Get that stretch out of your system with this week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist. It’s fashioned up, ready to make you pull your shoulder blades back and knock out another week of meaningful work while you bob your head to the beat. Whether you’re in the shop milling aluminum, sketching the latest product prototypes or modeling up a 3D storm, consider these tracks as a tool for your process. This week on SolidSmack Radio we’ll get the groove going with “Haunted” from Pinc Louds before diving into tracks from Dave Bixby, Cate le Bon, Knox Fortune, Ceramic Animal, and others before wrapping up with “Sentiment” from Better Person. Ready? Let’s…

It’s usually never official until a sizeable multi-national company does it. While smaller electronics companies have been using paper and other recyclable materials for their products for years, Samsung is only now catching onto the environment-friendly trend. In a recent press release, the electronics division of the company has announced that instead of using plastics for their packaging, Samsung will be using greener materials such as paper or recycled plastics. Concerning appliances, this means the plastic wrapping you so love to rip off your brand new fridge or microwave will be replaced with recycled plastics and bioplastics made from starch or sugar cane. On the mobile phones and accessories front,…

When it comes to side projects, hours become days, days become weeks, and weeks can often become months or years. But what if getting a minimum viable product created could happen on a Saturday…assuming you aren’t building a flying car? Many successful entrepreneurs have been touting the benefits of the 1-Day MVP—a one-day, all-out sprint to go from fresh idea to app or hardware prototype. Sure, some projects may take a little more energy and time than others, but having the process and infrastructure in place to successfully glide ideas along is what counts the most. Which is exactly the premise behind the 1-Day MVP 2.0 online training course; one…

Much like LEGOs, modern modular design kits contain various pieces that let the user build various structures. Desks, shelves, pot holders – depending on the kit’s materials, the user can make an assortment of things from a cleverly-designed family of attachable components. TikA by TiKA Lab are modular kits comprised mainly of different-sized connectable wood sticks. These sticks can conduct electricity and be fitted with dimmable LED lights that turn the structures into bonafide lamps. Connecting these sticks are small magnetic balls which serve as joints. These bits and bobs can support their own weight or be put on one of three different bases. Put all these parts together and…

Mondays might not be your favorite day of the week, but the good news is that we’re all in this together ladies and gentlemen. As purveyors of prime Grade A web content, the SolidSmack crew has done some of the heavy-lifting to make sure you get your Mondays started on the right track. Welcome to The Monday List. Every Monday, we link you up with some of the most insightful, informative, and socially-relevant stories to keep tabbed, bookmarked, reading listed, pocketed, or what have you to get your week started on the right foot. Be sure to check in each week for a new crop of freshly sprouted words curated straight…

In San Francisco, Hardware Massive put together their first “HW Summit SF” on November 7, 2018. This organization was also behind April 2018’s HardwareCon which we covered here. Apologies for not getting this coverage out sooner (some HW engineering stuff got in my way), but the insights shared here are still relevant — especially if you’re part of a HW startup. The event’s theme was “Training and Gear to get Through the Valley of Death”. There were two speaker panels with a bunch of hardware engineering experts. The first was on methodologies for scaling production, and the second was on gear to use in HW development. Then, the day finished…