The new Buckyballs packaging is fantastic. So happy for Jake and the Zoomdoggle crew. Want to win a set? Comment below and we’ll pick some winners later this week.

Disclosure, I’m a part owner in Zoomdoggle, which is a part owner in Buckyballs.

We’ve got a few Eye-Fi Wireless Photo and Video Memory cards to giveaway from our friends at Photojojo- they find the best photo shiz anywhere. If you’re unfamiliar, the bad ass Eye-Fi SD Memory cards allow you to wirelessly upload photos and video from your camera to your computer, transfer the images from remote locations right to file sharing sites, and geo-tag your images on the spot. We love them.

So, for the giveaway I’ve decided to try a Retweet (RT) contest on Twitter. Tweet the following and I’ll choose a winner randomly next week: RT Contest: I Want an Eye-Fi Video! http://su.pr/16MBDt #joshspear

It is almost a euphoric moment, a private instance when you let a faint smile appear on your face that nobody else notices. I had one of these moments when I played Last Cannon for the iPhone. It’s rare that a game, especially for the Apple mobile platform, has all the key elements that make up a perfect experience – gameplay, artwork/graphics, music, controls. This hits on all points flawlessly. The story, told through journal entries, is of an post-apocalyptic world. You are the last of your kind after the knurlings rained down and destroyed your world. 

The developer counts Geometry Wars, Dr. Mario and Ikaruga among his inspirations and I can definitely see elements of each in the game. Last Cannon is available now in the iTunes store for just $0.99. Version 1.1 promises to bring online leaderboards which will definitely add another layer to the gameplay.  

As a bonus for the readers of joshspear.com, the creator has given us four download codes to give away. Just leave a comment below on what elements you look for in a good game and we’ll choose four of you at random.

I raved about the 99% Conference happening this coming Thursday at the Times Center in NYC put on by our dear friends over at Behance already. But what about giving away a free ticket to the awesome and inspiring festivities? I’ve got one sitting here ($490 value) and will give it to the 99th person who leaves a comment on this post. Yes, you can comment more than once. GO GO GO!

Don’t worry, if you don’t win this arbitary contest, you still have time to buy one!

Update: Congrats to Nick. Contact me to get your ticket!

Ready to move from creative to creation? Want to spread the word that you’re action oriented? We’ve got a handful of very limited T-shirts here from our friends over at Behance, founders of the Behance Network and Action Method, the ultimate tools to find inspiration and get things done.

Want one? Leave a comment with color and size preferences and we’ll choose a few lucky winners at random next week.

Almost in time for Valentine’s Day (you can give your significant other an IOU since the shipping will be late for Saturday’s silly holiday), we’re giving away two gorgeous LELO products. For her: the MIA, an elegant lipstick sized vibrator. Ultra high quality, an intuitive interface with “four modes of stimulation for total control in the midsts of ecstasy” — their words, not mine. And for the men, the BO, a rechargeable, pleasure intensifying ring for couples to enjoy together.

Want to enter to win? Comment below and for a chance to receive the set for you and your like-loved-want-to-be-loved one.

Our pal Jeff has a nice little round up post from our Reed Annex Shopping Spree Contest– 74+ guesses later, there were a bunch of right answers, but only 4 winners were chosen. And 30 seconds each later, they piled all the best stuff they could get into one large shopping bag. Thanks again to the Staple crew for letting us rummage through their shop and make a big ol’ mess! Hat tip to the winners, congrats again!

Science, Nature, Art, People: It’s Boulder’s newest intellectual get together and it’s called SNAP! Yet another acronym with a great purpose, the conference joins TED and PopTech! as an excellent place to go get inspired, educated, and network — and it’s invite only as well, and at $1500 a ticket it’s still a little spendy but on the brighter side, it’s just fraction of the price of TED.

Speakers like Daniel Pink, Author Naomi Wolf and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis and many more interesting folks will be telling their stories September 23rd to 25th at the Boulder Theater. Michael Franti and Spearhead will be on stage as well, for the musical and film portions of the program.

Oh, wait, did I mention we’ve got a ticket to give away?

The Prize: A ticket to the festivities in Boulder, with hosted receptions and meals (retail value $1500; travel and hotel not included).

This Week’s Rules: Make an acronym like SNAP! of your own. Come on, you can do it. Make it good, make us laugh, make it matter, and relate it to changing the world for the better through science, nature, art, and people. Politics, too. We’ll choose winners next week. Comment away!

Our pal Stinger, the Netherlands-based designer behind Zeptonn Labs, has finally dropped his latest book project, Black & White Freedrawings. So named thanks to the no restrictions given, no holds barred approach to the 160 drawings held inside, the book offers over 132 eco-friendly pages of collab-y art between Stinger and house favorites like Jesse Hora, Undoboy, and Shin Tanaka.

