Can we fix it? Yes we can

Welcome to Idealog Weekly, the free email newsletter for New Zealand commercial creatives, entrepreneurs and anyone rich with ideas.

Can we fix it? Yes we can

Head, shoulders, knees and hips, knees and hips. Everyone’s joints wear out sooner or later, so it makes sense to be in the business of fixing them. And we are. Kiwis are knocking joints into place with specially-designed instruments so precise that if they made them any smaller they’d literally take the buzz out of playing Operation. Read more about our quickly-growing medical technology industry on our website.

Get down to the TUANZ

In this age of computer-generated music and Britney lip synchs there aren’t too many reasons to break out the accordion. But clearly the TUANZ awards is one of them, and Ernie Newman is taking full advantage. Play that funky music!

Put your money in your underwear

Barkers Menswear isn’t in the habit of following in the stilettos of women’s chain stores, but that’s exactly what it’s doing with its new fundraising venture. The Barkers Boxers for Prostate Cancer campaign pays homage to the Glassons T-shirts for Breast Cancer crusade—but with even greater eye-catching results. Neemia Tialata, Dick Frizzell and Chris Knox are among the celebrity designers, and Ruben Wiki, Alison Mau and Boh Runga are among the celebrity exhibitionists. To see them in their undies—oh, and to buy said undies, visit Barkers600Alive.

Post winter padding

Speaking of that Dick Frizzell, don’t forget you can win one of 40 Tiki Print cushions from Eon Design Centre worth $189 just by buying the latest issue of your favourite magazine from any Foodtown, Woolworths or Countdown supermarket. (Yes, that’s Idealog.)

Be brutal and win some sweet sounds

We want your opinion. We want it so badly that we have some shiny new Apple hi-fi kit to give away to our opinionated readers. Fill out the readers’ survey on our website and you’re in the draw to win an awesome iPod Hi-Fi worth $599 and an AirPort Express to stream music around your home. The survey will take about 10 minutes, is mainly multi-choice and we do pay attention to what people tell us! So get clicking.

 

iPod Hi-Fi

Fill your home with sound, not stereo components. Keep your music collection at your fingertips, not in countless CD cases. Change the way you experience digital music. For $599, iPod Hi-Fi delivers crystal-clear, high-quality sound in a clean, compact design. Hear, hear.

AirPort Express

Enjoy your iTunes music library in virtually any room of your house or several rooms at once. Share a single broadband Internet connection and USB printer without inconvenient and obtrusive cables. Create an instant wireless network on the go. Extend the range of your current wireless network. How many devices do you need to do all this? Just one: the Airport Express. Featuring AirTunes for playing your iTunes music wirelessly on your home stereo or powered speakers, AirPort Express (retail value $169) brings not only the Internet but your music to wherever in your home you like to enjoy them most, whether you use a Mac or PC.

Hate on wheels

Here’s a blog about a pretty cool looking car—if not a somewhat dangerous sounding one, where the driver sits between two passengers. But the really interesting bit is Nissan designed it in response to a survey that discovered young people hate cars. Has the world turned on its axis? Next businessmen will be saying ‘Money? Nah, not that fussed on it.’

It’s a match made in a factory

If you love museums but aren’t all that fond of moving, log onto The Matchbox Museum. There you’ll find a gallery of matchboxes through the ages, including some doozies. ‘Eat more turkey, feel perky’, for example, has nothing whatsoever to do with smoking, but if you’re getting sound nutritional advice from three square inches of cardboard, who cares?

It’s raining sun

And here’s another one for you lazy virtual museum-goers: the Sunshower allows you to get clean and tanned at the same time. You know, cos lying in the sun then walking to the bathroom can really take it out of you. And if you quite like the idea of turning into a complete human slug—albeit a nicely tanned one—you can add a TV to your bathroom set up. Not recommended for flatting situations.

Webstock

… is back. Just like its musical namesake it will be full of long-haired layabouts and high-tech equipment. The attendees are likely to be slightly more coherent though.

The architect behind slow design is coming to New Zealand to get us up to speed on sustainable issues. Catch Alistair Faud-Luke at the DINZ Conference on October 3.

Enter this competition to design the best Kiwi nibble and win a dish drawer to clean up all your experimental mess. The winning entry will be up for display and digestion at the second NZ Designer’s Saturday in Dunedin on November 9–17.

Check out Idealog’s events guide, Agenda, online and in print. Anyone can add an event to Agenda—just fill out the form on our website.

Quote of the week

“We’re never going to be a large-scale manufacturer. We can’t compete. We’ve got a brand that says ‘different’, that’s a little bit ‘designy’. Our future has to be in intellectual property”

—Stephen O’Neill, chief exective of Enztec, in ‘Head, Shoulders Knees and Toes’

More at Idealog online

Read more on our website: web exclusives, opinion, Idealog IP, the Idealog blogs and the Idealog podcast. See you at idealog.co.nz.

  Gena Tuffery
  Senior writer

Idealog Weekly is sent to friends, subscribers and registered website users of Idealog magazine.