Author Archives: JC Torres

DeckTop Makes the Steam Deck and ROG Ally Feel Like Tiny Laptops

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The Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and Legion Go are powerful little PCs that still behave like oversized controllers when you actually need to type, browse, or use desktop mode. Most people end up juggling a separate keyboard, mouse, and stand. DeckTop by Invensic takes a different approach, a clamp-on keyboard and trackpad that tries to give these handhelds a laptop posture without turning them into dock-only machines stuck next to a monitor.

Invensic frames DeckTop as a Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad you can mount to your Steam Deck, with a 360-degree swivel and multicolor LED backlighting. It is sold as a Steam Deck accessory but is also designed to work with Steam Deck OLED, Killswitch cases, ROG Ally, and Legion Go, so it is really a general handheld shell that treats all of them like screens on a tiny notebook.

Designer: Invensic

The folding clip has spring-loaded arms that grab onto the handheld and connect to the keyboard via a swivel hinge. The hinge lets you tilt and rotate the device through a full circle, so you can find a comfortable viewing angle on a desk, on a tray table, or on a couch. When you are done, the clip folds flat over the keyboard, bringing the whole thing down to about 1 inch thick, so it actually fits in a bag.

The low-profile keyboard has multicolor backlighting, and the integrated trackpad sits below the space bar. Brightness and color can be changed with simple key combos, and the trackpad supports single-finger tap for left-click and two-finger tap for right-click, just like a laptop. The idea is to give you a familiar input surface for desktop mode, emulators, and web browsing without reaching for a separate mouse.

DeckTop connects over Bluetooth, so there is no cable between the keyboard and the handheld, only whatever USB-C cable you are already using for power or docking. Invensic calls out low latency, which is fine for typing, navigation, and most games, but serious competitive players will still prefer a wired or 2.4 GHz setup. For travel and couch use, though, the wireless link keeps the whole rig clean and portable.

The spring-loaded arms are wide enough to handle bare devices and chunky cases like Killswitch, and the same deck can be swapped between different handhelds. The dual cinch straps on the back let you mount a power bank, turning the whole thing into a self-contained clamshell with extra runtime. It is a small detail, but it acknowledges that these devices burn through batteries fast when you treat them like laptops.

DeckTop does not magically transform a Steam Deck into a MacBook, but it does make writing, modding, remote desktop, and light productivity feel less like a hack and more like a supported mode. Whether or not you use it every day, it sits in a useful middle ground between treating a handheld as a pure gaming device and wishing you had brought a laptop instead.

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NES-inspired 8BitDo Retro Cube 2 Has a D-Pad for Volume and Playback

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Most small Bluetooth speakers are generic cylinders or bricks that sit somewhere on a desk and do not really belong to the rest of the setup. At the other end, you have sculptural, art-piece speakers that look great in a gallery photo but feel out of place next to a gaming keyboard. The 8BitDo Retro Cube 2 Speaker – N Edition sits in between, a speaker that actually looks like it belongs on a gamer’s or retro-leaning desk.

8BitDo calls it compact, powerful, and timeless, inspired by the NES and upgraded from the original Cube Speaker. The N Edition is part of the NES40 Collection, designed to sit next to the N40 keyboard and Ultimate 2 controller as a matching sound cube. The grey body, red grilles, and black D-pad top are NES shorthand translated into a speaker, not just random retro dressing borrowed from another era.

Designer: 8BitDo

The top surface is a D-pad layout with a central button, plus and minus on the sides, a power icon at the top, and play/pause at the bottom. You control volume, playback, and pairing with a familiar gamepad language instead of tiny, unlabeled buttons. It is simple, tactile, and instantly recognizable if you have ever held a controller, which makes it feel more like part of a gaming setup than a generic Bluetooth puck that could live anywhere.

