Netspeak can be difficult to gauge sometimes, so we thought we’d provide you with a handy guide to typed laughter. We recommend keeping it with you at all times.

[NotCot]

As we know all too well, it can be hard to get attention on the internet. But tacking a James Bond fan fiction in front of everything you write is the blogging equivalent of driving a snowmobile down a mountain with one hand while using the other hand to shoot the bad guys who are chasing you in faster snowmobiles until you drive off a cliff and unfurl your Union Jack parachute while they all crash and explode on the rocks below.

In other words, it’s risky.

Onlyknives.com was recently graced with a post on a do-it-yourself knife wallet, introduced by a 400 word vignette starring Mr. Bond himself. The funniest part is how much it reminds us of actual ad copy. Didn’t we see this on an Amiga poster somewhere?

Named “A Quantum of Mini-Tools,” the story chronicles Bond’s love for his Slimline Wallet and the raw sensual magnetism of said wallet. We would have preferred “The Wallet Who Loved Me” or “The Man with the Golden Wallet,” but nobody’s perfect.

The manuscript in full»

For a while there, we were genuinely excited about internet culture. Smart phones like the iPhone and the gPhone were going to spawn small-scale apps that would be smart, entertaining, and elevate humanity forever.

But today we learned that the top-selling app on the iPhone is iFart. When you click the buttons, it makes farting sounds. And according to VentureBeat, it’s selling more than 10,000 copies a day.

Sigh.

We’ve had a love/hate relationship with the radio for about ten years now, but it’s still one of the best ways to tap into the musical zeitgeist. If only the FM dial were a little less crappy…

The internet’s teaming with great audio channels—including stations broadcast too far away for you to tune in—but so far it’s been hard to tune in without going through tinny computer speakers. But where there’s a market, there’s someone looking to tap into it, so CES has been full of companies jousting for what’s been called “iRadio.”

Our favorite, so far is Sonoro’s entry, a discreet plastic brick that lets you search by title, genre or location. It should be coming out stateside around April, but we’ll believe it when we see it.

Until then…there’s always the occasional mp3 blog.

Burger King has been pretty clever about advertising, but their latest stunt might be the best corporate use of social media we’ve ever seen. The bad news? You’re about to have a hard decision to make.

Instead of making the usual passive app, Burger King is declaring all-out war on Facebook, offering a free whopper in exchange for de-friending ten of your least favorite online acquaintances. You’ll get a coupon, they’ll get an impolite note, and they’ll probably never speak to you again.

The brilliant move here is that Burger King isn’t playing nice: they’re asking you to become less engaged with the online community they’re using to promote themselves. Naturally, Facebook is big enough that they aren’t particularly worried—but if this kind of app gets more popular, maybe they should be.

Web photography tends to mean wringing changes on a simple theme, whether it’s man-on-the-street style or upside-down dogs. Naturally, we prefer the former…

Todd Selby’s gimmick is simple: semi-famous creatives in their impeccably designed living spaces. It’s equal parts social scenery and interior design, making it required viewing for anyone looking for ideas about how to set up a homebase.

See more of the Selby»

In case you were wondering how the Python chaps were holding up on the web, we’ve got some good news.

On the strength of their new YouTube channel, Python’s DVDs have climbed to the #2 spot on Amazon, an increase of 23,000 percent.

Now if we could just get the Kids in the Hall on board…

Radiohead have taken a crowd-friendly approach since In Rainbows hit filesharing networks in March, but while they made big news with the pay-what-you-want release and opening a few songs up to remixers, their video ambitions very nearly slipped under our radar.

Apparently the band partnered with aniBoom for a large-scale, crowd-sourced music video contest. The plan was to name a single grand prize winner and give them a hard-won $10,000 for their troubles, but the outpouring was strong enough that the band ended up bumping the number of winners up to four.

See the grand prize winners»

We’ve already stopped remembering phone numbers and writing down directions, but the flood of technology is about to wash away a genuinely useful skill. In just a scant few years, writing in cursive may join the ranks of useless abilities, alongside long division and parkour.

We’ve seen the future, and it is Helvetica»

For all the talk about progress and technology, the post-iPod gadget world is more about style than function. Take, for instance, Helio’s new Ocean 2. It’s got web access, email, facebook apps, google maps, etc.

But a phone with buttons just seems so 2005.

The Fleet Foxes have started branching out into video and so far, the results are pretty good.

