By John D. Sutter, CNN

(CNN) - Rube Goldberg machines - those contraptions that, like the board game Mouse Trap, aim to accomplish a simple task in a needlessly complex way - don't really fit in an age obsessed with efficiency and perfection.

Yet, online, these fun-to-watch systems do seem to have incredible currency. Think OK Go music videos, for starters.

The machine below, called Mini-Melvin, caught my eye this week. Housed inside two suitcases, Mini-Melvin employs an alarm clock, a smartphone, a child's xylophone, a toy train and many other trinkets - all to stamp a short message on a postcard.

Check out the video below:

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Editor's note: Ben Kaufman is the CEO of Quirky.com, which helps inventors bring their ideas to the market. Kaufman is the subject of Sunday's episode of "The Next List," on CNN at 2 p.m. ET.

By Ben Kaufman, Special to CNN

(CNN) - Ninety-nine percent of consumer product companies are incredibly disconnected from the people that they serve. The process of trying to learn about what those people want only creates more distance.

We used to live in a world in which Big Companies made things, and people bought them, sometimes because they were the right things, sometimes because they were the only things. Before the Internet came along, this kind of worked. Before the Web, people’s expectations of how, where and to whom they could express themselves were very low. FULL POST

By John D. Sutter, CNN

Over in our opinion section, Abigail Washburn writes thoughtfully about the power of music to connect people from different cultures. She has a unique persective from which to make this claim, since she's a banjo-playing bluegrass musician - with curly blonde hair - who sometimes sings in Chinese.

Here's what she has to say about music's cross-cultural powers:

Music is a powerful way to connect cultures. I see it when I'm on a stage at a bluegrass festival in Virginia. When I look out at the sea of people in lawn chairs and bust into a song in Chinese, everybody's eyes pop wide open and they nudge their neighbor: "Is that girl singing in Chinese?" After a show, people would come up to me; everyone seems to have a story about their connection to China. And I see the power of music when I'm on stage in China: I start a Chinese song and the audience roars with delight that the blond, curly-haired girl with the banjo can sing their music.

More importantly, I see how music directly connects people's hearts. Like the time a little Chinese girl came up to me after I performed at a relocation school in Sichuan's earthquake disaster zone and asked: "Big Sister Wang, can I sing you a song that my mom sang before she was swallowed in the earthquake...?" She sat on my lap and I could feel the warmth of her body. She sang me the song, and tears started rolling down her cheeks and tears started rolling down mine. The light shining from her eyes felt like a place I could stay forever.

Check out the full post on CNN Opinion, and watch a video interview above.

By Doug Gross, CNN

(CNN) - The winners of the 2012 Webby Awards were announced on Tuesday.

Established in 1996, the Webby Awards are arguably the Internet's best-known honors.

After starting small, the Webbys now hand out more than 100 awards each year.

Many of each year's honorees tend to be celebrities, big companies or well-known online entities. Among this year's big winners are Pinterest (best social media app), photo-sharing app Instagram (breakout of the year), and the comedian Louis C.K., honored by the Webbys for creating "a new precedent for distribution" by releasing his comedy special through his own website.

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By John D. Sutter, CNN

(CNN) - A Japanese roboticist recently showed off a giant, person-shaped pillow that also doubles as a cell phone and vibrates based on the frequency of the voice of the person you're talking to. If you're inclined to give this the benefit of the doubt, think of it as a step forward in "haptic" technology, which aims to bring the largely missing sense of touch into the realm of digital communications.

Or, if you're a skeptic: Just call it creepy.

The "Hugvie" robot reportedly is the work of Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, who, among other things, is known for making a robotic version of himself.  He also created a Telenoid robot that stands in for humans and, as IEEE Spectrum described it, looks like "a supersized fetus." FULL POST

By John D. Sutter, CNN

(CNN) - If you take Adam Harvey's advice, here's what you might wanna wear to a party this weekend: A funny hat, asymmetrical glasses, a tuft of hair that dangles off your nose bridge and, most likely, a black-and-white triangle taped to your cheekbone. Optional: Cubic makeup patterns all around your eyes.