The connectivity offers Bluetooth 5.3, 2.4G wireless via the included USB-C adapter, and wired USB audio. Bluetooth is fine for casual listening, but 2.4G and USB give virtually lag-free audio for games and video. The adapter hides in a slot under the dock when not in use, which keeps it from wandering off and makes it easy to move the cube between a laptop, a Switch, or a desktop without digging through a drawer for dongles.

The integrated wireless charging dock is a small square base with a circular pad marked by a lightning-bolt icon and a perforated ring. The dock keeps the cube powered and also acts as a signal extender for 2.4G, so you get better reception when it is parked. It doubles as a visual plinth, lifting the cube slightly and making the whole thing read as one object instead of a speaker plus a random charging pad that does not quite match.

The tech specs are dual 5 W drivers, 120 Hz–15 kHz frequency response, and a 2,000 mAh battery with around 30 hours of use and 3–5 hours of charging. It is slightly larger than a Rubik’s Cube, which makes it ideal for near-field listening on a desk or nightstand. Music and Gaming modes let you tweak the tuning with a single press, so you can lean into clarity for calls or a bit more punch for games.

Retro Cube 2 behaves as a desk companion that actually earns its footprint. It sits next to a keyboard and mouse like a tiny console, charges itself when you drop it on the dock, and gives you a D-pad to poke at instead of a phone screen when you want to skip a track. Whether or not you already own the matching keyboard and controller, a small NES-flavored speaker with a wireless dock and three connection modes is the kind of object that quietly makes a desk feel more finished, especially if you still remember what a D-pad felt like the first time you pressed one.

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This Doughnut Chair Has One Bite Missing, and That’s Your Seat

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Most chairs are clearly assembled objects, with legs, a seat, and a backrest, all stacked and joined together. Sculptural lounge pieces sometimes flip that script and feel more like a single volume that has been carved or sliced. Chunk is a concept that leans into that second approach, imagining seating as a doughnut with a bite taken out rather than a frame with cushions bolted on, treating furniture as something you edit rather than assemble.

The designer imagined a chair that looks like a doughnut with a chunk removed. The missing piece becomes the seat and the opening for the backrest, while the rest of the ring wraps around in a continuous loop. The concept is less about novelty and more about seeing how far a single looping form can be pushed into something you can actually sit in, where the absence of material defines the place for the body.

Designer: Liam de la Bedoyere

Both the seat and backrest share the same oval cross-section, but as the base curves up to become the backrest, that oval quietly swaps its length and width. It is wide and low where you sit, then gradually becomes tall and narrow as it rises behind you. The section never breaks; it just morphs along the path, which gives the chair a sense of motion even when it is still and empty.

The “bite” creates a bowl-like seat that cradles the hips and thighs, while the rising loop offers a relaxed backrest rather than a rigid upright. The proportions suggest a low, lounge-style posture, closer to a reading chair or a corner piece in a living room than a dining chair. The continuous curve encourages you to lean back and sink in, not perch on the edge ready to stand again.

A near-cylindrical form can look like it might roll away, but the geometry and internal structure are tuned to keep the center of gravity low and slightly behind the seat. The base is subtly flattened, and a denser core at the bottom would keep it from tipping forward when someone leans back. The result is a chair that looks precarious from some angles but behaves like a grounded lounge piece once you sit.

The monolithic upholstery, a textured fabric that wraps the entire volume without obvious breaks, reinforces the idea of a single chunk of material. The form reads differently as you move around it, sometimes like a shell, sometimes like a curled leaf, sometimes like a coiled creature. It is the kind of chair that anchors a corner or gallery-like space, inviting you to walk around it before you decide to sit down and settle in.

Chunk uses subtraction as its main design move, starting from a complete ring and then removing just enough to create a place for the body. For a category that often defaults to adding parts, there is something satisfying about a chair that feels like it has been edited down to a single, looping gesture, with one decisive bite turning an abstract volume into a place to rest, read, or just sink into for a while.

The post This Doughnut Chair Has One Bite Missing, and That’s Your Seat first appeared on Yanko Design.

