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Highsnobiety 

the making of shoes by swedish footwear brand Wesc. I have been fascinated by shoes and sneakers since a little kid and allways wanted to tour a sneaker factory. this is as close as i have gotten so far lol

August 12, 2011
By Steven J. Horowitz

(This is an abridged version of Steven J. Horowitz’s article in the August 20 issue of Billboard titled “Protecting the ‘Throne’.” For the full article, head here to purchase the issue, and here for a subscription, which gets you the magazine, charts, bulletins and much more.)

When Jay-Z and Kanye West’s collaborative album “Watch the Throne” hit iTunes earlier this week, many expressed amazement that the album hadn’t leaked, as nearly every hip-hop album in recent memory has.

What they didn’t realize was the months of near-military-scale planning required to keep the album under wraps.

Taking C.I.A.-like precautions to ensure that the album was released on their own terms, the duo successfully staved off hackers with a leak-proof strategy — an anomaly for an industry consistently brought to its knees by web-savvy individuals eager to share unreleased material with the world.

“It was really important to [Jay] that people experienced this album in its entirety when they first listened to it,” says a Roc Nation executive, who asked to remain anonymous. “That was really the driving force of it, to create that nostalgic moment of unwrapping the CD and listening to it for the first time.”

Conceived during three iterations in Australia, New York City and Paris, “Watch the Throne” was kept secure by three core engineers — Mike Dean, Anthony Kilhoffer and Noah Goldstein — who disabled their computers’ Wi-Fi at pop-up studios constructed in hotel rooms. Due to compromising hacker attempts for West’s 2010 release “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” outside producers such as the RZA and Swizz Beatz were asked to appear in-person for works-in-progress — no emailed song drafts were allowed.

To combat pre-release piracy, Kilhoffer, Grammy Award-winner for West’s Graduation and John Legend’s Get Lifted, claims that all sessions were saved offsite to hard drives in Goldstein’s locked Pelican briefcase over the course of nine months. “Everywhere we went in hotels, we were locking hard drives and Noah took them with him,” says Kilhoffer, who now travels with external memory units that can only be accessed by biometric fingerprints.

The technology, which Kilhoffer implements while traveling on West’s current European tour, takes a live scan of one’s finger to serve as key to access protected material. For less than $100, devices such as the Eikon Digital Privacy Manager and Zvetco Fingerprint Reader measure the finger’s ridges and valleys with conductor plates, transmitting imprints through a USB cord to safeguard hard drive contents. While on the road, Kilhoffer and Dean are the sole gatekeepers to unlock the digital safes.

billboard

“Tumblingerstraße” is a stop motion short film by an unknown animator with the user name “Yo Man” at Vimeo. A perfect miniature replica of the road Tumblingerstraße in Munich of Bavaria, famous for his graffiti, is the German equivalent of 5 Pointz in New York.

koikoikoi

image: Designboom

Check out Designboom‘s Ferrari factory assembly tour. the imagery along with the process of building these super cars is amazing

Designboom

this is a pretty complex cool build… here are the comments by the builders

“We think of innovation and invention as highly engineered, complex systems that are built by some mad scientist in a remote space.  The process results in long and layered equations, drawings and an endless source of references illustrated in a step by step process to further explain the construction of the device or machine. We have familiarized ourselves with this elaborate system through Einstein, Sherlock Holmes, even the coyote as he tries to invent ways to capture the road runner.  For this week’s VOW, we have brought you one of those diagrams to life.  It is highly engineered, highly interactive and social but the actual task of the machine might deceive its purpose and vision.  We introduce you toMelvin the Machine, the leading attraction of the 2010 Dutch Design Week.”

vimeo, yatzer

see my cut through the hole!

Highsnobiety

Drawn Out ep. 1: Joell Ortiz from Visually Inklined on Vimeo.

These are NIICE! I have to get one of these colorways for the fall… ITS A MUST!!!

An interesting new high top sneaker is releasing from the Nike Sportswear Fall/Winter 2011 Collection. The Air Nevist-6 is almost like a winterized Air Royal, featuring a premium leather and perforated leather tonal upper, and a black C.44 sticky rubber outer sole, a feature usually kept for the outdoor inspired ACG line.

info via: Highsnobiety

From the streets to Galleries!! Mr. Cartoon is doing it up big

Vans OTW Advocate Mister Cartoon breaks down his piece in MOCA’s Art In The Streets exhibition and opens up about his journey thus far – from his past as a tagger to his present life as an established street artist.

Highsnobiety