Our pal Stinger, the Netherlands-based designer behind Zeptonn Labs, has finally dropped his latest book project, Black & White Freedrawings. So named thanks to the no restrictions given, no holds barred approach to the 160 drawings held inside, the book offers over 132 eco-friendly pages of collab-y art between Stinger and house favorites like Jesse Hora, Undoboy, and Shin Tanaka.

If you were wise enough to get your hands on a copy of Stingermania, you already know that Stinger’s books are more fun than a water slide in the summertime. However, unlike his other publications, there are only 450 copies of the first edition of Black & White Freedrawings, and the heavy beast is unbearably pricey to ship internationally (75 bucksies). In fact, unless you do happen to live in Europe, your chances of ever touching this book are slim to none– which is a crappy thought, especially for those of us who are about to give away one of the only copies of the book to ever touch American soil (that happens to come with some very nice giclee prints as well)… Sigh.

Yes, we’ve got one. For you, from Zeptonn. And you can have it if you are the first person to correctly answer the following question: what philosopher initially inspired Stinger to get his Master’s degree in Philosophy? Leave your answer in a comment to this post, yo.

We probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but you seem trustworthy enough that you won’t go blabbing it all over town: we know a way you can get up to $525 in free gift certificates for some super awesome t-shirts from Threadless. That’s right we said free! During the month of April the kind yet covert folks at TCritic are giving away twenty one $25 gift certificates to one of our favorite shirt sources. So how do you get your hands on one? That’s easy. All you have to do is look for the secret word contained in one of TCritic’s blog posts each day and be the first to comment using said secret word. If it were any easier, they’d just give you the money...but contests are much more fun.

We’ve been Jawbone fans since the beginning, even back in 2004 when the first non-bluetooth version launched. Creating the “best bluetooth headset ever” and “sexiest way to talk” wasn’t enough for Yves Behar, so he had to go on and create a line of ridiculously sexy limited edition headsets shown above — we approve. Gold is for sweet talk, black is for dirty talk, white is for trash talk.

They were made in a *very* limited quantity, so these will no doubt dry up quickly (and you can’t buy them anywhere). Good thing I secured a set of them here at TED to give away to you, my fellow readers, right?

But I’m not going to let go of them easily, here are the rules:

The best sweet talk to me gets the gold adorned sweet talk headset, dirty talk, gets the sexy black dirty talk version, and trash talk (talk trash) gets the coveted shiny white trash talk version. Leave your dirty, sexy, and trash talk in the comments for me, and have fun. (FYI: comments below may be a liiiiitle NSFW. Just a heads up.)
Full product shots after the jump, courtesy of fuseproject…

Related: Jawbone Films
(Read More…)

Most people think pirates went the way of Blackbeard a long time ago, resurrected only for Broadway musicals and blockbuster movies starring Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley. While some still sail the high seas with more modern weaponry and less swashbuckling, it's a modern form of cultural piracy that is the subject of Matt Mason's new book, The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism. The frequent VICE magazine contributor "charts the rise of various youth movements — from pirate radio to remix culture — and tracks their ripple effect throughout larger society" for what amounts to a fascinating read. If you're interested in having your eyes opened wide to how the counterculture has transformed society then we certainly suggest picking up this primer.

If you want one for free, well, you’re in luck. First five (polite!) commenters get their own, so…comment away!

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!

In general, I am not into Rachel Ray. I like Giada because she’s pretty to look at, Emeril because he’s feisty, and Paula because she makes me feel good about eating butter straight out of the tub. Rachel just giggles and says e.v.o.o. too much (which bugs me, because the point of abbreviating something like that is to abstain from saying the elongated phrase — which she does anyway, right after saying e.v.o.o.). However, yesterday my fingers were too sore from, uh, typing? — to change the channel, which is why I let Rachel teach me how to make candy sushi. Watching her smush all that sugar into bite-sized pieces had the odd effect of reminding me that Halloween is next week, which then reminded me that I still don’t know what kind of whore I’m going to be this year. A Nurse whore? A Nerd whore? The Sheriff of Ho-Town (again)?

Today, we had two options: Talk about mimobots just by talking about new computer software, we decided to roll with Halloween. Here’s how it’s going to work: Tell us about your costume. We’ll give you points for creativity, presentation, and the amount of spandex used, and then (assuming you get the most points) we’ll give you a King or Queen mimobot. You won’t get points for telling me what to be, but hey, do it and I might just poke you on Facebook. Easier than making sushi… right?

It’s one of those days, I’m afraid; too late a night, too early a morning and entirely too much to do. I guess you could say I’m a little testy, just like I was the day I added the Visualize Bat from Orange32 to our Design Showcase. It’s probably a good thing I don’t own one — yet — because I might just have to use it. On myself. If you had submitted this to the showcase, you could be receiving a little care package from us containing fun stuff from Belkin, Bent Air or Desktoptopia…but you didn’t, so I might just have to keep all the freebies for myself. Want to take some of it off my hands? Head over to the Design Showcase and submit your finds now.

