Most life-enhancing item

So this is it, the final shortlist from the International Judges' Awards category: the most life-enhancing item. All the winners will be announced tonight at the awards ceremony and on Wallpaper.com tomorrow.

The dessert bar
Desserts often get a poor rap and skilled pastry chefs are often undervalued talents. The dessert bar — a restaurant you go to just to indulge in the sweeter things — is set to change all that. It makes dessert the focus of a meal and the savoury course a cursory forerunner. In New York, Room 4 Dessert (left), Intent, Chikalicious and Max Brenner are leading the trend, while in Barcelona Espai Sucre has caught on, and we look forward to others following suit.
www.nyr4d.com, www.chikalicious.com, www.maxbrenner.com

Dual-core processors in Macs
Apple CEO Steve Jobs now has Disney to play with, so let’s hope that doesn’t distract him from doing the right thing with the brightest brand of the age. The Intel-isation of Apple’s computers means that the Mac user can finally connect properly, potentially anyway, with the rest of the world. Of course, there are Apple heads who like to live and work distant and distinct from the wider world of ugly Dells and dingy Windows. But that’s no way to look at the world.
www.apple.com

Eco loo cleaner, by Daylesford
Daylesford is known for its well-packaged organic edibles, but this year’s foray into ecological biodegradable cleaning products has us excited. In particular, the Concentrated Lavatory Cleaner with Rosemary. Eco crimes in the home don’t come much bigger than toxic loo bleaches, so a safe bowl-blitzer whose ingredients are renewable, ethically sourced and contain no animal by-products, with a pleasant natural smell to boot, makes us a whole lot happier.
www.daylesfordorganic.com

Google Earth
The earth is getting smaller. And so there is something so perfectly right about Google Earth, the rapid zoom from space to your own back yard and off again, sweeping across oceans and continents to land wherever you wish (security concerns allowing), to see streets and beaches and the places where other people live, work and play. Thrilling and disquieting in equal measure, there is an idealistic charge to the Google Earth project.
earth.google.com

Tesla Roadster
Until the arrival of Tesla Motors’ Tesla Roadster, the fully electric car was only a short evolutionary stumble from the golf cart. The Tesla represents an astonishing leap. Powered by what is essentially a massive lap-top battery, the car — Californian technology assembled to great effect by Lotus in the UK — does 0-60 in four seconds (faster than a Ferrari Spider), has a top speed of 130mph and looks to match. George Clooney has ordered one.
www.teslamotors.com