S&W are applying new design and manufacturing techniques to transformable, personalisable products, often in short-runs. There aren't many companies working on intimately weaving software into industrial/product design like this, and it looks to this (non-professional) observer as if they will achieve great things.
Metal phone (the dangerous hiptop)
Metal Phone is a mobile phone within limits. You’ll need strong pockets. The metal reduces the effectiveness of the aerial so you’ll need to be closer to the transmitter. If you leave your mobile on the dashboard of your car on a hot day, you’ll come back to find the components in a pool of liquid metal. It’s not advisable to hold the phone in your hands for too long—cadmium is present in a low concentration. [...]
It's made from an expensive alloy so you'd have to protect it like a valuable. It contains poisonous metal and has the heft of a weapon, so you'd need to protect others from it. And it's like a perishable foodstuff in the sun, so you'd need to protect it from the environment. These are qualities that your mobile operator wishes you perceived in your handset (but since your operator gave it to you free with your contract, you don't value it the same way do you?)
Could the Metal Phone be other things? Could its natural fluidity be sped up and used in the co-design of the object instead of being locked out of the production line? [...]
Metal Phone offers a new kind of permanence: it offers relief from sculpted plastic forms yet makes no attempt to accommodate interface by changing the surface shape. The shape is no longer defined by constraints such as manufacturing cost or the fashion in electronics. A consumer may upgrade the interior and the screen interface a dozen times, but keep the weight and form of the shell the same for a decade.
This last is a powerful idea: we often feel nostalgia for old phones, particularly those with rock-solid build quality and reliability - certain candybar-era Nokias and the 77xx BlackBerry immediately come to mind.
Availabot (is USB unheimlich?)
Availabot is a physical representation of presence in Instant Messenger applications. Availabot plugs into your computer by USB, stands to attention when your chat buddy comes online, and falls down when they go away. It’s a presence-aware, peripheral-vision USB toy... and because the puppets are made in small numbers on a rapid-prototyping machine, it can look just like you.
The only thing I'd add to that is that when your chat buddy goes offline, is seems to more than just fall over. It's collapse isn't limp, it seems to dive to the ground just as energetically as it springs up when they come online. There's something animated in this, as if it is more an embodiment of the buddy than a representation. I start to think that this Matt Jones on my desk might start to do his bidding. And what are its own intentions? So I want to open its mouth to see if there's a scroll in it. But in truth, its physicality, humour and usefulness far outweighs any risk of uncanny presence - I want one.