Google just announced a new feature: Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail.

Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates.

Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name. If you have a Google Voice phone number, calls made from Gmail will display this number as the outbound caller ID.

For more information, visit gmail.com/call.

Foodspotting answers the question “What’s good around here?” by making finding and sharing food recommendations as easy as snapping a photo. I yet have to give this a try. The app really relies on people taking appetizing photos of what they’re eating. Interesting idea. Especially enticing for the visual crowd…

A bicycle shop in Altlandsberg, Germany advertises their goods with a wall of around 120 bikes mounted on the building’s exterior in lieu of a sign.

Apolis Activism is working with Los Angeles-based Matteo for their latest project. Sourced from Italy and finished in the US, the collection features a pocket square, tie, and scarf in a beautiful stonewashed linen fabric. Link

Japanese designer Ryohei Yoshiyuki creates “a small window on one’s arm”,  man’s original clock, ‘Time of the Sky’. To create this innovative time piece, Ryohei collaberated with media artist Tomoya Kahimada and programmed the watch so that it displays different colors of the sky every few seconds, therefore referring to changes in the real sky. Our favorite function is the button when pushed, the sun or moon’s colors appear in the sky display from that time indicating hour clock direction.

‘We are always looking at some kind of window, on the computer, mobile phone and so on. and now a small window on one’s arm.” – Ryohei Yoshiyuki

Meet the lightest and most advanced snowboard ever produced by K2. The K2 “0″ ($700)  has been designed from the ground up to be the board of choice for the unrelenting performance seekers and the environmentally conscious alike. The 2010-11 “0″ snowboard stands alone as the pinnacle of 23 years of product development, complete with lightweight precision, powerful response and buttery smooth performance in an entirely new package. The K2 “0″ utilizes a new flatline profile, integrated Harshmellow dampening as well K2’s Hybirlight / earth conscious construction process. K2 believes wood provides the best all around performance of any material out there. All of their woods are sourced from renewable resources and their high-end cores come with performance enhancing materials. This seasons K2 “0″ features a WH5 core. The WH5 Core is exclusive on the “0”, uniquely shaped for their new hybrilight construction and maximizing K2′s honeykomb technology. If your lucky enough to be riding a WH5 core, you will know that it is the best performing and lightest weight board offered in their line.

Tread 1 by Devon Works is inspired by motorcycles and industrial conveyor belts as you can see.

This Cheat Sheet Placemat made me smile.

Secret Stash Project by Yi-Ting Cheng, filmed and edited by Juriaan Booij

This project is about concealing valuables, secrets, bad habits and personal information in our workplaces. Here, hidden spaces/ messages were created within 8 general objects such as wood boards, lamps and disposable coffee cups.

Why doing this?
We all have the need of hiding.

We hide our valuables from being stolen, we conceal our past from our loved ones, we never show our real side to colleagues, we all have secrets. Or, sometimes we just want to keep something only for ourselves.

How?
Utilize stereotypes and visual camouflage.

We make judgments based mainly on our experiences and what we see. This dependency on visual information can create large blind spots. Thus, usual stereotypes of how we perceive solid, transparency and lighting are employed in this project to play with notions of ‘solid and void’, and ‘true and false’.

more info please visit

yitingcheng.com

Let me introduce you to this lovely, organic chair. I say organic because of the aesthetic of the whole thing. Look at it! Or rather, look at them, there’s more than one. This is the “Zeren Chair” designed by Njegos Lakic of Belgrade. The Zeren Chair is characterized by it’s low weight, thin structure, and high hardness. Each of these chairs is made of magnesium and wood and magic. It reminds me rather of something the master surrealist artist H.R. Giger would make.

A lot less scary, though, thank goodness.

These chairs would look severely amazing in something like a modern art gallery, modern collectable toy store, design office, anything like that. Probably not for your living room…

An all-around wicked and beautiful looking chair, I must say.

Designer: Njegos Lakic