Japadog kiosk owner Noriki Tamura is so encouraged by those incredibly long lineups in downtown Vancouver for his enormously popular Japanese sidewalk creations that he plans to set up shop in New York.

"I'm planning for the end of the year," Tamura told The Province last night. "We will expand to Los Angeles too. But we have to choose [which city first]."

After dominating the Chinese market to the tune of $1 Billion in sales this year, which also happens to be their 20th Anniversary, Li-Ning has now entered the American market with the opening of their very first US retail location in Portland’s Pearl District. The brand pulled out all the stops earlier tonight, as Portland Mayor Sam Adams was even on hand for the official ribbon cutting, joining Baron Davis and Li-Ning General Manager Jay Li for the ceremonial grand opening. “Portland is the epicenter of athletic footwear,” said Li. “It is a great testing ground for us to introduce the brand and ease into our international presence.”

Yotel, which has been an innovator in establishing micro hotel facilities called “pod” hotels at major airports of the world, has now ventured into opening hotels in cities too. Their first hotel is scheduled to open in 2011 in New York’s Times Square.

The hotel, designed by the Rockwell group, will have all luxury amenities such as business lounges, a bar and restaurant. The hotel will have a capacity of 669 rooms and each room will be twice the size of a capsule in a Yotel’s pod airport hotel. The rooms will be furnished with motorised beds and mood lighting.

After Twitter's launch in 2006, it took years to collect its first one billion tweets. It finally crossed the billion benchmark in November, 2008. Just one year later, Twitter hit five billion messages. And today – only four months later – that number has doubled, according to Twitter counter GigaTweet. Thursday night at about 7:50 p.m. Eastern time, the site hit 10 billion tweets.

PSFK friend, London conference speaker and entrepreneurial designer Kate Moross was asked recently to apply her visual aesthetic to a limited run of their Creme De Corps moisturizing cream.

Rapportive is a browser plugin that replaces the ads that appear in Gmail messages with contextual information about the sender. In addition to provide social context for more inspired conversations, the service features a section where users can create personal reminder notes about their contacts. With plans to integrate with popular CRM, helpdesk, and email marketing services, Rapportive’s upcoming features are modeled as tools for business users and a platform for managing relationships with clients and customers directly within Gmail.

'If we planted one of those in every hole, it would be like a forest in the road'

An ongoing series of public installations highlighting the problem of surface imperfections on Britain's roads.

The Kobe Shimbun recently reported on a “boom” happening among drinkers in their twenties and thirties: online nomikai.

As we know, Japanese nomikai often have a lot of ritual and social tension, especially when it’s with colleagues: where you sit is important to your rank in the office, and of course you have to be nice to your boss, pour his drink, and generally show lots of 遠慮 (enryo or “consideration”).

Suntory ran a campaign last year promoting its 3% low alcohol Chu-Hi Horoyoi (”tipsy”) as a drink for the young consumers to enjoy just by him or herself. It also started a community site to encourage people to go online and interact with each other. Horoyoi.com, did not, though, use a web cam, but instead provided you with a drinking avatar and customizable profile.

Nomikai-related tweeting has already been taking off too, it seems. Check out the tag #twinomi for what’s happening now.