HTC Touch Diamond officially unveiled

HTC Touch Diamond
(Credit: HTC)
As expected, HTC officially took the wraps off the HTC Touch Diamond at a press conference in London Tuesday and great googly moogly, does this thing look hot! Not only does it look sexy from the outside with its sleek, black casing, but the Touch Diamond also features a revamped TouchFlo 3D interface that gives you a more animated and easier way to access your contacts, messages, and other content. You can do all this via the Diamond's gorgeous 2.8-inch, 680x480 VGA (yes, that's right, VGA) touch screen; plus, there's a new touch-sensitive control below the display to help you out.

The Touch Diamond is a lot more than just looks, though. The quad-band smartphone runs Windows Mobile 6.1 and has integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, GPS, and HSDPA support. HTC also noted that it will ship the Touch Diamond with a customized mobile Web browser that provides an optimized view of pages and lets you zoom and pan sites with one hand. In addition, the page orientation will automatically go from portrait to landscape mode when you turn the device sideways (hmm, sounds familiar. *cough, iPhone, cough, cough*) Other goodies include a 3.2-megapixel camera, 4GB internal storage, 256MB flash memory, and 192MB RAM.

The HTC Touch Diamond will start shipping in European markets this June, and then later in the quarter for Asia and the Middle East. As for us, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that we're actually getting our own version but unfortunately, we, as well as Latin American markets, will have to wait till the second half of 2008. Now, while the Touch Diamond certainly looks like a gem (sorry, had to do it), we're hoping it's more than just flash. And we couldn't help but be reminded of a similar-looking smartphone from Velocity Mobile. Mmm hmm, things just got interesting. Check out CNET UK's hands-on examination and our photo gallery of the HTC Touch Diamond.

World Clock Project

imagine a clock that transformed into a new clock every minute. well that is what the world clock project is aiming to create. the project is collecting images of clocks from around the world, each depicting a different minute of the day. their goal is to collect a photograph for every minute in the day from different clocks around the world, at which point they plan to create a 'digital picture clock'.

A New Life by Design

Words by Clara Young
Probably the last thing on any steelworker’s mind when they’re being laid off is art or design. In the small town of Hallefors (population 7600) in central Sweden、which lost a major part of its steel mill to the Chinese in 1989、it was moose and pike perch that the steelworkers were thinking of when they got their walking papers. 「They thought it [the lay-off] was temporary,」 said Lars Wieselgren、deputy directory of Hallefors』 House of Design. 「They thought they’d have a year or two off to go hunting and fishing.」

When the Chinese came and took down the plant in 1993、Hallefors realized that they had better start thinking of something else. The redundancy list had grown to a total of 3000 people、almost one third of the town’s population then、which itself was precipitously dropping. 「The municipal government realized that it was for real、and that we could lay down and die or try to do something,」 says Wieselgren. The government spent a year analyzing the situation and realized the future was spelled out for them… in four Cs – Competence、Culture、Creativity、Communication. 「Culture is a vector、something that carries knowledge over barriers. If you、as an individual、work through a creative process、you will feel that you have powers you were not aware of,」 says Wieselgren. Since then、Hallefors has slowly transformed itself into a culture node、with design as one of its rallying points. In 1999 the municipality set up a preparatory design school、which has been run by the House of Design since 2005. Together、with the nearby culinary art school set up by chef-entrepreneur Carl-Jan Grankvist and technical courses at the remaining steel mill、these educational programs bring in between 600 and 700 students a year from around Sweden、a few of whom have stayed and settled in Hallefors.

In 2005、Hallefors opened the House of Design、which operates as a museum、educational institution and artist/design exchange program. 「Dine、Design、Delight」、in 2004/5、was a collaborative workshop with Parsons The New School of Design and three Swedish universities with design、textile and culinary programs、with students producing sustainable fast food packaging ideas. For the following year’s 「Little Houses on Black River」 senior design students from 10 different countries designed and built three Swedish Friggebod、small flatpack prefab houses made out of sustainable materials. The project was exhibited at New York’s International Furniture Fair in May of last year and was awarded best student project. The House of Design is now planning another international project for 2008/9 on the subject of emergency shelters. These projects and Hallefors』 research facilities are turning the town into a laboratory for design experimentation、one with an increasingly international profile on the conference circuit. Hallefors』 broad cultural initiative has created over 200 jobs and stemmed the emigration flow – the population has now stabilized. Hallefors is on an upward trajectory、with the kind of hope and dynamism that few company towns have when the mills have shut down and the business gone elsewhere.

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