Their second video just landed on the internets, and like Radiohead before them, they’re taking the animated route, using the glass pane technique to create a four minutes of dancing papercraft. It’s definitely not what you’re used to seeing on TV (even by the standards of symbolic music video epics) but it’s only as strange as the music is, and in more or less the same way.

See the video here»

You might think Fashion Week would be drama enough, but there’s always room for a little more.

FashionIndie President Daniel Saynt just cancelled all the site’s upcoming events, video premieres, and a good chunk of their Fashion Week coverage, and announced a lawsuit against the New York Observer. The lawsuit is in response to a catty lead paragraph from last week’s paper that called them out on crashing fashion week events…but don’t worry if things don’t quite add up. It’s not just you.

Frankly, we thought Saynt & Co. took pride in the occasional gatecrash, but calling off their own parties smacks of desperation and—even worse—thin skin. Calling in a lawyer is the weakest play in the book, and it’s simply not the blogger way. If you can’t take a jab or two from a broadsheet, how are you going to survive Gawker?

For goodness sakes, this is the internet.

After an afternoon of high fashion runway shows, the world of style can seem a bit insular…but it’s nothing compared to the world of modeling.

The web TV channel Modelinia just launched proclaiming itself as a behind-the-scenes look into the lives of models, but looks more like something you’d stumble onto at 3 a.m. on Bravo. Features range from fearlessly unironic advice from older models, a makeover segment called “high heeled boot camp,” and a frighteningly complete “model matrix” for tracking your favorites. The highlight is Heidi Klum’s Spiked Heel, in which she battles the forces of evil and unabashedly embraces camp—the money quote: “it looks like mayhem is the hottest look this season”—but the rest of the ladies here have yet to learn to stop taking themselves seriously.

The slogan says it all: “Because models don’t get enough attention.”

Another beloved boutique is going online. This time it’s the bicoastal Opening Ceremony (hat tip to Men.Style), who bring together their house label and international trinkets like this tool kit from Postalco.

Best of all, the site itself is bright and, aside from a few artfully angular background shapes, remarkably pleasant to look at. Compared to the usually dour boutique sites—we’re looking at you, Odin—it’s positively summery.

eCommerce and Flash media have developed together to the point that it’s possible to customize just about anything—with the right site, naturally. But we’re a little unsure of whether taking on tailoring was a good idea.

Shirtsmyway.com is a customizable shirting site that lets you enter your measurements, select a style, and generally oversee your oxford from conception to completion. Then it’s stitched together in China and shipped to your doorstep, just the way you imagined. Of course, we would never speak ill of tailoring, but something about this setup just doesn’t seem right…

We elaborate on our misgivings»

As many have noted, the internet’s a pretty rough place. Celebrity tends to attract more abuse than glamour, especially when there’s a hint of success alongside it. And now, if this startup has its way, all that abuse will have a home.

PersonRatings is billing itself as “Yelp for people”—it’s the first site to offer quantitative approach to web celebrity—but giving people an open forum to say things about Julia Allison is a dangerous game, and the nastier it gets, the higher their traffic numbers will go.

On some level, it’s brilliant…we just hope we never see our name on their list.

The world of sponsored microsites is usually pretty high tech, but leave it to AXE to turn a state-of-the-art work of web technology into something resembling a public access variety show.

Perhaps more explanation is required»

The digital revolution has brought a lot of changes to the world of gentleman’s publishing, but Playboy has been remarkably slow catching on. Thankfully, with a little help from Bill Gates, they’re finally making up ground.

The first step is putting all of their archives online, thanks to Bondi Digital Publishing and MSN’s Silverlight viewer. To put that in perspective, we’re talking about 53 years worth of magazines…and more than 600 centerfolds. Not bad for a days work.

Of course, we’re guessing you already know about the publication’s storied history, the Marilyn spreads crowding Nabokov interviews, and the general legacy of Hef. But on the off-chance you don’t, this would be a pretty good place to start.

Cherchez Le Femme: Agyness Deyn has traded Albert Hammond for (we assume) a less technically proficient guitarist. [The Cut]

Heading South: Michael Williams tours Austin’s finest boutiques…one Olch at a time.[A Continuous Lean]

Crazy Time: Gawker looks at Dubai and decides to get crazy artsy. We’re not sure either. [Gawker]

Greatest of all Time: Deb counts down the 100 blogs most likely to improve your life. Somehow, Failblog does not make the list. [AskDeb]

The animated gif is just a few great works away from being a legitimate art form—in fact, they’ve already got their own museum—but this is the first time we’ve seen it turned on the celebrity class.

