It's a comforting feeling to have another heart beating against your own. When two hearts beat as one it brings about a feeling of safety, warmth and ultimately makes us sleep easier. Unfortunately, not all of us are lucky enough to experience this on a regular basis and with a certain holiday coming up that we haven't mentioned enough, it's our position that everyone should have that necessary warmth envelop their life. Thanks to My Beating Heart, a furry, soft, huggable, heart from Banana Design Lab, you don't need a loved one to feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Instead, that warm fuzziness can be pressed just outside your own vital organ, as this plush pumper has its own heartbeat that mirrors one similar to what you might find your own heart doing in a meditative state. So even if you don't have that special someone you can certainly rest easy on Valentine's Day, or whatever other days Hallmark feels like creating next.

The world we live in sure is a strange place. Through all of the discovery, triumph, struggle, strife, greed, glitz, glamour and gore there is plenty for Earth's inhabitants to digest; the one consistent thing that seems to come out of the craziness of it all it seems to be a wealth of compelling stories and images recording all of the ups and downs that both man and mother nature made. Sometimes if we don't have the stories, the images are left to tell the tale themselves. The winners of the World Press Photo of The Year Contest for 2007 seem to speak more than those proverbial thousands words and serve to effective transplant us to a time and place whether we wish they were there or are glad we were not.

Image credits: left, Tim Hetherington, UK, (Vanity Fair); right, Bold Hungwe, Zimbabwe (Independent)

As I’m writing this, 3,000 nerds — and I say that in only the most complimentary way, naturally — are having the best geek-out party ever in Sao Paulo’s equivalent of Central Park, Parque Ibirapuera. Campus Party, a marathon digital entertainment event that began Monday and will last straight through until Sunday, takes place in various cities at different times since its inception in Spain in 1997 and has since been attended by top nerds/VIPs like Stephen Hawking and Al Gore. Participants for the Brazil edition have shelled out about $55 to camp out in tents and take advantage of areas coursing with lectures, workshops and shows led by experts in the fields of astronomy, robotics, modding and more. These include a how-to class on building a binary watch (take that, Tokyo Flash!) and a robot sumo competition, and DJs from the Red Bull Academy here will teach amateurs the keys to the wheels of steel. Like any camp, food stalls and showers will be available to use, that is, if anyone can find the time to pull themselves away from their screens. There’s one pretty huge difference to note though: emergency help on standby comes in two forms, medical assistance for those who sprain their fingers from non-stop gaming and technical help for others whose computers conk out from intense around-the-clock usage playing Second Life. Anyway, sounds like a lot more fun than band camp!

Most artists long to show their unique vision of the world to people all over the globe. While worldwide artistic domination might be a tall order, the folks at Diesel are giving artists the chance to start small in a big way…by taking over a large slice of city. The Diesel Wall Project is an opportunity for up-and-coming artists to have their work seen on a large scale by occupying one of four massive Diesel walls, housed in major cities around the world. This is a chance for aspiring artistic geniuses to be seen and enrich the lives of many with one simple or not so simple work of art. What are you waiting for? Well for starters, you're probably waiting for the contest to start accepting submissions on March 31st, but other than that we recommend you get to work and check out the Diesel Wall website for your chance to make your mark in Barcelona, Manchester, New York, or Zurich. From there, who knows the places you'll go?

Via Creative Review

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the indie-pop duo of Inara George and Gerg Kurstin, aka The Bird and the Bee, have released a digital-only EP titled “One Too Many Hearts.” George’s voice on the each of the four tracks are sexy and smooth and you feel slightly mischievous listening to it. Having recently toured with artists including Lily Allen, Sia, and Rilo Kiley, the pair present 3 original tracks, closing with “Tonight You Belong to Me,” a song originally written in 1926 and featured in the movie “The Jerk” with Steve Martin. Look for the EP today on iTunes.