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Ikea is ready to begin overhauling its smart home products. The Swedish furniture manufacturer began dabbling in smart home products as early as 2012, but in July it announced plans to soon debut a revamped range. The goal, it says, is to make products that are more universally compatible and more intuitive to usein other words, bringing the connected smart home experience to the masses. Now, Ikea’s 21 new smart home products are here. The collection includes new smart bulbs that come in more color and light intensity options than previous versions, an array of sensors and controls, and a smart plug that can make any “dumb” lamp or small appliance smart. Pricing and beginning availability date for the products will vary by market, according to the company. [Photo: Ikea] “Until now, smart home technology hasn’t been easy enough to use for most peopleor affordable enough for many to consider,” David Granath, Ikea of Sweden’s range manager, said in a statement. “This launch brings us closer to helping everyone feel ready and confident to get started.” The new line comes as Ikea faces falling sales for a second consecutive year. Ikea said last month that although the number of products sold was up, global revenue fell 1% to about $52 billion. The company is finding ways to reach new customers, like “shop-in-shop” locations inside select Best Buys in Texas and Florida that sells kitchen and laundry room items and extend the brand’s reach without having to build out new stores. The company says its smart home products were developed over years, through a design process that included in-home testing. Ikea says it wants everything it puts out to be intentional, and the strategy going forward will be to release new products if they’re cheaper and easier to use than its existing product line. “We believe technology should serve a purpose, not exist for its own sake,” Granath says. [Photo: Ikea] The company’s new Kajplats smart bulb range comes in 11 variations with options for color and white bulbs. The bulbs are also dimmable. The corresponding Bilresa remote controls come in two variations. One version has buttons that can switch the lights on and off, as well as adjust brightness and color, while a separate scroll wheel option gives an old-school iPod click wheel UI to home lighting. [Photo: Ikea] Ikea’s five new sensors include a motion sensor for indoor and outdoor lighting, as well as sensors for temperature and humidity, air quality, and water leakages. The water sensor, called Klippbok, was designed to be put under sinks and appliances. [Photo: Ikea] The Grillplats is an adaptable smart plug you can use to smarten up dumb lamps and appliances, so you can turn them on and off remotely. You can also pair it with remotes and motion sensors to track energy use. [Photo: Ikea] Ikea previously unveiled its smart home system hub Dirigera, a smart bluetooth speaker, and smart table lamp in a first look at its new smart home products earlier this summer. All of Ikea’s new products are compatible with Matter, a smart home technical standard. The smart home market size was nearly $128 billion in 2024, and it’s expected to roughly quadruple by 2030, according to Grand View Research, a market research firm. By revamping its smart home line and designing products meant to be cheap, useful, and intuitive, Ikea is positioning itself to capitalize on the rise of smart, connected homes.
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E-Commerce
Have you ever wondered how the letter A got its shape? Or why some fonts instantly look psychedelic? Or where the word text even came from in the first place? Kelli Anderson, a graphic artist, author, and master of all things paper, has asked all of those questionsand shes answering them with a massive new pop-up book called Alphabet in Motion. The book takes readers through an interactive journey about the history of typography from A to Z, starting in ancient Egypt and moving all the way into the digital age. But it’s no ordinary history tome. Anderson hand-designed 17 different pop-ups, including light projections to colorful sliders and mind-bending illusions, that demonstrate how humans have painstakingly developed type technologies over time better than a stand-alone blurb ever could. [Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson] With that artful addition in mind, Alphabet in Motion is really a set of books, including the two-inch-thick pop-up book and an accompanying 120-page-long, coffee-table ready book of essays, each corresponding to one of the pop-ups chapters. (There’s one chapter for each letter of the alphabet.) The book retails for $85 and is currently available for preorder on bookshop.org and Amazon. It will also be available at local bookstores across the country upon its release on November 18. [Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson] How ‘Alphabet in Motion’ dives into the fascinating history of letters Anderson released her last pop-up book, This Book is a Camera, back in 2015, and shed been dreaming up a new concept ever sincebut it wasn’t until she started researching the history of typography and the craft behind it, she says, that something clicked. She began work on Alphabet in Motion, with that catalyst, in 2019. [Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson] We inhabit this typographic reality where letters make us feel things, and providing some kind of satisfying explanation helps bring more meaning to why people are feeling those things, Anderson says. When you see psychedelic blobby letters, why does it remind you of the 1960s, Andy Warhol, and Development Underground? When you see different kinds of mod letters, why does that remind you of the space race era? [Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson] These questions, Anderson says, led her to some really unexpected places. After combing through historical type collections from sources like Londons St. Bride Foundation, books, and academic articles on the subject, she began to build a massive wall, held together by masking tape, full of all the examples shed discovered. At the same time, she spent thousands of hours experimenting with different cut paper pop-up mechanisms to demonstrate each concept. [Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson] I had certain pop-up mechanisms where I was like, Oh, this is so cool. I have to include this just for the razzmatazz element, Anderson says. And then it was a matter of figuring out where, with any integrity, I could place it to support a conceptbecause I didn’t want it to just be dancing bologna for dancing bologna’s