We’ve been hearing a lot about prosthetics design in the last week. Here’s a new spin on the field – open source design and development. Iraq war veteran Jonathan Kuniholm lost a limb to an IED, and was fitted with the standard issue replacement. Meanwhile, his engineering colleagues were working hard to develop a more advanced model. In a spirit of great altruism, they realised that the best thing they could do would be to share the designs with the rest of the world so that more people could benefit from them, and the Open Prosthetics Project was born.

The folk at Philips are nothing if not diverse in their outlook. Having decided that clothing with lights embedded in it is a great idea, and lauching textiles with light-up logos as an opening salvo, they’re now turning to the world of haute couture. The ‘SKIN’ fashion range is comprised of high fashion garments with lights or colour-morphing textiles that react to environmental stimulus and the emotions of the wearer. Which is a lovely idea, very futuristic. It’s just a shame it all looks a bit like the wardrobe department of the old Buck Rogers series.

The tides that whip in and out of the mouth of San Francisco Bay are something fierce, and may in the next few decades become a source of electrical power for San Franciscans.

HP has introduced a line of cameras with slimming features — the camera has a special filter for removing weight. So much for, “the camera never lies.”

If you’re into gadgets, student industrial design projects are a kind of boiled down essence of the future. They’ll rarely lead to real products, but they sure are fun to look at. In that spirit, have a look at I.D. magazine’s student design awards.