It’s easier to dress all of your male friends in Saint Augustine Academy when you have the entire collection in front of you– which is exactly what I would be doing if I were in Sydney, where the accelerating line of edgy men’s apparel has opened it’s first store.

Located in Surry Hill’s, SAA’s new space takes a minimalistic approach to displaying their line of bravely designed and beautifully tailored pieces, staying true to designers Adrian and Alvin’s musically-inclined vision. The mellow palate of this season’s collection, Happy Endings, looks quite at home against the black, white and metal of the flagship - as would I, I imagine, as I slather my man friends in the kind of gear normally reserved for more professional panty-droppers (oopsie, did I say that out loud?).

On my end, it has been exciting to watch this ballsy AU label grow as it has been spotting their work on an increasing number of serious-as-shit rockers, but a flagship store– well, that’s a whole new level of awesomeness. Congrats, boys!

Well, all of the mystery surrounding the new iPhone we’ve been shrouded in for the past couple months can finally be put to rest. Mr. Jobs just revealed the particulars at today’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco. Jason Chen and crew at Gizmodo did one hell of a job live blogging the event, and I found myself hitting ‘command-R’ just about every 10 seconds anxiously awaiting new nuggets of info. On July 11th, we’ll get (black or white) iPhones with a fast 3G network, the availability of tons and tons of 3rd party apps, impressive battery life, GPS functionality, and it’s going to be sold in 70 countries for the drastically reduced prices of $199 for the 8GB version and $299 for the 16 Gigabyte-er. Doesn’t look like they squeezed copy/paste in there, but we always need something to look forward to, right?

Photos and other informational goodies courtesy of Gizmodo.

Related: Why I’m Taking My iPhone Back

When I started this blog, I never imagined in only a few short years I would be able to surround myself with an incredible, talented, and diverse team. Today, I’m extremely proud to introduce a new Editor to the site, Jonathan Stern.

So, who is he? Jonathan is a native Bostonian, but around the age of five his parents thought it would be funny to transplant him to Florida, where he’d spend his formative years rooting for the Red Sox, drinking Miller High Life, and dreaming of that day he’d get back to the Northeast and write for Rolling Stone. Only one of those things happened, and for the past six years he’s written for no less than a dozen high-profile publications including: the Phoenix, Stuff, Penthouse, People.com, House and Garden, Golf for Women, Lucky, and ACCESS (DirecTV’s subscriber magazine). As the new Editorial Director of JoshSpear.com, he thinks that he can settle down and become a one blog kinda guy. We’re pumped to have him on board. Welcome Jonathan!

I've had the pleasure of editing this site for the past year. In that time I've seen our team expand, watched others leave (while wishing they weren't) and, most importantly, tried to bring fresh, exciting and high quality content here to the best of my ability. I've enjoyed it all thoroughly but as of Monday, I'll no longer be editing this site, and will hand the reins over to the very capable Jonathan Stern (more on him soon), who I've had the privilege of working with the past few months. I'm sure he'll continue in the same vein as I have, as well as adding his own flavor along the way.

This change in roles will hopefully afford me the time to contribute here more frequently. For the next few months, I'll be traveling — first to California for the majority of May, then back to Australia to spend some much overdue quality time with my family and friends. I couldn't be more excited about this and I hope to share some of my finds and experiences with you. (If the more mundane details of such interest you, you can find me at Tumblr or on Twitter.) I've loved hearing from everyone– what you think of the site, always appreciated your tips, submissions and feedback when you thought something was off. I hope you'll continue this dialogue with the new guard here. In my opinion, you couldn't be in safer hands than Josh, Jonathan and the rest of the editorial team.

Thanks for reading. You guys have been great.

–Heather

The speaker lineup for the legendary and incredible TED Conference I attend in Monterey, California just released their speaker lineup for the event — 50 days away! — and it is seriously stellar. As the folks at TED say, their most ambitious to date (I’m not surprised, they don’t play around); a diverse group of folks like Kaki King (love her) alongside author Dave Eggers, John Knoll, Walter Isaacson, industrial designer Yves Behar (he did the Jawbone) to name a few. And of course, Al Gore will make another appearance on the same stage he announced his film, An Inconvenient Truth. The yearly brain safari I alluded to last year in all my TED 2007 posts is almost here. I can’t wait! Be sure to check out the whole program here, because you know you can look forward to them as TED Talks in the future.

