Streaming services turned album covers into tiny squares you scroll past on your way to something else. Phones made music convenient, but also turned it into background noise competing with notifications, emails, and every app demanding attention at once. You used to hold a record sleeve and feel like you owned something specific. Now your entire library is just files in a folder somewhere, and nothing about that experience feels remotely special or worth paying attention to.

Sleevenote is musician Tom Vek’s attempt to give digital albums their own object again. It’s a square music player with a 4-inch screen that matches the shape of album artwork, designed to show covers, back sleeves, and booklet pages without any other interface getting in the way. The device only plays music you actually buy and download from places like Bandcamp, deliberately skipping Spotify and Apple Music to keep ownership separate from the endless scroll.

Designers: Tom Vek, Chris Hipgrave (Sleevenote)

The hardware is a black square that’s mostly screen from the front, with a thick body and rounded edges that make it feel more like a handheld picture frame than a phone. Physical playback buttons sit along one side so you can skip tracks without touching the screen. When you hold it, the weight and thickness are noticeable. This isn’t trying to slip into a pocket; it’s trying to sit on your desk or rest in your hand like a miniature album sleeve.

The screen shows high-resolution artwork, back covers, lyrics, and credits supplied through the Sleevenote platform. You swipe through booklet pages while listening, and the interface stays out of the way so the album art fills the entire square without overlays or buttons. The whole point is that the device becomes the album cover while music plays, which works better in practice than it sounds on paper when you describe it.

Sleevenote won’t let you stream anything. It encourages you to “audition” music on your phone and only put albums you truly love on the player, treating it more like a curated shelf than a jukebox with everything. This sounds good in theory, but means carrying a second device that can’t do anything except play the files you’ve already bought, which feels like a lot of friction for album art, no matter how nice the screen looks.

Sleevenote works as a small act of resistance against music as disposable content. For people who miss having a physical relationship with albums, a square player that only does one thing might feel like a shrine worth keeping. Whether that’s worth the price for a device with a screen barely bigger than your phone is a different question, but the idea that digital music deserves its own object makes more sense than cramming everything into the same distracted rectangle.

The post This Square Player Refuses to Stream Music, and That’s the Point first appeared on Yanko Design.

I don’t think anyone apart from Bruce Lee actually made nunchucks appear ‘seriously dangerous’. A lot of the appeal of a pair of nunchucks lie in the theater, the fanfare, the performance… but operate them well and they’re hellishly deadly. The TiNova is somewhat like that. Its magnet-enabled fidget-to-open mechanism is about as enjoyable as flicking around a butterfly knife or a pair of nunchucks, but once open, the TiNova is a tiny beast that packs a punch.

A titanium body, a machined construction, and a D2 blade make the TiNova a bite-sized brute. Nothing about the knife feels flimsy or toy-like… even though the entire thing measures just under 4 inches when open. When closed, the TiNova drops down to a mere 2.4 inches in length, and is small enough to be worn around your neck like a nifty EDC dog-tag. When you mean business, take it off, flick it open, and your pocket powerhouse is ready for serious action.

Designer: Ideaspark

Click Here to Buy Now: $45 $65 (31% off) Hurry, only 11 days left!

The TiNova is smaller than the average pinky finger, making it roughly the size of your standard thumb-drive. The two-part titanium handle is held together with a single pivot point, and a pair of magnets that snap the handle into its closed position. A drop-point blade sits in a gap between the two halves of the handle, concealed when not in use. To deploy the blade, simply swivel any one half of the handle around 360° and the blade travels outwards with confidence. It’s not like your regular flipper, which requires dexterity, or a switchblade or OTF, which requires being vigilant. The TiNova’s blade deployment is all about flair and performance. With enough practice, a simple flick of your wrist and a good amount of centrifugal force should have the handles rotate a full 360° to deploy the blade.

Once out in the open, the TiNova’s blade means absolute business – D2 steel is a top-tier steel in the EDC and knifemaking world, giving the TiNova street cred. A standard spear-tip design with a single drop-point edge makes the TiNova a reliable workhorse. When open, there’s nothing you can do to cause the knife to ‘fail’ the way a cheap lock on a budget knife would. This thing is built solid, and will even pierce through wood without as much as a bit of flex. The drop point edge is a classic in the industry, making it perfect for piercing, cutting, slicing, scraping, and whittling. Although built to withstand the outdoors, the blade works just as effectively indoors or in tactical/emergency situations.

However, seriousness aside, the TiNova’s charm lies in its fun personality. That fidget mechanism is almost entirely the most charming feature about this knife. It’s designed to engage your fingers, as you attach and detach the ends of the handles. If you’ve seen those magnetic fidget bars/sliders, think of the TiNova as just like them, but with a deadly blade just tucked away for when the fun stops.

This tactile appeal is easily what makes the TiNova such a stellar pick for your everyday carry. Why would you carry a boring folding knife when the alternative is something that feels fun and looks intimidating? With enough practice, the knife should flip open effortlessly, and should definitely drop a few jaws in the process. If you don’t believe EDC should have a component of childlike joy, this one might not be for you.

The reliably strong D2 blade cuts through everything with ease, whether it’s as simple as an envelope or an Amazon parcel, or as tough as wood or even paracord. The steel’s high-strength and blade retention means it’s definitely going to stay sharp even with regular use, although the drop-point design means that even IF the TiNova lost its edge (that’s a big if), sharpening it is fairly simple.

Meanwhile, the blade sits within a practically indestructible titanium shell. The machined titanium design boasts this sandblasted finish which is great to grip, while grooves on the handle add to the friction. The flat handle is ambidextrous, and tritium slots on both sides mean you can add glow-vials to make your EDC visible in low light. A lanyard hole means you can string your TiNova to a keyring or even a neck-worn chain, just in case the tiny form factor is a little too small for merely slipping into your pockets. And as far as ‘practically indestructible’ goes, you could run over the TiNova with your car and the titanium will shrug it off like a gentle breeze.

The knife falls within the small-carry category, given its tiny 1.4-inch blade and sub-4-inch overall design. The titanium makes the TiNova as lightweight as it is robust, weighing a paltry 38.8 grams or 1.37 ounces (that’s about as much as an AirPods case).

The TiNova starts at $45, or 20 bucks off its $65 MSRP. It’s designed to be scratch-resistant, corrosion-proof, and will weather any sort of rough use. In fact, designer Ideaspark confidently offers a lifetime warranty on the TiNova. Grab yours now and it’ll ship with a complimentary keyring… and if you want to jazz your knife up, an extra $15 will allow you to either get a custom engraving on the handle, or have it coated in PVD black, making it the ultimate stealthy EDC companion that still knows how to have some fun!

Click Here to Buy Now: $45 $65 (31% off) Hurry, only 11 days left!

The post Fidget-worthy Titanium Micro-knife is a ‘Seriously Fun’ piece of Tactical EDC first appeared on Yanko Design.

Vous savez quoi les amis ? Mozilla vient de lâcher dans la nature Firefox 140 et y’a du lourd dans cette mise à jour donc c’est pour ça que je vous en parle ! Si vous en avez marre que votre navigateur décide pour vous quel moteur de recherche utiliser, ou si vous galérez avec 150 onglets ouverts qui bouffent toute votre RAM, cette version va vous réconcilier avec le renard de feu (Oui, c’est un renard. Oui il a le cul en feu. Non, ce n’est pas un panda roux. Le Panda roux est un animal. Le Firefox est un navigateur internet et pas un animal. Merci ^^)