We just ran across this gif of one Scarlett Johansson in a variety of charming poses. As PR, it does more than a dozen Esquire spreads—and we’re quite partial to those. Think of it as one more step towards flacks becoming surrogate blogmasters.

And, needless to say, it’s better than The Nanny Diaries.

See the gif in question»

We’re well-acquainted with the internet’s insatiable love of bacon, but we’re still glad to see it getting a bit of play in the mainstream press.

Over the past few months, there’s been a web-based rush to invent the most bizarre bacon creation possible (if you were wondering, it’s here) but as strange as the creations seem, the impulse is simpler than you might think. Bacon has always been a bizarre food. It just took the web to show us exactly how bizarre it was. And as usual, the web got a little carried away.

Then again, we’re pretty happy about this…so it’s not all bad.

Playboy.com has needed a polish for some time now, so it’s only natural that they roll out a redesign on the heels of their archive’s recent online move. And ad units don’t grow on dead trees…

The stated goal of the new site is to get viewers to stick around for upwards of half an hour, but we’re not so sure. There certainly is a lot of new stuff to look at: style, nightlife, a full-scale culture section and a decent catchall section for Playboy’s typical idiosyncratic humor. But there’s still something missing.

Where are all the listicles? Where are the pointlessly provocative screeds? We looked for something making fun of Kanye—for more than half an hour, in fact—but we couldn’t find one. All we got was a centerfold jigsaw puzzle and a flash cartoon about a monkey on a road trip.

Hef’s got a lot to learn about the internet.

Filmmaker and noted Rubik’s cube enthusiast Michel Gondry just launched MichelGondry.com (via NotCot), and it’s well on its way to becoming the most whimsical thing on the internet. As you might imagine, it’s a pretty competitive title.

The site’s launch is timed to coincide with the director’s second music video compilation, but trust Gondry to use rudimentary Flash animation to create something both childlike and strangely troubling. The site begins with a mountain-nosed caricature of the Gondry standing at attention, and each product is explained by a new arm emerging, Quatto-like, from one of the director’s orifices with an informative placard.

The products include custom sketches, pre-drawn sketchpad toilet paper (“Wipe your ass with Michel’s good ideas”), and a disaster-themed calendar for 2007—which, the site notes helpfully, will be date-accurate again in 2018.

As new media gurus will line up to tell you, there’s a sea change going on and some industries will weather it better than others. The big surprise: public radio’s actually looking pretty good.

Jersey City’s WFMU—known to some as Yo La Tengo’s favorite radio station—just launched a project called the Free Music Archive, imagined as a curated source for the best free music on the internet. Of course, anyone with a server and a few industry connections can start stockpiling files, but when it’s a station that’s spent the past 50 years digging up some of the most interesting obscuro cuts on record, they have a lot more going for them than just technology.

We admit it. We’re impressed»

One of the wonderful things about web culture is how well it accommodates the idiosyncratic and the strange. With a low budget and a dedicated audience, there’s no telling how far out you’ll go. And we’d say the sex lives of limpets is pretty far out.

Isabella Rossellini just returned for another season of her cardboard biology short films, titled Green Porno, and newly hosted by the Sundance Channel. And it’s only getting weirder.

The series started by detailing the mating habits of house flies and honey bees, but now they’re onto sea creatures like limpets, starfish and whales. There are still plenty of hermaphroditic invertebrates, but the sets are a whole lot more involved, and the new mood is more mournful than scientific.

In other words, it’s pretty offbeat stuff—even for the geeked-out world of nature documentary. Even with the help of the Sundance Channel, it’s hard to imagine this kind of project making it to television without a long string of miracles.

But a computer screen…that’s another story.

See the Praying Mantis episode of Green Porno»

Bootlegging aside, the computer screen isn’t the ideal place to watch most movies. Television, on the other hand, may be just about perfect.

Twin Peaks, for instance, has been posted on CBS.com since February without much fanfare, but it’s by far the best reason to visit the site. The show is still in the running for the best thing David Lynch has ever made, and it’s a direct ancestor of heavily plotted series from The X-Files to Lost. In short, it’s worth a couple dozen hours of your time, and by putting it on their site, CBS is reminding us they had the good sense to put it on the air in the first place.

Although we shudder to think about what Mr. Lynch thinks of it all.

It’s an old rule of the internet that any desire, no matter how strange or unspeakable, already has a site devoted to it. And as you might expect, most of the sites are not work friendly…

Worlds Best Ever put us onto the latest result of the rule: a tumblr dedicated to the unique charms of freckled girls, frequently without the benefit of clothing. It’s a pretty simple concept, but as long as they’re handing out book deals, this is one site that could certainly move a few units.

