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A Standing Desk for the Rest of Us… the Lean Desk

leandesk1You’ve read the articles, seen the tweets and heard the news on talk radio – sitting is the new smoking. Bloodclots, organ damage, spine degeneration – sitting all day is as bad for you… but those stand up desks aren’t for you. They really aren’t for a lot of people. They sound great in concept – but can you really code all day in the stand-up position? Really?

Kentucky designer, Wayne Yeager, has come up with a compromise – the Lean Desk. Unlike sitting, it gets you up on your feet, but unlike standing, it takes 25% of your body’s weight off your feet.

Yeager has been cranking these out by hand and has launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring these into mass production. Compared to the commercial standing desks out there, the price is more than reasonable and the product is simply more practical. Standing desks are hard on your back and when you hurt, you lose your ability to be productive. Coders and geeks around the world, rejoice! The lean desk is here and people seem to love it (check out the video below).

The Lean Chair has already met double its funding goal on Kickstarter, but still has a few early bird options left to grab. The campaign ends in a little over two weeks.

You can follow the designer on Facebook, Twitter and on his website.

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Practical Design for Light-up Keychain Helps Geeks with Poor Night Vision

keylight2Geeks around the world have keys – keys to the house, to the office, to the lab (which might be just your man or lady cave – a closet, pillow fort or TuffShed) and we have issues at night with these things. We stare at flickering screens all day long. Our eyes are tired and as we age (especially the ladies), we can’t see squat at night. I’ve had mini mag lights and all kinds of things to light up my keys. I can’t always use my iPhone light because I’m carrying other stuff with one hand and fiddling with keys in the others. It’s never practical to try to aim a flash light at your keyhole while also trying to use the key – especially if you only have one hand free.

The designers Sanyo Tzeng and Julien Egger at Synthesis Labs have come up with a solution – a keyring in which the entire ring lights up – and brightly… Enter BEAM. Beam: The Luminous Keychain, is now on Kickstarter. You can follow Synthesis Labs on their website.

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