I’ve been tuned in to Hammerpress’s unique stationary for awhile, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized they are also the letterpress and design team behind the slew of seriously amazing concert posters that I’ve been lusting over. Using a letterpress is time consuming and requires quite a bit of skill, but the resulting product is almost always superior to other methods of printing in terms of depth and charm. Thanks to this process, the posters created by Hammerpress (for bands like Wilco and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club) aren’t just pretty, they’re displayable in a very post-dorm, maturely decorative sort of way. Hammerpress also makes incredible wedding invitations; If you’re in the market for marriage and are looking for something to wow your guests right from the get-go, these could be just what you’re looking for.

Can I get a ‘hip hip hooray’ for Charlie Engle, Ray Zahab, and Kevin Lin? The three ultra-endurance athletes just completed an 111 day run across the Sahara Desert. They ran the equivalent of 2 marathons per day to cover the whopping 4,000 mile breadth of the world’s largest desert. Their foot voyage took them across 6 separate countries– Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Libya and ultimately Egypt, where they submerged their hands in the Red Sea to signify the completion of their feat (and probably the completion of their feet as well). Upon completing their pan-Saharan jaunt, the three seemed to agree: this was a once in a lifetime type of thing; none are eager to attempt it again. Congrats guys! I love to see people push the boundaries like this– it’s truly inspiring. I also want to point out that H20 Africa is the charitable component of the adventure. It’s a clean water initiative for Africa– you can donate here if you’d like.

My guess is that this piece of news is the biggest thing to come out of this year’s Miami Boat Show. The Porsche Design Studio has teamed up with Miami-based high-end yacht manufacturer Fearless to develop a range of gorgeous sea-faring vessels ranging from 28 ft. to 150 ft. in length. They debuted the 28 ft. model in Miami at the convention– it has a seamless hull, clean European curves, and is powered by a 525 hp Dodge Viper Engine (sorta weird, I know). The price tag on the 28 footer is $300,000, which makes me wonder what the 150 footer will cost– but rumor has it that college funds all over the country are beginning to disappear.

Via Gizmodo

Those of us who live on the Front Range in Colorado have had no shortage of snow this Winter. But thanks to the erratic weather patterns associated with Global Warming, we probably won’t have any snow next winter. To all of you urban-assault jibber types out there (with a few extra grand laying around)– don’t fret. The SG5-LED Snowmaker kicks out the highest volume of any home snowmaker on the market– connect it to the pressure washer you gave pops for Christmas this year or a dedicated snowmaking pump, and you can generate up to 180 cu. ft. of gnar per hour. With the high-end set up, you’re looking at dropping close to $2500– not to mention the drastic increase in your water bill– but for some of you out there, that hefty price tag may be well worth the hours of DFD kinked rails and sick video footy that follow.

Via Uncrate

The guys at I-Manifest are at it again– this time they’ve collaborated with the Dub War Crew in NYC to make this super-limited-edition shirt to commemorate the coming together of Dub War and DMZ this Saturday, Feb. 24 at Club Tonic in NYC. As some of you may know, Dub War is the first Dub Step event to hit North America (it’s originally from South London). They’re only printing 100 individually-numbered t-shirts, and these are going to get snatched up like a life-preserver in a flood (get em here). This run of I-Manifest shirts represents the arrival to the U.S. of a new form of music– in other words, it stands for something big.

Just like I thought Google Earth was the next ’sliced bread,’ I’m really excited about what 3D Live Stats is doing to change the way we view our website data. Long gone are the days of interpreting spreadsheets and 2D bar graphs for clients– 3D Live Stats makes your data jump out of the screen at you in real-time so you– and more importantly– the customer can actually see the data. The program displays data in several ways: (1) shows a light beam in the exact location where each user is located, (2) counts your daily and yearly users with a live counter in the upper right hand corner of the interface, (3) displays the most recent locations of your users via a scrolling list in the lower left hand corner, and (4) scrolls search terms across your screen that led users from search engines to your site. Plus, if you have an interactive white board or SMART board, you can rotate the earth to view your stats in the way Tom Cruise did in Minority Report. 3D Live Stats is supposedly the World’s first designed website statistics program. If anyone knows of similar services popping up, I’d love to know about them.