Dep't—a conscientious and enthusiastic young woman—was greatly shocked to hear this, and at once ordered that they be transferred to the adults' department. Upon this I shamefacedly confessed to having read "Huckleberry Finn" aloud to my defenseless blind people, without regard to their age, color, or previous condition of servitude. I also reminded them of Brander Matthews's opinion of the book, and stated the fact that I knew it almost at heart, having got more pleasure from it than from any book I have ever read, and reading is the greatest pleasure I have in life. My warm defense elicited some further discussion and criticism, from which I gathered that the prevailing opinion of Huck was that he was a deceitful boy who said "sweat" when he should have said "perspiration." The upshot of the matter was that there is to be further consideration of these books at a meeting early in January which I am especially invited to attend. Seeing you the other night at the performance of "Peter Pan" the thought came to me that you (who know Huck as well as I—you can't know him better or love him more—) might be willing to give me a word or two to say in witness of his good character though he "warn't no more quality than a mud cat." I would ask as a favor that you regard this communication as confidential, whether you find time to reply to it or not; for I am loath for obvious reasons to bring the institution from which I draw my salary into ridicule, contempt or reproach. Yours very respectfully, Asa Don Dickinson. (In charge Department for the Blind and Sheepshead Bay Branch, Brooklyn Public Library.)

Twain's Reply:

21 FIFTH AVENUE, November 21, 1905 DEAR SIR: I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn for adults exclusively, and it always distresses me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean; I know this by my own experience, and to this day I cherish an unappeasable bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again this side of the grave. Ask that young lady—she will tell you so. Most honestly do I wish I could say a softening word or two in defence of Huck's character, since you wish it, but really in my opinion it is no better than those of Solomon, David, Satan, and the rest of the sacred brotherhood. If there is an unexpurgated Bible in the Children's Department, won't you please help that young woman remove Huck and Tom from that questionable companionship? Sincerely yours, (Signed, 'S. L. Clemens') I shall not show your letter to anyone—it is safe with me.

Vinyl made its comeback some time ago, but the record player has yet to catch up. Until now. The Symbol Record Console ($TBA) is a bench-made modern record player that... Visit Uncrate for the full post.

Grow up and dress nice every once in awhile. You and your clothes will get the attention you deserve. Burberry Cardigan ($1,095). Haggar Slim Fit Life Khakis ($36). J Crew... Visit Uncrate for the full post.

It’s not just smartphone screens that can be used as touch-based sensors – as we’ve recently seen with On/Off paint, enabling homeowners to control electric appliances such as lights without the need for switches. Using similar technology, MaKey MaKey is a set of components that turns almost any object into an input tool, allowing users to invent their own devices.

Having already easily passed its funding goal on Kickstarter, the kit consists of crocodile clips, a USB cable and pre-built chip board. One of the crocodile clips is connected to the user and the other to any object (providing it is able to conduct a very small amount of electricity – the developers suggest any types of metal, anything wet, food, animals and even people). The chipboard is then connected to a computer via the USB cable and depending on how the circuit is set up, touching the object performs an action on the computer. Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum, who are both currently researching at the Michigan Institute of Technology, have already come up with light-hearted suggestions such as a play dough games controller, an alphabet spaghetti keyboard and a banana piano (using one piece of fruit for each key), although it is easy to see how more practical innovations could come into being once the kit is in the hands of the public. The set is available to pre-order on Kickstarter for USD 35, or USD 45 to include international shipping. The video below offers a demonstration of the product:

MaKey MaKey provides both novices and experts with the technology to turn anything into a digital switch or controller, empowering innovators and providing a tool for educative purposes. One for inspiration!

Website: www.makeymakey.com Contact: silver@media.mit.edu

Spotted by: Katherine Noyes

If startup entrepreneurs are to the teens what stockbrokers were to the ‘80s, then the FoundersCard is, as the Observer put it, this era’s very own AmEx black card. Launched by New York-based Eric Kuhn, FoundersCard is a rewards program for innovators (Foursquare and Facebook are members) who pay an annual membership fee for exclusive deals on hotels, airfare, and advertising, among other services. It exists, in other words, to make the entitled arrested adolescents who people today’s business class feel even more entitled. Yay!

