... and some nifty bits I've pulled out of the box marked "design":

• Design on time: "Larry Cheng created a ‘free time’ dispenser that hands out free time in ten minute increments in the form of printed tickets. What you do with that time is entirely up to you. Nice idea, but Ted Howes and Adam Vollmer decided to try it out in the real world and took the dispenser on their Caltrain ride back to San Francisco the other day"
• Lovely piece on the design of the Classics book reader for iPhone: "Real-life testing was an important part of the application; users could be lying in the park grass reading a book on their iPhone in the bright afternoon sun, and if they are, they should be able to still read pleasantly without having to squint an eye or going indoor and looking at an interface that’s completely black on white" (oh, and isn't the mobile books space busy right now?)
• Cultural probes: "Users are met in their environment and given a ‘black box’ or a mock-up of a device. They are then told what functionality the device has and are asked to go about their life as they normally would…They are given a digital camera for a week and asked to take pictures of the situations where they would use the 'magic thing'."
• The N79 launched: "Simply, in the case of the N79 comes with a handful of interchangeable Xpress-on covers that feature an embedded chip to enable the replacement of a cover to automatically trigger the on-screen theme to morph accordingly"