I was just reviewing an edited set of photos I took during the Simplicity workshop I attended a little over two weeks ago at the MIT Media Lab. Student teams were challenged to stay up as late as necessary in one night to develop a creative new alternative for e-mail. All of the team projects were fascinating, but I personally thought the Play-Doh printer shown here gave the best demo. In just one all nighter, this team built an e-mail gateway that would convert ASCII text into codes that would drive a group of solenoids to imprint dot matrix characters on extruded strips of Play-Doh. It must be nice to be a young student and have the energy to be brilliant without any sleep.

- mike lee - blogging every half hour for 24 hours for project blog 2004