Aliph's long-rumored Jawbone 2 headset was officially announced and went on sale today. Reviews have been mostly positive, as you can see here, here, and here. Still, we've thought about it, and we've decided to keep using our hands.
Jawbone 2, $130, jawbone.com

Reopening next week: Museion, an Italian museum of modern and contemporary art whose inaugural exhibit, Peripheral Vision and Collective Body, is a massive group show that includes works by Vito Acconci, Hans Haacke and Jean-Luc Godard, among others. Berlin architects KSV Krüger Schuberth Vandreike designed the new building as a five-story glass and steel cube that comes with the requisites: exhibition areas, events space, and a library. Added bonus? The museum's facades double as screens; curators will be able to project specially commissioned artworks onto them at night. That'll be handy come fall when Sonic Youth etc.: Sensational Fix, a retrospective of the alternative band's multimedia career, goes on display. This is going to be the year punk broke in Italy, apparently.
Opening May 24, Via Dante 6, Bolanzo, Italy, (39) 0471-22-34-11, museion.it

[Dezeen]

The boxy van (and cult surfer favorite) appears to be headed to that great junkyard in the sky: Autoblog reports that Dodge will stop making the Sprinter by 2011. It's a casualty of the recent Chrysler-Nissan partnership; expect a reworked Nissan van to hit streets in about three years. Too bad—the spacious interior was great for customizing, and the diesel engine made it a (relatively) eco-friendly ride.

Later this month, Michel Fournier will attempt to break the world free-fall record when the 64-year-old Frenchman drops approximately 25 miles over (you guessed it) Saskatchewan. In doing so, he'll both break the sound barrier and endure temperatures as cold as -150 degrees. (On the upside, he gets to wear the suit from this rendering.) We know what you're thinking: How will he tell the time while this is happening? Well, he'll have Bell & Ross' BR02 strapped to his wrist. The steel-and-carbon chronograph seems more than up to the task—in fact, we'd say it's more likely to survive the fall than Fournier is.

Meaning a car with a green paint job, and not, say, a Prius. That's the news according to CNW Marketing Research, who just released a survey about how choice of car color reflects drivers' attitudes toward life. Turns out the Batmobile's hue isn't a coincidence—sad sacks like Bruce Wayne are most likely to drive something noir. Full results are below:

-Emerald green: Drivers have 5.5 percent above average confidence
-Dark blue: 3.2 percent above average confidence
-Silver: 1.2 percent above average confidence
-White: average confidence
-Sunny yellow: 3.7 percent below average confidence
-Orange: 4.1 percent below average confidence
-Bright blue: 5.5 percent below average confidence
-Bright yellow: 8.3 percent below average confidence
-Red: 8.8 percent below average confidence
-Black: 14.6 percent below average confidence

[US News and World Report]

Today in Flickr discoveries: photos by former London schoolteacher George Plemper, who taught science in working-class south London from 1973 to 1978. His pictures of Riverside School and its students—rarely shown, except for an exhibition in 1979—is a gripping body of work, not only for Plemper's considerable skill but also because many of his young subjects had such refined senses of style. Case in point: the young man shown here, a refugee from the Nigerian/Biafran civil war of the late sixties. Hey, if you're going to wear velour and fur trim, wear it proud.

[The Guardian]

...update it incrementally. That's the logic, at least, behind Royal Enfield's 2008 motorcycle collection. The flagship is the Bullet 500 Classic (pictured), which has had more or less the same design since 1955, when it was first manufactured in India. (The bike's named after a product the company no longer makes: rifle cartridges.) This year, however, the brand has given it an all-new four-stroke engine from Austrian engineering firm AVL, good for a whopping 70 mpg on the open road. Think of it as a hog Al Gore could love.
$5,095, enfieldmotorcycles.com

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is the first Woody Allen movie we've looked forward to in awhile. Not only does it reunite Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz (who were great in Jamón, jamón), the film also, er, unites Cruz and Scarlett Johansson. Prurient interest created by lesbian kiss? Check. Fast-forward to 1:12 below, and consider September circled on the calendar.

The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul is like a litmus test for designer labels. Browsing the wares here is the best way to assess a brand's viability: The more frequent its fakes, the greater its mass-market cachet. Last week, when I braved its halls, the stalls were piled high with Prada and Dolce bags (no surprise), but also with G-Star and Loewe knockoffs (take that, Canal Street). Strangest of all? The piles of ersatz Ed Hardy, which succeeded in looking just as cheap and tacky as the originals, making them probably the best buy there.

The Bazaar wasn't anything like I expected, although there were a few supposedly high-end boutiques tucked in a corner. One of them had an alabaster mannequin posed like a Helmut Newton nude: legs splayed, hands on hips, naked but for an enormous black fur coat suggestively hanging open—Russian-hooker-chic. The stallholders in that section were clearly courting rubles and pounds. The refreshingly direct advance—"Excuse me, where are you from? Can I help you spend some money?"—was repeated, as necessary, in Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, and English.

No doubt it's those international tourists—Russians with private jets, new-moneyed Chinese—behind Starwood's decision to pick Istanbul as its road-test location for the W Hotels chain in Europe. (The branch here will be the lone brand beacon for at least a year, until clones in St. Petersburg, Manchester, Verbier, et al pop up.) The hotel's housed in a cluster of Ottoman-era row houses that were once servants' quarters for the nearby Dolmabahçe Palace, with huge souk-inspired rooms, disco-dark corridors twinkling with pink crystals, and a two-story branch of New York's Spice Market. (Exporting Vongerichten's restaurant to a town that already has a real spice market? Ballsy.)

Next month, upstart ZeeVee is introducing the ZV-100, a kit that sends online video to your TV. What makes it stand apart from this suddenly crowded field? It's so easy a caveman could do it: Just connect the box to your computer and then to your TV (or multiple TVs) via a standard cable. The TV mirrors what you see on your monitor, so it's perfect for watching online video or even cruising the Web with the included remote. (An optional keyboard is due later this year.) Simplicity, however, does come at a steep price: 500 bucks, to be exact.
ZeeVee ZV-100, $500, zeevee.com

[NYT]

Out soon: Jaime Hayon Works, the first monograph of the designer's work. It includes sketches, castings, and samples from his playful oeuvre, including the MGM musical-inspired BD Showtime furniture collection. The release also coincides with Arrojadoa, an installation of Hayon's work for Dutch furniture store Moooi. The centerpiece is Hayon's Elements, a functional reinterpretation of his ceramic cacti for Moooi (and a highlight of the Milan Furniture Fair) making its U.S. debut.
Jamie Hayon Works, $100, gestalten.com; Arrojadoa, May 17 through July 7, Diesel Denim Gallery, 68 Greene St., New York, NY (212) 966-5593, diesel.com

In 1992, Olivier Zahm and Elein Fleiss founded Purple Prose, whose name (as Fleiss gleefully points out in her intro) is "practically impossible for any French person to pronounce." (Fun to imagine, non?) Since then, the mag has branched out to include Purple Fashion and Purple Sexe, and published the work of a who's who from the art world: Teller, Ackermann, Richardson (both Bob and Terry). Their new (and curiously timed) anthology includes essays from the likes of Kim Gordon and Glenn O'Brien, not to mention reproductions of nearly every page they've ever published. This includes enough pictures of Chloë Sevigny to last two lifetimes—though if Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin's nudes are any indication, you can never have too many.
$37.80, amazon.com; purple.fr