I didn’t come up with this idea when I created five concept watch designs, but I wish I had.

Called OV’L, this wall clock displays both the date and time on a series of concentric circles. The inner four circles display year, month, day and weekday, while the outer circles display hours, minutes and seconds.

I’m not entirely clear whether this clock really exists or not. Designer Stefan Vasilev is into graphic and logo design, so this could just be a concept.

In any case, it looks great, and I’d be really happy to have this on my wall. It might even cut down on the amount of time I spend looking at time passing. After all, I’d actually have to work out the time by studying the dashes, rather than simply being able to glance up and see a regular clock face.

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Some offer more precision that others, and some are easier to read, but all are definitely not your average analog or digital watch.

1. Fraction Clock

Granted, this is a simple digital watch so it’s not hard to see what time it is.

However, what this watch will do is to chime once in each one hour period — not necessarily on the hour but based on the associated fraction for that hour.

The minutes and seconds are calculated from the rounded decimal equivalents of each fraction.

So, where hour one is 1/1 or simply 1am/1pm, the seventh hour is 1/7 or 07:14:29.

Interesting that the sixth hour becomes 06:17:07 because there would be no such time as 06:16:67.

2. Rainbow watch

The inner circle, divided into four sections, denotes the hour.

Colours red through indigo (no violet) denote hours 1-6, 7-12, 13-18 or (without indigo) 19-23, with the colour appearing in the appropriate section – top right is the first six hours, bottom right is the next six hours, and so on.

The outer circle, divided into ten sections, denotes the minutes.

The ‘tens of minutes’ are denoted by colours — red = 0, orange = 1, yellow = 2, green = 3, blue = 4, indigo = 5 — while the units are represented by the position – zero at top right and then incrementing clockwise.

Times from 00:00 to 00:59 have no colour displayed in the inner circle.

3. Periodic Table Watch

This is a very simple clock to read. The white illuminated element denotes the hour while the yellow illuminated element denotes the minute.

If the hour and minute are the same, the element is divided equally. If one or other colour is not present, it denotes a zero.

The following times are shown for 00:20, 11:23, 15:15 and 23:00:

4. Letter Watch

Letters replace digits on this watch.

For the hours, the letters ‘a’ through ‘x’ represent digits 0 through 23.

For the tens of minutes, the space is a hyphen for zero, and then one of the five vowels for 1-5 — i.e. a = 1, e = 2, i = 3, o = 4, u = 5.

The units of minutes are represented by the letters ‘a’ through ‘z’, and change approximately every 23 seconds (23 x 26 = 598 seconds).

The following is what would be displayed for times 05:24:25, 12:09:01 and 22:57:59.

5. Planet Watch

The eight planets of the solar system are used to show the time.

The top row denotes the hours, with planets from left to right (distance from sun) representing the digits 1-8. Each planet can have up to three red dots beneath, representing an hour multiplied by either one, two or three.

The bottom row denotes the minutes: a new planet will appear, from left to right, every 7.5 minutes.

The faces below represent 08:19, 15:32 and 21:56.

What do you think? Would you wear a watch that told you the time like this?

Printing technology, then, continues to evolve. Yet while most people are looking for better laser and inkjet performance, Hoyoung Lee has designed a printer that works using pencils.

Seriously.

OK, the first time I saw this printer I was hoping that the pencil was controlled on some kind of robotic arm in order to form the letters by drawing them (logical, right?). In fact, the concept would grind up old pencils and then use electrically charge the wood and graphite dust and fuse it to the paper.

As if that notion wasn’t just a little surreal, there’s also an eraser section that — yep, you guessed it — grinds up pencil erasers so that previously ‘printed’ documents can be erased.

The mind boggles.

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Stéphane Massa-Bidal has some ideas.

Check out the virtual book covers for Flickr, LinkedIn, Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter, MySpace, Last.fm and FFFFOUND.

Each book cover has a cool illustration and subtitle, and all ten books have been designed to look as if they’re part of a series.

If they were real books I could imagine them turning up on Book Worship.

With traditional media increasingly winding up online, it’s an interesting concept putting Web 2.0 services into the context of print.

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Clearly not, as there’s a big red line under it in my text editor, but I think it has to be one for next year’s update of the Oxford English Dictionary, because it seems that you can stick an iPod on just about everything these days.

Take an everyday object and iPodify it by sticking an iPod-friendly dock on it.

Electrolux wants to iPodify one of its own products: a vacuum cleaner.

My first impression is a definite WTF because vacuuming is not generally known as a quiet activity. Yet the home appliance giant reckons it has created a cleaner that is “as silent as normal conversation”.

In other words, you can do the vacuuming and listen to your music at the same time thanks to the dock and built-in speakers.

Of course you need to have conducted a research study, too, and Electrolux has found that people get the vacuuming done more quickly and with less stress when listening to music.

That’s all very well, but if this wonder cleaner is so quiet, why can’t I just use my regular hi-fi to listen to music?

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While this Three Dee Power Socket design concept can’t do anything to help about the tangle of wires that emanate from peripherals and turn into plastic spaghetti, it could at least save some space and make the power strip or extension cord redundant.

It’s especially useful when you have things that need to be plugged in and out on a regular basis, such as cellphone chargers, as it expands and contracts as required.

When you’ve only got one thing to plug in, it sits flush on the wall and accepts a single plug, just like a normal power outlet. However, when you want two or more plugs from a single socket, it pulls out.

