On Feb. 23, a select group of Washingtonians received an intriguing e-mail: "The orange arrow is pointing at you," the subject line read.

It was an exclusive invitation to "an exclusive underground anti-restaurant," the e-mail explained. "Because the DNA of the magical dinner is unmapped, these events will evolve, month to month, season to season, place to place & plate to plate."

Orange Arrow plans to obtain location and liquor permits for its ambitious suppers, which will host as many as 150 select "hungry, hedonistic gypsies" at venues that range from a museum to an alleyway. Hush, the brainchild of a former World Bank staffer, invites no more than 16 for an intimate evening of home-style Indian food and culinary storytelling. There are even traveling underground restaurants. On Feb. 20, 40 in-the-know hipsters surrounded a long table to eat garlicky shrimp (and learn to suck out the heads) at the area's first Wok + Wine event.

OnLive has announced that its cloud-based game streaming service will launch in the 48 contiguous US states on June 17, 2010. The service will initially be available to PC and Mac owners for a monthly service fee of $14.95. Each game purchase and rental will carry a charge on top of the base subscription.

Mark Zuckerberg has long signaled that the future of Facebook will be off Facebook.com. His social network will take a big step toward that future at a developers conference in April.

That's when, according to a WSJ report, Facebook plans to launch a tool set for Web developers who want to make their off-Facebook Web sites look and work more like on-Facebook "pages."

Facebook calls this toolset the "Open Graph API," and describes it this way:

The Open Graph API will allow any page on the Web to have all the features of a Facebook Page – users will be able to become a Fan of the page, it will show up on that user’s profile and in search results, and that page will be able to publish stories to the stream of its fans.

The Open Graph API will allow any page on the Web to have all the features of a Facebook Page. Once implemented, you can include a number of Facebook Widgets which enable the transformation of any Web page so it functions similar to a Facebook Page.

Fashion chain Zara’s flagship store in west London’s Westfield shopping centre has a façade made from panels of HI-MACS material.

Designer Zara Estudio and fabricators Gruppo Candido Hermida chose HI-MACS in a Toffee Brown hue, and combined it with a metal trim between the pieces. Using 81 panels of HI-MACS and 3 sheets of steel, the angles and 3-D shapes allowed them to create an intriguing effect.

Stihl needed an inventive business gift to promote its new line of leaf blowers and Euro RSCG Germany delivered. The agency conceived the Stihl Autumn Calendar 2010, the first of its kind to tear of its pages automatically. Fusing elements of nature, technology and brand awareness — the calendar symbolizes the effectiveness of leaf blowers each day of fall. The calendar spans from September 23- December 21.

This page is for Wikipedians to list articles that seem a little unusual. These articles are valuable contributions to the encyclopedia, but are a bit odd, whimsical, or something you would not expect to find in Encyclopædia Britannica. We should take special care to meet the highest standards of an encyclopedia with these articles lest they make Wikipedia appear idiosyncratic. If you wish to add articles to this list, a broad consensus amongst contributors has identified two main guidelines.

Besides the obvious possibility of simple playful mischief, fictitious entries may be composed for other purposes. Chief among these is to catch copyright infringers. By including a trivial piece of false information in a larger work, it is far easier to demonstrate that someone has plagiarized that work: they will presumably copy the fictitious entry along with other articles.

This is very similar to the inclusion of one or more trap streets on a map or invented phone numbers in a telephone directory. Neither of these is effective for copyright purposes in the United States.

The New Oxford American Dictionary, in August 2005, gained media coverage[5] when it was leaked that the second edition contained at least one fictional entry. This was later determined to be the word esquivalience, defined as "the wilful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities" It was intended as a copyright trap, as the text of the book was distributed electronically and thus very easy to copy.

Hello Digg. Look at your homepage, now back to me. Now back to your homepage. Now back to me. Sadly, it isn't Reddit. But if you start using Reddit, you could be like me.

Vote down, now vote back up. Where are you? You're on a site, with Reddit, and what your Reddit could look like. What's on your screen? Back at me–I have it: Two Orangered envelopes from that link you liked. Look again, the envelopes are now Karma. Anything is possible on Reddit.

Vote up, I'm on a narwhal.

