Simply Home

by Ted Cahill

During a stroll through the up-and-coming "U" Street district of Washington DC last weekend, I stumbled on the mini-universe of Simply Home, an all-encompassing home design store and restaurant. In one room they have a fascinating array of artifacts and products, thanks to an ongoing collaboration with villagers all over Thailand, and in the other you find yourself in a far-east Asian minimalist dining paradise (where I discovered the Chrysalis Lamp I wrote about earlier this week). The cuisine is a blend of gourmet Thai and new American fusion dishes that are all prepared with elegant simplicity, are available for take-out or delivery, and are all surprisingly affordable. Simply Home also offers fresh flowers and great new gifts introduced new each month. Location and product and food shots follow after the jump.

The Iris Pleasure Object

by Ted Cahill

April showers will bring more than May flowers this year with the scheduled June arrival of Stockholm-based company Lelo's Iris pleasure object. Just in time for the peak (pun intended) of actual Iris season here in North America, this all-new boudoir companion ushers in a new season, not to mention era, in sensual massager functionality and design. Drawing O'Keeffean inspiration from a delicate blossom, the stem is ergonomically shaped to reach even the most remote places and the intuitive dial is engineered to maximize pleasure and control while minimizing noise. A three-hour charge will allow for four hours of enjoyment.

Also on Cool Hunting: Haute Sex, Designer Dildo and Toys

The New Gold Standard

by Ami Kealoha

Three years in the business might seem like a too-brief span for a retrospective, but since 2003, Washington D.C.-based quartet the Fort Knox Five founded their own record label (called Fort Knox Recordings), remixed the likes of Tito Puente, Louis Armstrong, And Tower of Power, and collaborated with hip hop's elder statesman Africa Bambaataa—not to mention all the bodies they've got moving on the dance floor at their popular club nights. Due out 6 June 2006, their debut release,The New Gold Standard, collects singles and unreleased tracks into a continuous soundscape that melds live instrumentation and electronics, including tight breakbeats, sitar, 60s-era funk and soul, African drumming, and dub. A few of the vocalists feel out of place at times, but overall The New Gold Standard is an album that's as equally fit for cooking a meal to share with friends as it is for the spontaneous dance party afterwards. Pick it up for $13.50 through Amazon.

Ian Hundley

by m ss ng p eces

Ian Hundley is a Brooklyn-based artist who transforms maps into original large-scale quilts. In this inaugural episode of a series where we visit the studios of artists and designers, we meet with Ian to discuss his inspirations and capture his process.

LG Chocolate (Photos + Review)

by SummerSeventySix

As shiny and black as Darth Vader's helmet, with controls that glow like his red lightsaber, the LG KG800, or Chocolate, as it's also known, is one of the most striking mobiles I have seen. In the manufacturer's South Korean homeland, people have been snapping them up for a few months now, but this week they finally launched here in Europe, and I've been getting to grips with one for a couple of days. So, does is it light on cocoa-solids like your average Hershey's Bar, or are we talking Valrhona's limited-edition vintage bar, made from single-estate Madagascan beans?

Just to give you a bit of background, my past three handsets have been Sony Ericsson, and before that I chose Nokias. They were all candy bars, as I never liked clamshells. However, sliders are apparently the style of choice for 2006, and not just for Trekkies, so I plumped for the LG.

I've already said it looks great, as you can see from the pictures, but it also feels fantastic too. It's nearly as thin as one of Motorola's RAZR phones, and the spring-loaded slide mechanism works very smoothly. When it's open, the touch-sensitive controls glow red, and at the back, the camera appears. A bit like when you first used the iPod's scrollwheel, using these controls takes a bit of getting used to. They're fairly sensitive, but they definitely add to the handset's minimalist, Nano-inspired style. Like Apple's miniature masterpiece, the Chocolate's screen is crisp and clear. Unfortunately, it's black case also attracts scratches and fingerprints very easily.

As for the User Interface, it's fairly intuitive, but not as pretty as Sony Ericsson's latest efforts. Bundled software is limited too, with Sudoku the only game included on the handset. Despite only being 1.3 megapixels, the camera is relatively quick to take a decent picture, and as you would expect, the video it shoots is watchable, but fairly basic.

The luxe feel is completed by the packaging. A magnetically-sealed box that looks like it's made of carbon fibre contains the phone, a vital soft-pouch to keep it in, and other extras like a decent hands-free kit and PC software.

You've probably realized already that the LG Chocolate is more style than substance, with the celebrities the company has got on board to promote the thing. For that reason, it's not quite up to Valrhona standards, but is still good enough to be likened to, say, Green & Black's Dark. Cocoa mark: 70%

Note: The latest slider from LG, soon to be released in Korea, is the KV6000 or Black Label. It's quite similar to the Chocolate, but has gold or silver trim that gives it an old-school cigar box look.