Cardboard Frame is marketing their cardboard (yet “surprisingly strong”) frames as an entire system that allows you to easily affix artwork and then ship the entire package to, well, wherever you want. They offer a bunch of styles and colors, and are relatively inexpensive– compared to what you’d spend at a frame shop on top of shipping costs. And right now, it look as though they’re offering a “3 for the price of 2″ deal on their 16×20 and 18×24 sizes. How does it work? You take a matted print or stretched canvas and velcro it to the frame, which is actually part of a shipping system, with shipping box and padding included. Then just label and send it!. I’m interested to learn about the quality and functionality of these, so if any of you have tried them, let me know about your experience. Seems like a good idea for those looking to frame and ship art in one fell swoop.

Trip Sync, the ‘live data’ travel tool that works together with Outlook– that so many of you got excited about when I wrote about it a few weeks ago– just made a commitment to its customers that may get you even more excited. They’re dropping those pesky booking fees that services like Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia always hit you with at the very end of your transaction. They may only be $5-$10, but that adds up when you think about the fact that Americans take about 145,000,000 business trips every year. This gesture goes right along with Trip Sync’s stated mission– to provide a helpful travel service to small and mid-sized businesses. Maybe this move will create a trend toward the elimination of booking fees across the the ‘travel’ board– doubtful, but we can hope, right?

Target has been blending art into their energetic advertising for quite some time now, but their latest spots are even more impressive than usual. New York’s Tronic Studio is behind the four spots playing at Victory Park (the world’s first large-scale, outdoor digital arts gallery) in Dallas, Texas, and I’m floored by all of them for an entire slew of reasons. This one is the first of the three spots that use marbles to create very visually/audibly arresting ads; the fourth (you can watch them all here) features a sort of paint-off between Mr. Jago and Kofie One, two very well-known, very talented street artists. According to Tronic Studio, a fifth is on the way, so keep an eye out if you like what you see.

Our pals over at Grow Interactive (the team that helped make this site the excellence it is today) just launched a fun site promoting Lollapalooza 2007 called PaloozaHead. In traditional Grow-like viral fashion, the site allows you to upload your face to a performer and choose from dozens of options for shirts, pants, dance moves (even the OK-GO treadmill act), and of course music. Finally, when you ‘hit the stage’ it shows your character rocking the crowd and you can easily send a link of you making a fool of yourself across the internet to all your friends. Got a free minute and want a laugh? Check it out…

After seeing Peter Dean Rickards’ Kingston, Jamaica based photo contributions to The Afflicted Yard, I was literally speechless. Then I read the Afflicted Yard’s mission, or as they describe it, The Afflicted Purpose, and it made a little more sense to me; no holds barred, in your face, and unidealized honesty is the best way I can describe it. He took me on a journey– from photos of beautiful models on Jamaica beaches, to the slaughtering of a pig, to a candid glimpse into Kingston street life, back full circle to smiling kids skateboarding. The photos are all top-notch and each displays that certain Jamaican cultural vibrance in it’s own way. You can see more work on AY’s MySpace page, and there are even more in this magazine. Right now he’s showing his photos in Zurich at Rundfunk’s Bar Marvin– looks to be an awesome venue. Besides some of my favorite photos you see above, I’ve included more great shots after the jump. I hope you enjoy Peter’s photos as much as I did– definitely the highlight of my day.
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Flipping through the channels last night I got hooked into an episode of CSI New York– which I’ve been known to do from time to time. I was excited and surprised to see the DNA Portrait play an important role in the episode. Not until this morning did I get to my inbox to see a message from the guys at DNA 11 giving us the scoop about the episode, and I thought it was kinda neat that I had seen the show first. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen CSI NY use ‘things we like’ on their show– last fall, they did the same thing with edoc’s coded t-shirts.