I’ve just learnt from IndyBlogs’ Shopping Bag that the wonderful Robert Ryan (who I occasionally confuse with the equally talented with scissors Peter Callesen) is planning to open a shop here in London!

This is great news for me as it’ll be in my neck of the woods - near the Columbia Road Flower Market - giving me the chance to ooh and ahh at his designs (and then ouch! at the price tags) in person, rather than on his Etsy shop.

Both Ryan and Callesen have some remarkable work on their sites so if you’re unfamiliar with them I highly recommend a look!

Today sees the start of the 61st Cannes Festival and for the second year running LG are partners for the festival, this year bringing all the highlights and best clips to you via the web on our special Scarlet monitor inspired viewer, in partnership with Canal+.

Sadly the service is French so lost on me but for the multi-lingual (&/or French!) among you, you can find out more here.

Nathalie from the LG France blog just emailed me this awe/pain-inspiring video:

Which has been watched an incredible 2,483,947 times since it was added to YouTube on May 5th. Is it a clever advert or PR stunt or just some guys with too much time and/or an aversion to getting dressed in the traditional fashion? …No pun intended.

Either way, I recommend you don’t try it at home - skinny jeans can be painful enough without trying to get into them at high speed!

Yesterday I came across this terrifying ‘fooz’ball table from AirWorks Inflatables:

Terrifying for me because I have enough trouble playing on a standard table but also because I can imagine the havoc created were we to actually get one in our office! Fortunately there is only one of these giant tables in existence at the moment; built for beer promotion during the recent European Champions League finals.in
It also reminds me of another beer advert which suggested ‘You do the football, we’ll do the beer’ - I’ll buy the beer if I need to but please do not make any more of these tables - the guys in my office all went misty eyed at the mere idea of a bigger foozball table, the office would never be the same if they actually got hold of one!

And another thing our office would never be the same with is the jDome - a new invention by John Nilsson, a Swedish gamer who, fed up with waiting for technology to improve his gaming immersion, took his inspiration from an OmnImax cinema. The jDome will give gamers a massive 180-degree field of vision instead of the usual 15 to 20 degrees they get from their monitors and Nilsson believes it will be possible to sell them for around $125-200, keeping prices low by only having the high quality focus right where gamers need it - straight ahead - and a lower quality visibility more like motion detection for peripheral views.

~Paracelsus

I’ve just been emailed a link to this wonderfully ingenious clock by Dutch designer Christiaan Postma. He explains “The starting point with this project was a personal study about form & time. I put together more than 150 individual clockworks and made them work together to become one clock. I show the progress of time by letting the numbers be written in words by the clockworks.”

The clock was on show as part of the annual Design Academy Eindhoven student show at Spazio Rossana Orlandi. It’s a very engaging clock, one I could happily watch for quite sometime, which I suppose is the point - this clock makes you think about time and it’s passing, rather than just remember you’re running late for that meeting.

Speaking of which…

The past few weeks have been a real test of my willpower - first, Di at Designers’ Block introduced me to Michael Michaud’s amazing nature inspired jewelry.

Water Lilies brooch, inspired by the painting of the same name by Claude Monet.

Then Register Hardware brought the Mobile Watch - complete with camera, Wi-Fi, 512MB memory card and GPS satnav - to my attention too:

As a result I had to spend a few minutes quietly repeating to myself ‘there is a big difference between wanting and affording’ before I could be trusted near the computer (or my purse!)
I think the major problem was that with these items combined my latest desires would have allowed me to feel like a bond girl and the agent himself simultaneously - a very tempting combination!

Fortunately Susie over at Style Bubble has bought a more affordable temptation to me - the East End Thrift Shop - and Dezeen have given me another affordable distraction by bringing the Rolf Sachs ‘ Take2′ exhibition to my attention and, thanks to the clever Mr Clayton, I have The Cans Festival to check out too!

So much to see but not to buy…

Here’s a bit of an LG Blog exclusive - Jeremy Newing, LG Mobile’s UK Marketing Manager, talking about the Secret and his ideas for the future of LG Mobile, at the bloggers’ event we held to launch the LG Secret last week: We also managed to collar John Barton, UK Sales and Marketing manager, as he spoke with Helen at the official press conference for the Secret’s release: These videos and more (such as an interview with Simon Perry of Digital Lifestyles) on our brand new LG Blog UK YouTube channel, which succeeds the LG Viewty one we had last year. Of course, we’re not the only ones who’ve been on about the Secret, or indeed videoed about it. Over at Tech Digest Susi has a video review (showing off the tempered glass front). Simon at Zath, Stephen at Gadgeteer and Al at Coolest Reviews both previews the phone - Al especially highlights the m-toy aspects, which I remember a lot of people enjoying at the event. In fact that’s one of the best things about it - was seeing how everyone enjoyed themselves in using the phone, something that I hope we’ll see as more detailed reviews come out in the coming weeks…