Great advert that went viral with a bunch a remakes, such as reddit and apple (see above links)

The Lips had a busy week in Los Angeles, officially releasing Embryonic and freaking out Conan on Tuesday, followed by last night’s pop-up store/Q&A/meet and greet/performance at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre. For 30 minutes the band took questions via Twitter, sharing some band trivia (the bunny suit’s origin came thanks to a guy on mushrooms) and interesting future plans: They’ve collaborated with Stardeath and the White Dwarfs to cover the entire Dark Side Of The Moon LP with guest spots from Peaches and Henry Rollins. Also those with a distaste for Kraft dressing will be glad to learn the proceeds from their use of songs in commercials benefit a music school in Oklahoma, along with various animal shelters.

Baker D Chirico is re-opening Tuesday 9 February Wednesday 10 February until Thursday 1 April (before Good Friday). Tuesday to Fridays, 8am-6pm. Hurrah!

A baked goods bomb has just exploded in Crossley Street.

That was my first impression when I stepped inside Baker D Chirico’s Alice in Wonderland inspired pop up store, the walls zinging with comets of pastries, cakes and bread against the night sky. The groaning counter of delectable sweet treats by pastry chef Louis Vaussenat was reminiscent of the maddest Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and even the staff were storybook cute, dressed in grey servant-girl cap sleeved dresses.

The Kid and I have been thinking about opening a cookie store for years. We'd bake cookies and talk about it. We'd eat cookies and talk about it. We'd bake more cookies and eat more cookies and think more and talk more. And, at last, we're doing something: COOKIEBAR! We'll be doing a CookieBar pop-up store and you can read all about it on Time Out's blog: The Feed.

Josh and I will be selling some of our favorite cookies — of course there'll be World Peace Cookies — and some new ones, too, from Monday, February 8 until Saturday, February 13. We'll be popping up at the chic hair salon, Mizu, on Park Avenue between 59th and 60th Streets, in New York City. It's just one door up from the famous Sherry-Lehmann wine store, which makes for convenient one-stop Valentine's Day shopping. Anyone for Champagne and cookies?

I really enjoyed last Thursday’s launch of the NOISE Lab, a ‘guerilla arts pop up store’ nestled opposite the Orange Shop and next to Boots the Chemists right on the Great Manchester High Street aka Market Street.

Situated in the former Shelly’s footwear outlet, next to Schuh and in prime shopping centre real estate, this incredibly bold 6 month long ‘experiment’ is born out of the national NOISEFestival.com project, an online community where young creatives in film, music, visual arts and many other creative disciplines develop and showcase their (first, in many cases) online portfolio.

Designed by Atomic Designs, inspired by Avi Adler, a Pop-up Store for Target that demonstrates the creative use of fabric in temporary architecture.

This season the top notch of Dutch design will pay London a visit during its most fashionable week. Taking place from 22nd-24th February, the Dutch Embassy will host a NL/Dutch pop-up space featuring the collections of Bas Kosters, Conny Groenewegen, End by Eva and Delia, Iris van Herpen, Mada van Gaans en Non by Kim.

The pop-up space showcases a wide spectrum of Dutch budding design talent ranging from art to architecture and fashion to design. Hosted by the Dutch Fashion Foundation in collaboration with UK based organizations, the initiative is supported by the cultural department of the embassy of the Netherlands.

The Chicago Fashion Incubator (CFI) at Macy’s on State Street provides six (6) emerging Chicago-based designers with the resources, including workspace, education about the business of fashion and mentoring, to launch their careers in fashion. The Designers in Residence (DIR) are provided office space, including computers and software; a workshop room with sample production space and a resource section; as well as a showroom. DIR are required to complete a core curriculum of workshops and seminars conducted at the Incubator location at Macy’s on State Street for the duration of a one year period starting in March 2008.

The S.L.A.T.E. Pop-Up Shop @ AK1511 is a unique retail concept launching December 20, 2009 at the AK1511 event space in Venice, CA. Located in the heart of trendy shopping street Abbot Kinney Blvd., it is the first-ever pop-up shop to be hosted by a fashion tradeshow as a showcase for their exhibiting designers and brands. S.L.A.T.E. is launching this Pop-Up as an open platform for key apparel and accessory brands that show at S.L.A.T.E. and are trendsetters in the world of lifestyle/streetwear/action sport style. In addition to standard retail, featured brands are able to host their own in-store events and sample sales, display exhibits, and bring in live musical performances and DJ showcases. The collection of apparel/accessory/shoe/timepiece/eyewear brands rotate monthly; the current roster will be available at the Pop-Up from December 20 through January 17.

from virtual to mortar, FC pops up

Robert Geller opens his first Pop Up Store in the brands hometown of New York in collaboration with retailer Assembly. Located at 129 Rivington Street, the store opened last weekend and showcases the all new Spring/Summer 2010 collection, until April.