Provided they can find a like-minded imprint…

Playing Dress Up: Christina Ricci continues to mystify us. [The Moment]

By a Whisker: The definitive beard blog emerges. But when will they find room for “The Welles”? [A Continuous Lean]

Rise of the Machines Pt. 7: We are only a week away from the world’s first computational search engine, which may or may not seize control of the world. Stay tuned. [Gizmodo]

Well Shod: visvim gets a few steps closer to the mainstream…but it’s all still in Japanese. [Hypebeast]

The aesthetes at Valet just debuted The Edit, a more web-integrated wing of their site. There’s a steady stream of obsession-worthy objects, a handy virtual newsstand and a digest of some of the best style blogs on the web (ahem), but what really caught our eye was a little applet called The Pulse.

Anyone who’s spent an afternoon scouring Google Trends can testify to its almost limitless appeal, but The Pulse is the first time we’ve seen it harnessed in editorial form. Above, you can see the Met Ball debacle broken down in handy graphical form, as news of Mr. Sutherland’s infamous headbutt gradually spreads through the blogosphere, and thousands of people simultaneously wonder who Jack McCollough is.

This experimental Youtube project has been making the tumblr rounds all day, and for good reason: it’s one of the cleverest uses of embeddable video we’ve seen.

The idea is simple, thirteen youtube windows in the same page—including a clip from The Red Balloon and a woman manipulating a modded Nintendo DS—all playing various pieces in the key of b-flat. Think Brian Eno meets Mark Zuckerberg.

New York’s Oak is taking a shot at recession-friendliness with their new mini-web store A.Ok.

Of course, there’s already an ongoing 60% markdown on a few items, but this particular corner of their online store is dedicated to finds under $100. For now, the men’s pickings are limited to t-shirts, slippers, sunglasses (like the quay shields pictured above) and the occasional duffel bag, but we hear there’s more in the pipeline, and if the women’s items are any indication, they should be worth the wait.

Web-based animation has gone to some pretty interesting places—most recently, Scarlett Johansson’s bedroom—but we didn’t expect anything quite as abstract as this.

The Drawing Archive is a site run by the pencil artist Adam Thompson, and it’s currently sporting one of the most interesting Flash slideshows we’ve ever seen. The images are all simple geometric pencil drawings, but they’re strung together with a mind-bending series of free associations and visual rhymes, making for a genuinely hallucinatory five minutes.

It’s time well spent…although you might want to save it for a less sunny day.

The internet tends not to offer much in the way of hard choices—Hulu or YouTube is about as tough as it gets—but a new site called Pick One (via NotCot) is offering an almost limitless supply of them. Radiohead or Google? Revenge or sunglasses? Tacos or love? Choose wisely…

Each time you pick, another random pairing will pop up, so you’ll never run short of decisions, while the total votes are tallied in a Top 10 and Bottom 10 to give you a pretty fair assessment of the internet’s overall mood. Lil’ Wayne fills out the Bottom 10 alongside perpetual downers like cancer, famine and war (we’re guessing the rap-rock album has something to do with it), while the best-of list tops out with sex and love…in that order.

Radio has had a lot of fun jumping into the internet age, but Sirius XM has come surprisingly late to the game. Their satellite radio app is gradually making its way to the iPhone, which is good news for anyone who’s already a subscriber, but the timing could be a bit better.

By now, Pandora and a few web radio apps have already staked out the iPhone’s music section, along with the iTunes, which enjoys a pretty serious home-court advantage. Sirius has volume on their side—hundreds of channels broadcasting 24 hours a day adds up to a lot of tunes—and enough resources to put together something genuinely exciting. As to what they’ll come up with…we’ll have to stay tuned.

These days, David Lynch mostly known for directing feature-length anxiety trips, but as anyone who’s seen The Straight Story will tell you, he’s got a hokey, latter-day Capra side as well. And it may have just found the perfect forum.

The Interview Project is Lynch’s WPA-style web project and, starting today, it will be posting a brief interview every three days for the next year. The first interview is with Jess, a Vietnam vet living on the road (they caught up with him in Needles, California) who makes for a surprisingly dissolute subject. He drops gems like “I ain’t proud of anything except just being alive” and “I’m six foot tall, so what?” at well-edited intervals, and offers a generally sobering look at life off the grid.

As far as web documentary goes, it’s among the better projects out there. And we can always use another James Agee.

