Last month I wrote about the New York City bike rack design competition. After seeing all the experimental bike racks installed in the Astor Place traffic island near my office, my favorite was the circular rack seen here…

Recently they announced the winning design, and guess what won? Right! From the design competition blog:

“Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve’s design reflects a modern simplicity that will greatly enhance the City’s streetscape. The rack is round with a horizontal crossbar, evoking an abstracted bicycle tire. Constructed of cast-metal, the design is elegant yet sturdy enough to withstand the harshest street environments.”

Here’s hoping the city installs these racks in pairs, both for convenience and aesthetics.

(From The Times, spotted first at Cityspecific.)

From my work blog: Same Stock Trader Keeps Getting Himself Photographed.

This kind of stupidity is what happens when the story – money changing hands – is impossible to photograph. Money changing hands can’t reflect light back onto a camera sensor. Money changing hands doesn’t even exist in space.

See also: Pictures of price signs at gas stations.

If things really go south, that’s when we’ll get some great photos!

Seen in the picture above is the standard New York City bike rack. It’s simple, ugly, indestructible, and barely functional. NYCDOT thinks we can do better, so they’re having a contest to redesign the bike rack. Prototypes of all the finalists have been installed around The Cube in the traffic island at Astor Place.

None of the prototypes proposes an elegant solution to the biggest problems facing the current racks: They can only host two or three bikes at a time, and bikes can fall over and bang up against each other. The present racks are sometimes hijacked by fools who hitch both tires of their bike parallel to the rack, rather than perpendicular to it.

Only one proposed rack looks like a fool-proof way to host four bikes, and it is also the biggest and ugliest.

The rest of the bike racks seem resigned to only accommodate two bikes, but if installed in pairs this could work. Something about the circular racks is appealing. They evoke bicycle wheels, they offer hitching space at a variety of heights to accommodate different-size bikes and chains, and they seem like they’d be durable. I think there is a quiet genius to this design:

Interestingly, one of the judges for the bike rack contest is David Byrne. He even proposed a few bike rack designs of his own just for fun, seen here.

The winner will be announced October 24.

History Eraser Button: Bringing you the things everyone was blogging about several months ago — today!

1. Pandora Internet radio
2. Cooliris
3. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Here’s a link to a video I made today at work.

Not my best effort, but it was done on a very fast turnaround… Shot this morning, online by 5:30. This time I stay off camera and read narration from a script. Also, this was my first time shooting in widescreen. Didn’t go so well. As things are set up now, it’s waaaay simpler to keep everything in 4:3.

Last one:

(If you missed any of the postcards or have trouble viewing the video here, just follow this link.)

Here’s PDN video postcard three from Perpignan:

Another quick-turnaround video I made for work:
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Quick video I made for work today:
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Dear blog readers, nothing makes me happier than sharing with you something cool I know you’re going to love – especially something you can enjoy free.

First, you’re going to love the new David Byrne & Brian Eno album “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.” You can stream the whole thing online. Play it now, before it’s playing in every single coffee shop.

Second, you’re going to love this Donald Miralle photograph from the Olympics. An instant classic.