Periodically I google Cork just to see what designers are doing with one of my favourite tactile materials.  I am still waiting to bump into a friendly patron-like cork supplier who wants to give me some play cork to experiment with. 

Jasper Morrison is a designer with a thing for cork and he has several covetable stools on the market including these little rotund earth-coloured beauties for Moooi.

Up there on the left is another Jasper Morrison, this time for Vitra.  Its "Stool A".  On the right is a designer I have only just found - Daniel Michalik and his beautiful layered cork forms.  Design Within Reach run an annual cork design competition where would-be-corkies make chair designs from a champagne cork.  I am not allowed to enter because I am one of their designers - lucky because intricate craft is really not my thing!  Below is the judges pick for this years Cork Competition:

And click on the image here for a terrific overview from the Inhabitat site on how cork is made.

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Check out this cool design that landscape architect Jim Davidge has planning for Parking Day this Friday in SF!  Note judicious use of Rainwater HOG tanks.....

I am currently in the Napa Valley as a guest of Mercedes, driving the SLK 350 fitted with their new myCOMAND (not a typo just an unfortunately wrong-looking acronym) social interface system.
Johann Jungwirth, CEO of Benz R&D North Amercia walked us through the four social trends ID'd by his group as the keys to understanding the digital lifestyle revolution:
* the constant connection that means we are "always on";
* "Simplexity" - the demand for intuitive, efficient and aesthetic interfaces - the hallmark of Apple;
* "Innovation acceleration" as demonstrated by the disruptive business practices of some of Silicon Valley's best known social network phenomenons; and
*social networking and the ability to effect rapid change from bottom up empowerment best evidenced by the soclal uprisings in some of the Arab countries this year.

We visited Google - always a highlight! - and learned what it meant to be googly.....and with a couple of minor nav mishaps that are to be ironed out before the November launch and bunch of German journalists and I made it across the Golden Gate Bridge to Napa.