Let us go ahead and title this The Thread MrFood Can Safely Ignore.

Some friends of mine from the Environmental Design program at Texas A&M went on to do some fun (danprovost.com) things (tomgerhardt.com) in NYC for graduate school. After entering the work force they're continuing to do cool things, including personal projects outside employment. Yesterday they introduced a pretty fun product called the Glif (theglif.com). It is a kickstand and tripod mount for the iphone 4. Their design principles orbit around simplicity, functionality and elegance; and this little guy is a great showcase of their talent and ingenuity.

They're going through kickstarter (kickstarter.com) to try and fund the Glif as a marketable product. Within less than a day they've superseded expectations have as of this moment raised almost twice as much money as necessary (the original goal being $10,000 in 30 days) . It's less of a plea for donations and more of a pre-ordering process if you like what is being offered. The website is littered with other awesome entrepreneurial gems. These guys have been plugged by leading industry designers (namely John Gruber at Daring Fireball (daringfireball.net)) and other such snooty, elitist Apple product fappers.

I'd encourage even non-iphone4 users to check out the website (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danprovost/glif-iphone-4-tripod-mount-and-stand (www.kickstarter.com)) to at least see an example of good product design.