One location, one theme, once a month. The shop is open once a month for a special event related to fashion.

Drama Beats brand Y&R recently held a release party for their collaboration with Diamond Supply Co. in Los Angeles. The party was also the launch for the Y&R pop-up store inside Diamond’s retail spot, which ends this Friday March 12th. So if you are in the City of Angels this week head down to the Fairfax District and check out the limited edition Y&R gear that is available exclusively in the pop-up shop.

From April 22nd, the Gucci Pop Up store will open for three weeks at Covent Garden’s Seven Sials. The store will carry 17 exclusive sneaker styles from their “icon temporary” collection, 15 men’s and 2 women’s styles, plus the Mark Ronson collaboration which will be exclusive to London. It has been called the ‘Gucci Ronson’ with some exclusive packaging with each item purchased.

Fashion has no Merci as Liberty woos us with delights from the Parisian concept store

Want a pop up Retail Store in Southampton, Bridgehampton or East Hampton? Best options available from Morley Commercial Real Estate

Members of MIT's Bits and Atoms lab visited Afghanistan some time ago. While there, they showed locals how to turn pieces of board, wire, a plastic tub and some cans into reflectors for a wireless network. The result? Fab Fi.

The project resulted in 25 simultaneous live nodes being up in the city of Jalalabad and residents being able to enjoy a stable connection all over the place. Locals are even expanding the network by adding more reflectors and routers. There are some difficulties in actually obtaining the routers though, but the MIT crew—now dubbed the Jalalabad Fab Lab—are helping resolve those by shipping routers over.

"This image featuring the tourism logos for all 50 states is currently being passed around twitter. The general consensus is that NY and GA are coming up as the winners, and I'd even add Kentucky to the top of the list as well."

Commune was founded in 2004 as a collective focusing on enhancing life through design. We come from all over the world to share a vision and an aesthetic sensibility in everything we do. Our intent is not to dictate, but to facilitate through unconventional thinking and creative solutions. Our design process is a collaborative effort. Whether the project is a commercial space, a retail environment, a restaurant, a residence, packaging, corporate identity, or a website we approach it holistically. Our diverse backgrounds allow us to see the same project from many angles and to offer solutions that reflect this open-eyed attitude.

With a staff of interior designers, architects and graphic designers using a collaborative mindset, we assemble the best team for each job and maintain integrity in every project we do.

Social Networking site Facebook is now offering its users the opportunity to share cash with each other, real cash that is.

You can send and receive small payments via a Facebook application called Buxter and the company behind Buxter that will process the transactions is online payments company ClickandBuy.

Marketing to postmodern consumers: introducing the internet chameleon

Reminded me of teen prostitution in Japan…

They loiter at the mall for hours, young teenage girls selling their bodies in return for designer jeans, Nokia cell phones, even a pair of socks.

I've already posted about MS tablet, here some more infos!

We've been dying to know more about Microsoft's Courier tablet / e-book device ever since we first caught wind of it last September, and while our entreaties to Mr. Ballmer went unanswered, we just learned some very interesting information from an extremely trusted source. We're told Courier will function as a "digital journal," and it's designed to be seriously portable: it's under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn't much bigger than a 5×7 photo when closed. That's a lot smaller than we expected — this new picture really puts it into perspective — and the internals apparently reflect that emphasis on mobility: rather than Windows 7, we're told the Courier is built on Tegra 2 and runs on the same OS as the Zune HD, Pink, and Windows Mobile 7 Series, which we're taking to mean Windows CE 6.

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.

Not all of us own land for farming, but even urban dwellers can grow gardens and plants. There are more and more fantastic green living concepts being designed for people who want to try out their green thumb. Here are 15 fantastically futuristic plant growing design concepts.

4chan kinda brought this to north american internet:

Human-flesh search engines — renrou sousuo yinqing — have become a Chinese phenomenon: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath. The goal is to get the targets of a search fired from their jobs, shamed in front of their neighbors, run out of town. It’s crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online — with offline results.

This is an ad for Pedigree, a supermarket dog food brand, and it features a series of mesmerizing slow-motion images of dogs jumping, shaking, and catching treats.