All of these otherworldly fashion accessories – which could leave a person looking kind of like an opulent villain from "The Hunger Games" - have a singular goal: to stop your face from being detected by cameras and computers. Called CV Dazzle (short for "computer vision dazzle;" more on the name later), Harvey's project is a provocative and largely theoretical response to the rise of surveillance cameras on street corners and face-detecting technology that's been incorporated into social networking sites like Facebook and Flickr.

If you employ these techniques, Harvey, 30, hopes computers won't even know you have a face:

I don’t want to be unrealistic about it. It’s a pretty conceptual project but it seems to touch on a subject that people are still trying to figure out, which is how to adapt to living in surveillance societies, where not only are you being watched by government surveillance but by citizen surveillance and social-media-type surveillance. FULL POST

Editor's note: Jad Abumrad is the co-host of the innovative radio show "Radiolab." Together with Robert Krulwich, he explores heady topics and scientific topics with a sense of curiosity and fun. Tune in to CNN on Sunday at 2 p.m. ET to see a 30-minute profile of Abumrad on "The Next List."

CNN: Okay, so what is "Radiolab"?

Abumrad: "Radiolab" is a kind of crazy, slightly psychedelic adventure through a big idea. So we take an idea every week and we kind of do an hour-long investigation of it.Myself and Robert Krulwich are the hosts, and the whole thing is supposed to be like two guys sitting at a deli table. That's sort of the superstructure, two guys just chatting.

The whole thing has a crazy kind of hi-fi soundscape that weaves through all the different things. But really, at the end of the day, I want it to feel like two guys having slightly surreal but completely ordinary chat about the world. It's like the stuff that everybody's been thinking about, back to Aristotle, that really has no answer, like what is time, what is space, what is consciousness, like how do I know I'm conscious? Like how can I reflect upon my own experience? I'm addicted to that feeling of standing in wonder, like looking at the world in awe. But it can't be a cheap wonder. FULL POST

Although he's only 39-years-old Abumrad is redefining the age-old medium of radio. He's the co-host of the wildly innovative show called Radiolab (WNYC Radio).

To try to define Radiolab is a fool's errand; it simply has to be heard. Each show tackles complex topics that range from the mind-bendingly scientific to deeply human philosophical questions. Abumrad takes us on this journey of explanation and exploration with multi-layered sound design interlacing loose bits of fun banter between him and his co-host Robert Krulwich. It's a fully realized, highly produced blockbuster.

Radiolab has a cult-like following of millions of fans who eagerly await each new show. And it's consistently one of the most popular iTunes podcasts - over 2 million subscribers a month. It also airs on more than 300 NPR stations across the country. FULL POST

Every Sunday at 2 p.m. ET the CNN show 'The Next List' profiles a person with a new idea that could change the world. Here's a list of all of the innovators the show has featured since it started in November 2011. Check back for updates.

Hugh Herr, prosthetics developer and bionic man

By John D. Sutter, CNN

(CNN) - When technology knows your name, it's hard not to personify it.

That's what's so interesting about Shapeways' "What does Siri look like" contest: You get a little window into the minds of people who use Apple's voice-controlled "assistant." Some imagine Siri as a Superwoman. Some see her as more of a gender-neutral "it," like a standard robot.

One entrant, not shown here, created an image of Siri as Sarah Palin reincarnated, according to Carine Carmy, spokeswoman for Shapeways, the design and 3-D-printing company that organized this contest and recently posted the winners online.

"Everyone who is an Apple user is a very big fan (of Siri), so I think people feel they have a very intimate relationship with this technnology," she said. "He/she/it gets to really understand your needs. It's quite an impressive technology."

The image at the top of this post, created by SaGa Design, won the 3-D design contest. Here's the 2-D winner, which shows Siri as the rock-star version of an executive assistant and was created by @eddieadolf:

And here are a few more of our favorites. Take a look:

Which is your favorite? Or how do you picture Siri?