The material received the name of S.Cafe. and is completely organic, “does not use any chemicals” and is free from “harmful materials commonly found in other yarns.”
Source: Singtex Industrial Co., PSFK
Wearing coffee instead of drinking it!
Posted by Katrien on Tuesday July 14th 2009 at 15:00
A company in Taiwan has recently turned the well-know coffee bean into a “super high-tech eco fabric.” The process, created by Singtex Industrial Co., can produce two shirts from the amount of coffee grounds needed to make just “one medium cup of coffee”. The fabric is also said to be “quick-drying, odour controlling, and UV-protective.”
After the shoes … everything else follows
Posted by Katrien on Wednesday May 6th 2009 at 10:26
We all know the Nike ID configurator which enables you to build your own Nike shoe. And now - after the shoe - the rest follows! In the new BootRoom at London Oxford Street’s NikeTown, you can create your own customised Nike football kit for the entire team.
Source: rubbishcorp
Smart Fashion conference in Antwerp
Posted by Katrien on Friday March 13th 2009 at 08:15
Remember to keep 30 April 2009 available, since the Flanders Fashion Institute organises a conference on “Smart fashion: creativity and intelligent fabrics”.
The conference will take place in the Yohji Yamamoto Auditorium of Flanders Fashion Institute - ModeNatie, Drukkerijstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp.
The full programme can be found here!
Spoonflower: the test - part 1
Posted by Katrien on Tuesday February 24th 2009 at 14:14
A while back, we talked about two website - Spoonflower and Bonbonkakku - which make it possible to design your own fabric. And since you have to try (almost) everything in life, we decided to check out the working of Spoonflower.
The first question was of course: which design? After some brainstorming we decided to make our business cards (which we still don’t have) out of fabric! Not only because we’re both part of an research project concerning clothes, but the choice for fabric is also related to the name of this blog: Social Textiles!
A second question concerned the amount of fabric we would order. But since this first time is just an experiment: we’ve chosen for a swatch (8×8 inch or 20,3 x 20,3 cm). If it all goes well, we can always order a whole yard for each business card!
With some essential help of Maarten, the designer, the business cards were ready for print! And from there on, I took over and frankly, it was a piece of cake! After registering, I just had to upload the TIF-file that Maarten already made! The next step was choosing the lay-out of the design: center, repeat, half-step, half-brick or mirror. I went for the option repeat and indicated that I wanted to order a swatch. So, these options are on the right side of your computer window and on the left side, you see your design with an indication of the size (kind of a ruler).
So far so good, but when I looked at the design the colours in the Spoonflower menu were different than the ones in the original TIF-file. However my attention was drawn to a title called “preview color shift” in the left corner. This was a short, but clear text explaining that:
If you observe colors shifting in the preview: don’t worry. We print from your original file, not the preview.
So what’s up?: TIFF files and LAB colors won’t display in browsers, so to create this preview the Spoonflower elves have translated your original into a PNG file with RGB colors. Despite their care, color shift can occur.
This preview is created to give you a sense of the size and placement of your design in repeat.
When the elves prepare your file to print, they use a very fancy digital textile workstation that operates directly from your original file.
Most folks are really happy with the result, but if for any reason you aren’t, just let us know and we’ll reprint or refund your order.
Please keep in mind that colors on a computer monitor are not the same as colors printed on fabric, so if you’re sensitive about getting just the right color you’ll want to order a swatch first.
Unfortunately textile design and the web haven’t spent a lot of time together. As a matter of fact, we’ve only recently introduced them, but we hope the marriage will be long and fruitful! We’re working very hard to improve the accuracy of this preview. Apologies for any flaws.
So, I was reassured and went on with my order. I can say that I’m very anxious about the result. And as soon as that little piece of fabric arrives, I’ll let you know!
Internet Archaeology - history and sketches of Twitter (in 503 characters)
Posted by Niels Hendriks on Monday February 2nd 2009 at 11:02
The immenseley popular Social Media tool Twitter was founded in March 2006 by Evan Williams (@ev), Biz Stone (@Biz) and Jack Dorsey (@jack) who all worked at the podcasting company Odeo. The initial idea of Twitter however, started already in 2000 and came from a frustration from Jack Dorsey who was quite active at LiveJournal but wanted to create an even more ‘live’ journal: “Real-time, up-to-date, from the road.” He tried to slip the idea of live status updates into each project he was working on, but it was only at a daylong brainstorm at Odeo that he found the right people to start Twitter.
First Sketch of Twitter by Jack Dorsey
The initial use case for Twitter they worked on, was strongly linked to your mobile phone and text messaging and was city related: “Telling people that the club he’s at is happening. I want to have a dispatch service that connects us on our phones using text.” The first name one of the users came up with was friendstalker, but eventually became twttr, a name which was -self evidently- inspired by flickr, but also by the fact that American SMS shortcodes are five characters. Still, from the very first beginning they were using the name twitter (with the vowels) but had to halfly launch at twttr.com as they didn’t own www.twitter.com yet.
Twitter used to call Twttr - Mind the green logo.
As Odeo needed to lay off a few of the founding fathers of Twitter a new home for this instant status update-service was needed. Obvious was born and it had the sole purpose of being the incubator for Twitter (in April 2007 Twitter got its own company -Twitter inc- with Jack Dorsey as a CEO). For a long while Twitter stayed in private beta and had the opportunity to grow in close contact with (and thus with a lot of feedback from) a small number of first user and enthusiasts. Now, Twitter seems to be the new popular kid on the social media block as it has by one measure over 3 million accounts and, by another, well over 5 million visitors in September 2008, a fivefold increase in a month (source: wikipedia).
Trivia:
- There were no whales, nor birds in the beginning. The initial mascot was an indian (asian?) girl
- One of the initial team members Dom Sagolla is working on a book called “140 Characters
A literary guide for terse content” - The initial Twitter (or should I say twttr) colour was green
- The short code to send your message to the Twitter service was “89887″ (which reads TWTTR on the numeric pad of your cell phone). It was later changed to 40404 as this was much easier to remember
- The initial Twitter question to trigger action was not “What are you doing?” but the more informal “what are you up to?”
Indian (asian?) girl - the first mascot of Twitter
You’re on Twitter? Cool! I’m on Twitter too…
via: Wikipedia - 140 characters - Flickr
Internet Archaeology - 1981 - News via your computer!
Posted by Niels Hendriks on Thursday January 29th 2009 at 15:40
“When the telephone connection between these two terminals is made, the newest form of electronic journalism lights up Mr Howards television.”
Maybe something which has few links with social media or online customisation (the two major themes of this blog), but Robin Wauters (Techcrunch, Plugg.eu,…) posted an intersting and -in my view- entertaining video from 1981. In the video above you can watch a news report from these prehistoric internet days. Journalist Steve Newman investigates a new system (called The Electronic Examiner) which connects home computers with a server. After two hours of downloading (!) you could read the newspaper (“With the exception of pictures, ads, and the comics” ). User Richard Halloran (who “owns a home computer”, the caption in the news report says) seems quite satisfied with the service.
The Electronic Examiner was thus launched some twenty years before Krishna Barat, a principal scientist at Google, would develop Google News (and it was some 25 years before Google News left its beta phase).
via: Robin Wauters - Techcrunch