Massimo Voltolina started practising sport only when he was 30 and he trains without following rigid schedules: he simply “listens the his body”. At the age of 43 Massimo Voltolina is one of the two Italians that has swam from France to England across the Channel. Of course, with worse weather conditions and a better timing. He is now getting ready for his next adventure: crossing the Adriatic sea.

Www.stitsh.com The site looks like a fashion blog, filled with loads of snapshots of cool kids from the streets. The impressive new thing is that you can buy any piece of clothing they are wearing by just clicking on it. That will bring you to an online retailer who sells that exactly the product.

The 17 is a conceptual experiment by Bill Drummond, gathering
different groups of 17 people to create and record music, play it back once, and then delete it. The 17 is a choir. Their Music has no history, follows no traditions, recognizes no contemporaries. The 17 has many voices. Only once, and then it is deleted in order to start fresh all over again.

Shanghai Tang does everything right. And the time is perfectly right for the brand too. Shanghai Tang is evolving in China’s first top luxury brand. Soon China will not only be the country where all commodities are produced. The success of Shanghai Tang, that has stores all over the world, indicates that the meaning of ‘Made in China’ does not always is about quickly made, cheap products. Now get prepared for a whole new range of Chinese luxury brands. INNOVATIVE Chinese luxury brands!

A Dubai bill board showing two men in traditional clothing. Close to one another, within each other’s personal space. The expression on their faces is soft, almost sensual. Their noses more or less touch.  Is this a billboard for a movie? Are we looking at movie stars? The movie story line one can image doesn’t seem to fit the environment. We ask a local shopkeeper for translation. He is proud to help us out. It happens to be the billboard for his shop. And indeed, on the fascia of his modest store front we see the same Arab text lines, including the translation. You could have fooled us.

Picture 2000 people, mostly in their 30s, seated outdoors listening to a DJ play an eclectic mix. Most are drinking beer or wine they carried in, and some have full-scale picnics. After sundown, the music fades and the real action begins on the giant screen as the classic (at least old) movie starts up. What’s special about that? Consider the venue: Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles. Eternal home to such stars as Marilyn Monroe, Rudolph Valentino, and Cecil B. De Mille. The movies are programmed by the founder, and generally favor offbeat cult classics. Shampoo and The Birds were recent screenings.

As middle-class staples like cars, computers and phones become more accessible to society’s have-nots, distinctions between the first and third worlds will grow increasingly murky. The following innovations will help tip the balance:
The cheap mobile phone (15 euros) reaching out to 1 billion new owners. The cheap laptop (under 150 euros) accessible to a wide population of poor children and school - in Libya, Uruguay, Rwanda and Peru. The cheap Tata Motor car Nano (1800 euros) that will lead to a 65% growth of car owners in India to start with.

In co-operation with Lois Saldana

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.

With more households in which both partners work, it’s tough for families to coordinate vacation schedules, and weakening job security is making employees reluctant to leave for long. As gas prices and travel costs soar, people are sticking to domestic trips. Many are opting to stay close to home, rediscovering delights in their own backyard.

No underwear anymore: we can do without.  It is simply more exciting so. This is an upcoming trend in the North of Europe. And it might go more broad, because people in many places of this world are getting fed up with the over-sexualisation on TV and the internet.

A weathered, green train, which traversed China’s railways throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, shipped from Shenyang, China and being shown in Basel, Switzerland recently. Its 24 windows screened 1940s newsreel footage of war and revolution in the world. It is an project by the Chinese artist Qiu Anxiong, called Staring into Amnesia.

M1nt® is the first club in China Mainland, that is owned by 500 chosen shareholders who are at the same time elite members. Aside from this there will be room for another 2000 fee-paying members. M1nt® has so far launched exclusive venues in London, Cannes and Hong Kong. Now it is time for flagship, Shanghai. While M1nt® is on the very edge of extravagance it has proven to be a very fresh and successful concept. Partying and earning money do go hand in hand for the extremely rich.

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.