IKEA has announced a new lightweight bicycle with a rust-resistant chain, aluminum frame and low-maintenance construction all aimed to make it easier for more casual bicyclists to hop on and enjoy the ride.

A joint project by Oskar Juhlin, Jan Puranen and Kristian Eke from Swedish studio Veryday Design, the easy-upkeep bike comes in a few basic models with a series of adjustable features.

It is simple and unassuming at a glance, but aimed to be a go-to, easy-to-use object just like IKEA’s furniture and furnishing lines (just presumably more robust than some). For many would-be bikers, the prospect of maintaining the bicycle itself is a barrier to entry that IKEA hopes to eliminate as a concern.

Bike racks, bags and a two-wheeled trailer can all be added via click-to-attach mechanisms to allow for easy adjustments. At $750 it won’t be the cheapest model on the market, but affordable for its quality.

This holiday season brings fresh printer-compatible designs of low-poly skeletons, monsters, animals and more for the do-it-yourself costumer, all scaled to fit an adult or resizable for children.

Like a polygon mesh in 3D computer graphics (that has a relatively small number of polygons), these masks are leant a haunting effect unique to the digital age, looking otherworldly and surreal like low-resolution computer renderings.

Some models are more complex than others, involving sets of articulated parts that rotate on simple hinges or pivots, like the tail of a fish, trunk of an elephant or the hands of a dragon.

The key ingredients: a printer, some paper of applicable color, glue sticks, craft knife, tape, cardboard and an elastic headband. If you have more time than money, or simply enjoy the process, these models provide a great balance of personal work and creativity within a ready-made outline.

From their maker, Wintercroft on Etsy, who sells the plans online:  “The instructions and templates are designed to be quick and easy to follow. The finished masks are pretty robust due the their polygon construction and will survive the wildest of parties.

More on Steven Wintercroft: “By nature I am obsessively creative and starting making things as a kid with my granddad. I studied Art and design, then furniture studies and have been designing and building custom surfboards since I was a teenager. I’ve worked as a cabinet maker but have spent most of my time as a full time surfboard shaper. I believe that the urge to create is a fundamental part of being human and these masks provide an excuse to sit down, get out the scissors, tape and paint and make something” (via Colossal).

Containing a room’s worth of essential furniture you can take on the bus or train, this all-in-one-box solution costs just $150, is easier to assemble than IKEA equivalents and much lighter too, with wheels as well for added mobility.

While requiring no tools or glue, the would-be catch is that the kit is made of cardboard – however, its makers have delivered on over 40 projects of that same material to date, making them experts at rendering it robust and durable. For those who only need some of the composite pieces: each element can also be converted to other purposes – the bed supports, for instance, can be stacked into shelves or other forms of storage.

The box contains a chair, desk, bin, dresser and bed supports which double as storage, each designed to be load-bearing as well as water-resistant, able to be reused for years by students or other young adults. The entire system can be assembled or deconstructed within a half hour and the pieces weigh around seven pounds each, all making moves between dorm rooms and storage much simpler.

From the creators of Room in a Box: “Every piece of furniture can be assembled with no tools or glue by folding and slotting the pieces, and can be taken down and packed back into the box.  When you are done with the furniture it can be recycled or reused in its entirety. This makes for versatile furniture which can be used in many different ways and configurations.  The design of the furniture also includes sliding drawers for storage (with stoppers) which double as handy moving boxes.  “

Resembling a house turned inside out, the Cubitat is a hybrid architectural and interior design prototype designed to be a modular all-in-one solution that can turn any empty space into your new home on demand.

In essence, it takes the idea of a mobile kitchen island and expands the concept to include everything you need to live, containing a bathroom inside and featuring an array of furniture and fixtures on its exterior.

Certain novel applications seem particularly promising, like quickly upgrading old condo spaces or converting open-plan warehouses, factories or schools, for instance, into instant apartments.

A pullout bed on one side slides open while panels above reveal a series of shelves, including one that can be fitted with television. A sink and stove, some storage and other kitchen amenities can be found on an adjacent face of the cube. Individual pieces and parts can be swapped out over time as needs change or things wear out as well.

A collaboration between Luca Nichetto and Urban Capital, the design is made to be as portable as possible, constructed from prefabricated parts but also made to be assembled and deconstructed with ease. It features durable laminate surfaces on the outside and warm wood accents within (all materials could, of course, also be customized by buyers).

From the designers: “Fitting the bathroom in was our biggest challenge. The only way to approach it was to start with that, and place everything else around it. There’s no reason why it couldn’t be built with that as the central piece, with smaller cubes plugged in around it, like a giant Rubick’s cube. Just plug in all your ’colours’ once the middle is in place.”

What if we could make alternative transportation ultimately faster, cheaper and more convenient than personally-owned cars, the dominant transport devices of the 20th Century? The sharing economy has opened new possibilities for commuters and travelers, but integrating this dizzying array of options together with public transport is an essential next step in this ongoing paradigm shift.

OMG Transit is a Minneapolis-based startup that provides free, fast and simple sets of options for getting from your location to your destination without a personal car, be it by bus, shared bike (NiceRide in the case of the Twin Cities), shared car systems like Car2Go or ZipCar or private rides along the lines of Uber or Lyft. Available as an iPhone or Android application, OMG also offers a web app version – all with no cost to the user.

Boasting a beautifully-designed interface with attention to usability, color and detail, their free-for-all approach is aimed at helping them grow faster than the competition. Their team, headed by entrepreneur and technologist Matt Decuir, has its sights set first on major cities around the US and then the world (perhaps space thereafter).

More focused on next-step options than A-to-B directions, TransitScreen started out displaying realtime  transit data in residential, commercial and institutional building lobbies. Their boards show people up-to-the-minute information on subways, commuter trains, buses, bike share, ride shares in cities around the United States.

Now, with SmartWalk, this same company has taken to the streets (or rather: sidewalks and walls) outside of offices, apartments and universities, projecting this data onto public surfaces for the benefit of anyone passing by. The data includes color-coded transit option types and times but also wayfinding cues regarding directions and distance.

Other players in this space include Roadify and RideScout, though not all offer options for all devices or for every type of regional transport. Some, like Google Maps in its current form, have broader reach but focus more on public transportation schedules (their acquisition of Waze is a step toward realtime data, albeit for personal cars). Whatever system(s) triumph, the goal is a worthy one: reducing friction in the use of alternative transit options to the point where taking, for instance, a bus to a bike to a shared car is easy, fast and cheap enough to obviate the need for a fully-owned automobile.