With so many cool things coming out each week, it can be hard to wade through all the rock-awesomeness. With ‘Cool Tools’, we’ve done the hard work for you. This week we saw everything from a minimalist smart phone that features only the bare essentials, a timer app for helping you keep track of task management, a dinosaur coat rack project, a most excellent mini-doc on shaping bonsai trees and more… Ready? Let’s go! This week we look at: DESIGN Punkt Talk “Say it with words. Focus on what matters most and leave out the rest. The MP 01 is a simple mobile phone for smart communicators.” Bang & Olufsen…

If Zoolander was an actual person and came across Lance Abernethy’s miniature tool collection, there’s a good chance that he would ask “what are these? tools for ants?” – and for good reason. Abernethy, who resides in New Zealand, has been actively building miniature ‘micro-machine’ replicas of his power tools for the past year that *ahem* actually frickin’ work. While he had previously created a functional cordless drill back in March, he’s back again this week with a working circular saw that operates just like an actual full-size circular saw. To create the saw, Abernethy turned to Onshape to design the individual parts based off of parts from his own…

Time for another round of apps that cover the spectrum of your beloved mobile device, be it iPhone, Android or Windows! The Weekly App Smack is the best of design and productivity apps (and maybe a couple of fun ones, too) for the busy design or engineering professional and this week we have a list sure to make you more efficient. This week we have a new multimedia idea-tracking journal from Morpholio that’s aimed at creatives of all types, an immersive story of survival and perseverance, a note taking app powered by IFTTT recipes and more… Do you have an app suggestion that has made your life easier or changed…

For the past two months, Lexus has been gradually releasing details regarding their “Amazing” Slide hoverboard – but of course, never the technology inside of it. Today, the Japanese automaker finally released the details behind the Slide hoverboard and why they set out to do it. As expected, the board was a publicity stunt for the brand’s mission of tackling design challenges and “always try(ing) to achieve the impossible” as a part of their ongoing Amazing in Motion campaign. Although the resulting board design is constrained to a specially-designed track (located in Cubelles, Barcelona) and eager riders will have to wait a little longer for their own hoverboard, the one-off…

While today’s tablet sketching apps are a dime a dozen, only very few of them actually get the user experience right – particularly when it comes to truly being useful rather than being an interface to digitally doodle. While few things could ever replace a simple back pocket sketchpad and a favorite pen, this generation’s ability to quickly archive other sources of inspiration – particularly photographs – is becoming increasingly easier and more useful thanks to the mobile devices that are also always in our pockets, too. Unsurprisingly, the challenge of having a bombardment of inspirational sources – whether sketches, images or webpage snippets – is organizing them. Although Cloud-based…

This week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist brings an entirely new playlist of face-melting great music to help propel you through those laborious, tedious design tasks for the next few days. So whether you find yourself inking markers until they’re dry, grinding material through a bandsaw or flying through a CAD model, consider these tracks as a tool for your process. This week we’ll start things off with “Dream On – Dave Clarke Acoustic Version” from Depeche Mode and work our way through some Porcelain Raft, Ween, Blockhead, The Acid, Chet Faker and others before wrapping up with “True Loves” from Hooray for Earth. As always – do you have any…