Here’s something to make them feel even more entitled: FoundersCard has gone and tapped Brooklyn’s Hovard Design to create slick packaging for delivering cards to new members. The designers wanted to make something literally “out-of-the-box” to match the clientele’s entrepreneurial spirit, creative director Bill Hovard tells Co.Design, and thusly considered ideas like self-folding envelopes and matchbooks. The design also had to be casual enough for dudes who go to board meetings in flip-flops and hoodies (recall, Facebook is a member). “The concept was to design a package that was special and welcoming, but not fussy, so that it would appeal to the FoundersCard members,” he says.

Finally, Hovard settled on a short black tube and a twee postage label that looks like it was mailed over from France in 1944. “We took inspiration from old maps (graphics and packaging) and mailing labels that we felt spoke to the idea of exploration, entrepreneurship and innovation,” Hovard says.

Yesterday’s rich guys loved Italian suits and gold-plated everything. Today’s love faux-vintage chic (and apparently really hate boxes). Privilege has gone retro. Soon enough, rich guys will just start carrying around scepters and oversized turkey legs.

[Images courtesy of Hovard Design; h/t The Dieline]

Världens bästa fotbollstidning? “Jag gillar fransmännens sätt att förhålla sig till fotboll, lite kvasiintellektuellt så där, så jag säger France Football, även om jag läser den försvinnande sällan. Annars är Gazzetta dello Sports helgmagasin Sportweek ofta bra och så har vi ju svenska Offside.”

Vilka tidningar köper du regelbundet? “Jag köper nog bara spanska dagliga sporttidningar regelbundet, inte så mycket pga kvalitén som pga mitt jobb. El País för övriga nyheter om Spanien. The Economist köper jag också, det är min bästa omvärldsbevakare. Och när jag är hemma i Sverige växlar jag lite. Bang. Aftonbladet.”

Din senaste upptäckt i tidningshyllan? “Språktidningen kanske. Fick en prenumeration av min mamma och är lite fast.”

En tidning du aldrig någonsin skulle köpa? “Allt om fiske. Jag är för ointresserad.”

Viken tidning har snyggast omslag? “Bang brukar få till det.”

Skribenter du följer oavsett ämne? “Jag är en ganska otrogen läsare, men Åsa Linderborg och Aftonbladets kulturblogg i helhet brukar jag ha pejl på. Alex Schulman då och då. Plus säkert fem till som jag inte kommer på.”

Tidningskonto per månad? “Mellan 15 och 40 euro på fotbollsläsning. Faktureras till Aftonbladet. Privat lite mindre.”

Vem vill du helst läsa en intervju med just nu? “Angela Merkel. Jag tycker hon är fascinerande.”

Tidningen du gömmer när du får gäster? “Jag har en tendens att spara tidningar där jag själv figurerar, det måste man stoppa undan när folk kommer så att man inte framstår som en narcissist.”

Tidningen du lägger fram när du får gäster? “Jag bor i Spanien och det är ändå inga av mina vänner här som pratar svenska, så det är ingen idé…”

Din största tidningsbesvikelse i år? “Min konstanta besvikelse är hur lite utrymme damsport får i alla tidningar.”

Världens bästa och sämsta tidningsnamn? “Bäst: Pravda. Sanningen. Går inte att slå. Sämst: Härligt hemma tycker jag är förfärligt för att komma från Aftonbladet, men det är kanske snarare konceptet än namnet i sig.”

Tidningen du ger bort till din mamma? “Vi.”

Tidningen du ger bort till din pappa? “The Economist.”

Tidningen som påverkade dig mest som barn? “Kamratposten.”

Vad ser du mest fram emot tidningsåret 2012? “Alla fotbolls-EM-bilagor som är på väg. Gaaah.”

Johanna Frändén är en av landets bästa fotbollsjournalister. Hon rapporterar just nu från spanska ligan för Aftonbladet och SVT. Följ hennes blogg och twitter.

Wait for it….Wait for it….

Whoa. To paraphrase the philosophers of Insane Clown Posse, magnetism, how does it work?

If you’re ever unconvinced that the simplest design ideas can create the most dramatic product improvements, think about this: designer Jung Soo Park stuck a magnet--nature’s oldest invention--to a hammer--one of Mankind’s oldest inventions. And in doing so, he created Neo, a hammer that can pick up those pesky, rolly nails from a table or floor. It can even hold your spare nails in place during the hammering process.

