Our pal Mario Marsicano at Jellio told us about some cool new items he's just gotten: like this magic slate bag (remember magic slates? They were the dime store toys you could write on, then erase by peeling back the plastic).
The magic slate bag looks like an old 50's TV set - with a "screen" are on the flap that you can write on: Link - Thanks Mario!
We've featured a panorama of Mars before (taken by the rover Opportunity), but here's a new one from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander: Link [Quicktime]- Thanks Jeffrey Martin!
I'm glad that I'm not the only one who ever noticed shops, clearly closed with dark interiors, all locked up nice and tight, but with a blazing neon sign that said "Open." Here's Daniel Wanderman's new photo blog Clearly Closed, which aims to fill a specific niche documenting shops who commited the "open yet closed" faux pas: Link - Thanks Daniel!
We've posted about Joshua Harris' garbage bag art on subway grates before, but that was his 1.0 creation. Check out his latest and greatest garbage bag animals: Hit play or go to Link - Thanks Ash Adams!
Neatorama reader (and biggest Brazilian fan, he said) Marcelo Porpecelli sent us a pic of the best chocolate bar EVAR: the ORLY bar he bought from Wal-Mart - Thanks Marcelo!
If you like that, you'd probably like Neatorama's ORLY shirt.
Would you stop to pick up a penny off the floor? How about from a billboard ad? Chevrolet created a 20-foot billboard advertisement for the Aveo entirely out of one-pence coins in London's New Oxford Street ... which was stripped clean by passers in 30 minutes flat:
Chevrolet's Les Turton commented:“There have been some great car adverts before, but none that has stopped traffic and actually put money back into the motorist’s pocket so this is certainly a first. We’re glad we’ve topped up lots of people’s wallets, purses and, in some cases, rucksacks, but it would have been nice for the billboard to last a little longer than 30 minutes.”
After PINK magazine editor Cynthia Good complained that its "Men at Work" and "Men Working" signs are sexist, the city of Atlanta is going to change them - at a tune of $1,000 - to "Workers Ahead."
The project, which involves painting over the existing 50 "Men at Work" and "Men Working" signs with those that say simply "Workers Ahead" or "Workers," will cost a total of $1,000, Atlanta Public Works Commissioner Joe Basista told FOXNews.com.
About half of the city's 100 Public Works employees are women, said Basista, so he complied with PINK magazine editor Cynthia Good's request to stop warning passersby of men at work when women were right there alongside them.
Now, she's going national:
"We're calling on the rest of the nation to follow suit and make a statement that we will not accept these subtle forms of discrimination," she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
A sensible correction or political correctness gone mad? What do you think? Link - Thanks Chris Ayres!
Photo: 8tokyo
Noriaki Yamada of 8tokyo blog found this Froggy Cream Puff from Japanese dessert shop "Maison grace Ange." She said that the green tea-flavored cream puff was tasty as well as good lookin.' Link
BTW, Noriaki's having an exhibit "Fugeiten" at tortoise, in Santa Monica, California. It's a textile craft project combining traditional Japanese hemp quilting technique with modern designs: Link - Thanks Noriaki!
Neatorama reader Sarah Lustberg spotted this brilliant idea on her way to work in East Village, New York City: a gumball machine selling "ideas" for 50¢ each! Too bad she didn't buy one ... Thanks Sarah!
In 1992, Disney announced that it would plant trees in Florida to give something back to the area - so they planted 50,000 pine trees ... in the shape of Mickey Mouse!
See Mickey's Forest and other fascinating bird's eye views of Florida: Link - Thanks Dave!
Wonder why the iPod is so expensive as compared to other MP3 players? Well, sure - it looks and works great - but is quality necessarily the main driving force behind its high prices?
Perhaps not. Here's an article in Popular Mechanics about the secret "Apple Tax":
Last year, when Apple introduced the original iPhone and the latest generation of iPods, another new product came out of Cupertino, Calif., but this one received little fanfare. It was a proprietary authentication chip. The chip works like a silicon key that unlocks streaming video functionality on iPhones and iPods and generally authorizes the devices to work with approved accessories. The advent of the “auth chip” made it impossible for any third-party company to produce iPod-compatible gadgets without dealing first with Apple—the only company selling the chip. Previous-generation iPods could output video over a generic $2 iPod video cable, but new phones and iPods require officially licensed Apple cables—and these can cost up to $50.
The chip has become a headache for many accessory manufacturers, who complain that they sometimes have to compromise on quality to pay for the chip and other Apple licensing fees, while still maintaining price points consumers can afford. “If we didn’t have to pay Apple for the dock and auth chip, we could have made a much better speaker for the same price,” said an official at a major electronics maker, who, like several sources for this story, requested anonymity because of fears that speaking with the press could jeopardize his company’s relationship with Apple.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4272628.html - Thanks Andrea Faville!
Photo: eagle-ffm [Flickr]
Flickr user eagle-ffm took this great photo of a fantastic spiral staircase at Garvan Institute in Sydney, Australia: Link - via ReubenMiller
photo: PANTOGRAPH
I ran across these fantastic bench shaped like numeric keypads and a chair shaped like a mouse by Japanese studio PantoGraph. Can someone who can read Japanese tell me what they're all about?
Link (Don't miss the Diorama section - it's wonderful!) - via misterstarfish
The recent decision by a federal judge to order Google to turn over all YouTube user data to Viacom has the web atwitter - but do you know what actually happened to all those videos taken down from the website for alleged copyright violation?
MIT Free Culture has a project, appropriately called "YouTomb" that tracks these "dead" videos: http://youtomb.mit.edu/
Previously on Neatorama: What do 12-terabytes-worth of data look like?