Click n Cook: Modular Cooking Utensils

Quirky's Click n Cook system of cooking utensils, invented by Fred Ende, it consists of five commonly used utensils and just one handle, which snaps into each like a razor handle does with disposable blades.

Here's the video of its design and development process:

Making Good Use of Tree Branches as Household Hooks

Etsy seller Gabriel Rutledge makes hers out of green maple twigs mounted to a distressed wooden board.

John Robohm's Live Wire Farm is a Vermont-based outfit that manufactures goods from local hardwoods, and judging by all of the SOLD stamps on their website, does a brisk business in hooks.

Homemaker Graca Paz cobbled up a set from local materials and documented it on her blog dedicated to living in the Portugese countryside.

Another Etsy seller, Jack Pollner, takes advantage of New Hampshire's snowfalls to harvest his raw materials. After heavy snow fills the area around his house with downed branches, Pollner collects them, cuts them to size and assembles them into hook racks.

Corner Ladder

Corner Ladder by Company and Company, the Barcelona-based design quartet comprised of Allan Legaspi, Neus Company, Juan Pablo Ospina and Jorge Freyre.

Genie: Motion Control Time Lapse Device

Industrial designer Chris Thomson and cinematographer Ben Ryan, under their company named Syrp, have created a simple, portable, and clever device to help shooters regulate motion control. Called the Genie, it doesn't take up much more space than the SLR body it's meant to be attached to, and it allows the user to program in both rotating and panning features.

Most impressive hackability function of the device; it can propel itself along by a provided rope, the camera can go anywhere you're willing to string that rope, either using an optional track or something you whip up yourself, like a few pieces of wood nailed together or even a skateboard.

Watch their amusing video below:

Respond Mechanical Coat Rack

Berlin-based designer Nicole Schindelholz has managed to weave kinetic interest into what's ordinarily a rather staid object: The coat rack. What could be mistaken for gears are actually blocks of wood, precision-cut into blocks or trapezoids and glued to either side of a flexible strip, allowing the assembly to bend in a snake-like way.

While the motion of the Respond Mechanical Coat Rack does not provide a functional benefit, that's not what it's about—Schindelholz, a former Swiss schoolteacher turned Eindhoven grad, had a different motive:

Today, more and more products are simple on the outside and complicated on the inside. people cannot understand the products anymore and they lose the control over them. concerning this development, the desire of understanding a product while using it decreases. with this project, I have taken the opposite tack, to ensure that people can see how a product works, so that they can enjoy understanding how technology works. it is my aim to set people thinking, so that they really perceive the world with the help of their eyes and their hands.

"respond" is an interactive coat rack, which moves when a coat is hung on it. it is an ingenious weight system, using precision carpentry and the element of surprise. after all, surprise arouses curiosity, and curiosity can lead you to the pleasure of understanding.

Video of its look in motion:

Umbra Clock: Modern-day Indoor LED Sundial

Roshan Hakkim made two observations from the past, one from his own and one from human history's. The first was that "As kids we were always amazed by the change in our shadow lengths according to the sun position," he writes. The second was that ancient humans used the position of the sun and shadows to create sundials, the first time-telling devices.

Inspired by these things, Hakkim came up with the Umbra clock.

The [Umbra] clock works on the principle of shadow and lights.... By using TWO LIGHT sources which creates TWO SHADOWS, time can be communicated by altering the shadow length.

UMBRA uses 2 LED strips.

1. Inner Strip - 24 LEDs. Projects minute hand shadow as it is the nearest, hence a longer shadow.

2. Outer Strip - 12 LEDs. Projects hour hand shadow as it is further compared to the inner strip, hence shorter.

UMBRA visually defies the language of a normal clock. Its not a flat block which fits onto the wall. It has a volume and a poetic approach to it. It could be placed vertically or horizontally as it has a layer of gecko tape behind.