For those of you who were hanging around here last year, you’d remember the infamous 6 resolutions I made for 2008. I’ll cover how I’ve done on the others ones soon, but time is of the essence to circle back to the last one, entitled Donate More. I pledged to walk my walk about companies big and small making a difference in the world by donating to those in need. And, I said I would donate 5% of my site’s profits to a charity that we all agreed on together. The time to decide on that place has arrived. Clean water? Disaster Relief Efforts? Create a scholarship fund at a design school? Perhaps we should micro-finance some projects as a group together through Kiva? You (and there are many of you), tell me where it should go. Comment below or email in, and after we receive a bunch of ideas, we’ll put it up for polling and go from there. Speak!

Boys and girls, it’s that time of the year again where we ask you to spare a few minutes to tell us a little bit about yourself; your likes, dislikes, and what you think about this little site turned full-time business. I promise, this is one of the shortest surveys we’ve ever done — and in exchange for doing it, you’ll be entered to win one of these awesome new Eye-fi Wireless SD cards, so you can you can snap and upload pictures instantly with no wires, giving any digital camera wi-fi instantly. Runners up will receive a few Monsterpods — this all courtesy of our kick-ass friends at Photojojo. Quick, quick: go fill it out, and thanks!

Time for a quick Spearlocator update! I’m in Portland for the next three days, meeting with a certain shoe brand (you’ll never guess which one); I’ve got some free time here and there if anyone has any good tips for the city. On Wednesday afternoon I pop down to Los Angeles for Imprint Life, the Asian marketing conference put on by interTrend and giant robot. I’m moderating a panel called ‘Speed Scribes’ about blogging culture with Rob Heppler, Jeff Staple, Danny Choo and Brian Lam from Gizmodo. If you’re free Thursday, sign up and join in. I’ll have some time afterwards to meet people. Then on Friday, back across the country to NYC I go. Where next? Where next? Nobody knows…

A while back, Mimoco approached the Spear Collective with the idea of doing an artist series Mimobot. We hollered at our 26 artists to submit design proposals, and many of them came through with some damn impressive bot mockups. In the end, Mimoco chose to produce the work of none other than Undoboy for part 2 of their 2007 Artist Series. I’m sure you’ll agree that the ‘King’ and ‘Queen’ you see here are the most regal Mimobots to ever infiltrate USB drives. Undoboy also did a bang up job with loading these things with a ton of exclusive content — wallpapers, icons, avatars, animations, and screensavers — even more of a reason to grab one. Look for these little ballers to hit Mimobot retailers in the very-near future. But remember, they’re limited edition — only 2,000 of each are being produced, and their sure to fly off shelves like greased lightning.

Thanks to everyone for their input regarding how to best use the floor and wall space in my very empty, very awesome new apartment and as promised, we’re giving away — arbitrarily! okay, only sort of — the three Ptry mimobots to our (okay, my) favorite submissions:

• Corey O’Malley, for the sexy rug and (recycled!) plastic adirondack chair suggestions
• Bud Caddell, for making Carmel and I giggle like delirious schoolgirls. Also, because we agree that everyone should own employ a Hamburgler or monkey butler. Seriously.
• Tehbias, whose Trove recommendation inspired a post all of its own.

Again, thanks for all your feedback, and if you weren’t lucky this time around, keep your eyes peeled for more giveaways really, really soon.

Heads up to our California readers: early tomorrow morning I’ll be on two Red Bulls and an airplane, heading to L.A. for a little hunting. I’ve spent tons of time in the Northern part of the state, but almost no time in the Hollywood/greater Los Angeles area, so if you know of some good things worth checking out, feel free to tell me about it. I’m only there through Thursday on what may turn out to be a packed schedule… but I’ve always been one to choose art/design over things that Heather tells me to do, so fire away, and I’ll do my best to get where I can!

