Amit Gupta is an entrepreneur. If you read Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, or any other combination of America’s best publications, your eyes have probably skimmed the same pages that some of Amit’s more popular projects have graced. Photojojo, the friendliest photography* newsletter around, and Jelly, the co-working sessions that help creative types get even more creative, are perhaps the most popular examples of Amit’s endeavors (and definitely the most written about).

Popularity aside, the best thing about Amit’s brand of entrepreneurialism is not how it tends to win fast friends — or even how it seems to win media attention as soon as each new project has a homepage. The best thing about Amit’s entrepreneurialism is that it actually solves problems. While this has always been purpose of the profession, one would find it hard to debate that- more often than not- the “problems” solved by such ventures are ones that people didn’t know they had in the first place, making the motives of said ventures too obviously financial. I'd venture to guess that I stand with thousands of others when I say that Amit does what should be done with a talent for entrepreneurialism: He helps people. Whether it's having fun, making money, or gifting their Facebook friends with a digital form of Chlamydia, Amit's ideas help people do what they like to do better, and that's exactly why we love him.

Joshspear.com: What do you find so exciting about entrepreneurialism?

Amit Gupta: I’ve had internships and I’ve volunteered, but I’ve never had a full-time day job. READ MORE…

I’m biding my time before looking through Dazed & Confused magazine’s Dazed Digital site because it holds so much content (a good thing), the highlights of which include interviews with Bjork and designer Bernhard Willhelm, and an up-close and personal tour with Wu Tang Clan as they globe trot from London to Denver. If you’re feeling similarly overwhelmed, hit up the “Seduced By Light” series first for some excellent short documentaries featuring three artists/groups that use light as integral parts of their work. One of the groups represented is United Visual Artists (the people behind the dynamic live visuals for Massive Attack’s tour), who discuss their technique for developing warping holograms above dancers in a show, and how they rigged the lighting work for Battles’ “Tonto” video. In other films, artist Jason Bruges takes viewers into the studio to show “interactive light environments,” and David Batchelor talks about his interpretations of light in art. I’m not sure how long these films will be up, so catch them before they’re replaced with new content.

There is a Starbucks in Boulder, CO that is open 24 hours. At inopportune moments, and generally those containing some degree of panic, this Starbucks offers a degree of convenience that independent coffee shops typically can’t– which is to say, the ability to find an internet connection when your own decides to die at 3 a.m. (which only seems to happen when the consequences of having no internet also mandate your own death). I would be grateful for this but for one thing: Darling Starbucks still charges for internet. The responsibility for this disservice is actually shared with T-Mobile, a partnership communicated as groundbreaking yet realized as a classic example of corporate ignorance. Every time I have to pay for a 24-hour internet pass, I’m reminded of why Pumpkin Spice Lattes will never measure up to locally brewed americanos, and for some reason, this makes me hate both of the companies behind the $9.99 charge (…and in a weird, aggressive way that manifests itself in away messages involving Catherine Zeta Jones and scalding cappuccinos).

The Starbucks/T-Mobile alliance is only one of several corporate partnerships that make little sense to the people supposedly benefiting from them. Today, in a totally opposite approach to that situation, we want to ask you: If you could meld the power of any two companies together in order to do something good, what would it look like? Who would the companies be, what would their alliance do, and how would it help? Because the truth is, there’s power in collaboration, and even though Starbucks and T-Mobile don’t get that, we do.

Bonus reading: How I’d Communicate My Feelings About Starbucks’ Wi-Fi if I were a Soap Opera Writer, a Hollywood Screenwriter, A Sci-Fi Writer, A Playwright, or an Email Writer @ McSweeney’s

If you take a moment to think back to May of this year, you may recall us telling you about Mike Perry’s typography compilation, Hand Job! A Catalogue of Type, which featured the work of Spear Collective Compatriot RoyalRemarkable and that of 54 other massively talented typographers.

