It’s my birthday today, and we’ll, each year, I feel like the above picture… young but old, or old but young. Anyhow, I got a laugh out of the picture above so I thought I’d share it with ya’ll.
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I started Designverb on January 18th, 2006 as a quick experiment to jot down the many things I found to share with my friends and anyone else curious. Today, August 1st, 2010,  marks my 1000th post, and this one being the 1001’st.

I’ll admit the the opportunities, friendship, community, and insights I’ve received throughout the years has been amazing and it has surely kept me busy after a long day of work and on weekends.  There are times where I’m flooded with work and have very little time to post, but I started a Facebook Fan page where I post quick  fun links and have recently found some extra contributors to help find more great things to post about.

The Above picture is of sushi at O Ya here in Boston. I tend to eat sushi to celebrate  so maybe I’ll go there this week again.

Anyhow, I had no plans to really celebrate, but I thought I’d share some of the most popular posts since starting Designverb.
1. Tunnel House
2. Stuck At Heathrow Airport
3. Paint Chip Card Holder
4. Red Bull Headquarters
5. Mark Khaisman Brown Tape Art
6. Stefans Stormtroopers a Day
7. Heineken World Bottle: Beer to Bricks
8. Creepy Snow Globes
9. Color Changing Mini-Cooper
10. Burj Al Arab: Tennis Court in the Sky!
11. Non-Metric Countries
12. Shoes That Make Everyone the Same Height
13. How 315 Billion Dollars Looks
14. GadgetOff 2007 and 2009 Recaps.
15. TerraCycle Inc

And one of my fun little trips came from GM here.

Back in March 2007, soon after starting Designverb, I was selected as 1 in 100 artist worldwide to create a design for the Converse JoinRed initiative to bring AIDS awareness and to raise money for the cause. Above is the one of the final designs I submitted which was stitched by hand and went through quite a design process even though I later submitted a re-worked design because of trademarks issues in my first design.  Though I am not a shoe designer, I approached this project as any of my other projects diving into research, discovery, meaning, definition, creation, and refinement.

If your interested, read after the jump to see the design process, thinking, and some other design concepts I thought up but did not continue with in this short 2 week project.

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It’s been awhile since I last posted about a new beverage but this week I came upon a refreshing drink called Alo which infuses aloe bites along with an assortment of other flavors giving water a nice simple zest. I think I’ve had something like his in Hong Kong before. I first had the aloe with wheat grass mix called Awaken and just picked up the original aloe version called Exposed, but they have quite a few new assortments of flavors on their website which I have yet to come by at a store. Anyhow, go give Alo a try… these bottles cost me about $5 each so hopefully it’ll be available in bulk to customers for a better price soon…. otherwise Alo is DELICIOUS!

“In this poignant, funny follow-up to his fabled 2006 talk, Sir Ken Robinson makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning — creating conditions where kids’ natural talents can flourish.”

via TEDtalk

His talk from 2006 where I got to hang out with him quite a bit after the jump.

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I’ve been incredibly busy helping organize the TEDxCambridge event occurring May 16th at the MIT Stata Center. The theme “How do you eat”  is based off of this year TED prize winner Jamie Oliver in regards to Food and education. If you are in Boston May 16th, apply to get an invite and let me know. We can only invite 300 attendees and registration will close soon. You can learn more on tedxcambridge.com

Also, if you are in a position to sponsor any food, funding, or gifts for the event, please contact me asap. (now! =) ).
We will have 2 break sessions followed by an evening event in eating, drinking, and idea sharing!

Lots of awesome speakers in the line up!
- Wylie Dufresne: WD 50
- Chandler Burr: Times Scent critic
- Dan Ariely: Behavioral Economist
- Richard Chisolm: Filmmaker
- John Gertsen: Mixologist
-  many more!

update: Photos on flickr, via eddric(350),Tino(40), JB (60), millie(16)

I’m off to nyc for the rest of the week for the wonderful GEL (Good experience Live) conference.  Let me know if your there.

Right after that I’ll be scurrying off back to Boston for ROFLcon II for a rather fun 2nd day of the web in a room!
Several posts to follow, otherwise, lots of extra mini links on the facebook fanpage.

Hidden within a quiet alley in Boston’s Leather District is a restaurant experience inside a cozy brick and beam environment with dim lights echoing eclectic music while your senses feast on intricate creations at a placed called O Ya .

I’d heard numerous rave reviews (nytimes , yelp) about O Ya since it’s opening 3 years ago, and with delight experienced what just might have been one of my favorite sushi meals in Boston. The combination of a warming environment, attentive personal service, a carefully crafted menu, and an execution to freshness and details made out for an fantastic experience… damn it was good!

Read the rest of the review after the jump which has several photos and reactions to each dish, including the full O Ya menu.

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By far my favorite talk at this years TED was cell biologist Mark Roth talk about Suspended Animation! Unbelievable! TEDsters were running around the bar asking for Hydrogen Sulfide after the talk.

“Mark Roth studies suspended animation: the art of shutting down life processes and then starting them up again. It’s wild stuff, but it’s not science fiction. Induced by careful use of an otherwise toxic gas, suspended animation can potentially help trauma and heart attack victims survive long enough to be treated.”

Watch the video above or here.

I use to draw self-portraits back in high school I but never had the patients to film the process like Marc Dalessio does in the video above. Cool.

I’m off to TED 2010 for the rest of the week in Palm Springs. If you’d like to watch from your own home you can pay for the TED associate feed which streams all the talks to your home live. As usual, it’ll be an inspirational brain safari into ideas to spread across the world. Be on the lookout for posts next week, follow me on twitter (hahatango), or join the designverb facebook fan page for quick random links to things I find. If your going, let me know!

Happy Holiday to everyone. I’ll be out in Hong Kong for the break and will be back with some goodies to post most likely dealing with food, shopping, and culture.

If you have not already, please join the Facebook Fan page here which I post to often but write less and it’s open for fans to post to as well. I’ll post a few goodies I shared on the fan page below recently for the holiday break:

- Tadpole like sleeping bag (pictured above) Reminds me of Selk bag.
- Newspaper laptop sleeve holder. I’ve gotta get this!
- TED launches Best of Web.
- Cool jacket..I like asymmetric clothing which is hard to come by for guys.
- LED lights save energy, but don’t melt snow
- Ping Pong office convertible table
- Awesome silloutte clock!
- xylophone table

JOIN THE DESIGNVERB FACEBOOK FAN PAGE HERE!