The Elevation iPhone Dock from Oregon-based industrial design firm Elevation Lab is a well-crafted aluminum dock for the iPhone, the iPod Touch and iPod Nano. Casey Hopkins, founder of Elevation Lab, began a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter to bring this dock to a larger market. The docks will be machined and assembled in Oregon.

The current Kickstarter fundraiser record is held by MNML for their iPod Nano watches that we covered in the post, TikTok and LunaTik iPad Nano Multi-Touch Watch. There is a chance that the Elevation Dock campaign will break that record (and surpass the $1 million mark) within the next (and final) days.

via PandoDaily

Jake Reilly took a 90 day vacation from email, the Internet, cell phones, and other aspects of modern communication and documented his experience in a short video: “The Amish Project.”

via Viral Viral Videos

Jeffrey Koterba takes a look at how libraries have changed in this comic he made back in 2010.

via Curiosity Counts

“Digitals” by Chris Crutchfield is a humorous musical short film about communication overload in the digital age. The music for the video is made up of beeps and tones from an orchestra of digital devices.

One day I got an email, an sms, a phone call, a Facebook message and two tweets all within about 5 seconds of one another. This video is a re-manifestation of my brain’s interpretation of that event.

via MG Siegler

Linotype: The Film is a documentary about Linotype, the 19th century type casting machine that revolutionized printing and remained dominant until it was made obsolete in the 1970s by computers and new printing techniques (trailer). The film is directed by Doug Wilson. It premieres at the SVA Theatre in New York City on February 3rd, with subsequent screenings along the East Coast. The West Coast premiere is February 21st at Typekit in San Francisco.

Linotype: The Film is a feature-length documentary centered around the Linotype type casting machine. Called the “Eighth Wonder of the World” by Thomas Edison, it revolutionized printing and society. The film tells the surprisingly emotional story of the people connected to the Linotype and how it impacted the world.

Cassette is an upcoming documentary about the cultural significance and history of the tape cassette (trailer). The film is by Zack Taylor and Seth Smoot—they’re raising funds for the project on Kickstarter.

A few months ago, the term cassette tape was taken out of the Oxford English Dictionary.

It may seem ironic, then, that the cassette has experienced a quiet comeback over the last few years, as independent labels issuing tape-only releases have begun popping up around the world.

What better excuse to take a look back at this beloved musical format?

via The World’s Best Ever

The 10th SF MusicTech Summit is less than a month away. Held twice a year in San Francisco, the Summit is a connection point for the traditional music industry and the cutting edge of music technologists. Online music services, performing artists, instrument makers, music journalists, record labels big and small, and everyone in between come together to talk about the state of the art and business of music.

The folks who run the conference have generously offered a special discount code for Laughing Squid readers to get tickets at 20% off. Just use the code promolaughingsquid.

On February 13th at San Francisco’s Hotel Kabuki, the SF MusicTech Summit will bring together 1000+ visionaries in the music/technology space, the best and brightest developers, entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. This one-day conference, which has been called “the best music and technology conference” by Mashable’s CEO and founder, Pete Cashmore, features 75+ prominent speakers, new technology demonstrations, great networking opportunities, and packed cocktail parties.

The long list of speakers for the February show includes representatives of companies like Spotify, BitTorrent, and Topspin, and such musicians as David Lowery (Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker), Martin Atkins (Public Image Ltd., Ministry, Pigface, Killing Joke), and the band Pomplamoose.

Below are sounds and images from the last Summit in September of last year. Including an interview with Joe Satriani(!)

photo by Brian Zisk

Robot is a 1963 short film about the emerging technology of data communications that was made for the Bell System by Jim Henson. The film features a sassy, flatulent robot puppet in the starring role.

via AT&T Tech Channel

FLORA is a new open-source wearable electronics platform by Adafruit Industries. The platform is based around a programmable circular microcontroller that is less than two inches in diameter. Adafruit is developing the platform for sale in the near future.

For the last few years Ladyada has been thinking about everything she wanted in a wearable electronics platform for Adafruit’s community of makers, hackers, crafters, artists, designers and engineers. After months of planning, designing and working with partners around the world for the best materials and accessories, we can share what we’re up to. The hardware is now in the hands of our staff and testers!

We call it the FLORA.

Charlie O’Donnell has just launched Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, a new seed stage investor that is the first venture capital fund based in Brooklyn. As part of the launch he worked with BKLYNhaus to produce the video Made in Brooklyn, which highlights some of the amazing entrepreneurs and companies who call Brooklyn their home.

For more on the launch of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, check out Charlie O’Donnell’s announcement.

Tech writer, author and entrepreneur Sarah Lacy has launched PandoDaily, a daily tech news blog that strives “to be the site-of-record for that startup root-system and everything that springs up from it, cycle-after-cycle”.

Lacy, formerly a senior editor for TechCrunch, has over fifteen years reporting on Silicon Valley businesses. Interestingly, Michael Arrington, MG Siegler and Paul Carr, all formerly of TechCrunch as well, will all be writing for PandoDaily.

Kara Swisher of All Things Digital recently interviewed Lacy about PandoDaily and why she left TechCrunch:

The Samsung Transparent Window is a 46 inch transparent LCD display that is a combination touchscreen computer and window (video via MobileNations). The display can perform a variety of functions familiar to tablet users. There’s even a “blinds” app that blots out unwanted natural light. The display is entering production later this year.

via The Next Web

PressPausePlay is a fascinating documentary about the digital revolution and how it has affected creative expression (trailer & full film). The film is by Swedish creative agency House of Radon.