Do you remember? Good. Now, snap out of flashback mode and start living in the present tense because thinking about the past is not going to get you to the Jen Bekman Gallery in New York City this Saturday, where Mike Perry will be signing copies of his book. Perry won’t be alone, though, he’ll be joined for a talk by Kate Bingaman-Burt, who while included in Perry’s book, also serves as the mastermind behind the exhibit currently on display, Obsessive Consumption, “a brand, company, website and art project developed as a means to explore and showcase her personal relationship with money, shopping, branding, credit cards, celebrity, advertising and marketing” through the employment of her versatile skills as a visual artist. Get thee to a gallery, more specifically the Jen Bekman gallery on Saturday from 3pm to 5pm.

Just in time to make us feel better about being too old for trick-or-treating, mimoco has combined Halo and flash drives to create one super-techy wet dream. Coming to you in the form of Master Chief, Blue Spartan, and Red Spartan, the new mimobots will store all of your gaming tricks, and will even come to you loaded with stuff like Halo images and sounds, parts of a Marvel Halo comic book and strategy guide, and an episode of “This Spartan Life.” If you’re looking for something even spookier to provide you some digital backup, mimobots like RayD8 and Galacula will offer a more traditional (skeletal and bloodsucking, I mean) approach to file storage. So, readers, I guess the choice is up to you: Will you be storing Butterfingers in your waistline, or top-secret documents in your mimobot?

The highlight of today’s first session entitled “The Pursuit of Happiness” was seeing friend, JoshSpear.com regular and sure-fire genius Jonathan Harris present one of his latest projects entitled The Whale Hunt. Whale Hunt tells his story of visiting the Northern most part of Alaska to witness, and observe, a traditional whale hunt. Jonathan took photos at 5-minute intervals throughout his 11 days up there (even while sleeping) and more often at more exciting moments. The result is basically a giant meta-story with multiple sub stories which can be organized by different themes of the story, locations, and characters. There are 3124 pictures in total.

But the Whale Hunt project is really more than just the story of a white guy from Brooklyn living with Eskimos and taking pictures; Jonathan’s work continues to explore new and engaging platforms for story telling, and ways to cross reference characters, events and emotions.
No word on when the site will be live, but I’ll let you know as soon as it’s up to see.

Every now and then, I like being reminded that people can be really stupid, and stupid people can be really, really funny. That being said, new podcast Marzipan Taco has had me giggling through its past two episodes that illustrate that very point, The Starbucks Barista Challenge and Let’s Call an Agent. I guess you can say these guys are looking out for you by keeping the people responsible at the backend of many people’s regular routines — coffee and movies — accountable for their actions while reminding them that they may or may not be total idiots. Not only that, the guys seek to dispel the myth behind such mysteries as dude hugs and customer service reps using military lingo for shipment tracking numbers. Marzipan Taco can be streamed straight from their site, or you can subscribe via iTunes for your easy iPod/iPhone listening convenience.

Okay, now that I have secured my ticket, I guess I can let the cat out of the bag. You should go to OFFF. What is OFFF? Well, I’m glad you asked. OFFF is the International Festival for the Post-Digital Creation Culture happening over the first weekend in November. Or, more simply put, it’s a bunch of today’s digital gurus spilling their guts. And there’s some serious cannon fodder coming: Justin Cone, Editor of Motionographer, Scott Hansen, AKA ISO50, as well as the guy who gets everyone giddy around here, Joshua Davis. There will also be people on hand from Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Psyop, and Troika. So if that list makes you break out into a bit of a cold sweat, get over to their site and grab tickets because they’re just about sold out…and then track me down and say hello!

Image via ISO50

Artist Geoff McFetridge is by no means a stranger to the skateboard world, but he’s directly involved with decks and wheels under a project with his partner and skateboard industry veteran Yong-ki Chang called Solitary Arts. The company’s new website has goodies like organic shirts and a skate shop with a modest selection including their first complete board(proudly built individually by hand in sunny California), trucks and wheels, all bearing McFetridge’s distinct style mark. This stuff has an unimposing modern classiness in a certain way that I haven’t seen in skate before. Peep the videos section for a compendium of his motion works and an interesting documentary in which he shares his creative process.