These people are clearly not aware of the tablet’s most impressive new feature: the ability to turn into a fireplace and provide a comfortable gathering spot for friends and family or even set the mood for a romantic evening for two.

The new i-Log iPad stand is crafted from carefully chosen re-claimed London wood, and is also a charging station. Couple it with the FirePlace app, which brings the “warm glow and crackle of a roaring fire” to your device, and you’re set, whether you need an ambiance for swapping scary stories or cozying up with your date.

Perhaps you could even roast digital marshmallows or pieces of meat.

Unfortunately, these products have not completely replicated the fireplace experience as they don’t produce any realistic iSoot for you to clean up. This feature will hopefully be available in upcoming editions, and it is also rumored that the fire will soon be able to spread and delete your other iPad apps if left unattended.

i-Log and Fireplace app for iPad, you are tickle city!

You might curse your rushed decision not to carefully read the meter. Or bemoan the impact the fine will have on your spending plans. Some might even plan a court protest against the mean-spirited officer who ruined their day.

But would receiving a ticklish piece of art alongside your ticket help balance out all the anger and depression? That’s just the idea behind the New York City-based Parking Ticket Emotional Reclamation Project.

PTERP members roam the streets, locate unfortunate parking ticket recipients, and stealthily slip in a small card that’s just the right size to fit in the parking ticket envelopes used in New York City. On one side, there is a written explanation of the project and on the other is an original drawing or painting.

As the note explains, these small pieces of art are intended to “offset your feelings of anger, sadness or frustration with feelings of joy, connectedness and being taken care of.”

The project’s official website also reveals the organization’s bold plans for expansion:

PTERP will help restore emotional balance to New York, The World, The Universe.

A diverse group, ranging from artists to kids, create the art, and PTERP welcomes anyone with interest to join in. If you would like to create a piece of parking ticket artwork to help soften the blow for an unlucky city driver, you can email them at TMW@pterproject.org.

Perhaps the next step will be gifting cheerful, friendly artwork to officers in the process of writing a ticket to discourage them from going through with it.

Parking Ticket Emotional Reclamation Project, you are tickle city!

Photo Credit

When you step into the Cruise Room, you have truly stepped into a historical landmark of the West. Established right after Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the Cruise Room was the first bar to open in downtown Denver. Because of this historical significance, it is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Much of the venue’s décor was maintained since its opening, which could be described as elegant yet modern with its distinct, vibrant, and bold colors. Self-described as Art Deco, the interior of the Cruise Room certainly displays its flare for the 1920s and 30s with its clean yet refreshing cushioned furniture and wall artwork. Since the establishment was designed after one of the lounges on the Queen Mary, the ambience lends a regal, yet relaxed quality that no other bar in the city can offer.

Following suit with the ambience, the red lighting gives its visitors a surreal experience, as if you have been taken back in time. Since every part of the martini bar has been preserved since its original construction, patrons can experience the Cruise Room as it was almost a century ago. No wonder the Cruise Room won the Miami Art Deco Society’s Annual Award, the most influential and prestigious organization for Art Deco works in the United States.

Atmosphere aside, the Cruise Room offers a vast array of drink selections. Living up to its name as a martini bar, the Room offers patrons a cocktail menu that contains all its signature drinks. Of course, customers can always ask for a classic martini made by one of the cheerful and experienced bartenders behind the bar.

Outfitted in black and white tuxedo attire, the bartenders are not only well-trained but give the bar an old-world feeling, while maintaining fast and efficient service. Patrons can enjoy a martini of their choice right at the bar, or pick a number of nooks in the bar that consist of circular cushioned benches and tables built into the wall.

Wherever you decide to sit, you will certainly admire the chrome and mirrors behind the counter that reflect the luminescent red lighting and the wall art, which consists of black and white paintings of people toasting, hopefully, to good health and great fortune. Should your good health become jeopardized by hunger, the adjoining restaurant of McCormick’s Fish House is the perfect place to go, no matter what your palate. The Fish House serves constantly fresh food and features more than thirty varieties of fresh seafood from around the globe, including their eight varieties of oysters. If seafood is not to your liking, there is a large selection of poultry, beef, and pasta dishes.