Like I needed any more distractions, virtual or otherwise, while I am at “work” — reader Nina submitted Peter Fowler’s collaborative project with HP, Toyrama, to our Design Showcase this afternoon, and it’s got me wanting to create some serious stop-action uh, action and just about nothing else right now. The competition is split into two segments, professional and open (for students/enthusiasts/people who think they’re awesome but probably suck), and you can win some serious prizes, for your time. For her top-notch submission, Nina scores a subscription to Desktoptopia. Want to snag some goodies for yourself? Thanks to Kohler, all you have to do is head on over, submit your finds and you could be next.

There’s certain people in my life who would be virtually impossible to get into a dress shirt. They are the kind of guys who’d turn up in a tuxedo shirt, blazer and checkered Vans to a wedding, and would rather be building something out of metal and brawn or performing some sort of bizarro homemade tattoo ritual instead of acting getting all swanked-out for a night out on the town. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, or anything. I’m sure if those guys were into cufflinks (or, if they had any idea how how girls think guys are who wear french-cuffed shirts), they’d be totally dig these Phillips Head Cufflinks, submitted to our design showcase by our reader, Katina. For her trouble, she’ll be rocking this slick Sea Thief tee from our friends at Bent Air. Want some free stuff? Join us and Kohler at the Design Showcase and submit your latest discoveries.

Some of you may be familiar with the work of Damien Hirst, as well as the ones which also mock him. This week, though, saw a submission through our Design Showcase which while similar, is neither: A Very Hungry God, the 2200+ pound skull crafted of pots and pans by Subodh Gupta, currently floating on a Venice’s Grand Canal in front of the Palazzo Grazzi. The piece was designed as a commentary about Parisian soup kitchens using pork in dishes, which is not allowed in Muslim diets. Très intéressant, indeed.

Thanks to the folks at eternallycool for their submission, which has scored them one of Belkin’s awesome new Mousetraps. You have something that should be featured here? Join us and Kohler over at the Design Showcase, submit your finds and you, too, could be scoring some sweet schwag.

For some reason — maybe just because they’re nice — the kids at Vinyl Pulse and Super Rad Toys have decided to team up to give one lucky person a whole basket-full of super-collectible vinyl. Though you’d think you’d have to sell your soul to Satan (or at least post something incriminating on youtube) for a chance at a Plasticgod Gosho, Yellow Dalek Gosho, a Traditional Gosho, a Blank DIY Gosho, and Mister Cartoon Green Lost Angel (yeah, all at once), all you really have to do is leave a comment on their bloggy thing. It doesn’t even have to be a witty comment- you could probably write what today’s date is, and it would still put you in the running. Those toy people… I bet they were too busy staging a Gosho vs. Lost Angel battle to set up a real contest. Well, whatever, this looks like a win/win to me, and you’ve got until Monday to go make that winning comment.

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.

My pal Chuck just dropped me a line to let me know that he launched a brand new site (same great work, new layout) as well as a couple of new prints and finally the addition of some t-shirts to his online store. The shirts go for $24.00 and are hand printed on super-duper soft cotton. Guess what? Chuck doesn’t know this, but I’m going to give away some of his early stock to get things moving. Lets say… 4 shirts, 2 yellow and 2 black to the first people that can tell me where Chuck is going for his honeymoon (congrats) next week. Go ahead, comment away.

In a clever marketing ploy, PepsiCo has been reaching out to the DIY/design/art/fashion communities by offering “design your own” contests for cans of Pepsi, and now, 16-oz aluminum bottles of Mountain Dew. Visitors on Mountain Dew’s Green Label Art site can try their hand at designing a custom label (or submit an image they cooked up at home), share their results, view labels designed by other users, and (of course) vote for their favorites. As these things go, the site is actually pretty well done although the label design tool is a bit wonky. I won’t bother sharing my creation with you (let’s just say it was less than good) but I bet those of you well-versed in Illustrator and such could make a run at the $10,000 grand prize. The winner will be determined by a panel of judges, made up of some top-notch talent, such as Chicago’s very own Chuck Anderson. Here’s the best part: for each artist on the panel, you can view their label design, an artwork gallery, and a homemade video. The videos alone are worth checking out for a rare glimpse into their studio space, creative process, and daily lives. The deadline for submissions is June 30th, so get cracking… and should you want to share your winnings, well, I could use some help with my credit card payments.

Okay, kids, listen up. To celebrate the launch of our hot new Showcase feature, the folks at Spout have generously donated five $100 certificates for the most popular entries posted to the showcase; we’ll be giving away one a week for the next five weeks. To enter, all you need to do is head to the Showcase page, upload a picture and a description and then hope it’s hot enough for the discerning JoshSpear.com readership to deem worthy.
Spout is an online community that genrates and fosters discussion between users who are passionate about film and video. You can use your certificates towards buying merchandise at their online store…that is, after you make sure out that it’s come recommended from their well-informed community. Good luck! Winners will be notified Sunday evenings, for the next five weeks.