shortlist

SF Gate has an article by Carol Lloyd about Innovative architects turning used shipping containers into homes - "In this era of scouring the earth for the magic bullet in home building, few ideas can compete with the weird, pragmatic beauty of the used shipping container. ... Used containers (which can be picked up for $1,500 to $2,000) often have teak floors and sometimes are insulated."
[architecture and hygiene] | Adam Kalkin
Live without rich daddy. Container terminal for students in Amsterdam

The Aral Sea in Central Asia is shown in this Envisat image. The Aral Sea, located on the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan (to the south), is actually a lake rather than a sea. Over the last 40 years, the Aral Sea, once the fourth largest lake in the world, has evaporated to half its original surface area and a quarter its initial volume, leaving roughly a 36 000 square kilometre zone of dry white-coloured salt terrain now called the Aralkum Desert.
Envisat acquired this image on 14 July 2006 with its Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument while working in Full Resolution Mode to provide a spatial resolution of 300 metres. The image has a width of 545 kilometres.

The iPod speakerbag
BOOM BAG ist a new concept study for loudspeakers by GROdesign.
Designed as an accessory for iPods and other music players it is made from weatherproof speaker fabric and comes with a built in full range speaker and a rechargeable battery. The red lable can be used to control your MP3 player.

Das Grundproblem vieler Paare sei falsch verstandene Intimität. Sexuelle Intimität setzt nach Meinung von David Schnarch die Fähigkeit voraus, sich dem Partner so zu zeigen (und sich dem Partner so zuzumuten), wie man wirklich ist. Sein Buch 'Die Psychologie sexueller Leidenschaft' ist gerade in deutscher Übersetzung erschienen. weiter ...

US Civil Defense film from the 1950's for children in which Bert the Turtle shows what to do in case of atomic attack.
Producer: Archer Productions, 1951

This film is available for streaming and download from the Prelinger Archive at archive.org.
Creative Commons license: Public Domain

Lebenslustige erhalten Visa. Glücklosen, Sinnsuchern, Utopisten, Flüchtlingen, Schutzsuchenden, Träumern, Hilfesuchenden und eiskalten Realisten wird Asyl gewährt. Als diplomatische Vertretung des Landes Arkadien vertritt die Botschaft Arkadien in allen Angelegenheiten und dient zur Kontaktpflege. Das auf der diesjährigen Havanna Biennale erstmals vorgestellte Projekt wird nun dauerhaft in den Räumen der Galerie artMbassy installiert. Aktueller Wettbewerb: Arkadische Momente (-04.08.2006).

Seit einem Jahr veröffentlicht telepolis alle 14 Tage eine Folge der GOLD AG von Harald Taglinger als Text. Der Autor hat zu jeder Folge Podcasts als MP3-Files veröffentlicht. Mit der 30. Folge: Luganer Freuden liegt nun der letzte Teil der Kult-Serie vor.

is specially produced as a web-based project by Heman Chong transforming an existing architecture to pictogram using a benefit of presentation on a flat computer monitor. Chang collected satellite pictures of Singapore, which is the city he grew up in, and traced out 100 of existing building shapes from a bird’s-eye view.
REAL ESTATE - 100 Aerial Drawings by Heman Chong / NoSleepRequired is part of City/Observer created for rhizome.org | via VVORK

Galerie Lichtblick in Cologne invited photographers to send pictures as a visual statement against war. 'I think one has to act up and show his opinion in his own medium - in our case to initiate and do the exhibition and the website images against war', said the curator of this project Tina Schellhorn. The exhibition shows works of 576 artists and the website continues.

Come and dance to the meter of the kalevala*-sound! Open the curtains. Step inside the dancebox. Attend to the orders. Follow the acoustic instructions. Wait for the start of the Kalevala sound clip. Dance. You have 1 minute. Or watch the others dancing. Videoclips
a project by Schule für Dichtung -Vienna Poetry Academy and ImPulsTanz -Vienna International Dance Festival

Newsmap is an application by Marcos Weskamp and Dan Albritton that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Beyond that, the graphic depiction enables users to get a quick overview of breaking international news and, in doing so, provides background information on its distribution and how it is processed further, and sheds light on the mechanisms of news production on a global level. Newsmap uses Macromedia Flash and ColdFusion; Net Vision Award of Distinction/Ars Electronica.

Plan B is a promotion site of Recycling Centre of Helsinki area (KIERRÄTYSKESKUS). Created with taste it shows many different ways of reuse and recycle old things that available on sale for symbolic prices in Centre’s stores. This project is calling people to use Centre’s stores to donate and buy old stuff. Trashion Queens-designers Irina and Anna showing their works made of recycled clothes and household items. Many are notable. | via Nordic Design Blog |

Rana Creek’s living wall display, which they’d custom designed for the occasion as an example of a climate-appropriate botanical rain catchment system.
Excellent interviews (part 1 | part 2) with Paul Kephart of Rana Creek and impressing photos of their projects by Sarah Rich | inhabitat |

It's not a particular place that gives you the feeling of belonging here. It's the emotions that you connect with the place, the relationships you have to people living in the place and the functions that you assign to the place.

Seán Hillen is an artist and photographer from Ireland. He uses precise (sometimes using scalpel and tweezers) paper collage to mix postcard scenes of Ireland with photographic images of Greek ruins and Venetian canal life to create the fantasy land
IRELANTIS via | spurgeonblog |

Brazil is sick and tired of companies stealing their plant names, and they're not going to take it any more! Brazil has now come up with a wonderfully pragmatic way to break this cycle. They've compiled a list (there's a pdf here) of more than 5,000 Portuguese language names of plants, seeds, roots, etc. more ...
Brasilien kämpft mit einem interessanten Plan gegen den zunehmenden Mißbrauch seiner Pflanzennamen. Sie haben jetzt eine Liste mit mehr als 5.000 portugiesischen Sprachennamen der Pflanzen, Samen, Wurzeln usw. an WIPO, WTO und andere Organisationen geschickt. Die Hoffnung dabei ist, dass wenn diese Organisationen und Länder wissen, dass ein Begriff schon in Gebrauch ist, wird es seltener vorkommen, einer Firma darauf ein Warenzeichen zu gewähren.
via | boingboing |

The Tactical Sound Garden [TSG] Toolkit is an open source software platform for cultivating public "sound gardens" within contemporary cities. It draws on the culture of urban community gardening to posit a participatory environment where new spatial practices for social interaction within technologically mediated environments can be explored and evaluated. Addressing the impact of mobile audio devices like the iPod, the project examines gradations of privacy and publicity within contemporary public space.
The Toolkit enables anyone living within dense 802.11 wireless (WiFi) "hot zones" to install a "sound garden" for public use. TSG