Cool Hunting

Mobile Payments
As the quest to consolidate wallet contents in to the mobile phone continues, we still look to Japan as the technological innovator. Next month trials will begin to test the use of mobile phones for subway fare payment. No worries about dialing up the right screen or sending off a text message, the entire transaction will be handled by a small chip manufactured by...

Socialight London
First introduced a few years back by a couple of ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program) students, the cleverly named Socialight, a free service using social networking to deliver localized info to your mobile phone, launched in London today. Like a combination of Dodgeball and Google 411, The service works by geo-tagging places with "stickies" that list the particulars of a favorite bar (for instance), which...

mShopper
Adding to the ever-expanding list of things you can do with your cell phone, a Boulder-based startup called mShopper recently debuted a mobile shopping platform that combines the visual and tactile pleasure of brick and mortar shopping with the efficiency and cost- effectiveness of online shopping. Using mShopper's free service, consumers can easily compare the price of an item they'd like to buy from...

T-Mobile HotSpot @Home Giveaway
Bridging the gap between mobile phones and landlines, T-Mobile's new HotSpot @Home service launches today nationwide. For those of you who who don't have iPhone fever and have thought to yourself, "who wants a landline anymore, anyway?," the service enables reliable, clear reception and unlimited nationwide calling using Wi-Fi. Seamlessly switching between the mobile network and your Wi-Fi at home—as well as T-Mobile's over...

Foléo: The New Mobile Companion from Palm
Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm, unveiled a new mobile device called Foléo today via webcast from the D: All Things Digital Conference. Dubbed as a "mobile companion," the device is to be used as an extension of your smart-phone providing one button email access, a 10" screen, full size keyboard and five hours of use off a single charge. Built on flash memory, which...

The Borderline: Enlightenment x Towa Tei
An exhibition of new lithographs by Enlightenment's Hiro Sugiyama opens tomorrow, 26 May 2007, at the highly–acclaimed Hiromi Yoshii gallery in Kiyosumi, Tokyo. Sugiyama's lithographs are a wonderfully fresh reinterpretation of the traditional Japanese Hanga prints, with a subject matter far from the traditional. His lithographs include abstract colorful pieces as well as human skulls and imagined modern-day tribe portraits (pictured). Sugiyama works mainly...