sake. I wanted people to, once they read the text, understand, Oh, this is actually a demonstration of a concept that will help me understand this particular era of typographic technology. [Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson] And how psychedelic fonts got their shapes One typographic era that most fascinated Anderson was the early 60s, which is explored in-depth through Alphabet in Motion‘s chapters on the letter “J.” Anderson was curious why this period produced so many whimsically blobby, puffy, and even flared-looking letters. During her research, she discovered that these iconic hallmarks of the era were all thanks to a new technology called phototypesetting. [Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson] Phototypesetting allowed type designers to set type by shooting light through pieces of film, then projecting it on a photo paper and arranging it like a magazine layout. This breakthrough made typesetting vastly easier, quicker, and cheaper, since the most common earlier method was to use molten lead. [Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson] You had all of this experimentation, which is in line with the psychedelic experimentation of the era, Anderson says. There was all of this interest in bending and projection of light. And so if you went to a concert at the Fillmore or with Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, you might see go-go dancers with light images projected on them warping space. People were actually doing that when they were setting type, too. [Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson] With Alphabet in Motion, readers can experience a taste of that process for themselves. On the books page dedicated to the letter J, a paper cut-out pops up to become a projector for your iPhone, allowing you to use your flashlight to create a 60s-style typographic light show. [Image: courtesy Kelli Anderson] Thats just one example of how Alphabet in Motion uses tactile experiences to place typographic innovations in context. Other pages in the book include a 3D model that explains the development of uppercase and lowercase letters in the Roman Empire and European Middle Ages, respectively; a mini pop-up that describes the creation of early video game bitmap fonts; and an interactive page that shows how the early practice of weaving actually shaped our modern lettersand served as the basis for the word text itself. For Anderson, her biggest goal is that this six-year passion project will help introduce a new generation to the world of type design. I hope some people buy it for their little kids thinking it’s just an A through Z pop-up book, and enjoy it on that level, Anderson says. Then stick it back on the shelf and have their kid in 12 years open it up and actually realize that design and typography are interesting and tie in with the larger world and culturethat they’re not a separate thing.
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E-Commerce
Nintendo’s hard-line approach to piracy has shut down a streamer who seemingly specialized in unauthorized content. Jesse Keighin has been ordered to pay Nintendo $17,500 in damages after livestreaming gameplay footage of at least 10 different games on at least 50 occasions before the games were released to the public. Included among those were Super Mario Party Jamboree, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, and Pikmin 4. Keighin was served with takedown notices by Nintendo dozens of times for those streams. Yet he continued to air himself playing the games, encouraging viewers to support him on loco.gg, an Indian live-streaming and esports platform, if his other accounts were banned. Platforms would take the account down following Nintendo’s complaints. But after that happened, Keighin sent emails to Nintendo saying I have a thousand burner channels and [w]e can do this all day, according to the recommendation of the U.S. magistrate judge who oversaw the case. Nintendo also says Keighin had released links to repositories of ROMs (digital pirated games), including several that were Switch-specific. Those pirated copies are played via emulators, such as Yuzu. Yuzu was a target of Nintendo’s anti-piracy campaign last year. The video game company shut down the emulator, saying the team behind it had enabled piracy at a colossal scale. The Yuzu team agreed to pay $2.4 million and ended all operations. But in an email to Nintendo, Keighin vowed to actively help people find newer and updated copies of the software, which he said was still being developed underground, according to the judge’s recommendation. That cavalier attitude also led Keighin to ignore Nintendo’s repeated attempts to serve him with the lawsuit. His refusal to engage resulted in the case proceeding without him, which led to the default judgment. Nintendo has long taken an aggressive stance against piracy of its games, including emulator programs. Dolphin, an open-source emulator for the Nintendo Wii and GameCube, was a target of the gaming giant in 2023 when Dolphin’s developers announced plans to put its emulator on the Steam game distribution platform. Nintendo sent a cease-and-desist order to Valve, which pulled the listing. Days later, Dolphins developers announced: It is with much disappointment that we have to announce that the Dolphin on Steam release has been indefinitely postponed. A $17,500 judgment isnt pocket change, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the $4.5 million Nintendo is seeking against a now-former moderator on Reddit, after accusing him of facilitating a network of online websites that offered pirated Nintendo Switch games. Nintendo says in the filing that it could easily have demanded more, alleging that the defendant, James C. Williams, “not only copied and distributed Nintendo game files without authorization; he actively promoted their distribution and copying to thousands of others across a variety of websites and online ‘communities,’ and knowingly trafficked in unlawful software products aimed at circumventing Nintendos technological measures protecting against unauthorized access.” While the Switch remains important to Nintendo, the Switch 2 is driving more and more of the company’s revenue. On November 1, the company reported its fiscal Q2 earnings, noting it had sold 10.36 million Switch 2 units between June 5 and September 30 and was raising its sales estimate for the year. Thats twice the rate the Switch sold in the same time period. Nintendo now expects to sell 19 million Switch 2s before the end of March 2026. The original Switch has thus far sold 154.01 million units.
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