The Apartment has kindly offered Design Blogfest their Crosby Street window for the duration of New York Design Week. SO! We need something to put in it!

Have a brilliant design that would look great in the window? Know of a friend with one that is just too shy to show off their incredible work? Then upload an image and a brief description to Wists and tag “designblogfest”. All the entries will be available at wists.com/everyone/designblogfest. The Design Blogfest bloggers (Us! + mocoloco, cool hunting, apt therapy, treehugger, curbed, cribcandy) will create a shortlist on Monday afternoon, then it will be on you readers to vote on the best design.

Important dates:

- NOW! upload an image to Wists and tag it “designblogfest”
- Monday May 14, 12noon EST, deadline for entries via Wists
- Tuesday May 15, shortlist of finalists, voting begins
- Wednesday, May 16, 12noon EST, voting ends

CHOP CHOP, people. This is going to be a quick one, but well worth all the much deserved attention the design will be getting!

ICFF Design Blogfest! May 18th (next friday) in Soho 6-9 ~ first physical event NOTCOT is officially partaking in… so if you’re in town, you’d better be there! A bunch of my favorite blogs have teamed up for this one… Mocoloco, Cool Hunting, Apartment Therapy, Treehugger, Cribcandy, and Curbed… and it’s being sponsored by The Apartment and 10 Cane Rum. So if you’re up for it, RSVP to icff@theapt.com ASAP! More flyers below…

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Click the pics! - Another roundup of some goodies seen on .org and TasteSpotting this last week…

UPDATE! NOW FOR SALE:
USA, 2 for you + 2 to share, $5:

International, 2 for you + 2 to share, $6:

Yes, these are all over my floor right now. The package from Busy Beaver showed up, i tore it open, poured them out, and can’t stop grinning. There is something extremely fun and satisfying about seeing NOTCOT on all these little 1” buttons. (And it probably helps that i’ve always wanted to bulk order buttons, but never knew what to put on them!) So please excuse me for being a little slow on the posting yesterday and today… between the pins, figuring out hosting, and cleaning/rearranging to make space for the new couches showing up tomorrow - been a little behind! BUT - back to the buttons… not sure what to do with them yet, perhaps Shade Elaine and i will make cute sets you can order cheaply, or start a flickr group to see where they end up, or just leave them in bars, or hand them out randomly at an art show…. ideas? (there will surely be a follow up post soon once we figure this out)

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Click each little square to find out more! You have no idea how hard it is to pick 10 great posts from NOTCOT.org each time i try to do these… There are constantly too many inspiring and brain tickling posts that all of you contribute (and if you haven’t been contributing, but find things you think are even cooler than what you see on the site, why aren’t you?) Seriously, if you haven’t tested it out yet, NOTCOT.org and TasteSpotting are our pet projects that we have tried to make as EASY as possible (except for the part where you need to pick a picture - BUT we autocrop and scale it!) - all you need is an image, link, and a quick caption to make us want to see what it is.

Hi everyone - tons of exciting news and posts coming up - but at the moment i am a little bit frazzled at the fact that Dreamhost is going down multiple times a day lately - (but from what i hear we’ve been lucky we’ve been up as much as we have been?!?!) So basically, while scrambling to try and figure out what to do - where to move - who has the least downtime, good support, php5, mysql 4-5, nice amounts of HD space and bandwidth… got any pointers? or things to desperately avoid? We played with media temple a while back, kept having some odd email issues… considering going back to them with their new plans…

So sorry for the mini posting break - technical side of things taking over for the moment (there really are pretty much 2-3 of us doing everything over here!)… but please bear with us as we try to smooth things out!

IMAGE MAP! Click the pics to see more… here are some .org favorites of Shade Elaine and I!

In case you missed it ~ here are some highlights over at NOTCOT.org and TasteSpotting this week ~ click the images to see each post!

Here’s a quick roundup testing out some new adventures in coding… all image maps, so click away up there to test out some of this weeks goodies on .org and TasteSpotting… everything from whiteboards evolving into gorgeously framed frosted glass, more diy print+cut toys, magical undo (crtl+z) cream, princess cake, baked pancakes, and rolled lasagna…

NY! ICFF! May 19-22 ~ i finally put aside much travel planning procrastination, and booked flights and hotels, so for everyone that’s been asking, i’ll be there! Any tips on things that i must see, attend, find, eat? leave a note!

