Google Maps has just rolled out an exciting new traffic feature, that provides traffic data for major interstates and freeways.

Quick afternoon treat…Let the page load and push the human-powered cursor around. BTW if you give ‘em a rest, the dude near the bottom takes a squat and a scratch. What can I say- It’s Friday.

winner of an AIA award for the design
of the "Wave Wall," a kinetic skin on the surface of the new Science
Education Center at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave
Observatory (LIGO) in Livingston, Louisiana.

I bet your current desk doesn’t have a built in fish tank. The new desk MILK does.

19 Bus-stops built with grandeur. Soviet grandeur that is. Christopher Herwig
photographed some amazing bus-stops in the Soviet Union. A different
world, compared to the ones you find in The US. I envy this
kind of diversity.

amy ruppel on the fridge? i’m there. these cute little 4-packs of magnets are available through ipop right here for $11.50. [thanks jessie]

       
Here are the finalists from the 2006 Design Within Reach annual contest
to design a little chair made out of a Champagne cork and the
surrounding wire cage.
Link

(via Kottke)

See also Contest to make a tiny chair out of champagne cork wire

A huge, beautiful collection of vintage luggage labels.
Beats the pants off the tags they throw on your bags at PDX. Link

You
Are Beautiful is a simple, powerful statement which is incorporated
into the over absorption of mass media and lifestyles that are wrapped
in consumer culture.
      
This statement and the context in which someone finds it gives meaning to its message and purpose to this project.
The intention behind this project is to reach beyond ourselves as
individuals to make a difference by creating moments of positive self
realization in those who happen across the statement: You Are
Beautiful.
      
Intention is the most important aspect of the You Are Beautiful project
in its idea of purity. Graffiti and street art are an act not a style,
but stylistically large corporations have been copying and using the
‘urban decay’ look to sell products.
      
It all comes down to intention. Nothing is sacred. Everything that has
a perceived value becomes commodified. Companies hire out teenagers to
slap up stickers and posters, and pay their fines when they are caught
by the police. This is not street art, but a marketing campaign.
      
The reasons why street artists are doing what they are doing, in the
way that they are doing, is not simply to question their surroundings;
but to provide alternative perspectives, meanings, or values to those
of consumerism.
      
Advertising elicits a response to
buy, where this project elicits a response to do something. The attempt
with You Are Beautiful is to create activism instead of consumerism.
      
You Are Beautiful uses the medium of advertising and commercialization to spread a positive message.
Projects like these make a difference in the world by catching us in
the midst of daily life and creating moments of positive self
realization.