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Who hasn't been in a situation that required significant keyboard input but had to struggle, thanks to cramped phone, tablet or even laptop keyboards? Those days are over thanks to Brookstone's latest gizmo, the aptly-named Virtual Keyboard. Any flat surface can now be transformed into a keyboard for your device, driven by a laser-based Bluetooth system that tracks finger movement. The battery is said to deliver up to two hours of typing and can be recharged via USB.

For more than 20 years the New Directors' Showcase has formed an integral part of the annual Cannes Festival of Creativity. This global mix of directors has a reputation for spotlighting new talent that goes beyond the realm of advertising to include short films, titles, animations, music promotions or simply examples of new techniques. A good example of this is Andrew Thomas Huang's mesmerizing Solipsist, above.

The clientsfromhell.net site is a repository of anonymously-contributed gems from designers sharing the pain of dealing with impossible clients. Most have a comic element, such as the following story about designing menus for a Persian restaurant, which involved a suggestion for the owner. Designer: To be honest, I would change the name to ‘Taco-Dog’ on the menu. Client: What’s wrong with Dog-Taco?

Clearly amazing. The quad-core A5 chip delivers even more power. The laser projection keyboard liberates your thumbs. The new iClear Retina display presents sharp graphics and stunning images. iOS 6 will take your iPhone experience in an entirely new direction. And if there's anything else you need, just ask Siri.

Venezuela-USA

Old maps are cool, there's no doubt about that. But purchasing them, especially large ones, is simply not possible for any but the happy few. Trying to change all that is the team of Alex Toledano and Seth Rosenbaum, who together comprise Bedrock Images, founded last year with a mission to make reproductions of large urban maps of historical interest available to a wide audience. In that they seem to have succeeded, with their site now offering affordable, high-quality reproductions of historical maps of Paris, Rome, Beijing, New York and Washington DC in a range of sizes and formats. Above, a detail from Will Taylor's 1879 portrait of New York shows the Brooklyn Bridge, imagined before its completion.

Süperfad describes itself as "a brand-driven design and live action production company." Founded in 2001, this collective of designers, directors, animators and artists has assembled an impressive client roster, including such brands as Honda, Sony, Target, Adidas and AT&T. One of its recent initiatives is On Creativity, a series of informal interviews with designers, artists, musicians, animators and educators, which spans everyone from Milton Glaser to graffiti artist Craig Costello.

Agency called Serviceplan from Munich, Germany created a special kind of annual report for the company Austria Solar that is activated by the sun.

They've been a long time coming but plugins for Creative Suite applications that make it possible to browse and preview fonts from vendors directly within layouts are finally becoming available. The FontShop plugin, which seems to be stuck in a perpetual beta mode, was first released for Photoshop. Support has now been extended to Mac and Windows Illustrator CS3-CS6.