This Friday, Colorado artist Rafa Jenn will be showing his new collection of work at Boulder’s Joy Engine. “Pin-Ups,” which features 50 drawings by the multi-aliased man, will pack out the Engine with plenty of hand-drawn nakey from 8-12pm, then hang steady until next month’s Jon Fellows opening. Rafa Jenn is well-known for his enviable collection of artistic skills — which stretch through fine art, design, web design, photography, and anything else the man takes a liking to — and it’s safe to say that his openings are the sort that will increase in importance as time sorts out exactly what place Rafa occupies in the worlds of fine art, urban art, and elsewhere. If that sounds cryptic….that’s about right. Just go.

Fossil will soon welcome another design into their Phillippe Starck collection, this time to the tune of leather, stainless steel, and split time/date displays. The sleek watch, which from what I can tell is still nameless (yeah, let’s just call it The Time to Do Me Watch), represents another promising addition to the Starck/Fossil collab series (which we weren’t so hot on at first, but has sort of won us over since Heather posted on/nabbed the Wrapped Analog). No word on the actual release date of this sexy beast (though rumors place the price at around $125), but keeping an eye here should guarantee your wrist a nice friend in near future.

Even though I try, I am not the smartest person when it comes to being green. I'll admit that sometimes I leave a light on when I'm not home or stay in the shower a bit too long. Luckily, if Wired magazine’s new prefab home is a foreshadowing of the future, being eco-conscious will be self-automated. Slated to be built over three days this week in the Crestwood Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, the “high design, low impact” house is full of gadgets designed to conserve energy. Conceived by internationally-renowned architect Ray Kappe and constructed by LivingHomes, features are all discreetly placed and include thermal blinds, motorized windows, self-adjusting vents and a washing machine that uses sensors to gauge the dirt level in the water so washing ends as soon as items are clean. All gadgetry is kept in order by a dashboard loaded onto a home computer that allows residents to track real-time energy use making it easy for them to gauge just how green they are being. The house will be open next month to the public, so stop by if you're in the area. Criminals be forewarned though: a Panasonic camera verifies the identity of visitors by scanning their irises.

I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of sick of not being able to locate my friends in every capacity and at all times. Especially when I’m wasting the workday away online without the faintest as to what my friends are surfing simultaneous-like. So, pretty much, thank God for the miracle that is Me.dium, a veritable virtual GPS of sorts, that keeps you connected with the real world… behind your browser. It’s people-watching for PCs (and Macs, too, of course); a totally free Web browser add-on, Me.dium essentially removes the blinders from the browsing experience, enabling you to answer the question, “What’s Bob Internet-up-to?” So you can follow the rest of the Me.dium community, find out what’s relevant to you (and your surfing), and drop Bob a real time line if he’s surfing, too.

Check out the tutorial, read the FAQs, and then check out RockMe, a five-day online music festival beginning September 18th. Hosted by the band Rose Hill Drive and presented by Me.dium, RockMe is more or less the first of its kind where online concerts are concerned. Not only do you get to listen with the rest of the Me.dium brood, you get to surf with the five participating bands’ post performance, too. All from the comfort of your bedroom/office/place or from wherever it is you steal your wifi these days. Now that’s my kind of mosh pit.

–Thea Beemer

Got a t-shirt idea you’ve been itching to get out there? Are you a master of making incredible designs with a minimum of materials? Are you just sick of the clothes you’re finding in the store like I am?

Design portal/website Design is Kinky is hosting a t-shirt design competition called One Color Comp to hype up their next t-shirt release. The rules are pretty simple: it has to be an original design in one color made for a t-shirt. That’s it. Leaves the playing field wide open. So go make something awesome, because my closet it starting to look skimpy and I could use a new stockpile of tees.

And if you haven’t explored the DiK site before — they run those super fun Sketchel contests as well — take a wander through; they’re sporting some seriously excellent interviews and artist features.

Available to the public for the first time on Adam Frank’s website, the long-awaited fruits of his latest experiment with creative interior lighting: REVEAL. For anyone that doesn’t know yet, REVEAL looks like a simple projector, but it’s special for a few reasons: for one, the light itself is designed to resemble natural sunlight as closely as possible; for another, when the projection is fixed on your wall you’re left with the gently swaying image of a tree as seen through a double window. When REVEAL is set up in your house or apartment, it will be as if you have an outside-facing window where you actually have only wall. And furthermore, it will be as if that window is always looking out on a pleasant, breezy dawn, or a ghostly twilight hour.

The first edition of REVEAL is limited to 1000 pieces, is priced out at $380 and is available directly from Frank’s website.

If you’re hankering for new music without having to interrupt too much the zen flow of your daily web surfing session, open that extra tab in your browser to Play Music Magazine, a digital online publication rockin’ to go with its September edition. The English-language, Norwegian mag resources what’s available on the Internet to make its stories complete — so besides the interview of a band itself, you can check out video and sound clips, go to the band’s website or buy their music in a handy, comfortingly familiar magazine format with “flippable” pages. This issue features cover star and up-and-coming hip-hop artist Derrick Ashong, an interview with Sweden’s Jose Gonzalez that you listen to instead of read, as well as a time-out session with The Horrors, whose spastic Sheena Is a Parasite vid was directed by Chris Cunningham. The mag also directs readers to other goodies like live show footage of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in San Fran and the late William S. Burrough’s first-ever televised appearance.