Whether stopping for a quick drink or making a night of it, The Cruise Room will amaze with its elegance and modern convenience. Because of its impressive preservation, visitors are truly able to see and experience a night during the post-Prohibition era, and get in a once in a lifetime chance to eat, drink, and celebrate a truly historic moment in United States history.

Young-eun Park is Tickle City Award's Denver Columnist, dedicated to uncovering ticklishness in the Mile High City. She writes about restaurants, shops, historic sites, nightlife spots and even local hiking trails and other outdoor attractions.
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But instead of admitting defeat, you quickly devise a plan. With your smartphone hidden in the palm of your hand, you fire up a Google search.

Soon after, as you’re piecing together the information in the search results, you have it! The answer to the question is right there at your fingertips.

Most people would consider this type of behavior to be inappropriate, maybe even grounds for disqualification. Internet searching is simply off-limits when it comes to trivia contests; it takes away all the fun.

But what if there was a trivia game didn’t only allow Googling, but was built on it? A game where the questions were challenging enough to expect some additional web research in order to solve them.

Google has come up with just that type of challenge with A Google a Day, a daily puzzle that rewards creativity and savvy searching.

The Official Google Blog explains it further:

Questions will be posted every day on agoogleaday.com and printed on weekdays above the New York Times crossword puzzle. We’ll reveal each puzzle’s answer the next day in the Times and on agoogleaday.com, along with the search tips and features used to find it.

Just like traditional crossword puzzles, the difficulty of the questions increases over the course of the week, so by Thursday or Friday, even the most seasoned searcher may be stumped.

To give an example, here is yesterday’s question, followed by Google’s suggestions for solving it:

“If a man has two swallows tattooed on his chest, how many inches has he sailed?”

“How to find the answer: Search [meaning of swallow tattoos on chest]. Results will show it means a sailor has sailed 10,000 nautical miles. Convert nautical miles to inches using the search bar to discover that a man with two swallows tattooed on his chest has sailed 729,133,858 inches.”

But we all know that Google isn’t in the business of fun and games, so there must be some other reason for creating this trivia puzzle. Some might say it represents a noble mission to teach information literacy skills to the public; others argue that it’s a clever attempt for Google to show off how great it is.

Ken Denmead of Wired wrote that this promotion of advanced search features is Google’s “ulterior motive:”

“Over time, Google has realized that people aren’t using Google to its full potential. Like taking your Lamborghini Miura to the corner store to pick up a lottery ticket, folks haven’t been truly putting the search engine through its paces.”

If you need help finding the answer, you can even ask your friends via Google Buzz, the company’s wildly successful social networking site which has nearly surpassed market leaders Goodwizz and Partyflock in registered users.

Google-based trivia, you are tickle city!

But is Lady Gaga planning a radical change in her musical style?

The lead single for her latest album Born This Way was released to wild popular acclaim, selling one million copies in just five days, but a recent live performance may hint at what’s to come for the pop superstar.

For her 25^th birthday celebration, Lady Gaga performed with Mariachi Sol de Mexico, the house band at El Cielito Lindo restaurant in Los Angeles. Check out the video footage below:

Lady Gaga’s album Born This Way is scheduled to be released May 23, 2011 by Interscope Records.

In addition to the title track, confirmed songs include Judas, Edge of Glory, and Bad Kids and rumored ones include Mexico Lindo y Querido, El Jarabe Tapatío, and a rousing rendition of the traditional birthday tune Las Mañaitas.

Lady Gaga Mariachi, lookin’ pretty ticklish!

I first stumbled on this tiny coffee shop in my first days in Denver, when I wanted a place that I could walk to and get my seemingly endless amount of work done without the distraction of my television. Penn Street Perk fulfills these needs perfectly. Located across the street from a busy pub on a busy street where busy people hurry back and forth without a moment to spare, Penn Street Perk is anything but.

