13 March 2009

Trendables -- 6 products that can

-able, everyone's favorite "can-do" adjective suffix, is enjoying a revival. 20-some years since its heyday, we've found it stitched to no less than six modern product names, deriving for them a certain adroitness that a lonesome noun mightn't have provided. And two of these products, as it happens, have been demoed at TED.

1. Siftables: The cookie-sized computers with motion sensing, neighbor detection, graphical display, and wireless communication. (See David Merrill's demo of Siftables at TED2009.)

2. Inventables: A subscription service used by consumer product companies who want to create unique products. (Watch Keith Schact and Zach Kaplan show off products from the future.)

3. Instructables: A how-to and DIY community where people make and share inspiring, entertaining, and useful projects, recipes and hacks. (Watch Saul Griffith show hardware solutions to everyday problems.)

4. Mashable: Touted as the world's largest Web 2.0- and social networking-related news blog.

5. Reactable: An electronic music instrument with a slick, multi-touch interface.

6. Lunchables: Children's meal combinations, often called "the taste of elementary school" by the Gen Y cohort.

Give us more examples in the comments, if you are capable.

(Image: Mike Femia)

Posted by Matthew Trost | Permalink

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30 October 2008

Toys from the future: The Inventables guys on TED.com

The Inventables guys, co-founders Zach Kaplan and Keith Schacht, demo some amazing new materials and how we might use them. Look for squishy magnets, odor-detecting ink, "dry" liquid and a very surprising 10-foot pole. (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, California. Duration: 15:46.)

Watch Zach Kaplan and Keith Schacht's 2005 demo on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 300+ TEDTalks -- including more talks about inventions.

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