Generally, I’m not a fan of the traditional “cube” power block, partly because the old-fashioned ones can actually be a bit of a hazard if they’re not used properly. However, this one looks much more sturdy because it’s built in to the wall rather than being a separate unit.

It doesn’t exist yet, but you never know: someone might try to construct it.

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Having said that, this concept coffee machine does look interesting. The BeMoved machine has got the Douwe Egberts brand name on it, so it can’t be all that bad… can it?

The most important aspect of getting your coffee is getting it just right, and the large touchscreen’s primary purpose is to offer a range of options which make choosing style and ingredients easy.

While that coffee is brewing, the screen can also be used to check news, weather, sports and so on. Just don’t hold up the queue.

Apparently the concept was devised because “people wanted more interaction with their beverages”. I’m not sure about that — at least I love interacting with my freshly brewed coffee but only inasmuch as I quaff a cup or two of it every morning.

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Still, I love this concept. The Pac-Man shirt has our little yellow friend chomping up button dots, while the Tetris variant has a lot of coloured blocks at the base of the shirt and even a vertical block as the zip handle. Nice.

Even the clothing sizes reflect the design — the Pac-Man version comes in one (small), two (medium) and three (large) sizes, while the Tetris one is just available in small and large.

It comes with a little mallet, much like that found on a xylophone, which allows the user to know how much water (if any) is in the jug based on the tones made by the hammer when it strikes the body and the handle.

When the two tones are the same, the pitcher is empty, yet the fuller the jug is the higher the note emitted from the body, while the tone from the handle stays the same.

I guess it has some practical advantages for the visually impaired, or just as a cool little trick to know whether there’s water available without lifting the lid.

It’s a concept design by Petit Invention.

It doesn’t mention what this is in response to — Apple MacBook multitouch trackpad, perhaps, or the increasing number of mobile devices with touchscreens — but of course it is dependent on associated hardware to work correctly.

A device that could input touch data for two or more fingers could integrate with Firefox and allow for a number of commands to be executed without either mouse or keyboard shortcut input (though these could perhaps be used as modifiers).

What I really like is the “create new gesture” that would allow users to add their own commands — gesture macros if you like — which would execute based on a specific set of touch inputs.

This is something that’s not really been well explored on mainstream devices. Even the iPhone has a relatively small set of gestures in the main user interface, though individual apps could always add to this.

Having this in Firefox is all very well. Now how about it rolled out across the operating system. Both Apple and Microsoft are totally capable of doing this.

How about support for gesture input on other surfaces, like this really cool video on scratch input:

The keyboard has a lot of interesting applications, such as the ability to input basic gestures, gaming that reacts to varying key pressure, font size changes based on typing pressure, and typo correction.

The keyboard was developed by The Applied Sciences Group at Microsoft and was entered into the UIST 2009 student innovation contest.

Designed by Rhea Jeong and inspired by water droplets and musical notation, it has a tumbler toy built in to the base meaning that it will always self right itself.

In addition, spinning or pushing the speaker in different directions can be used to operate the iPod. Left and right (with the Shuffle facing you) would skip back and forward a track, front to back would pause and resume the music, while spinning it one way or the other would adjust the volume.

How about one for the iPod touch?

Not only does it serve a dual purpose (not at the same time, obviously) but it looks pretty good too.

The bottom hotplate takes care of tea, coffee and other drinks you want to stay hot by maintaining them at a constant temperature.

If you want it cold, the top section contains an impeller and motor for pushing out cold air.

To make it really obvious which function is being performed, the LEDs in the top section turn either red (for heating) or blue (for cooling).

The only problems are that this is currently a concept from designer Dmitriy Shcherbakov, and that it will only handle one cup at a time. A dual unit would be great, though I wouldn’t mind having a couple of these sitting next to each other on my work surface. Maybe they could even start communicating with each other via Bluetooth?

I love the sound and feel of real percussion and I’d never suggest that an electronic version could compete or substitute. However, you get a whole array of new sound possibilities with synthesizers and virtual instruments.

Take this concept electronic drum. Not only can it be used to trigger new sounds but it’s also visually appealing. Firstly, it’s lovely and curvy and is crying out to be touched. When you do, it’ll form a multicoloured impression of you hand on its surface.

Yes, it’s just a concept and I can’t really imagine one of the major instrument brands – Yamaha, Korg, Roland – making this, but perhaps some independent company might be able to work something out from it. If it could be hooked up via MIDI or OSC to a sequencer or alternative sound sources, or even to a huge lighting rig, I’d be sold on it.

More pictures at the link.

The shower controls and the shower head are both fitted with LEDs that are used to show how much time is remaining, and also what the temperature of the water is.

I could see this being useful at home, too, if you have someone who uses up all the hot water or takes forever in the shower each morning. Set the timer and cut the water off after a set period of time, or rig it so that it only pushes out cold water after ten minutes.

This is just a concept at present but one that shouldn’t be too hard to implement.

That is, apart from the concept ones which, by nature, don’t exist yet. Not in production, at least.

Take this one designed by Kamil Kurka from the Institute of Art and Design at tehe University of West Bohemia.

I have to say I like the silver and black one the best, but it might also come in other colours. How good the coffee would be from one of these machines is another matter, but there’s no way of knowing that until it’s made.

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