“Wattcher is a product that monitors domestic electricity use, designed by Marcel Wanders for Dutch company Innovaders. The device plugs into a Dutch electrical socket and displays electrical consumption, encouraging users to reduce their energy use.”
Wanders Gained popularity with his Knotted Chair, designed for the world famous designers at Droog Design in 1996. Today he dabbles in all kinds of things and designs for European design firms such as B&B Italia, Bisazza, Poliform, Moroso, Flos, Boffi, Cappellini, Droog Design and Moooi.
(Link and photo: dezeen.com)
The War on Fun is all nice and dandy, but apparently it shouldn’t impede on the little pleasures that its proponents enjoy. Mayor Ruud Vreeman of Tilburg, member of the PvdA (Labour) party that’s in the fun-hating government coalition that banned smoking in bars last year, lights up a cigar now and then in his office. 
In 1990 Piet Hein Eek made his first cupboard from reclaimed scrapwood and the rest, as they say, is history. Soon you couldn’t step into a somewhat upmarket furniture store without stumbling into one or two scrapwood items. The only problem with these, and one that’s persisted ever since, is despite that they’re made out of garbage they’re so damned expensive.
A short selection of my favourite stories of 2008, some of them funny, some sad, some just weird: 