Tray210 Proves Recycled Plastic Doesn’t Have to Look Grey and Boring

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Recycled plastic products often fall into two camps: grey utilitarian bins or loud, speckled experiments that feel more like proof of concept than something you want on your desk. Tray210 recycled, a collaboration between Korean studio intenxiv and manufacturer INTOPS under the rmrp brand, takes a different approach, using recycled plastics and waste additives to create a tray that feels like a considered object first and an eco story second, treating material diversity as part of the design language.

Tray210 recycled is a circular tray with three compartments, an evolution of the original Tray210 form. It grew out of INTOPS’ grecipe eco-material platform and hida’s CMF proposals, which is a long way of saying it is the result of a tight loop between material science and industrial design. The goal was to pursue material diversity and break away from the cheap recycled stereotype, making something that belongs in sight rather than hidden under a desk.

Designer: Intenxiv x INTOPS

The form is intuitive, a 210 mm circle with a raised, ribbed bar running across the middle and two shallow wells on either side. The central groove is sized for pens, pencils, or chopsticks, and the ribs keep cylindrical objects from rolling away. The side compartments are open and shallow, perfect for earbuds, clips, rings, or keys. It is the kind of layout you understand at a glance without needing instructions or labels; just place your pen where the grooves are.

The material story is where Tray210 recycled gets interesting. Multiple recycled blends reflect their sources: Clam and Wood use 80 percent recycled PP with shell and wood waste, Charcoal adds 15 percent charcoal to 80 percent recycled PP, and Stone uses 10–50 percent recycled ABS. Transparent and Marble variants use recycled PC or PCABS with ceramic particles or marble-like pigment. Each colorway is visually tied to its waste stream, making the origin legible and intentional.

The aim is to create a design closer to the lifestyle rmrp pursues, breaking away from the impression recycled plastic generally gives. The Clam and Wood versions read as soft, muted pastels with fine speckling, Charcoal feels like a deep, almost architectural grey, and Stone and Transparent lean into translucency and particulate. Instead of hiding the recycled content, the CMF work uses it as texture and character, closer to terrazzo or stoneware than to injection-molded scrap that just happens to be grey.

The combination of clear zoning and tactile surfaces makes Tray210 recycled feel at home on a desk, entryway shelf, or bedside table. The central groove keeps your favorite pen or stylus always in the same place, while the side wells catch whatever tends to float around, from SD cards to jewelry. The different material stories let you pick a version that matches how you want the space to feel: calm, earthy, industrial, or a bit more playful.

A simple tray can carry a lot of design thinking, from intuitive ergonomics to material storytelling and responsible sourcing. Tray210 recycled is not trying to save the world on its own, but it does show how recycled plastic can be turned into something you actually want to touch and keep in sight. For people who care about both what an object does and what it is made from, that is a quiet but meaningful upgrade over another anonymous catch-all that eventually ends up in a drawer.

The post Tray210 Proves Recycled Plastic Doesn’t Have to Look Grey and Boring first appeared on Yanko Design.

Nocs Braque Stacks Two Cubes into a 25kg Sculptural Stereo System

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Most hi-fi speakers still look like anonymous black rectangles, even when they sound great. A few brands treat speakers as furniture or sculpture, but often at the expense of engineering. Braque by Nocs tries to sit in the middle, a pair of cubes that are as considered visually as they are technically, treating stereo as both sound and composition rather than one serving the other as an afterthought.

Nocs calls Braque “two cubes, one sculptural stereo system,” and each speaker is a stacked pair, a CNC-machined plywood enclosure on top of a 25 kg solid-steel base. Built in numbered editions, assembled in Estonia with the steel cube handcrafted in Sweden, and tuned back at Nocs Lab, Braque signals that this is not a mass-market soundbar or a safe play for casual listeners who just want something wireless.

