Eventually, we’ll get sharks with laser beams attached to their heads to fill our backyard pool. But until then, making “Pew! Pew!” sound effects will have to suffice. Not Damion Silver. This member of the Nu Artist movement has used his chaotic, layer-happy graphic style to design images for a wide range of companies — from Converse to Timex — but recently he created an intriguing personal project: laser-designed skateboards.

After creating boards the old-school way, Silver stumbled upon the technique of using focused light as a design tool. He liked the method’s clean and precise feel, so he found a partner and started working on his first deck. In about two weeks, he will be offering five decks, which all have the same essential design on different colored backgrounds, for $300 on digitalgravel.com

Related: RefillSeven Laser Deck Shows

Bowers & Wilkins, producers of totally sick, high-end audio equipment, is showing love to music fans with an unusual approach for gear makers. B&W Music Club puts out exclusive albums recorded at Peter Gabriel’s studio, and available to members in a lossless file format (as to avoid compromising the superior recording quality as it reaches your B&W speakers). One album will be released every month by artists including Skip McDonald, Gwyneth Herbert and Grindhouse. Even if you haven’t heard of any of them, it will probably be worth checking out just for the quality of sound.

Overall it’s really progressive program. Based on the membership fee, each album (in digital format) costs the consumer about $5. The artist gets a high-five from B&W as well, by getting the rights to their music two months after the initial release on Music Club. The motivation for this series is seems to be experimentation in sound rather than the ‘best-seller’ mantra of your traditional label. Definitely a refreshing move from an old school head.

It’s more or less a fact of life that you learn something new everyday. You might learn that Paris Hilton is dating someone new or that your Grandmother’s application to join the Hells Angels was accepted. However, if you’re employed within the creative fields of graphic design, illustration, web design and developement, the odds are that neither of those things are useful or applicable towards your continued personal growth within your chosen trade. If you’re looking to gain more practical knowledge that will go a long way toward giving you more of an edge in your creative field of employment, you’ll probably find The Learnlist to be a much more valuable source of wisdom on everything from Flash to Dreamweaver. The site is aimed at creative types and lists a bevy of the best books and websites to help you add to your ever growing database of information for innovation. Whether there’s a new program that you need to learn or an application you just haven’t had the time to perfect yet, The Learnlist is the place to go to expand your intelligence on such matters.

Italian industrial designer Djordje Zivanovic submitted a fascinating orb-like watch concept to the Signity International Watch Design Competition. Inadvertently, he has created an entirely new graphic representation of time. First there was the wall clock, then came digital, and now we have the linear orb. As Djordje explains, “The idea for this watch is a classic plastic bracelet, with incorporated lines inside the watch that show the current time. Those three line are rotating around the watch and show the time, while the seconds line is going around all the time. Adjusting the clock is easy because the watch is the touchscreen. All you have to do is to touch the line, click the adjust icon, and slide current time line to correct time.” Swatch would be lucky to get this one …

Each week, JoshSpear.com explores the latest projects by top creative professionals in the Behance Network and highlights a few that are pushing the edge of creative industry. Josh Spear also serves as an Advisor and Guest Curator for the Behance Network.

One look at the Aptera, and you’d swear that it could fly. Coming off as a cross between a single engine Cessna and something George Jetson could be seen flying around in, this spectacular new breed of plug-in electronic hybrid vehicle sets our design obsessed, eco-friendly hearts aflutter. While this sweet ride may not be able to take to the friendly skies, it will save you a boatload of valuable gas money, getting over 230 miles per gallon. Not only does this awesome automobile set entirely new standards for environmental safety, but it does the same for passenger safety, employing a safety cage similar to that of a formula one racecar. It also contains an “eyes forward” vision system that gives the driver 180 degrees of rear sight. It may not be exactly ready to hit the road just yet, but for those living in California, you can reserve yours today. So if you inhabit the Golden State, want to be ahead of the environmental curve, and at the same time convince your neighbor that he or she overslept by about a hundred years, perhaps you should invest in an Aptera.

Love fish? Hate algae? Indifferent about LCD technology? Then you’re a little strange … but that’s good, because you’ll also be into this blue whale sized “virtual” fish tank in Bejing. Longer than an American football field, we can’t help but wonder where we’ve seen this before. No. Oh, yeah.

via Gizmodo

It’s getting warmer and warmer everyday and I might need to pick up a bike to plow through the city streets on the weekends (HINT: my birthday’s coming). I’m digging the special edition Cannondale and G-Star collaboration called the RAW CANNONDALE. An incredibly sexy city bike with custom pedals, corked grips, Brooks saddle (so hot) and tube covers featuring G-Star materials (denim, cloth, nylon, the like). Sign me up?

Via Selectism and more pictures after the jump.

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BIG changes are afoot at Mimoco.Their impossibly adorable, data hungry Mimobot creations just got a little data hungrier for your precious filing. Everyone’s favorite portable USB buddies are now available in 8GB incarnations. That’s twice the size as previously available! Whether you trust Boba Fett or prefer rayD8 to ferry around your files, you’ll be delighted by the sheer amount of info these drives can digest depending on what you want to feed it. The new Mimobots up the input ante by boasting the ability to stuff their faces with nearly 20,000 photos, 2,000 songs, or 2,500 minutes of video. All you have to do is find one you want to make your own.

