I am not quite sure what I think about this idea, but for some reason I felt compelled to write about it for those of you who don’t already know about it– it’s Australian entrepreneurship at its best. Love Me & Leave Me is an online fashion accessories borrowing service for women, and the realized vision of Melbourne based Simonne Santana– she has created a niche business where there may very well be room for one. The concept is simple: why buy a ungodly expensive handbag when you can rent it for a week (or a month) and return it for a small fraction of the cost of owning it outright? The fashion cycle moves so fast, you’ll want to replace your key accessories soon anyway, right? Some of the brands you’ll find: Marc Jacobs, Chloe, Fendi, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci, Balenciaga, Chanel and Dior. Still, for me there’s something a little strange about renting this kind of stuff. Q: “is that bag real or fake?” A: “real, but it’s rented.” LM & LM currently only operates in Australia, but I’m wondering when we’ll see a similar service state-side?

Via LifeLounge

While we surely never hesitate to fill you in on our favorite t-shirts, it isn’t everyday that we write about Turkish brands. Reha Erdogan is the designer behind the B Turk label, and both the designs themselves and the story behind the designs are worth your attention. Each design has independent cultural significance, and seeks to enhance Turkish values, symbols, and visual objects to today’s aesthetic values. To that end, the overall aesthetic of the line is a “reflection of the cosmopolitan culture that has survived through thousands of years, inheriting a multi-cultural, multi-religious, and multi-lingual structure.” The fashion movement is merely the first prong of the B Turk movement; they want to apply the same design aesthetic to an array of other areas of design in the future.

Readymechs are free flat pack toys that you can easily print (and very carefully) build. All the toys are designed to fit on a regular 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper and printed with any printer– obviously the nicer the printer (and paper), the better the toy. Every toy can be assembled with double sided tape, matte paper, and 10-15 minutes of extreme origami like patience. This tentaclopse by Fwis is one of my favorites, but the entire new 002 series are adorable.

The new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album, ‘Some Loud Thunder,’ hasn’t been officially released yet (it’s due out Jan. 30th), but the band has orchestrated a deal for all of you die hard fans. You can download the album today before 3 p.m. (EST) for free. Well, it isn’t exactly free– you basically pay $13.00 to pre-order the album, and they will email you a ’secret link’ where you can download the album today. It’s a good deal if you ask me; you’ll be one of the first people out there to get the new tunes, and you will also be supporting a great band that has made ballsy strides to employ independent distribution tactics and has thus far sidestepped major label representation. If you haven’t heard Clap Your Hands before, go to their website and sample two songs from the new album on their website, ‘Love Song #7′ and ‘Underwater (You and Me).’ Hurry up!

Via PSFK

Despite being a little spooky, Packet Garden is insanely intriguing. The downloadable application captures information about how you use the internet and translates all this data into a ‘private world’ you can explore. The application takes note of all the servers you visit, their geographical location and the kinds of data you access. For example, uploads make hills, downloads valleys– the size of each hill or valley is based on how much data is sent or received. Plants are grown for each protocol detected– so if you visit a website, an HTTP plant is grown, if you share files, a P2P plant is grow, etc. All of this information is kept private (we hope) on your own machine to grow your own personal landscape– and naturally, everyday you can rediscover a new world based on that days network activity.