Designer: Nocs Design

The upper cube is rigid plywood finished in deep matte-black oil, chosen for tonal warmth and acoustic integrity, and the lower cube is a hand-welded, brushed steel block that anchors the system physically and visually. Sorbothane isolation pads sit between them, decoupling the enclosure from the base so the driver can move without shaking the furniture or smearing the soundstage. Together, the two volumes form a study in symmetry, a minimal yet expressive composition.

The acoustic core is an 8-inch Celestion FTX0820 coaxial driver with a 1-inch compression tweeter at its center, powered by dual Hypex FA122 modules delivering 125 W per side with integrated DSP. The coaxial layout gives a point-source image, and the active 2-way design lets Nocs control crossover and EQ precisely, resulting in a 42 Hz–20 kHz response that is tuned rather than guessed at from a passive circuit.

Nocs describes their studio-sound approach as tuning like sculpture, not adding but uncovering, working with artists and engineers to balance emotion, texture, and detail. The dual-cube design is part of that, lifting the driver to ear height when seated and using mass and isolation to keep the presentation clean and stable at real-world volumes. The idea is that a speaker should reveal music rather than shape it into a brand’s house curve.

Braque offers both analog and digital inputs, RCA and XLR for analog, plus S/PDIF, AES/EBU, and coaxial for digital, and it is meant to connect directly to turntables with a phono stage, streamers, or studio interfaces. There is no built-in streaming or app layer, which feels intentional; you bring your own source and let the speakers handle amplification and conversion from there without trying to be a whole ecosystem.

Braque behaves in a living room or studio as two strict cubes that read like small pieces of Cubist architecture until you press play. For people who want their speakers to be part of the composition of a space, not just equipment pushed into corners, the combination of Celestion drivers, Hypex power, and that heavy steel base makes Braque feel like a very deliberate answer to how a stereo should look and sound in 2025, where form and performance finally coexist without one apologizing for the other.

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Iris Sconce: Hand-Shaped Glass Wall Light Where No Two Are Identical

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Most LED sconces are thin metal plates and diffusers, designed to disappear into a wall and quietly meet a lumen spec. That approach is efficient but rarely memorable. The Iris Sconce by Siemon & Salazar is the opposite, a fixture that leans into glass and bronze as expressive materials and treats light as something sculpted rather than simply emitted, turning a functional wall mount into a small piece of living craft.

The studio describes Iris as a piece that uses mottled clear thick glass and a cast-bronze heat sink to balance ancient craft with a forward-looking spirit. Each sconce is shaped by hand, with molten crystal poured directly and manipulated immediately, so no molds are used and no two patterns are alike. The result is a fixture that feels more like a living object than a repeated product, where the character comes from the glass itself.

Designers: Caleb Siemon, Carmen Salazar

The glass is lead-free crystal that starts as a glowing pool poured from a crucible, then worked while still hot to create ripples, grooves, and thickness variations. That hot-forming process, without molds, means each disc has its own outline and internal weather. For a designer or homeowner, that translates into a wall of light where every piece has a slightly different voice, and where the surface feels more like water frozen mid-flow than a stamped shade.

The cast-bronze element at the center acts as both a heat sink for the LED and a visual anchor. Its rough, hammered surface contrasts with the smooth glass, and it reads like a pupil, a seed, or a small meteor embedded in crystal. The bronze conducts heat away from the LED, but it also brings warmth and weight to the composition, grounding the otherwise ethereal glass and giving the sconce a core you can read even from across the room.

The thick, textured glass behaves more like a lens than a shade, bending and scattering light into a halo on the wall. The LED sits behind the bronze center, so light spills around it into the glass and then out into the room as a corona of streaks and soft gradients. The effect is less about a beam and more about a field, turning a blank wall into part of the fixture itself.

Iris is sized to work as a single focal point above a mirror or as a series along a corridor, and it can be mounted on walls or ceilings. Because no molds are used, grouping several creates a field of related but non-identical eyes or flowers, which suits projects where lighting is meant to be seen. The integrated LED keeps the profile relatively shallow, and the bronze heat sink means the fixture can run for years without fading.

