Josh was all over the first Kid Robot/JB Classics sneaker collaboration back in January. Now there’s another. While that last shoe was released along with the Kid Robot Tilt Bubble hoodie, this new one accompanies the Thought Bubble crewneck. Both the shoe and the crewneck sport black backgrounds and some colorful jagged vertical striping, with thought bubbles interspersed throughout. The shoes have leather toes and mesh sides, but my favorite part is the blue JB detail on the otherwise key lime colored soles. They’ll be released in August, so keep your eyes peeled for them.

If you live in Boulder, you know Hapa. It’s the place to eat Magic Mushrooms and Multiple Orgasm Rolls, drink Purple Haze Sake, and listen to some of the best DJ sets in Boulder. The food may be somewhat Americanized, but it’s still very tasty. For some time now, there have been two Hapas in Boulder — one on Pearl Street, and one on the college-crazed “Hill.” The crowd is very different at each to say the least. I’ve always enjoyed the experience at Hapa on the Hill; Ken Yuasa, the manager, always does a great job of staffing it with great people. Needless to say, I was both excited and disappointed when Hapa on the Hill closed its doors after the spring semester to do a big remodel. Ken has shared photos with me throughout the process, and they really did a number on the place — not only has it been expanded to be over twice the size (the old one was pretty small– not a bad thing necessarily), but they’ve also added plenty of orange and black Hapa flair, not to mention a huge new bar. I’ve included a photo here of the ‘almost finished’ product, but you get the idea. Today it reopens with — as Ken put it — a “soft launch.” If you’re in Boulder, head up to the Hill and try to make sure the launch isn’t so soft, will ya?

Confronted with evidence of global warming, undeniable environmental degradation, and calls to action, I think many of us are left are left wondering what we can do today to help reduce waste and negative impact in the environment. Particularly inside the home, I think it can be a bit difficult to make Earth-friendly changes, especially for us renters. Sure, there are a number of things we can do (think low-flow shower heads, moderate use of heat & AC, “green” cleaning supplies, long-life light bulbs, and so on) but some DIY projects are just too far out there (such as installing solar power) for all but the crunchiest of landlords. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to take advantage of my pad’s Southern exposure and rig up a vast array of solar panels on the roof, but I really doubt I could sell the nice folks who own my building to go for it. But today I stumbled across a solution that’s both DIY and well within the realm of possibility. The Aqus Toilet System reuses grey (i.e. used) water from the sink by routing it into the toilet tank, thus potentially saving thousands of gallons of water each year. The system seems to have a few drawbacks: for starters, it’s only truly compatible with vanity sinks and it may or may not produce enough water to flush the toilet each time (depending on your flushing habits). Then again, if you’re a borderline OCD hand-washer like myself, I think you’ll be fine. On the plus side, the system only costs about three hundred dollars and can be installed in a few hours. Almost the entire contraption resides under the sink hidden within the cabinet, and seems to me like something most landlords could swallow. Of course, then there’s the whole “saving the planet” thing. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, maybe we can spend a few minutes to come up with a term to replace “grey water.” How about water that has been “gently used?”

By now, we have come to expect intelligent, provocative programming from HBO. HBOVoyeur is the network’s latest project, and it’s almost completely different from anything predating it. To start with, there’s barely any dialogue. The viewer watches the stories unfold through the sides of the characters’ building — think a beehive, cut in half — from enough distance so that he can see but not hear what is going on. The stories interweave, and HBO is betting that we voyeurs will be curious enough to figure out what’s going on.

Though you can watch Voyeur on TV, you can only watch it on OnDemand, the project is designed to be viewed online. Not only does the online version have more content, but you can navigate through it, zooming in to watch one apartment (one story) more closely before zooming out to see the whole building again. But it is really that latter view that captures the essence of voyeurism and the idea of the project. The large view is distracting — the eye jumps from one apartment to the other — but while zooming in forces the viewer to miss most of the stories, the large view is incomprehensible as a whole. Life in the city. Visit the HBO site and the The Story Gets Deeper blog for more information. And click here to view the freshly-released “The Watcher” short film, another more intimate view of the project.

If you’ve got some extra room on your plate for blog-consumption today, head over to feedmecoolshit.com, where our boy Jesse Hora is featured as today’s dose of uh, totes awesome shit. It basically says what we already know (Jesse Hora is one of the baddest %^#$!% around), but the new Kickers House of Holland shirts — what a quaint way to say I’ll totally do you for those shoes.

And just for the record, it makes us happier than a toddler with an Otter Pop when we see our Collective-ers posting up all over the internet, so if you ever happen to find them somewhere off the beaten track, let us know (so we can brag on them some more- they deserve it for being such badasses).

Just two days ago I was enjoying a deliciously refreshing Chardonnay at my organization’s one year anniversary party. I think it’d go great with the dinner I am planning tonight but I’ve already forgotten the name on the bottle, only remembering the region and varietal. As recent as three years ago, I would probably be out of luck. But today, with powerful online databases such as the recently launched Snooth, wine drinkers have a great way to be reunited with a favorite.

Snooth was founded by Philip James in 2006 and finished a successful round of seed funding late last year. Just six months later, a team of in-house and offshore developers put together an splendid site with an equally impressive set of tools, featuring Linux, Apache, PostGreSQL and Perl/PHP. As a techie, the part that I am most interested in is the database population and manipulation techniques. The site adds about 5 new partners (both wineries and stores) per day, which provides it with a large and relevant database. By having partners volunteering information, Snooth avoids potential translation problems and false positives.

