I will do my best not to post too often about various iPad apps here because, frankly, I don\'t expect many readers to actually own them. My thoughts are still split on the device but that\'s for a whole other post.. I digress..

Looks like Phaidon is releasing their Design Classics series for the iPad. I\'m happy to see more book publishers embrace this digital format and, hopefully, receive a wider audience to their offerings. I\'d likely never purchase a slew of Phaidon books to sit forever on my coffee table but I may procure a few digital copies to flip through for inspiration.

Via Madrid.

This quick gallery of Quirky Inventions from the Pages of Popular Science are pretty amusing - particularly the vehicles showcased within. The Dog-Powered Car is easily my favorite but the Dynasphere and Personal Sub are pretty great as well. Be sure to check out No. 7 - the Handheld Kissing Screen.. for the Pure and Germless Kiss. Ridiculous!

Out of nowhere, RDIO started making the rounds on the Internets yesterday. Some are calling it the US solution to Spotify; access to an enormous library of music for a very low monthly price. The Mobile apps let you access the music anywhere and, apparently, there\'s a little social networking built into it as well so you can discover music from your friends. Having not actually received an invite yet I can\'t vouch for the goodness of any of this stuff but it certainly sounds intriguing.

I\'m also extremely curious to see how aligned this is with a possible forthcoming iTunes solution for much of the same thing. Granted, it\'s entirely speculative but there\'s a pretty big assumption out there that iTunes.com will relaunch from the grave of LaLa and offer something very similar.

Via Renaud.

If you haven\'t been reading the BPGlobalPR Twitter feed, you need to start immediately. After doing that, head over to Gizmodo and read this article from the creator of the account. Leroy Sticks take on the entire oil spill is spot on; just the right amount of humor and vitriol.

I started @BPGlobalPR, because the oil spill had been going on for almost a month and all BP had to offer were bullshit PR statements. No solutions, no urgency, no sincerity, no nothing. That\'s why I decided to relate to the public for them. I started off just making jokes at their expense with a few friends, but now it has turned into something of a movement. As I write this, we have 100,000 followers and counting. People are sharing billboards, music, graphic art, videos and most importantly information.

Why has this caught on? I think it\'s because people can smell the bullshit and sometimes laughing at it feels better than getting angry or depressed over it. At the very least, it\'s a welcome break from that routine. The reason @BPGlobalPR continues to grow is because BP continues to spew their bullshit.

I realize Twitter is still considered sort of a vapid repository of meaningless thoughts but you have to give credit where credit is due sometimes - and BP Global PR is pretty much perfect.

Typically when AV Club interviews someone that I\'m a fan of I find their results to be far more compelling than just about any other publication. The interviewer always seems to be far more informed than most publications and actually cares about the subject. Such is the case with this James Murphy interview - in which a wide array of LCD Soundsystem topics are investigated. The questions are spot on but Murphy\'s responses are even more engaging. When asked what the latest album is \'about\' he responds:

That’s a tough question for me. Albums to me aren’t really about things—they are things, if that makes any sense. It’s not a narrative, so I never know how to answer that. I understand the question, but I don’t know how to answer it, other than to make something up.

He also has a great bit about the new record, This Is Happening, being more personal than the previous releases. As to why:

I don’t know, you’re in a rock band singing about your life, your feelings. It seems pretty yawny in a lot of ways. But I ran out of songs like “Thrills.” [Laughs.] And “Yeah.” You hit a wall, to a certain degree, and all of a sudden you’re writing songs about dead people and all your friends and stuff. I felt like those were hard songs to write, because I was a little embarrassed about the point of them. But then they wound up being songs I really liked. They wound up being strong-esque songs that weren’t just musical ideas about musical ideas. So I guess on this record, I was like, “Well, embarrassment is not a good enough reason not to do things. You should try and do the best you can, even if it’s a little embarrassing—or a lot embarrassing.” So I think this record had a lot more with me trying to do things that I think I unconsciously forbade myself to do. Like sing in a really arch falsetto, or write songs from a hackneyed position of desperation, things like that.

I love that bit about not doing something because it\'s embarrassing. Perfect.

Read the whole thing, please.

• HTML5 Prefetching - apparently Firefox already supports this prefetching method in HTML5 that will force your browser to download a separate link in the background. The idea behind this being that your load times will be shorter because the next page would already be cached. I can see this being abused pretty heavily but there\'s some good potential in there too.
• Facebook Actionscript API - anyone have any experience with the Facebook / Actionscript API endorsed by Adobe? We may have a project coming up soon involving a Facebook App and I\'m assuming this is the best way to go for ease of integration with Facebook.

I can\'t say I\'m entirely enamored with all of the works from Justin Kemp but there are some occasional gems that, to me, work just right. His Adding to The Internet series is hilarious (the Jack Johnson House Plants and Smile Gradient being my favorites). The Internet Surfing and Celebrity Color Wheel are worth a peek too.

Via Zach.

Maybe not my absolutely favorite in the Everything series but the Danny Jelinek, Jason Whetzell and Oliva Monroe clips are great.. so that\'s a pretty solid percentage of success.

Maybe I\'m just on a kick because of the release of Mario Galaxy 2 but I found the following to be endlessly entertaining:

• Jay Pavlina Mario Bros Crossover Walkthrough - the creator of Mario Bros Crossover plays through a few levels of his own game and he is, surprisingly, hilarious. And if that\'s not nerdy enough excitement for ya; watch this.
• Super Mario Bros X - a massive undertaking of Mario canon all dumped into one new original game. Every character, costume, power up, etc from just about every official Mario adventure is all blended in this game. Watch the trailer to get an idea of the madness.