"While this kind of problem is solved by a tool belt with nail pouch in construction sites, having a tool belt to hang up a frame is just too much," Park tells Co.Design. "Most of the times, we have someone else handing nails to us, or we hold them between our lips. Because most nails are made with metal, the simplest solution was using magnets."

Even though Park went through several iterations to make Neo work--tweaking the strength of magnet was key--the end result is the perfect, simple product improvement. Nothing about the hammer’s ergonomics has to change, and the Neo shouldn’t cost notably more than any other hammer to manufacture. Rather, an age-old device has been retrofitted with an invisible technology to enhance its functionality. Granted, this idea probably isn’t geared towards pros, but you can easily imagine a handle with an affordance at the bottom that accommodates heavier gauge nails. And still, there’s an issue of making the magnet strong enough not to let nails shake loose during hammering.

But Park has me wondering how magnets could improve all of my gadgets. What if my iPhone could stick on my refrigerator? What if iPad could stick on my refrigerator?? What if my Macbook could stick on my refrigerator???

I’m gonna make millions. As for Park, he has no current plans to produce the Neo. Hint: Get to Kickstarter ASAP, dude.

As the weather warms and we all realize that we’ll be removing clothing in public for another summer, pilates seems like a better and better idea. But how do you--what’s the verb I’m looking for--pilate? Pilatorize? Pilatiocize?

Move, by ElectricFoxy, is a prototype tank top that uses four stretch sensors to feel the postures of your shoulders through your back and recognize the poses of exercises like yoga, pilates and even sports like baseball and golf. If you did something wrong in almost any activity, haptic feedback (vibrations) could let you know. It’s an automated trainer for those who don’t like yoga classes, much like the MotivePro.

But what makes Move a bit different is that it actually syncs with an iOS app in real time, not so differently from what we see in Nike+ products. This sort of on-the-fly analysis is technically daunting, as it means that not only do positioning algorithms need to recognize and identify postures, but the built-in Arduino needs to crunch these numbers in real time. And when it comes to pushing one’s body into some pretty extreme contortions, inaccurate or mistimed feedback could be pretty devastating, ironically inducing the same sort of injuries the Move is built to prevent.

I don’t envy the development team, but the idea has extreme potential. Imagine wearing Move to your weekly golf outing, then charting your swing’s progress over time. Or better still, what if you just wore Move as an undershirt at all times, and rather than optimizing your downward dog, it just watched out for those stupid motions we all make that could tweak your back. The longer it recorded, the more data a doctor could analyze, cross referencing any new pains with any red flags in your entire movement history.

Indeed, maybe the best part of Move isn’t that it will prepare your body for the beach, but that it will be an excuse to cover it. “I’m training,” you say pompously, a girdle of diodes hiding your beer belly for yet another season.

[Hat tip: ecouterre]

There are innumerable ways digital content can enhance real-world experiences, but it’s fairly safe to say we’ve never seen such efforts undertaken on so large a scale as in Monmouth, Wales. Now known as the world’s first “Wikipedia town”, Monmouth aims to use QR codes to link every notable place, person, artifact, plant and animal to a relevant Wikipedia page in as many languages as possible.

“Monmouthpedia,” as the project is called, is the first Wikipedia project ever to cover a whole town, and it relies on QRpedia codes to link visitors with relevant articles on Wikipedia. Ceramic or metal plaques are emblazoned with the codes in places that are exposed to the elements and for articles specific to Monmouth; elsewhere, smaller plaques are used. Either way, visitors can use their smartphones to scan the codes and retrieve linked articles in a wide array of languages, though the project’s primary emphasis is Welsh. The project is jointly funded by Wikimedia UK and Monmouthshire County Council, which has committed to installing free citywide wifi to help enable it. The video below explains the premise in more detail:

Since the project began six months ago, Wikipedia volunteers around the globe have contributed nearly 500 new articles in over 25 languages; on its official launch earlier this month, some 1,000 QR codes were already in place throughout Monmouth, according to an announcement on the Wikimedia blog. How long before initiatives such as this become a norm around the world?

Website: www.monmouthpedia.org Contact: john.cummings@monmouthpedia.org

Spotted by: Murtaza Patel

After a series of accounting failures and other scandals, Hong Kong's top securities regulator on Tuesday defended new proposals that could subject bankers to civil or criminal prosecution over misleading statements in I.P.O. documents.

Hotel wireless networks can keep you connected when you travel, but be aware of security issues.

One concern: the pitch could have done a better job of discussing the potential for competition.