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Kwartet is a modified version of the age-old Dutch card game Kwartet (which is not unlike the game Go Fish), in which the objective is to collect a complete set of four cards per given category.

This version, which uses contemporary artworks grouped by theme, was conceived by Dutch artists Marijke Appelman and Koen Taselaar. They asked Tymen Cieraad and Jaap de Maat of Studio Joep Jacobs to take care of the design.

Kwartet was produced in a limited edition of 300 decks. Cost of one deck: $ 35 (Hey, it’s art! ;-)

Photography by Karina Bogaerds.

Recently I realised that there is no post about Apple on Minimalissimo. If there is one brand that has brought us simple, minimalist and perfect design, it’s Apple.

Impressively, this post could be about any of Apple’s products. I chose the iMac however, because to me it’s the most representative product of the brand. The iMac has fundamentally changed the classic concept of a computer – a bulky CPU, monitor and tons of black wires – combining them in just one element.

London born Jonathan Ive, senior vice president of Industrial Design at Apple, has been responsible for the iMac’s design since the G3 version. It’s in the iMac G5 that each detail has been refined to the maximum: design, fineness, materials…

1px Clock is an iPhone app that shows time, ticking away one pixel per second.

Each square is built up of 60 rows of 60 pixels: one for each second. As such, one square represents one hour, and the total of 24 blocks make up 1 day.

1px Clock was developed by Japanese web design firm E-Bird, and is available as a 6×4 version and a 2×12 version. Download the 1px Clock here (free!).

No iPhone? It’s also downloable as a screensaver. (Thx, Derek!)

Macworld 2011: Dolly Drive syncs Time Machine to the cloud, creates bootable backup – TUAW:

Out of all of the product news that came out of this years Macworld (which I am now heavily regretting not attending), this was the coolest. Just like it says on the tin, it is basically a subscription based cloud storage that you can hook Time Machine up to for a native, offsite, backup option.

But wait! There’s more!

In addition, it also allows you to create an auto-updating and bootable local backup as well for immediate recovery. The pricing seems reasonable as well.

Click through for more info and a video of it in action as Dave covers it for TUAW far better than my brief outline here.

Ken Case Interview on Ars Technica — Shawn Blanc:

You know that free over-the-air syncing server that Omni Group offers its users? It’s running on a Mac Mini and is doing just fine.

You know, I have heard from some birdies that many of the folks in enterprise that would have relied on the now discontinued XServe are going with Mac Mini Servers instead. Yes, you read that right. It kind of makes sense from a cost/performance perspective if you think about it. Especially if the storage is still being handled by a RAID or other system and all you need is an enterprise class OS on a small cool system with a low cost of ownership. Heck, stick two side by side in the same rack space that Xserve would have taken for redundancy.

Also, we live in the future. You are aware of that, right?

With RIMA, by Germany based industrial designer Matthias Pinkert, one can now easily define the position and range of his desk illumination.

By sliding any of the rings, placed around the central tube, in horizontal direction one turns on and off the LEDs. Additionally one can adjust the angle of light, intensity and light color by rotating a secondary ring on the base ring. You can also switch on a second lightning area based on the same principles. By selecting a small light area one can simply reduce the energy consumption.

RIMA is awarded with a reddot design award in product design in 2010.