Most of us relish when the Internet is reflected in real world applications. But not banner ads. The HypTV people aren’t exactly recreating a tangible Internet banner with speciously easy games and questions, but they do have access to a skyscraper-sized outdoor screen that shares similar dimensions as a typical web “skyscraper” banner ad. Even better, they are relying on you for the content. The HypTV 2008 Skyscraper Festival is giving users the opportunity to have their videos or animations to go into rotation on their giant screen in the heart of Manchester, England. The videos can be anything awesome, as long as they show off this gargantuan screen. Head over to their site to submit some videos so we don’t end up with some lame Web advert for car insurance.

We keep killing our plants. It’s nothing personal, but remembering to water them just doesn’t rank as high on our list these days as making sure we’re home in time to watch women’s rugby. Thankfully we can finally buy the Vitamin I.V. plant pot. It will do everything, making us feel less guilty about our neglect. Just pop your little O2 producing buddy in the white pot (or in the limited-edition black version), set the watering schedule, and the I.V. drip attached to the adjustable metal rod will keep your flora green … until the bag runs out. Unfortunately, it doesn’t refill itself. That’s what’s we have ASIMO for!

From the company that brought you the SoundBridge networked audio device, Roku just introduced their Netflix Player. The player is $100 and roughly the size five stacked CD jewel cases. It has plenty of connections in back including HDMI, component, RJ45 and legacy ports. Anyone with a Netflix account over $9 can stream the entire online catalog. Interestingly, the navigation is done via Netflix’s browser interface. After you choose your movie, you hit play and it starts streaming. Movies start playing almost immediately and the quality level depends on your connection speed. There is no downloading here, only streaming (with a tiny buffer), so seeking is slow. For a one time investment and a Netflix account that most of us already have, the entry price for having unlimited access to a library of 10,000 titles is definitely enticing.

The magic of e-mail (aside from instant delivery) is that all of your unwanted spam can be disposed of with the click of a button. If only there was a button to erase the heaps of unwanted paper junk mail that arrives at your front door every day. Wait. Is there one? The geniuses behind Earth Class Mail have come up with a new system for virtualizing your snail mail, so you have a say on whether or not those pesky catalogs wind up wasting space in your house. Their service asks users to forward their mail to one of 18 P.O. boxes, where their envelopes are scanned and posted on a secure website and allows the user to decide whether or not a certain letter is trash or treasure. From there, users can also decide whether they’d prefer to recycle, shred, ship, or open and scan the contents so they can be read online. Not only is Earth Class Mail a seemingly simple solution for eliminating unwanted letters, but it’s also an eco-friendly way to figure out what to do with that inevitable mess of mail.

Most computer users express their individuality via their screen savers or personalized backgrounds. But GeekStuff4u realizes that the screen is not the only PC canvas with which to be creative. Their line of hand-painted USB keyboards turns your typing tool into a magical mural. Whether users would like their QUERTYs to be floating amidst a floral garden or simply have P’s and Q’s blinged out in gold, these keyboards are a welcomed makeover to something we stare at every day.

Frequent JoshSpear.com readers know that we’re big fans of the Jawbone since way back in ‘04. It’s hard to imagine how Aliph could improve on an already solid product, but the Jawbone 2 sports a new design, a footprint about half the size of its predecessor, and improved noise-canceling technology (dubbed “Noise Assassin”) … RED TEAM GO, RED TEAM GO!

Looking back at the first generation product we only had a few criticisms. First, the package was huge for the size of the headset. Hats off to Aliph for trimming down the sexy lucite packaging to something a little more proportional and eco-friendly. Our second gripe was the beautiful but difficult to use ear loop. The second generation Aliph opted for a simpler leather-wrapped design that not only feels good on the ear, but makes putting on the headset a snap. Lastly, was the charger and USB cord. To be honest, the first generation version of these accessories felt like an afterthought. The wall plug was pretty ugly and the USB cord was difficult to detach from the headset. These issues no longer exist with the introduction of a updated charger and much easier magnetic USB cord.

Beyond that, you can really tell that Aliph took some time to analyze the old version and challenge themselves to make the new one even better. Pairing is enabled the first time the headset is powered up. Standby time has increased to a whopping eight days — though talk time has decreased to four hours from six. But, best of all, the sound quality is as crisp and noiseless as we’ve come to expect from Jawbone.

Related Posts: Limited Edition Headsets; Jawbone Films

We’ve championed Bell & Ross brand timepieces for quite some time now. The Swiss watchmakers build instruments for those whose professions force them to withstand physical trials well beyond the everyday commute. Did you know a Bell & Ross watch was the first automatic chronograph worn in space? Or that their Hydromax model holds the world record for water resistance? Seeking to build on their reputation for breaking records and enduring extreme conditions, Bell & Ross is teaming up with skydiver Michael Fournier on The Big Jump.

On Fournier’s wrist will be a BR 02 Instrument watch, as he attempts to break the altitude world records for skydiving and balloon flight (as well as the records for longest free fall and fastest skydive) with his 40,000 meter stratospheric jump, taking place between May 24th and May 28th over North Battleford, Saskatchewan. Both Fournier and the watch will have to withstand -120 degree Celsius temperatures, cosmic radiation, and variations in atmospheric pressure. We’re sure the BR 02 will hold up. Mr. Fournier … uh, TBD.