Mashable recently posted a Wordpress plugin that needs far more coverage than it's getting. The Douchebag Plugin allows for you to visually tag your commenting trolls with an official douchebag icon. Certainly the Gawker and Weblogs, Inc. networks could make good use of this. Even better, would be a community-generated douchebag icon, when specific commenters are consistently complained about. Unfortunately, Shake Well Before Use operates off of Movable Type, but there's always other ways of publicly calling out dbags.

What you wear around the house is soon becoming haute couture. Victoria Beckham supposedly likes skipping around with little to no air-drag. The sexy leg-shaved star is creating a trend of not wearing pants on the red carpet. Even if trend doesn't catch on, that's far beside the point. Actually, most would hope it doesn't catch on, so as to avoid a similar tube-to-muffin top fallout effect fashion trends often have years down the line.

Pressure-sensitive and ready to play, an interactive ball responds to crowd participation. Called the Zygote, these inflated spheres contain LEDs that react to touch. Each time the ball is played with, the graphics change, creating a "shared experience". While watching a massive ball change colors across a crowd may only keep the attention span of the heavily induced, there seems to be potential in how the object stays connected:

"Each ball also can act as both an input and an output device by being networked to a central computer. This allows for more complex interaction, as the crowd can modify the graphics on a screen, make the balls light up in unison, or even affect the music."

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Trendhunter rounds up the "16 Brands of Drinks Using Sex to Make You Thirsty". From Pimp Juice to Monster Energy, to a you've-got-to-be-joking energy drink called Who's Your Daddy?, the list covers off on quite a few. The 16 sex-obsessed still leave out a few notables, though. Most recently, Heineken's "Draughtkeg" commercial left a misogynistic taste in some viewers' mouths, while others creamed their pants over a cyborg-like, beer-dispensing, techno-dancing, short-shorts-wearing woman.

AdAge jokes, "The perfect woman: a mute nymphomaniac whose father owns a brewery." However, AdAge adds that the joke "manages to [not] trivialize the essence of femininity quite as egregiously as Heineken. And why don't they?

Because they don't portray a woman's uterus as a beer keg."

In so obviously a shot at shock advertising, a New Zealand pizza chain successfully crossed the line. Named Hell, the chain stated that they did not set out to offend anyone with their sieg heil to pizza, despite large community complaints.

"We thought that people would be able to see a funny side to a guy doing a 'sieg heil' salute with a piece of pizza in his hand," stated Kirk MacGibbon of Cinderella advertising agency.

Apparently, this wasn't the first controversial ad from Hell, as they had mailed out condoms a year prior to promote their "Lust" pizza. After 685 complaints, you'd think they'd stop their Crispin-Porter-wannabe antics.

You like everything organic, so why not your orgasms? An eco-friendly oil- and water-based lubricant loves the health benefits of helping you make love. Yes believes a lubricant can change the world by creating sexual well-being and smiles. Appropriately, the personal lubricant is also Vegetarian Society approved for accidental swallowing. Made from pure food quality ingredients, Yes specifically doesn't take away from the smell or taste of your own skin.

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Bras and panties are often made to look pretty by someone slaving over a hot desktop for hours on end. Based out of Portland, a lingerie boutique refuses to Photoshop. Presenting their wearables and women in unedited allure, Lille Boutique takes a diamond in the rough approach to displaying products. In addition to their untouched techniques, they sell each of their store items online. Goes to show, a little unmufflered marketing can go a long way in the sale of unmentionables.

[A weekly link post of skipped over (and slightly stale) sights and stories]


• Phones modified with floating ultrasonic transmitters for fish-finding services.

• Apple blocks MySpace from store computers, even the emo kids don't care.

• Ringtones go analog.

• Solar-powered interweb access for the entire neighborhood.

• Concept phone doubles as a yo-yo.

Passive Aggressive Notes

Breast enlarging cookies from Japan.

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Save energy when you're between the sheets with the Hourglass Nightlight. Like most partners in bed, the illuminated electricity saver stays turned on until you fall asleep. The nightlight becomes active when you turn it over and syncs up with a stream of sand. The battery and plug -less lamp powers purely from the internal energy generated by the sand, so when the sand ends, the light turns off. Created by Sun-Young Lee, the Hourglass Nightlight will hopefully have you resting easier knowing you're going green.