Iris reminds you that even a code-compliant LED fixture can carry the marks of molten glass and cast metal. Each sconce is genuinely unique, not just in finish but in shape and pattern. For people tired of flat panels and generic cylinders, it feels like a small argument for bringing a bit of studio craft back into the everyday act of turning on the lights, where every time you flip a switch, you are also lighting up a piece that was poured, shaped, and cooled into something one of a kind.

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Auk Mini Grows 4 Herbs on Your Counter, No App or Pump Required

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The usual indoor herb story goes like this: supermarket pots that die in a week, plastic hydroponic kits that look like lab equipment, and a general mismatch between those gadgets and a carefully considered kitchen. Auk Mini is a Scandinavian take on the problem, a compact indoor garden designed to live on the counter without screaming appliance, especially in its new cork-wrapped edition that adds sustainable texture to clean lines.

Auk Mini is the smaller sibling to Auk’s original six-pot system, a four-pot hydroponic planter that has already sold more than 100,000 units. The base is now available wrapped in natural cork, alongside oak and walnut finishes, turning the planter into something closer to furniture than a gadget. It ships with a 100-day money-back guarantee and has won awards from T3 and Esquire, but the story is the cork and how it changes presence.

Designer: Auk

The core hardware is a 17.5 × 8.5 inch base with four oval pots over a 0.8 gallon reservoir, flanked by wooden uprights holding a full-spectrum LED bar. There is no pump or app; you fill the tank, add nutrients, set the light cycle, and plants wick water through coco fiber. The light runs a long “summer day” schedule, and you top up water every week or two, checking the side wheel that turns red when empty.

The material mix uses recyclable ABS for the base, recycled aluminum for the light, and American timber for the uprights, then adds the cork wrap. Cork brings warmth, texture, and a sustainable story, softening the white plastic and metal into something that feels at home next to cutting boards and ceramics. The oak and walnut options do a similar job, but cork has a quieter, more neutral presence that works across more interiors.

Auk Mini ships with basil and parsley seeds, but you can use any brand’s seeds, as the system deliberately avoids pod lock-in. Herbs and salads are usually ready in four to six weeks, tomatoes and chilies in eight to twelve. The ideal temperature is around 69–79 °F, and a single crop can last four to ten months if you harvest little by little from the top, encouraging new growth and keeping the plants productive.

Maintenance is a simple loop: refill water and nutrients, harvest regularly, and occasionally swap out the coco fiber. Auk sells refill kits with coco fiber and nutrients for $35, and recommends fresh fiber for each new crop, though you can reuse it. Cleaning between crops is a quick rinse and wipe, not a full teardown, which keeps the system feeling more like a kitchen tool than a science project.

Auk Mini, especially in cork, is designed to disappear into daily life. It is a planter that looks good enough to leave out, a light that doubles as a soft counter glow, and a routine that boils down to topping up water and snipping herbs. For people who want fresh basil without babysitting pots on a windowsill or dealing with finicky smart gardens, it feels like a quiet, well-designed compromise between nature and the realities of indoor living.

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Tom Black Carves Travertine Tables That Look Like They’re Floating

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Stone coffee tables often default to simple slabs or blocks, heavy objects that sit on the floor and announce their weight. More interesting pieces treat stone as something to carve and balance, not just to drop into a room. Coffee Table 01 and Side Table 01 by Tom Black lean into that second approach, using one curved gesture to make Italian travertine feel lighter, paired with a contrasting metal inlay that turns solid into void.

Coffee Table 01 is an exploration of form with a classic Italian materiality, carved from travertine with a soft curvature to the underside that gives a sense of floating and elevation. The top is not a flat slab, but a long trough lined with brushed metal, and this inverse layering of a metal finish into stone sets up a contrast in both finish and form, cool against warm, reflective against matte.