Although often crowded due to its popularity, the coffee shop offers leisure and peace away from the hubbub of the outside world. While only seating around fifteen people inside and around ten more on the outside patio, the shop is cozy and welcoming without feeling cramped. Patrons can be seen relaxing among the cushioned benches on one side, laptop or book in tow.

On a bright sunny day (of which Denver has plenty), coffee drinkers sit outside on the patio and take advantage of the warmth and free wireless internet. Dogs are more than welcome to bask the warmth on the patio as well, and can lounge while their owners read a book or chat with a friend over morning coffee.

If you’re in the market for legal advice, the shop also offers free walk-in consultations with a legal expert every Sunday from noon to two o’ clock. Thankfully, not many people rush in to take advantage of this extra benefit, but the option is certainly nice to have.

Coffee with free legal advice is not the only item Penn Street Perk offers on their menu. While the menu is not extensive, it is extremely inviting and unique. Written by hand on a board behind the counter, the coffee shop offers a variety of unique coffee combinations as well as an array of sandwiches, bagels, and baked goods.

My personal favorite is the zebra macchiato, which is priced at around three dollars and is a delicious combination of espresso, whipped cream, milk, and chocolate (hence, its name). The macchiato tastes fantastic with a plain or blueberry bagel, a banana, or its signature burrito, which you can see made freshly behind the counter.

Even their breakfast bagel sandwiches are freshly made, with the eggs cracked and cooked before your eyes. Because of its freshly made menu items and its delicious coffees, being at Penn Street Perk is more like being in another room in your own home. Patrons can spend as little as five minutes ordering items to go in a regular to-go cup, or lounge around for hours at their leisure with coffee poured and whipped in a mug. Whatever the choice or reason, the coffee shop fits the needs of every coffee drinker.

Despite all the perks of the Perk, my favorite part of the shop is not the coffee or the food. My favorite part of my experience with Penn Street Perk is the owner. Every time I order a drink, he leisurely chats with me (or any of the customers) as he makes the coffee, and now, every time I come in he asks, “Are you the teacher?”

We then chat about my week, how the kids are, and his experience working with students when he worked at a school. He always asks if I need a refill and kindly tells me that I work too much and need to relax.

Unlike other coffee shops, where impersonal employees whip out drinks and move on to the next, the owner is willing to get to know his customers. From overheard conversations, he asks customers about how their dog is doing, their work schedules, and takes his time to chat, even if the line is long. While I enjoy their drinks and food, the people who work at Penn Street Perk truly make it an experience to be enjoyed over and over again. And if you happen to forget you’re not in your own home and stretch out for a nap in the coffee shop, I won’t blame you.

Penn Street Perk, you are tickle city!

Young-eun Park is Tickle City Award's Denver Columnist, dedicated to uncovering ticklishness in the Mile High City. She writes about restaurants, shops, historic sites, nightlife spots and even local hiking trails and other outdoor attractions.
View all Denver Posts      Contact

Fortunately, consumers must wait no longer as it has been confirmed that the newest version of the Kindle will feature advertisements.

Masses of Kindle readers are rushing to pre-order, as they did not feel comfortable reading a substantive piece of content without the soothing feeling brought on by flashing banners, interstitial pages, or at the very least, contextual ads.

Some were rumored to regularly interrupt their Kindle reading by voluntarily looking at pictures of new products and services for several minutes in order to simulate the familiar experience. But now, at long last, they will be able to view advertisements directly on their Kindle.

Before you start criticizing Amazon’s move, however, there are a few big twists.

First, this new e-reader, referred to as the Kindle with Special Offers, comes at a nice discount, $114 instead of the standard $139.

And perhaps even more importantly, these advertisements are far from what we’re accustomed to seeing on websites and magazines. Instead of embedding the ads within the content of the books that the Kindle user reads, they are attached to the device itself. They will only be seen as screensavers or on the bottom of the launch screen, never entering the digital books and interrupting the reading experience.

As CNN Tech reports, this new model for advertising is a radical move, one that “could be the future” if this Kindle with Special Offers takes off.