The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent of people in an unprecedented way, unleashing unlimited creative opportunites.

But does democratized culture mean better art, film, music and literature or is true talent instead flooded and drowned in the vast digital ocean of mass culture? Is it cultural democracy or mediocrity?

This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world’s most influential creators of the digital era.

Thanks to Deborah Yoon for the tip!

“Century 21 Calling” is a 1962 short film about the Seattle World’s Fair, and in particular the many marvelous technologies from Bell System: the punchcard autodialer, the Bellboy (the first radio-operated pager), and Touch Tone dialing. The film was created by Fairbanks Productions for AT&T.

via Retro Thing

KoPoint Wire is a new opinion and content-aggregating blog focusing on media, politics, sports, and technology. KoPoint founder Dan Patterson is starting off by hitting the road to cover the Republican presidential primaries.

Techno-Dunce is a 1980s film short that shows a frustrated student trying to grasp technology in a school computer lab. She gets teased and then the whole thing turns into a hilarious ‘quasi-rap’ music video which apparently aired on MTV. It is from a longer (never-completed) film called siliconia made by Lange, Celia, Calbert and Cedric Lai of LVL Productions.

Thanks to my brother Andrew for the tip!

Tabstrummer is a guitar-like electronic instrument that has touch sensitive strips in lieu of strings, and programmable chord buttons instead of frets (demo video). Tabstrummer creates its guitar sounds through MIDI. It is not currently for sale.

via Hack a Day

The Air-Free Tire is an airless tire design concept by Bridgestone (video by DigInfo TV). The concept relies on thermoplastic resin spokes to give the tire its shape and flexibility (it is also 100% recyclable). Due to the limited load capacity of the tire, it is intended for use in lightweight carts and personal mobility devices, with use on larger vehicles planned for the future. The tire debuted at this month’s Tokyo Motor Show.

Michelin developed a similar concept, the Tweel, back in 2005.

via Gizmodo

Designer Aaron Wood has come up with more wonderful tech company war propaganda posters. They’re available as prints on his Etsy store. Back in July we wrote about the first posters in the series, which had a social media focus.

Little Printer is an adorable web-enabled printer that prints mini-newspapers containing content from the Internet (video). Users select the content—everything from news to puzzles to status updates from friends—using a smartphone app. Little Printer is by London-based design firm BERG and runs on BERG Cloud, a web-based system for controlling wireless products. Little Printer is scheduled for release in 2012.

Connected to the Web, Little Printer has wide range of sources available to check on your behalf. We call them “publications”. Subscribe to your favourites and choose when you’d like them delivered. Right on time Little Printer gathers everything it needs to prepare a neat little personalised package, printed as soon as you press the button. You can get deliveries multiple times a day, but we find once or twice works best–like your very own morning or evening newspaper.

via The Next Web

The RGB Laser Projector by Gdansk University of Technology student Karol is a DIY laser projector built from lasers scavenged from consumer electronics. The projector can display graphics and animations and beamshows and fits in a sporty metal hardcase.

via Hack A Day

Caroline Drucker of SoundCloud offers a simple but empowering solution for getting more women in tech in her Ignite NYC 13 talk, How to Get More Women in Tech in Under a Minute. She suggest that by not using the word ‘girls’ to refer to ‘women’ that “there will be a lot more women (in tech) when we get rid of the girls”.

via Lori Dorn, Veronica Belmont and Gina Trapani

“Eve’s Wireless” is a 1922 silent film newsreel demonstrating the world’s first wireless mobile telephone. The boxy telephone required an umbrella to act as an antenna. The actors are shown dialing into an operator who plays a phonograph record for them—perhaps the world’s first Pandora? Discovered last year by British Pathé archivists, the reel is from issue 41 of Eve’s Film Review, a women’s cinemagazine produced by Pathé from 1921 to 1933.

“It’s Eve’s portable wireless ‘phone – and won’t hubby have a time when he has to carry one!”

via Miss Cellania

The L Train Notwork is a pirate wi-fi network that is available on certain New York City Subway L Trains this week, thanks to creative agency WeMakeCoolSh.it (here’s a behind-the-scenes video). The service is provided by person-portable battery-powered web servers. Rather than connect commuters to the internet, the L Train Notwork serves content provided by local artists and hosts a web 1.0-inspired chat room.

The L Train Notwork is available 8am to 10am on the L Train between the Morgan Ave. and 8th Ave. stops, until Friday, November 18. New York City-based WeMakeCoolSh.it was founded by Mark Krawczuk and Matt McGregor-Mento.

via Fast Company

image 1 by David Dax, image 2 by Yoshi Sodeoka

Olly is a small rectangular device that combines internet notifications like Tweets and pings into smells. It’s a customizable “web connected smelly robot” that hooks up to a computer and emits odor. It can be stacked, have its looks changed around and all the parts, code and instructions are open and customizable. Currently, Olly can be created with a 3D printer but its developers, design lab Mint Foundry are looking to manufacture them for a wider audience.

Check out their prototype video:

Our first smelly prototype was the Pringles tube with a fan in the top and air freshener in the bottom. It definitely worked to an extent, and the fan did distribute the smell – the main problem being that it smelt quite strongly whether it was switched on or not. And its hard to smell the internet when everything else smells too.

via Waxy