Madrid gave me the heads up on this RSA Animated talk on What Motivates Us, courtesy of Dan Pink. There\'s actually a great interview with him in the latest WIRED regarding this same topic of motivation but you really need to watch the RSA Talk first. The bits about Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose are especially inspiring; particularly if you think about them in the context of your own employment.

Here\'s the thing about Bad Postcards - I realize these images are being mocked and pithy captions are being added for potential additional humor value but I disagree! I legitimately enjoy them. There\'s a color aesthetic that is undeniable and a bizarre setup to the images that, to me, seems to say that the creators were being a lot more imaginative than what we see in advertising today. That being said, I\'m not saying these are all brilliant pieces of work to be put on a pedestal but I think they can enjoyed for what they are rather than mocked.

With all the debates flying around regarding the Future of Flash we are probably going to start seeing a lot of potential alternatives to work within AND around the issue. Such is the case with Smokescreen; a solution to convert Flash to HTML/JS friendly SVG canvases. Granted, it doesn\'t work in IE and the filesize difference is exponential (which means their banner examples are sorta out the window in terms of practicality) but it\'s a step in the right direction. I\'m not sure if this will ever catch on for real but it\'s worth being aware of; even if just for proof of concept.

This weekend launched a new showing at Nashville\'s Smallest Art Gallery; a collection of works entitled Reflect courtesy of Jemma Hostetler (Jemma Gura) and Dustin Hostetler (UPSO). It looks great online but even better in the actual space; so swing by and take a peek if you have the chance.

Jeremy posted a new mix - OughtaGhettaCamra - a themed collection of songs loosely about photographs and cameras. Even if the songs / lyrics themselves don\'t pertain a whole lot to photography, the tracklisting looks solid and that\'s about all you can ask for.

Which reminds me.. I need to finish up my May mix and start prepping for the 2010 Summer Mix Series.

The image of the Guatemala Sinkhole is absolutely unreal. Aside from the fact that my brain has no frame of reference for how a tropical storm would cause a near perfect circle of Earth to retract itself, I can\'t look at the enormous void of city and not immediately assume it\'s been digitally created. Like I said, absolutely unreal. The storm was, obviously, massive in its strength and has sadly taken the lives of 146 people thus far.

Heads up via Bryan and Jed.

While I\'ve no doubt it probably tears your records up in a less than ideal manner I have to admit that the kitsch of the Soundwagon Portable Record Player is right up my alley. Do a quick YouTube Search to see a smattering of videos of the little guy in action... it\'s like it is begging to be purchased as your next frivolous acquisition.

Sadly, I am super busy this week / today trying to get everything ready for the show tomorrow - so the playlist is just a meager six offerings. However, they\'re a quality six. So, enjoy.

• LOST: Unnecessary Censorship - with LOST being over now, this just feels right.
• Check It Out: Steve Brule - the new Tim & Eric spinoff, Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule has started airing and you need to be watching it.
• Cat Water Skiing - make no mistake, Crispin Glover has always been weird.
• New Coke Machine - this isn\'t really weird but, rather, just interesting. 1) The narrator is VERY excited. 2) The interface is about as Back to the Future 2 as you can get.
• Cafe du Nord - using vintage footage for your music video may not be anything new but something about this one seems way more spot on than usual. Check the dude at 1:10 to see what I mean.
• Big Train: Office Prankster - somehow I missed the boat on the BBC Sketch Show Big Train and am just now catching up. This sketch is a pretty good introduction to their absurd style.

Bonus

• David Cross - My Sleep Mask - little clip taken from his recently released DVD. The time to go pick that up is now.

Have a great (extended) weekend!

Tomorrow, May 29th, there will be a rather large celebration at Mercy Lounge to wrap up Moustache May 2010. Performances include:

→ The New Whole Usuals
→ Tristen
→ Uncle Skeleton
→ Shaboi
→ Roy Ira

It will be a blast. You should be there if you can. The Codaphonic / Shaboi split 7\" is available for free download and vinyl 7\" pre-order. Again, this parlays right into Moustache May as both songs are a nice little sendup to the glory of the moustache in some way or another. If you haven\'t taken the time yet, please listen to both tracks. The first track from the forthcoming Uncle Skeleton release, Warm Under the Covers, is available to stream right now. There\'s a fantastic 12\" version on the way (going to pick up the test pressing right now) and I highly suggest you get excited. Vinyl pre-orders and CD copies will be available at the show tomorrow.. yet another reason to come out.

Daniel just relaunched Fav 4 as MyFav.es. No longer are you restricted by the tyranny of just four icons or withheld from adding your own destination links; culled from a huge batch of custom icons. Check this new feature list:

• Ability to add more than 4 icons
• Pick from a batch of custom icons and assign url
• Choose icon colors (for custom icons)
• Pick any letter of the alphabet to use as icon (for Casey)
• New layout options
• Seamless transition from fav4.org (Remembers settings)

It\'s a pretty massive upgrade for such a conceptually simple site but one that is very welcome. Big congrats to him and I hope everyone starts using MyFav.es as their homepage.. it\'s the slickest start page you could hope for.

The tilt-shift effect gets overused (and Photoshop abused) quite a bit these days but occasionally it hits the mark perfectly. Olivo Barbieri has done a great job of capturing NYC with the effect and the results are fascinating. Be sure to browse the whole gallery.