Just a quick update in the Spear-travel-world, I know many readers appreciate knowing my whereabouts. I still have a handful of reviews coming from Bali and Java to write. I landed back on the east coast for the last week and change, where I had some great new business meetings in NYC; mysterious, I know. But don’t worry, I’m very close to announcing the new company. I’m headed to London for the week tomorrow evening for business development, looking forward to checking out the Virgin Atlantic upper class on the way there, and EOS Airlines on the way back — both come highly recommended to me. As usual, if you’re an entrepreneur, designer, agency, company or like-minded person and want to catch up, talk, or have me in to chat, i’ve got a few times open throughout the week in London, so always feel free to reach out and say hello!

When I had the idea to form an artist collective and ultimately launched the Spear Collective with Jamie this March, we had no idea that we would garner such incredible recognition in such a short period of time. This month, our esteemed collective appears on the front cover of Computer Arts– the world’s best-selling creative magazine. The cover is 1 of 3 limited edition artist-covers that hits news stands today. For this project, Chris Cox, Dan Funderburgh and Ingi Erlingsson collaborated on a design to help share both our collective aesthetic and their vision of true collaboration. The cover itself is seriously awesome, and the inside story sheds some light on the step by step process the three guys used to create the cover.

The collective has been — and remains — one of our passion projects, and we’re humbled to be surrounded with such diverse and distinguished artistic talent. When we assembled these 26 “chosen ones” and began to sense the group dynamic build, we knew something special had been set in motion. Head out to your local news stand pick up this issue– it may be worth something one day. And to the entire Spear Collective: you make us proud! Keep your eyes peeled for more Spear Collective projects coming very, very soon.

It’s officially a happy Thursday, because today is the day we introduce Mike Luce, our new Chicago-based contributor that’s been filling the pages of Spearland with the kind of wit and wisdom one can only attribute to years of sometimes questionable, other times admirable choices.

Mr. Luce, a Kentucky native with an alluring background in English, Political Science, and Shenanigans, is an avid reader with a passion for dive-bars and Puma Sneakers. The spectacular series of events that have contributed to the formation of Mr. Luce as we currently know him include: a brief stint at Kenyon College in Ohio (ahem, Mike likes to party); a wise relocation to Chicago to attend Loyola University; a grown-up job working in client development within Fortune 500 companies; and a recently developing distaste for “The Man,” resulting in his most recent position in educational technology as he explores other “options.” When not exploring the “option” of problogging, Mike enjoys dabbling in art/design, skiing (even though he’s currently laid up with a busted knee), and offsetting existential angst by volunteering for non-profits. We’re incredibly thankful for Mike’s increasing contributions to JoshSpear.com (and are consistently impressed by his ability to pack 3 pages of information into one paragraph — seriously, dude, you’re making us look bad). Welcome to the team, Mike.

Just fresh back from London where it looks like my new agency will be opening an office, (more on the agency a bit soon), and with only a week at home here in Boulder, I’ve decided to make a major and life-changing move — I’ve packed my apartment up, shipped and stored what matters most to me, sold what matters least and I am officially a nomad (read: Jetsetter). I’m feeling both terrified and a sense of freedom I’ve never really experienced before now. I’m off early tomorrow morning to Taiwan (didn’t get enough of Taipei those night markets last time around), followed by some downtime and exploring in Bali and Java with my brothers. After a few weeks in Indonesia, I hop back into NYC for a couple of speaking engagements, into London for a handful of meetings and from there the adventure continues — I’ll be living and planning my next stop (or not planning) on the go. I will live in hotels, friends couches, and hopefully, the guest bedrooms of rich and famous. My mission is to explore, meet new people, find new dynamic content for this site and aggressively build all of my businesses around the globe. Maybe I’ll even put up a poll and let you all decide where I should go next. I know I don’t often use this blog for personal reflection anymore but thought many of my readers would actually like to know what I’m up to as this site grows and widens the lens with a great set of new writers from around the world. As always, if you have any tips, contacts, etcetera in any of the places I’m going or want to engage me for some consulting/speaking in any of the places mentioned above, please feel free to drop me a line.