I am a huge stickler for ratings and I personally find them to be invaluable when choosing anything from a new bottle of wine to a new restaurant to try out. There are no less than 4 different types of wine ratings and their scales are not the same; some using stars and some using numerical values on different scales. Snooth provides a simple “SnoothRank” value which is calculated using a, wait for it, proprietary algorithm. It takes things like reviews, number of reviews, and how trusted each review is into account and returns a simple value which will help you in your wine purchasing decision.

Snooth prides itself on the size and accuracy of it’s database. It’s constantly being tweaked and filtered. I particularly like the “intelligent” searching algorithm which let you type in things like red good with steak. Next time, before you head to the wine aisle, check Snooth out. Who knows, you might end up with a new favorite.

Jessica Williams is a 20-year-old photographer. Born in Alaska, raised in Texas, and currently cultivating in New York and Sweden, Jessica seems to be blessed with the sort of natural talent that many other aspiring photographers would consider selling their souls for. Her photographs are — as we might expect from from any young artist — introspective and a tad manic-depressive. The difference between Jessica and most of her contemporaries is the immediate emotional reaction that her work asks of the viewer. Whether the subject is a sobbing man or a clothes-line, her simple pictures make you feel something; sometimes something universal, and often something that you can’t even pinpoint. It’s this gift that makes her photos so powerful, and it will likely be this same gift that sends her to the spotlight.

Via It’s Nice That

Conceptual photographer Helga Steppan's current exhibition “Be long a part” at Man&Eve gallery in London sort of reminds me of how I organize my closet — everything is arranged by color. The difference is hers is artwork and my color (or colour for fellow Brits) coded mess of overflowing clothes are merely an assault on the eye.

The exhibit, broken down into two sections, is meant to question the extent to which an object or possession can ever represent its owner or hold particular meaning as it invites viewers to discover their own associations with the objects. Belongings Apart takes transparent items borrowed from Steppan's friends and displays them as a sculptural installation along with photographs of the locations they come from along with a written piece by each owner. See Through are meticulously constructed, sort of Martha Stewart-esque looking photographs of Steppan's own solid-colored belongings. Even though there are a ton of items in each image, the end results don't look too busy and are even serving to motivate me to take another look inside my closet to see if there isn't some way to make it a bit more pleasing to view.

The show runs until July 29.

Microgravity Enterprises sells products such as the AntiMatter energy drink and Space2O water. The company is based on “bringing space to earth”, so basically flying the product to space and bringing it back down is special. Space2Oâ„¢ claims to have “spaceflown electrolytes” — although they aren't specified as being different from the ones we can get from water bottles that haven't penetrated the Earth's atmosphere. AntiMatter, the “world's first space energy drink” has a similar angle, but yet with such typical earthlike energy drink ingredients — but what I'm really left wondering is for such a “space age” company, how can they have such horrendous packaging? It's definitely out of this world that we are in an age where we can be suckered into thinking that just because something is transported it is transformed. If it looked good, at least it would have an excuse. Admittedly, I'm not usually this mean, but seriously. Space electrolytes? What are your thoughts?

7-Eleven just announced the conversion of all “participating stores” to be temporary Kwik-E-Marts (or at least they did on the radio…I have yet to track down a news release). The lucky girl I am, I happen to live near one of the original 12 Kwik-E-Marts for the Simpsons Movie promotion. The San Francisco area store is actually in Mountain View, near nothing except the Google Campus, and I think it's time for a low-down on what not to miss and what to skip.

My favorite offering has to be the Blue Woo Hoo! Vanilla Squishee, a concoction that tastes like vanilla frosting…on ice. While I chose to have a pure Squishee, the thought of having one with the standard coke and cherry Slurpee mix is mind-boggling. While it’s awesome to see the KrustyO's, I recommend skipping them…unless you really want the box or would love to pay close to $4 for generic Fruit Loops. The Kwik-E-Marts are doing very well — not that surprising, really — so even if you're not looking for a sugar rush, go check them out. You can find the list of participating stores here.

I don’t know if you’ve seen it yet, but WeShow — touting the tagline “The Best Videos Everywhere” — made its official launch into beta recently after sitting quietly, racking up users. With editions in the U.S., U.K. and Brazil, I guess I should be riveted and be sitting glued to my computer screen.

Not really. Or at least not yet. The site has big financial support from MTV founder Bob Pittman, so I’m paying respect, but I’m just not entirely convinced. WeShow gets real, actual people to sift through tons of videos (I imagine it’s like what the producers had to go through on America’s Funniest Home Videos, with or without the therapy required afterward) from places like YouTube and Google Video and put up the ones they think are the most worthy on different “channels,” so algorithms and other fancy computations based on clicks go out the window. It’s an attempt to try to organize the mess of videos out there. According to Kelton Research, a research company WeShow quoted, 46% don’t watch online vids because the amount is simply too insane to wade through. Another 46% only watch what their friends forward to them. I’m part of both groups. WeShow is making the leap to provide what you really want, even if you don’t know what it is. I’m part of that group too.

Check it out for yourself and let us know what you think.