Internet radios like this one have been a favorite with the CES crowd for some time, but they haven’t quite had the content to break through to the mainstream. A box lets you stream audio feeds through something a bit more lush than computer speakers, but so far, most of the feeds come from FM stations, which isn’t quite tempting enough to make us toss out our antennas.

But it’s coming along. Amazing Radio (via PSFK) just launched in the UK with a roster of all unsigned artists. The artists get the lion’s share of the mp3 sales, but mostly they get some much-needed exposure and a chance to get their songs on the airwaves…or audio streams, as the case may be.

Of course, the jury’s still out on their choice in bands…but at least they won’t have to worry about keeping their signal clear.

Navigating a major sporting event can be pretty bewildering if you don’t have the right equipment. But it’s nothing a Smartphone can’t solve.

This Android app from IBM gives you a guide to every taxi stand, restaurant, and bathroom, along with live feeds from every court giving a blow-by-blow for each match. And, in case you want something a bit more direct than Google Maps, it gives you all the info in a heads-up display through the phone’s camera. Think of it as the difference between “north-northeast” and “that way.”

See a video and here more about Augmented Reality»

Over the past decade, the internet has left a long trail of upended industries in its wake—most notably music, publishing and feline photography—but so far the phone companies have skated by more or less untouched.

There have been a few attempts at startup telephony, most notably Skype and the recently revived Ooma but one of the heavy-hitters is about to give it a shot too. We’ll give you a hint; it starts with a G…

And ends with an “oogle”»

More than Microsoft or even Apple, Google has always been interested in blowing minds. So when they get into the OS racket, they do it with a web browser—apparently just to mess with us.

Late last night, Google announced their new Chrome OS, a stripped-down operating system based on Linux and promising to get the average computer booted up and onto the internet in a matter of seconds. Compared to Microsoft’s increasingly glacial startup times, it should be quite a jolt, and perfect for a new generation of web-based apps. Looks like their heads are still in the cloud.

Liquor trends come and go, but the next big thing is never more than a marketing push away. The latest candidate is sherry, which just got a surprisingly tongue-in-cheek website courtesy of the Sherry Council for America. (A high point: The site’s “exclusive” enough to require a secret password to get past the front page, but the site immediately informs you that it’s just “password.”) Still, we’re more concerned with the future of the country’s bar scene.

We’ve thought sherry was underrated for quite a while, partially due to the name (the only order that sounds girlier than “appletini”) and partially by association with more common port wines. But we’re also not sure it’s due for a tequila-style revival just yet. Sherry falls in a box with wine and scotch—tasty, but hard to market. The new site gives a tip of the hat to mixology through an extensive cocktail list, but this seems like one drink that’s better straight. Which means it may be a little slow catching on.

With Netflix, on-demand streaming and torrent sites on the march, the pool of movies you could watch tonight has grown to a truly bewildering size. Now you just need help finding the right one…

Luckily, as with the vast majority of your problems, the internet has this one covered.

A pair of movie-choosing sites»

Yesterday’s Washington Post had an interesting tech trend piece on email closers—you know, that awkward dangling word before your name. The main takeaways were that “best” is on the rise, “fondly” is for geezers, and “sincerely” usually conveys a barely contained animosity. Apparently Emily Gould writes “xoxo” a lot, an innocuous fact which has probably already ignited several flame wars in the Post’s comment section.

In matters professional, we’ve always found “Thanks” to be a bit passive-aggressive (“Could you get right on that? Thanks…”), so we tend to go with “truly” or “always”—after all, you’re always you. More creative options include “Namaste,” “tata,” and our personal favorite, “one love.” If you’re worried about overstepping etiquette, it may be better not to play the game at all and just give yourself a hyphen and a first initial. As with so many things, it’s a question of style.

Brandom out.

Via NotCot

Web-based culture criticism usually specializes in subculture mining or and oh-so-thinly veiled contempt, so it was only a matter of time before someone combined the two. This chart splits the art world’s nooks and crannies into two camps—stoner and douche—providing you with a handy excuse to snootily ignore just about anything. N.B.: By douche, we think they mean pretentious gallery-hoppers not clubrats…but we’re not sure which of the two is into Thomas Kinkade.

Sneakerheads are a pretty obsessive bunch, so it makes sense that they’d take to the internet in force. And since counterfeits make eBay too sketchy to rely on, it was about time someone started up a marketplace just for them.