If you were wise enough to get your hands on a copy of Stingermania, you already know that Stinger’s books are more fun than a water slide in the summertime. However, unlike his other publications, there are only 450 copies of the first edition of Black & White Freedrawings, and the heavy beast is unbearably pricey to ship internationally (75 bucksies). In fact, unless you do happen to live in Europe, your chances of ever touching this book are slim to none– which is a crappy thought, especially for those of us who are about to give away one of the only copies of the book to ever touch American soil (that happens to come with some very nice giclee prints as well)… Sigh.

Yes, we’ve got one. For you, from Zeptonn. And you can have it if you are the first person to correctly answer the following question: what philosopher initially inspired Stinger to get his Master’s degree in Philosophy? Leave your answer in a comment to this post, yo.

We probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but you seem trustworthy enough that you won’t go blabbing it all over town: we know a way you can get up to $525 in free gift certificates for some super awesome t-shirts from Threadless. That’s right we said free! During the month of April the kind yet covert folks at TCritic are giving away twenty one $25 gift certificates to one of our favorite shirt sources. So how do you get your hands on one? That’s easy. All you have to do is look for the secret word contained in one of TCritic’s blog posts each day and be the first to comment using said secret word. If it were any easier, they’d just give you the money…but contests are much more fun.

We’ve been Jawbone fans since the beginning, even back in 2004 when the first non-bluetooth version launched. Creating the “best bluetooth headset ever” and “sexiest way to talk” wasn’t enough for Yves Behar, so he had to go on and create a line of ridiculously sexy limited edition headsets shown above — we approve. Gold is for sweet talk, black is for dirty talk, white is for trash talk.

They were made in a *very* limited quantity, so these will no doubt dry up quickly (and you can’t buy them anywhere). Good thing I secured a set of them here at TED to give away to you, my fellow readers, right?

But I’m not going to let go of them easily, here are the rules:

The best sweet talk to me gets the gold adorned sweet talk headset, dirty talk, gets the sexy black dirty talk version, and trash talk (talk trash) gets the coveted shiny white trash talk version. Leave your dirty, sexy, and trash talk in the comments for me, and have fun. (FYI: comments below may be a liiiiitle NSFW. Just a heads up.)
Full product shots after the jump, courtesy of fuseproject…

Related: Jawbone Films
READ MORE…

Most people think pirates went the way of Blackbeard a long time ago, resurrected only for Broadway musicals and blockbuster movies starring Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley. While some still sail the high seas with more modern weaponry and less swashbuckling, it's a modern form of cultural piracy that is the subject of Matt Mason's new book, The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism. The frequent VICE magazine contributor “charts the rise of various youth movements — from pirate radio to remix culture — and tracks their ripple effect throughout larger society” for what amounts to a fascinating read. If you're interested in having your eyes opened wide to how the counterculture has transformed society then we certainly suggest picking up this primer.

If you want one for free, well, you’re in luck. First five (polite!) commenters get their own, so…comment away!

Boys and girls, it’s that time of the year again where we ask you to spare a few minutes to tell us a little bit about yourself; your likes, dislikes, and what you think about this little site turned full-time business. I promise, this is one of the shortest surveys we’ve ever done — and in exchange for doing it, you’ll be entered to win one of these awesome new Eye-fi Wireless SD cards, so you can you can snap and upload pictures instantly with no wires, giving any digital camera wi-fi instantly. Runners up will receive a few Monsterpods — this all courtesy of our kick-ass friends at Photojojo. Quick, quick: go fill it out, and thanks!

In general, I am not into Rachel Ray. I like Giada because she’s pretty to look at, Emeril because he’s feisty, and Paula because she makes me feel good about eating butter straight out of the tub. Rachel just giggles and says e.v.o.o. too much (which bugs me, because the point of abbreviating something like that is to abstain from saying the elongated phrase — which she does anyway, right after saying e.v.o.o.). However, yesterday my fingers were too sore from, uh, typing? — to change the channel, which is why I let Rachel teach me how to make candy sushi. Watching her smush all that sugar into bite-sized pieces had the odd effect of reminding me that Halloween is next week, which then reminded me that I still don’t know what kind of whore I’m going to be this year. A Nurse whore? A Nerd whore? The Sheriff of Ho-Town (again)?

Today, we had two options: Talk about mimobots just by talking about new computer software, we decided to roll with Halloween. Here’s how it’s going to work: Tell us about your costume. We’ll give you points for creativity, presentation, and the amount of spandex used, and then (assuming you get the most points) we’ll give you a King or Queen mimobot. You won’t get points for telling me what to be, but hey, do it and I might just poke you on Facebook. Easier than making sushi… right?

It’s one of those days, I’m afraid; too late a night, too early a morning and entirely too much to do. I guess you could say I’m a little testy, just like I was the day I added the Visualize Bat from Orange32 to our Design Showcase. It’s probably a good thing I don’t own one — yet — because I might just have to use it. On myself. If you had submitted this to the showcase, you could be receiving a little care package from us containing fun stuff from Belkin, Bent Air or Desktoptopia…but you didn’t, so I might just have to keep all the freebies for myself. Want to take some of it off my hands? Head over to the Design Showcase and submit your finds now.