Amazon is reportedly considering another Kindle with an even bigger discount, a $4 model that is made up exclusively of ads except for a single ebook that periodically appears on the screen for a few minutes.

New Kindle Ads, you are tickle city!

Having never attended Austin’s famed SXSW before, I felt like I was embarking on a musical pilgrimage of sorts. A long-standing tradition of sinking into Austin’s relaxed, downtown atmosphere with an endless soundtrack of live music. In all honesty, I had high expectations for this festival and was prepared for some degree of over-hype and disappointment. Instead, I was all but floored. It’s definitely worth it to come experience the real thing.

From the epicenter of the madness (Downtown on 6th St.), you’d be hard pressed to cast a stone and not nail someone in the front row of a live show. Bar hopping can be equated to scrolling through songs on an iPod, except that ice-cold Shiners and a uniquely intimate set with the band is waiting for you too. Truly a Mecca for lovers of live music.

Choosing not to invest in the insanely expensive wristband, I experienced the free side of SXSW and there was a staggering amount of free shows. Absolutely no way you could create an itinerary to incorporate it all, much less describe it in one post. So I’ll just recount one memory:
…

8pm at the Belmont and there’s already a line of people waiting for a show with Hoodie Allen, RJD2 and Chiddy Bang. The outdoor music venue is complimented by a mild spring night, the kind of night that makes you forget how quickly Austin turns into a hellish oven in the coming summer months. Definitely one of the best times to be in this city.

My fellow blog writer and I are enjoying the early goings of the media and VIP portion of the show, a privilege we are relatively unfamiliar with. To put it frankly, we had become writers for a blog and official media guests of this show in a matter of days. Certainly a whirlwind beginning to our careers, but maybe an auspicious start as well. It’s always been my feeling that the best adventures begin without much warning or preparation.

In any case, the complimentary drinks and warm up sets from the artists seemed like more than enough to distract us from forming our first blog post. A few free microbrews and RJD2 as the house DJ would make anyone feel as though they were in the place to be, a sentiment that I feel most easily embodies the attitude of SXSW. Although larger acts have begun to overshadow some of the up and comers, this festival is still so packed with great, small-venue shows that Jack White can perform on a street corner without drawing the entirety of people out that night. There’s just an overwhelming amount of places to be.

As the warm-up show progressed, we fell into an opportunity to take part in a brief interview. We were approached, and without much contemplation, we accepted. The only problem was we never caught the name of the person we were going to be speaking with. Every time it was mentioned the music seemed to maliciously rise in volume and mask it just enough to prevent even the most hopeful of guesses. It’s very possible we had reached our limit on free drinks, but at this point it felt wise to just go ahead and feign understanding. We had already seen that things move at a fast pace in this world; better not hold things up on our account.

We were escorted and then left to stew in the waiting room, where we were introduced to the new Windows Phones (which look very cool; looking forward to their Verizon release). In a few minutes we made our way to the green room and were briskly ushered to a table seating someone who looked as young and curious as we did. Unprepared but not yet undone we introduced ourselves, and he, like the others, assumed we had been brought up to speed.

And having to be brought up to speed was right, as our interviewee seemed as if he was going a hundred miles an hour in his head, his speech moving at an equally breakneck pace. Suffering through our offerings of worn-out polite conversation, he seemed slightly taken aback by the vague start to the interview. I felt it was going to be necessary to take a leap. I had initiated the topic of writing, and to my interviewee’s credit he answered my scattered questions without much hesitation.

He described his writing as centered around the topic of life, at least life the way he has experienced it. And although that sounds cliché, he assured, it’s really the most direct way I can describe it. I agreed, also feeling that writing is maybe most valuable as a means of personal expression and understanding. It seemed like something an artist would say… and with this, the mystery began to unravel.

My interviewee’s approach to writing and the speedy, almost nervous pace of his speech pointed to his thoughts being elsewhere. It started to seem more than likely that this person was taking a much bigger stage than this interview tonight. Only by eventually admitting our ignorance and thoroughly embarrassing ourselves did we finally identify the interviewee as none other than up-and-coming rapper Hoodie Allen.