An entertaining and cheeky music video for “70 Million”, hit song by Franco-American band, Hold Your Horses!, offers a wink at art history as band members playfully reconstruct famous paintings in an off the wall lyrical interpretation all their own. Produced by L'Ogre.

the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, designed by UNStudio, can repurpose its internal ventilation system to form an artificial tornado.

Philips and DDB will follow-up its award-winning interactive film "Carousel" by releasing a series of five thematically-linked short films online in April.

At the ceBIT Technology Fair in Germany, the Berlin Brain-Computer Interface Research Consortium displayed a remarkable use of brain-controlled technology. Users are able to wear a special helmet allowing them to play a pinball game using only the power of their brain waves.

The term farm gals - Nogyaru, in Japanese - is a combination of the words nogyo (agriculture) and gyaru (gals).

The rice farming project is the creation of Shiho Fujita, a 24 year-old pop singer, who is growing rice on a farm in the Akita Prefecture which will be sold under the brand "Shibuya Rice," denoting Tokyo's fashion and shopping district that is frequented by so many trendsetting gyaru. She is also the author of a book on "gal farming."

"The New York City Police Department announced Tuesday that bloggers and others who publish on the Web will now be eligible for press credentials. The move comes as a result of a lawsuit filed in 2008 by three Web journalists who were denied press passes. In New York, journalists with press passes are typically allowed to cross police barricades at public events. 'Events that will qualify include city-sponsored activity — like a press conference or parade — as well as emergencies where the city has set up do-not-cross lines. The proposal also allows inexperienced journalists to obtain single-use press passes. Longtime civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel, who represented the journalists who sued, says the city will now decide who a journalist is by looking at the type of work they do, and not the organization they write for.'"

Fake businesses are to be used to lessen the impact of the recession on high streets in North Tyneside.

According to figures released today by the singularly focused blog Inside Facebook, the ubiquitous social network made upwards of $700 million in 2009 and is expected to reach a phenomenal $1 billion in revenues in 2010.

Year over year, Facebook's revenues have typically doubled, from $150 million in 2007 to around $300 million in 2008 and so on.
The breakdown of revenue streams is fascinating, showing the extent to which well-targeted ads based on massive amounts of user data still drives how we monetize the Web.

You know about the four basic tastes: sweetness, sourness, bitterness and saltiness. Even if that list doesn't roll off of your tongue, you can certainly imagine how each of these tastes flavors your mouth.

Well, it turns out there is fifth taste, called Umami. Umami was first isolated by Japanese chemists Kikunae Ikeda in 1908, yet only recently has the concept of umami made it out of Asia.
Here's why you should be aware of umami: It makes just about anything you eat taste better. Ikeda, who discovered umami, also patented the notorious flavor enhancer MSG, which essentially acts as a chemical umami.

When I discovered that they were independently owned and had survived for five years, I raised an eyebrow in curiosity. When I found out that they had expanded from one location to three over that time while Game Crazy had lost four locations in that same period, I raised the other eyebrow in surprise. And when I walked into their main location recently and saw that their store contained games and systems from every generation, hosted retro game tournaments and events, and has a videogame museum in the back complete with a Power Glove signed by Fred Savage … let's just say that something else raised of its own accord.

Aaaaaw I miss TOKYO!

Written and directed by Jonathan Bensimon and produced by Jonas Bell Pasht, Tokyo/Glow follows the nighttime journey of an illuminated man from a crosswalk sign as he embarks on an adventure through the streets of Tokyo. Shot on location throughout Tokyo using thousands of individual digital stills, the short film features original music by indie rock band Kidstreet, who recently signed with Nettwerk Records and will be releasing their debut album worldwide in 2010.

"Captivating & Insightful" The Monster Engine is an eleven year art project which has grown into an internet phenomenon. Released in June of 2005, The Monster Engine attracted 17 million hits in the first month and continues to get 1/2 million hits per month and is linked to over a 12,000 blogs worldwide–all on word of mouth with no advertising.

The Monster Engine is a book, a demonstration, lecture and a gallery exhibition. The premise for all three came from one single question: What would a child’s drawing look like if it were painted realistically?

It began at the Jersey Shore in 1998, where my niece Jessica often filled my sketchbook with doodles. While I stared at them, I wondered if color, texture and shading could be applied for a 3D effect. As a painter, I made cartoons look three dimensional every day for the likes of Marvel and DC comics, so why couldn’t I apply those same techniques to a kid’s drawing?