I sure hope the Firebox.com site accepts international credit cards (update: oh baby, yes they do!) because I am so going to order the remote control K.I.T.T. car as soon as I can. It talks and has that snazzy, retro, swooshing red sensor light in front!

Speaking of Knight Rider, I wonder if they’ll show the NBC Knight Rider TV movie here in Singapore…

[Via Cool Hunting]

It’s hard to believe this film was made in 1944. What a piece of work! So slickly done, it could have been made in 2004 (except for the opening credits and all).

This electrifying film was where “prominent jazz musicians of the 1940’s get together for a rare filming of a jam session”. It features Lester Young, Red Callender, Harry Edison, Marlowe Morris, Sid Catlett, Barney Kessel, Joe Jones, John Simmons, Illinois Jacquet, Marie Bryant, Archie Savage and Garland Finney, and was directed by Gjon Mili.

I wish there was some way of seeing this on the big screen…

88.80.13.160

Most laptops are like SUVs. You’re using most of the energy to move the car, not the person.

›› Nicholas Negroponte on Moore’s Law and commerce.

This one’s for the ladies (and the lady-like) – a Walkman Radio Bag from Loop NYC (online store here) which comes with actual speakers! Fire up your preferred music player, stick it into the bag, hook it up to the speaker jack inside the bag and you can start sodcasting.

Priced at US$14 from Karmaloop. Batteries not required. 80s hairstyle is a recommended optional.

Remember James Bond’s Lotus Esprit which could travel underwater back in 1977? Well, the real deal is at hand with the Swiss made Rinspeed sQuba. The all-electric convertible sports car is going to be launched at next month’s Geneva Motor Show, where we may find out if scuba gear comes standard with the car.

(I also have other questions like if the car would have airbags or waterbags, and if the engine can ever get flooded – I guess we’ll have to wait and see.)

Maybe it’s an early adopter syndrome or the gazillion inane requests, but I am just sick and saturated with my Facebook experience. I’ll just stick to LinkedIn, thanks very much.

(To my dearest friends, please don’t feel slighted. I am still contactable via ‘older technology’ like email and IM and maybe we could even catch up IRL one day.)

The Euro hits the heights of fashion and finance.

A mildly depressing song from Blur’s 1991 album Leisure, Sing also appeared in the Trainspotting soundtrack. Despite the melancholy, it’s a beautiful track. Sad, but uplifting in a weird way…

…NIIOMTPLABOPARMBETZHELBETRABSBOMONIMONKONOTDTEKHSTROMONT. It is 56 words long and comes from Russia. It even made it to the Guiness Book of World Records and it refers to “The laboratory for shuttering, reinforcement, concrete and ferroconcrete operations for composite-monolithic and monolithic constructions of the Department of the Technology of Building-assembly operations of the Scientific Research Institute of the Organization for building mechanization and technical aid of the Academy of Building and Architecture of the USSR”.

The longest acronym, on the other hand, is ADCOMSUBORDCOMPHIBSPAC, which is a United States Navy term that stands for “Administrative Command, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet Subordinate Command”.

Spending all day at home on a work day recovering from bacterial tonsillitis is not really that much fun because the medication makes you all woozy and daytime TV makes you want to throw up. And yet somehow, I ended up watching the rather entertaining Flyboys from start to finish on HBO.

The story is revolves around the enlistment, training and aerial fighting of the volunteer American pilots who served in the Lafayette Escadrille during World War I. The movie is a little long and the effects are not the best but the aerial combat scenes are great. This flick would make a good addition to any war movie buff’s DVD collection.

I don’t know why desktop wallpapers are hosted on a photo sharing site, but it’s all good.

Great message and nicely paced animation for Honda from Wieden + Kennedy London.

A wicked, if not mischievous, idea for a shopping bag! (You can find it in the Citizen:Citizen store.)

The PlasmaCar looks like a fantastic toy for the kids and even adults. No need for batteries or any kind of fuel – all it takes is a willing (but not too heavy) driver, some centrifugal force, gravity and friction to get going. I’m going to run down to the nearest Toys R Us soon and get one for myself!

Wired story with nice graphics by Build.

[Via Heavy Backpack]

The limited edition Karmaloop Reebok Pump Fury has a whole bunch of different materials used in its construction: suede on the toe box area, reflective 3M plastic for accents, rubber for the air ‘bladder’ and on the heel, and even carbon fibre in the sole. More bang for your 139 bucks, I suppose. Find out more at Karmaloop.com.

Amazing! Well done, NASA!
Send my love to the aliens. All the best…

›› Sir Paul McCartney is just thrilled, isn’t he.

