www.magcloud.com is a platform that enables people to publish their own hardcopy magazines. A person/persons only needs to upload a PDF, and MagCloud takes care of the rest: printing, mailing, subscription management and more. Printing good-old, full-colour, 80lb paper, with saddle-stitched covers, on-demand.

A munny is a vinyl toy that comes completely blank so it can be customized by its owner/artist. In a sense, they are blank canvases for artists to use paint, markers, metals, electronics or anything in order to create an original vision.

The Urbanspoon iPhone application let you shake your iPhone and gets a random restaurant recommendation for you in proximity of your location. Urbanspoon is iPhone’s free application that uses a gps-chip and gyro-sensors to let you experience a sense of surprise by a random choice.

Chinese people traditionally make lots of wedding photos, the best of them making it, enlarged of course, to the central wall in the new home. Now videos are replacing the photos. Both photos and videos must be made in the most fashionable ways. And here comes V-shade in. V-shade uses the highly effective film and television stunt photography and brings it to the people, including the one in China’s main lands.

At www.PornfortheBlind.org - more than 150 thousand unique visitors in six months time - the blind, and everybody else for that matter, can listen to audio descriptions of porno videos. The site reunites recordings based on a pre-approved script, with accurate description of porn videos (not just its audio). It is open for collaborations; you can upload your own recording of the x-rated productions.

Daft Punk scored an average hit with the dance floor tune “Harder Better, Faster Stronger” in 2001. Now the song made a revival on Youtube. A guy has made a video clip for the song filming just his hands. He’d written the lyrics of the song on his fingers and he would show them during the song following the tune. He called it ‘Daft Hands’. It looks brilliant and has already been watched 15 million times on YouTube.
Great stuff, but it the viral doesn’t stop there. Two college girls from California decided to do the Daft Hands idea with lyrics painted on body parts, called Daft Bodies. It has been watched over 4 million times. Less than ‘Daft Hands’ but even so four times as much as the original 2001 Daft Punk clip.

Meet the GIANTmicrobes family: Stuffed animals that look like tiny microbes. Only the microbes have been magnified a million time the actual size. Its members vary from the Common Cold, The Flu, Sore Throat, Stomach Ache, Ear Ache, Bad Breath, Ulcer, Black Death, Ebola, Sleeping Sickness, Dust Mite, Bed Bug, Bookworm, Hepatitis and even H.I.V. Each 5-to-7 inch doll is accompanied by an image of the real microbe it represents, as well as educational information about the microbe.

A ever growing amount of people tell stories on the web, often on their own blog. Viewdle is a new service that can be very helpful here. Currently, search engines work with key words. But Viewdle works in the first place with videos and visuals. So if you write about whatever celebrity or new making person, viewdle almost immediately brings them visually to life on the page you are writing. “Enhance your story and reader appeal”, says Viewdle, “lets visualize the people you reference on your blog and website.” Fast and simple and cool.

http://Www.superuse.org is an open community of designers, architects and anyone else who would like to join and is interested in inventive ways of recycling. The creative fun level is high. The playful care for our polluted world as well. Giving old gear, ready for the trash belt, a surprising second life: that is what it is all about.

Swiss grandmothers sell tailor made knitted socks via the Internet. You choose the granny, the pattern and voila: homemade socks.  www.netgranny.ch: a wordwide hit!

Originally by Joris de van der Schueren, best contribution ‘Redevco Cool Retail Hunt’

Nokia has rolled out its own stores over that last year and a half, called Experience Centers. But there’s a twist: the 25 Experience Centers around the country don’t sell anything. Instead the Experience Centers serve as resources for current customers to learn more about the phones already in their pockets--about one-third of the world’s buyers last year - and prospective customers to demo and scout before future purchases.

Probably it started on February 24, 2004 when DJ Dangermouse mixed the Beatles’ The White Album with Jay-Z’s The Black Album. The result, The Grey Album, was downloaded a million times in one day: Mash-Up Culture was Born. We simply love it when two (or more) different worlds get together in a creative, innovative smooth way. Be it in music. Be it in playful mash-up movies: Rocky Bilboa (Sylvester Stalone in Rocky 4) mashes op with Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep in the Devil Wears Prada, see on top of this page). Be it in the virtual social networks we love and are still separated from each other. Be it: wherever (fashion, food, home decoration.)

By Joe Pine, Carolijn Domensino and Carl Rohde (ed.)