Designer: Tom Black

The underside curve lifts the edges off the floor so the table reads as a solid volume that barely touches the ground. The concave channel on top mirrors that curve, turning the center into a controlled void rather than a flat surface. The metal inlay sharpens that void, catching light differently from the travertine and making the negative space feel as intentional as the stone around it, a second reading of the same carved gesture.

Side Table 01 is designed as the partner to Coffee Table 01 that can also stand alone. It shares the same exploration of form and material but takes a different approach to curvature. Instead of resting directly on the floor, the curved upper element sits on a rectangular base, and that base is what highlights the juxtaposition between curve and block, between the flowing top and the grounded plinth beneath.

The side table effectively rotates the coffee table’s gesture into a more vertical, totem-like object. The travertine trough becomes shorter and more upright, while the rectangular base grounds it. The relationship between the two parts, curved top and rectilinear plinth, makes the piece read as a small monument, echoing the coffee table’s floating mass but with a different emphasis in the room, more punctuation than sprawl.

The choice of Italian travertine brings a sense of permanence and architecture, with its horizontal veining and warm tone playing against the cool, brushed metal inlay. The stone offers classic materiality, while the metal introduces a precise, almost industrial note. Together, they feel less like a decorative veneer and more like a small section cut from a larger, imagined building, where structure and surface are the same thing.

Coffee Table 01 and Side Table 01 operate as a family. The coffee table stretches low and horizontal between seating, the side table stands as a vertical accent beside a sofa or chair, and both share the same carved gesture and material palette. For anyone who likes furniture that behaves like small pieces of architecture, these two feel like a quiet study in how far one curve can go when you pair it with the right material and the right inlay to make the mass feel like it might lift off the floor.

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This 11g Keychain Knife Has a Tungsten Tip You Swap, Never Sharpen

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Most keychain cutters feel like afterthoughts. Plastic shells with soft blades that struggle with packing tape, bend on zip ties, and disappoint when needed. The gap between how often a small sharp edge would be useful and how rarely those tools work is frustrating. Small does not have to mean flimsy, but most micro knives settle for exactly that, leaving you hunting for scissors or borrowing someone else’s blade when boxes arrive.

The Z3RO mini knife rebuilds the category from the materials up. It weighs 11g, measures around 5cm, and combines a tungsten cutting tip, carbon fiber body, and titanium backbone in a package that fits on a keychain without feeling like a toy. Instead of plastic or aluminum, Z3RO feels closer to pocket tech or minimalist jewelry, something you notice when you pick it up rather than ignore until it breaks.

Designer: YSMART Design Team

Click Here to Buy Now: $74 $120 (38% off). Hurry, only a few left!

The cutting tip is tungsten alloy, the same material used in surgical blades and industrial cutters, rated at Mohs hardness nine. It shrugs off cardboard, cord, plastic tags, and thick tape without dulling quickly or chipping like softer steel. It handles tasks that show up constantly, opening boxes, slicing cable ties, trimming threads, and cutting shrink wrap. Sharp enough to feel precise, hard enough to stay that way through months of daily cutting and abuse.

Instead of sharpening a tiny, ultra-hard edge, Z3RO uses a replaceable cutter head that swaps out in seconds without tools. When the tip eventually loses its bite, you pop in a fresh one. The body becomes a long-term object while the working edge is treated like a precision consumable. You replace the blade, not the tool, and the carbon fiber shell ages gracefully without looking worn after weeks of heavy pocket carry.

Most small knives lean on plastic or aluminum to save weight. Z3RO goes for woven carbon fiber wrapped around a titanium core, keeping the weight at eleven grams while still feeling solid. The material combination offers natural resistance to rust, sweat, moisture, and impacts, so it does not corrode in damp pockets or degrade from drops. It is the kind of material choice expected in high-end gear, not something dangling from house keys.

The mechanism is a magnetic quick-release using internal neodymium magnets instead of fiddly sliders. One firm pull separates the body, the cutter snaps into position with a click, and it is ready. The magnets hold everything with zero wobble, so it feels precise rather than loose. This matters when your other hand is holding a box, rope, or bag you do not want to drop while fumbling for a blade.