Like many nerds, I really cannot do without Quicksilver on my Macs. For those not familiar with Quicksilver, it is (at the very basic level) a keyboard application launcher (though it’s capable of many more things). There are a number of Quicksilver pretenders for the Windows and I have tried a number of them. My favourite, though, has always been Find and Run Robot. I have been using it for the last three years and it has never let me down — it is lightning fast, doesn’t slow your computer down and stays out of the way.

Having said that, Quicksilver is a very powerful application, and honestly, Find and Run Robot is not really at that level yet. But it works great as an application launcher and can only get better.

What a charming retromercial from 1983.

The beauty of football is you have some values, you have the teams, you have the fans, you represent something important and you are not a travelling circus.

›› Michel Platini on the crazy English League ‘export’ idea

I’m one of those guys who has to clean his keyboard and mouse quite regularly (to offset the careless eating and snacking habits while using the computer, but I digress). The washable Belkin mouse looks like a promising piece of equipment that would save me a few cans of compressed air when it comes to cleaning time. I wonder if they have it in black…

Random Friday Music is going to make a comeback really soon, but until then, please take in the bizarre new video for Ready For The Floor from Hot Chip, off their spanking new album Made In the Dark.

The rat will become aggressive at the tail end of the year and its underlying water element will cool the stock market.

›› A feng shui master at the Singapore Feng Shui Centre.

A nice script and great music makes the Nokia N82 TV commercial my favourite ad on TV at the moment. No thunderous, momentous, great, big, bad ass idea, but the sense of imagination and wonderment is just great and it gets better with every viewing. Nice work on the ad by Lowe Singapore, though I have to say the N82 storytelling microsite is rather underwhelming.

A close second on that ever-changing list of current favourite TV commercials is for another Nokia Nseries product! The Nokia N81 commercial has a nice tense, pacing background music which I wish I could use for my morning run warm-ups. That and the talking cartoon head in the arcade game console (at around the 27 second mark) are two things that I keep looking forward to seeing every time this ad comes on.

I signed up with Advertlets when they first launched, but never quite served out their ads here. After logging in again, I think I know why I never used them.

• The choice of ad sizes from them is limited to about five.
• You don’t have the option of showing text ads.
• The smallest ad size is 165 pixels in width – 120 pixels would be a good ’small size’.
• There’s no option to serve text ads.
• You can’t really customise the colours of the ad frame – it would be nice to be able to select the border colours, logo colour, etc.
• And yeah, there’s no option of text ads.

( An actual ad served by Advertlets.com )

Honestly, I actually think Advertlets is a good product. Bloggers and self-publishers in Asia can serve targeted ads and earn some cash, while their readers get to see relevant ads for Asia-oriented products & services.

I am sure they will tweak their offerings as they grow, but until I can choose text ads and be able to customise their appearance, I’ll stick to Adsense.

()

The Fisker Karma was unveiled at the Detroit motorshow about a month ago. This car can run on just pure electricity, which can last for about 80 kilometres, or in the four-cylinder engine sports mode, which can go from 0 to 100km/h in about 6 seconds. Designed and built by Henrik Fisker, designer of the awesome Aston Martin DB9, this is one car which is good to look at and good for the environment too.

Fantastic Seiko timepieces from the early 80s designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro (who also designed the De Lorean DMC-12 among other cars).

[Via Coolhunting]

[Via It's Nice That]

Using cloth bags has been seen as an extreme act of a crazed environmentalist. We want it to be seen as something a smart progressive person would carry.

›› Vincent Cobb, founder and president of reusablebags.com

A beautiful infographic showing the undersea cable map of the world.

Somehow, benches in public parks and open spaces are always wet (or have some kind of unknown, indeterminable substances on them). But a clever solution to overcoming the wet bench problem is this rolling bench idea from South Korea. Very neat, though you are probably on your own if any kind of bench is stained with unknown, indeterminable substances anywhere in the world.

Looks like Microsoft is stepping up the fight against Google with all the billions it can find. (US$45 billion at this point in time.) All I can think about now is if all this will screw up Flickr.

Anyway, after kicking myself for not buying Google stock back in 2004, I am now wishing I had the balls to buy Yahoo! stock a few months ago.

What a cute looking Land Rover! This would make a great gift for kids and in some ways, can be rather educational too. The UNICEF store also has a UNICEF Supply Truck model!

The unfortunately named Dixx Training Putters from Adam’s Golf are great for those who crave for precise analysis on their golf technique. The built-in motion sensors and microchips can identify impact position and track the player’s ’swing path, face angle, tempo and speed balance’. The DiXX training putter is great for those who like hi-tech gizmos and don’t particularly like their golf coach.