The Waterflask by Eva Solo meets a very simple need: transport a drink while keeping it cold or hot. The leash keeps it from getting away, or other people trying to take it.

Charles & Marie are having a pre-sale of their Hot Cold Mug. The mug is made with a heat sensitive pigment that causes it to turn from black to white as it heats up. So, it starts by reading “COLD”, and after you fill it up with a hot liquid, the text turn into “HOT”. Clever, eh? The Hot Cold Mug is a spin off of Charles & Marie’s On Off Mug.

Available for pre-sale here.

Kariann Burleson (who is always sending me the best links for our Ideas column) has a big time passion for business cards. She has a flickr collection with over 750 photos of amazing business cards – some conceptual, some just gorgeous. Definitely worth a look – very inspiring!

The cards above are Stefan Sagmeister’s (top row), Marian Bantjes (middle right), and polaroid photographer Mike Slack (bottom row).

The new Puzzlemotion Collection from Swatch takes watch faces to another level. Instead of extra hands for extra information, the discs rotate and form different patterns at each half-hour. The Interpretation is shown above. Be sure to check out the video and the rest of the collection.

The Royal Mint unveiled new coins – and they are pretty awesome, splitting an image of the Shield of the Royal Arms between six coins. The Royal Mint held a design competition in 2005, and 26-year old Matthew Dent designed the winning entry. How’s that for a pretty awesome portfolio piece? Anyone from the UK want to send me some coins? I’ll trade you for American tender…(how’s that for an exchange?)

Via It’s Nice That.

The Beijing National Aquatics Centre, also known as the Water Cube, opened in February, hosting the Good Luck Beijing 2008 Swimming China Open. The Centre is part of the 2008 Olympic Village and will host the swimming, diving and synchronized swimming events in the 2008 Olympics.

Designed by the Australian architecture firm PTW, the building boasts of a series of green technologies, including a facade made up of 3,000 air cushions that cause the building to function similarly to a greenhouse. This allows high levels of daylight into the building, and the solar energy is used to heat the pools and the interior, with backwash water being filtered and reused in the swimming pools.

It’s kind of pretty, don’t you think?

All photos by Chris Bosse, via Dezeen.

The Pigeon Ring Necklaces by Chinny Chin Chin catalog pigeon racers and contain a collectible piece of sports memorabilia. The anthropomorphic quality of the pigeon portraits combined with the pigeon’s likes/dislikes makes the flying rats look almost like-able.

There’s no denying that Riedel makes quality glassware, but the product series that I love most from Riedel are their decanters. They are so gorgeous with their fluid shapes and simple forms. I really wanted to put one of their decanters on our wedding registry, but felt too guilty about the price tag, so I didn’t. But regardless, they are beautiful and maybe some day we’ll take the plunge and get one.

Some of my favorites: the Amadeo Decanter the Swan Decanter, and the Cornetto Decanter.

Flickr turned 4 a few weeks ago and hosted a big show in their gallery space. They also encourage everyone to grab a few photos from the Flickr Turns 4 Photo Pool and put up a little gallery of your own.

If you are ever looking for some incredible photographs for your walls, Flickr is absolutely a great place to look. Print them out and frame them! And you can start adding them to your contacts to keep up with their work. I am waiting for camera companies to integrate gps into their cameras so that geotagging will become a bigger part of photography.