With the elephant in the green room finally addressed, we were able to discuss a shared interest in alternative and hip-hop music, as well as his rising prominence with the college age crowd. I even discovered Hoodie graduated from school in the same year as me, and in many ways is extremely relatable in his tone and approach to music and work. All this made it a lot less surprising that we could find common ground without knowing who or what the other did.

Hoodie would take the stage minutes after our conversation, bringing an impressive energy and confidence to his set. He took a gathering of people at the Belmont and turned them into a pulsing crowd. It’s never easy to open and even harder to compete with talent like RJD2, Chiddy Bang and Xaphoon, but Hoodie Allen held his own. I just hope next time we can hold our own in the green room.

By Hamish, Austin Correspondent

…

Other highlights (Thanks to BroBible.com and Windows Phone, sponsors of “From Austin with Love” at the Belmont):

- Check out Hoodie Allen’s new album:

- Chiddy Bang with his producer/drummer Xaphoon kept it old school with a new twist, freestyling with words being posted live by fans on twitter. Chiddy mixed in most of the words and phrases without missing a beat, meeting expectations in what has become a signature act.

Photo credit DanielDavisPhoto.com

Would you make fun of him? Aggressively denounce his silly beliefs? Or take him on an epic journey across the country on a mission to show him the truth?

Although the third option may sound a bit extreme, it’s exactly what documentary filmmaker Blake Freeman did. After a pizza bill that read $88.88 prompted delivery man LeRoy Tessina, a lifelong believer of paranormal activity, to share some of his philosophy, Freeman knew he was sitting on a story that needed to be told.

According to Freeman, such beliefs are far from harmless, as psychics and other unscrupulous entrepreneurs in the alien niche routinely con believers such as Tessina out of big sums of money.

Tessina himself estimates to have spent over $100,000 in his lifetime on alien paraphernalia, personal therapy sessions and even a special helmet intended to stop extraterrestrials from stealing his thoughts.

“I started to think about how many people there were just like him out there; how many people had paid money to psychics and alien “experts” just to be taken advantage of. We decided to show LeRoy the truth by taking him on a little trip and documenting it,” Freeman says.

So the two set out on a cross-country trip to meet with some of these characters and grill them on their areas of “expertise.” The result is Gawd Bless America, a highly entertaining documentary film with the ultimate goal of uncovering the truth.

Among the antics: a hilarious prank on a crop circle “expert” and an interesting conversation with another alien authority where Freeman questions aliens’ motivation for anal probing large numbers of humans.

Check out the trailer below. According to Youtube, the film will hit theaters in June 2011.

Gawd Bless America, you are looking tickle city!

Instead, the process today is as easy as the following: sign up for an account with Pandora and take a few days voting songs up or down to sufficiently engage its algorithm; pull together a few dozen carefully-chosen music blogs into your RSS reader; and learn how to use music recommendation services including Last.FM, MyStrands, iLike and Musicovery, which function as either websites, desktop applications or add-ons to iTunes or Windows Media Player.

You’ll be on top of every artist in your favorite genre in no time!

But although this process couldn’t be any more crystal clear, it seems that people are demanding even more effective tools for finding new music.

A recent study by Orpheus Media Research, a music research and development company, found that people question the accuracy of these music services. 40 percent of participants reported that the recommendations were accurate less than half the time and 22 percent went so far as to say that it was difficult or even impossible to find new music that they liked.

How could the recommendation engines fail to take into account such vital criteria as the mood and level of intoxication of the listeners when they first heard a song? Or their opinion on the political views of the artist?

About half of participants in the survey advocated a single website for all their music needs where they could match their current favorite artists and songs to new ones. With hundreds of entrepreneurs, major music vendors and record labels battling over billion dollar markets, we’ll expect this centralized resource to be rolled out very soon.

Finally, the study confirmed popular opinion that 0 percent of music fans have ever found new music illegally through peer-to-peer file sharing networks, because the prospect of breaking copyright law is enough to make any web surfer tremble with fear.

Music recommendation services, looking real ticklish!

Photo by mrceviz