I am not a geek… well not totally… ok well, maybe sometimes? Denial aside, i don’t usually post this kind of thing, but the ladies over at GeekSugar were far too sweet and asked some fun questions… SO. Here is their “*Geeky Girl We Love: Jean Aw of Notcot” interview with me ~ and some gadgets i can’t do without! Big thanks to GeekSugar ~ honored to make their list of geek girls!

So apparently my laziness on the org/tastespotting roundups lately has bothered some enough to request them back… so not only will i try to start doing them every tuesday… i even gave it an image map, so you can click directly on the pictures to go to the actual notcot.org and tastespotting posts (you can tell which one it was on the page, from the specially colored post numbers ~ well, that and recognizing which pic you just came from!)… Top row are some fun things from org, bottom row are tastespotting yummies. There has been so much great stuff on both lately, its been hard to keep up!

We love the wii here at notcot ~ the whole team has one pretty much… well we’ve randomly picked up 5 at targets luckily, so decided to share one with a lucky reader. All .org readers know we’ve been closely following the great design, UI, and innovative games and wii ready sites like wiiminder, wiitoob, wiihear, etc. And our favorite game/animations lately… Rayman’s Rabbids!

Additionally, i’m sure you’ve noticed the ad spaces i’ve been slowly adding to .com and .org ~ its been a really hard decision on my part, but the last year of running the sites has been so fun, i’m excited to move closer to making NOTCOT my full time gig (i still do a lot of UX/design consulting). The ad spaces aren’t perfect yet, and design wise been trying to work them in nicely, but don’t be surprised to see them evolve quite a bit on both in the upcoming weeks… have ideas on how the layouts might work better? lets hear them!

SO. What does this mean? and how to win the wii? Federated Media needs another survey to be run to get us more innovative/creative ads… so ~ basically fill out the survey here… and in the comments section (bottom of the survey), leave your email address (and if you’re feeling nice, what you love about the wii?), and the winner will be contacted Friday!

Welcome back after the gorgeous long weekend… to all you stateside kids. I’ve decided to do my .org roundups still weekly, but more of a whenever i feel inspired to do one as themes pop up. And this week there has been so many great videos i get lost in… if notcot has a tv channel, this is the type of stuff you’d be watching… So as you sit at your desk and need some inspiration to sit back and zone out too:

- 3135:: Pleix’s Birds :: what feels like dogs on trampolines in slomo with Vitalic in the background… i can’t stop watching this one.

- 3173:: Pes’ Human Skateboard Ad :: Mesmerizing… and you must check out all of his other shorts and ads as well, i particularly recommend the Roof Sex and the Making of Roof Sex.

- 3169:: Ok Go’s Do What You Want Video :: Banksy’s elephant stunt meets crazy Ok Go fast paced tune is a sure waker upper.

- 3158:: Guinness’ Hands :: You can even cut and paste your own video… it will make you look at your hands differently for at least a few minutes.

- 3192:: Podlove :: It really is a few shorts about life, love, and the technology that effects them… especially “i love like blood”.

- 3112:: Rabbids Don’t Date :: Rayman’s Rabbids are the BEST game ever on the Wii especially… and their animated shorts are pure brilliance. If this doesn’t make you smile, i worry for you.

Happy Valentine’s Day ~ also happy first .org roundup since i’ve missed the last two? It’s been 36 weeks of .org! and week 4 of Tastespotting already!

So in lieu of a proper roundup, or even a massive roundup to make up for it ~ here’s a V-day roundup, since seldom will you see this much pink, red, and hearts on NOTCOT. Love/Hate cards, Free Vday Photoshop Brushes (no this should NOT count as your present to that special someone), Heart and Arrow Necklace, Kahlua infused heart shaped brownie ice cream sandwiches, glossy red raspberry ganache filled, opulent white choc coated hearts in gorgeous signature circular Pierre Marcolini boxes, and last but not least heart shaped plum cakes waiting patiently for the oven.