The site is SneakerListing (hat tip to Josh Spear), and it’s an online flea market for a whole world of obscure sneakers, with many of them on sale for free. A quick tour digs up purple Nike Dunks, Jordan XXIs, and a whole cohort of heavily worn hi-tops. As for the high-end, there’s a pair of gold Ice Cream Colettes on the block for five grand, but somehow we don’t see them selling any time soon. Sites like this are perfect for obscurists—and there are quite a few—but these kicks won’t take the place of a fresh pair. On the other hand, if you’re putting a museum together…

Unless you’re an unusually big fan of the radio, traffic information can be remarkably hard to come by. Luckily, anyone with a smartphone is about to get a new secret weapon.

Here’s a hint: Google is involved»

Good books get all the press but a good sentence is worth quite a bit on its own, especially if you’re trying to get through it on an elevator ride. And with tweets, status updates, and email signatures popping up just about everywhere, a perfect one can get surprisingly far.

That’s where Words Move Me comes in. Ostensibly a twitter clone, it’s devoted to those perfect turns of phrase that would be read aloud to the living room in simpler times. Nowadays, they’re posted on the internet and—once synergy catches up with things—auto-tweeted, transformed into Facebook quotes and generally set loose into the many-splendored world of social media. Even better, the site was set up by Sony to promote their new Kindle clone, which means you’ll be able to direct the whole affair from a handheld device about the size of…well, a book.

Good Press: Page Six has an extremely persuasive photo editor. [Cover Awards]

The Anti-Trend: Trads make the trend page, despite not being a trend. Does this mean we can start wearing ascots again? [New York Observer]

Medieval Tech: South African internet is slower than a carrier pigeon. We think Mr. DeVaughn said it best… [Reuters]

You Can Never Have Too Many Ties: Seriously. You can’t. [Selectism]

Look Back in Amber: DETAILS makes the most of its time with Amber Heard. [DETAILS]

Great Scott: The Sartorialist gives GQ UK some style advice. One highlight: He recommends owning only one pair of jeans. [GQ UK]

Almost Blue: Complex counts down the ten best jeans under $100. Street or no, it’s hard to deny APC. [Complex]

The List: Counting down 50 things being killed by the internet. “Your spare time” didn’t make the list. [Telegraph]

The world of Flickr photography is massive, but it doesn’t take much browsing before one wishes for something a little more tangible. But that’s nothing the internet can’t solve…

The UK-based Biscuit Tin lets you interact with online snaps the way you would with developed stills: you can spread them on the floor, check inscriptions on the back, and generally get the kind of object-pleasure that’s so hard to come by in the virtual sphere. And since you’re drawing from your entire flickr feed, you’ll have a very big tin to sort through.

She Means Business: And don’t give her any of this Linux crap. [Refinery29]

Hooverville: George Saunders takes a stroll through a modern tent city. [GQ]

Web Civics: Choire Sicha ponders the ethics of blogging. Sadly, it’s in the Times, so he can’t call anyone a douchebag. [NYTimes]

Victory!: After literally hours of pleading, Tracy Morgan has finally joined Twitter. [Twitter]

We warned you before, and now it’s happening. Google is taking over your voicemail, and even though resistance isn’t exactly futile, we’re not sure why you’d bother.

As of Monday, you can import Google Voice to your current phone number, which means that, among other things, you’ll never have to listen through your voicemails again. Once you’re plugged into the Google Voice network, you can convert all your voicemails to text and sort through them like emails, which means you won’t have to skip through Aunt Gladys’s dictation of her travel arrangements before you hear from your Thursday night date. It’s simple, easy, and it’s the first step in a long road that most likely leads to the end of the phone bill.

But for now, let’s take it one step at a time.

See the quirky animated video explanation»

The trench coat is already one of the more iconic items in the menswear canon, so it hardly needs the ad treatment—but it couldn’t hurt.

Today, Burberry launched a site called Art of the Trench dedicated to classic outerwear piece in all its forms. You can see street style shots from all over—including this one from Mr. Schuman himself—which should give you some ideas on how to style yourself. We prefer a dark navy or black like the gentleman here, but dig around the site and you’ll find plenty of other ideas.

As for the timing, it might have done us a bit more good a few weeks back…but we’re not complaining.

Contortionists: The girls in AnOther Magazine always look kind of uncomfortable. [Fashion Copious]

Fare Thee Well: The final Alexander McQueen men’s line. Chavvy stuff, but in a good way. [ViewonFashion]

The Terrifying Future: Much like the champagne room, there is no sex on the iPhone. [TechCrunch]

The Tumblr of the Week: It’s pretty much what it sounds like. [BabieswithLaserEyes]