Sugar never was so sweet
Virginia Postrel blogs that MIT engineers are figuring out how to transmit electricity wirelessly. No more inconvenient lamp cords. Very exciting.
I nearly went insane trying to figure out how to task-light (new verb!) my kitchen work space. Hiding the cords wasn’t going to be a problem, but I liked the uninterrupted expanse of cobalt-blue acrylic I’d used as a backsplash and didn’t want to wreck it with a bunch of clip lights or floor lamps. Then I ran across a display of these at Tokyu Hands.
That picture is not all that far from actual size. Each light has a diameter of 3.2 centimeters at its widest point, and the whole thing is 7-ish centimeters long if you extend the lamp fully. You can hardly see it unless it’s turned on. And the light is powerful. Worked perfectly. Of course, I thought it was nice that the thing is supposed to save on energy and stuff, but it was the design that hooked me. (And no, I did not pay the full suggested list price given on the Kokuyo site. I probably am gay enough to spend the equivalent of US$200 on a light the size of an artichoke heart just because it won a design award, but I didn’t have to.)