Everyday moments shift when a sharp, instantly accessible cutter lives on your keychain or neck lanyard. Cutting packing tape becomes one motion instead of clawing at it. Freeing a stuck zipper pull takes seconds. Trimming a cable tie or slicing shrink wrap happens without hunting for scissors. The tool turns minor annoyances into quick actions, and that quiet utility adds up, making it something you reach for multiple times daily without thinking.

The carbon fiber sheen, titanium accents, and slim silhouette make Z3RO look more like gear art than a utility blade. Color options like Stealth Black, Neo Blue, and Volt Green add personality without sacrificing the minimalist shape. It is the sort of object people notice when you set keys down, even if they do not immediately realize it cuts. The woven texture and metal details read as intentional design rather than generic hardware fare.

Z3RO exists because everyday carry has matured past cheap freebies into a space where materials, mechanics, and longevity matter. A tiny knife built from tungsten, carbon fiber, and titanium, with a magnetic quick-release and replaceable head, feels like a natural evolution. It reminds you that even the smallest tools can be designed with the same care as big ones, and sometimes the best gear is what you forget you are carrying until you actually need it.

Click Here to Buy Now: $74 $120 (38% off). Hurry, only a few left!

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Clover Emotion Tracker Turns Small Happy Moments into a Daily Desk Ritual

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People are more stressed than ever, yet still find it hard to talk honestly about how they feel, even with therapists or friends. Most mental health tools live inside apps that want you to rate your mood on a slider or fill out forms about your day, which can feel clinical or like homework you forgot to do. Clover is a concept that tries to make emotional check-ins gentler and more tangible, focusing on collecting small moments that went right instead of cataloging everything that went wrong.

Clover is a small ecosystem built around three pieces: a pocketable voice recorder, a desk-calendar device, and a companion app. Instead of logging stress or symptoms, you press a button and record short voice notes whenever something makes you genuinely happy. Those moments are then visualized on the calendar and analyzed in the app, turning your week into a kind of happiness log that quietly reframes how you see your days.

Designers: Seyeon Park, Bhin Son, Yu Jin Song, Jiwon Park, Jinya Kim

The recorder is a small, circular object with a single orange button and a loop strap, designed to be grabbed and pressed quickly. It is meant for capturing tiny, specific moments, sunlight on your desk, a good cup of tea, a joke from a friend, in your own voice. The goal is to lower the friction so much that recording a positive moment feels as easy as taking a photo, no unlocking, no tapping through screens, just press and speak.

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The desk calendar is a tilted white slab with a large circular dial labeled with days of the week and a small screen that displays words like “Sunlight” or “Spring.” It plays back or summarizes your voice recordings by day, and turning the dial lets you move between Day mode, Q&A mode, and long-term overview modes. Checking your emotional log becomes a physical ritual, more like flipping through a calendar than scrolling a feed or staring at another glowing interface.

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The app brings everything together, with daily cards asking “What is your today?”, weekly and monthly views full of dots and bars, and simple text insights that highlight recurring themes. You can tag entries by time, category, or keywords, and later see which people, places, or activities show up most often in your happiest moments. The analysis stays gentle, showing patterns without drowning you in numbers or making you feel like you failed when a week looks sparse.

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Clover’s visual language, white and grey surfaces with orange accents, soft typography, and a clover icon that appears on hardware and UI, keeps the system from feeling like medical equipment. The core values, self-honesty, emotional balance, and everyday positivity, are baked into how it looks and behaves. It frames itself as a friendly desk object and app you would not mind seeing every day, not a reminder that something is broken.

Clover quietly flips the usual tracking script. Instead of asking you to monitor symptoms or productivity, it asks you to notice and collect small good things, then shows you that they happen more often than you think. For people who are tired of mood sliders and habit streaks, the idea of a physical recorder and calendar that simply help you remember what felt right might be the most calming part of the concept.

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