Azalea, one of our favorite online clothing stores, has added some great new men’s clothing for spring, including some fun stuff from Umbro by Kim Jones and the eco-friendly GRN Apple Tree. I love Artful Dodger’s latest additions (this tee is awesome, even if it does look suspiciously like the work of Deanne Cheuk), and one of the spring look books is seductively hinting at some fresh Saint Augustine Academy to come. Azalea is also holding a pretty killer sale right now for both men and women, and be sure to check out the section for Eco-Azalea, where the site showcases some talented, earth-loving designers.

Boxfresh, one of London’s favorite streetwear brands, has formed a pretty alliance with fellow designer and countryman William Cheshire in a collaboration for a new line of men’s and women’s accessories. These are a few pieces from the resulting “Boxfresh Towers” collection, and I haven’t been so sold on jewelry since I wrote about the incredible Alex and Chloe months ago. Cheshire’s menswear background is evident in the designs he created for this assembly; most of the line-up is angular and powerful, and even the women’s pieces have a touch of superhero. You can find a Boxfresh dealer close to you here, but I doubt all their retailers will stock the jewelry, so check around a bit.

We’ve got a few invites to the new and super-exclusive networking, gaming, and round about dating site called I’m in like with you. If you haven’t poked around the site yet it’s worth a visit– the user interface and experience is just above and beyond the competition. Basically, users set up “games” with a question or statement like “Who wants to go to coffee Friday…” As a user, you can then bid your own points on that game. You gain points by answering questions, spending time on the site, winning other games, etc. After a chosen time period for a game expires, the creator of the game can select a winner from the top 5 bidders– then they can email, message, or even call (without showing their phone numbers) the other person. We’re totally excited about this model– it’s a safer for both parties, more fun and borderline addictive. As a single (yes, single) 20-something entrepreneur, I was actually pleasantly surprised with the caliber and savvy of profiles I’ve seen and people I’ve met thus far. Lots of designers, entrepreneurs, and smart looking people. So with that said– why should I give you an invite? Leave a comment to be chosen.

I think we can expect some good things from Burn Suburbia, a new t-shirt company backed by a neat (and a little lengthy– sorry) concept: to work with designers from all over the world to create shirts that creatively encompass unique aspects of each individual place and culture in a rebellion against the general blah-ness of suburbia. The first two shirts represent collaborations with designers sub.aura (London) and Gislene Mayumi Matsui (Tokyo; shown), and it looks like one for Phoenix, the location of Burn Suburbia (and an old hometown of mine) is coming soon. I like that this little start-up has such a big and positive purpose behind it; most people that are fed up with the endless and depressing suburbia of Phoenix don’t start tee-shirt companies– they just move.
Via jeansnow

With a little (ok, maybe a lot of) help from Crispin, Porter & Bogusky, Volkswagen has just launched their new and mucho improved website. This is quite the site– packed with user-friendly and design-savvy features like a great custom building tool, and the “Compare-o-tron,” an amazing head to head, fully animated comparison tool that puts the VW models up against their competitors. We’re very impressed with this re-brand– setting the bar high for auto sites for sure!

As “green” becomes the new “red, white and blue,” we’ve been seeing a lot of innovative ideas that work conservation ideals into our daily lives. Greenprint is another such idea– it’s a software program that scans documents queued to print for wasted pages based on set of “waste criteria.” Pages the program believes to be empty or too unimportant to print are highlighted in red so you can go through the document and double check, adding back to the print queue pages you indeed want to print that got flagged as waste. The program incorporates a helpful pdf reader and an easy to use print preview feature as well. As you can imagine, In a huge pdf print job, this will save a lot of paper. A demo can be found here for those interested. Greenprint is a member of 1% for the Planet and also ran a promotion in March where they planted a tree for each copy sold, and if they reached a half million units in sales, they promised to match it, making it a “million tree March”– no word on how many units they did sell though. The software is free to try for 14 days, $35 for individual use, and $70 for a business copy.

TED, the unbelievable once-yearly conference on spreading knowledge far and wide just launched a new, refreshing and incredibly pleasing web presence. The new website is built around their infamous tag line: “Ideas worth spreading”– so every aspect of the site is about spreading, networking, and sharing the power of TED with the rest of the world. There are more than 100 talks up there now as well as a great social networking tool for attendees, aspiring attendees and like minded folks. Be sure to check out the beautiful video-player with unique rating system, and poke around the network. Seriously, this is a site you could dive into and come out 4 hours later and 40 IQ points smarter. Congratulations to everyone involved! TED 2007 was amazing, I can’t wait for 2008!