While looking at lingerie is always a pleasure, this push-up is painful to the eyes. The internal silicon bra attaches itself to ribs and various other points inside the body to act as a sub-skin support. The bra acts as an alternative to augmentation, but doesn't seem to be catering to the squeamish anymore than going under the knife. Uplifting lingerie certainly provides perks, but to what pain is a little pleasure worth?

Trying to compensate for their petite privates, a group of chumps created an ad for reliable servers. While advertising, sex and technology typically shake mix well, Qsol took the unfortunate oh-so-middle-school approach to market their manhood. With lines like "Don't feel bad - Our servers won't go down on you either", it's hard to tell if the horridly over-used, most-likely-stolen stock photography is worse than the copywriting. A commenter on Copyranter adds that Qsol's logo is quite precarious as well.

We have a serious shortage of strippers due to randy robots. Or at least that's what one artist believes. Vance DeGeneres (related to Ellen) is an artist with a thing for naked women and robots. Painted in oil, his paintings warn of stripping down for the metal machines. DeGeneres' "It's Because I'm a Robot, Isn't It..." piece is reminiscent of the popular Threadless "She Doesn't Even Realize" tee. From robot robbery to poker, who knew robots could be so crafty?

Crying over spilled milk, many of you may have missed out on the "not-so-official" National Underwear Day yesterday. Like a belated birthday gift, treat yourself to photos of the line-up of tushes that could be seen in NYC the previous day. The cleverly named Queerty covers off on more of the dressing down:

"Started by Freshpair founder and Queerty friend Michael Kleinmann, the New York City-based event sprang from the pantie guru’s love of the groin and its many moods. Adapting 1960s happenings with guerilla marketing tactics, NUD began as a wandering event: sexy undressed models wandered the city spreading the word. Today, over fifty models will don eighteen brands of underwear - including Ginch Gonch, Paul Frank, C-IN2, Diesel, Hanes and women’s brands Natori and Barely There, among others - and strut their unclothed stuff for all the world to see."

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Inflatable fashion invades inner-city environments. Tired from public transportation, Joo Youn Paek crafted an air-pressured dress. The dress (along with an oh-so-sexy pair of slippers) acts as a Self-Sustainable Chair for exhausted urbanites.

"The dress is made up of 7 trash bags, 2 foot-pumps and a pair of slippers. The shoes pump air into an inflatable bubble attached to its rear part on each step, slowly turning the garment into a chair. The chair is slowly deflated under the weight of the wearer, motivating him or her to consistently switch between walking and sitting as a loop behavior on the street."

Though the sight to be seen is sure to not garner a second glance in an "already seen everything" society above ground, bustling between station security underground may prove to be difficult, given the protruding tubes and trash bags.

See also: Inflatable Breasts Dress

Shake Well Before Use celebrates its first blogiversary today (one year ago: Check out my guns). Quite a bit has changed in a year, and only for the better. While I typically don't make personal posts, a blogiversary is the perfect excuse for it (and for cupcakes!). With that, there are even more changes happening right now that I wanted to share.

After 8 solid years at VML, an interactive WPP agency, I am resigning as Digital Insights Analyst to pursue social media insights consulting. During my time at VML, I had the opportunity to work with a variety of truly amazing people from whom I learned a lot.

I'm currently in the process of relocating from Kansas City to San Francisco. You can also find me in different places across the web. I'm currently writing for Engadget and Suicide Girls, discussing the intersections between advertising, sex and technology. I may also be popping up in your inbox from time to time, as I recently started working with the wonderful team at Pownce to help assist them with support issues and requests. Shake Well Before Use will continue to be my main home within the vast blogosphere and will continue to grow. Check out the updated About section for more information. I look forward to another year of change and new experiences. In the meantime, I'm celebrating with a chocolate cupcake.

Email is quickly becoming one of the most hated methods of communication amongst any tech-savvy community. Perhaps by accident, a new visualization tool reflects email's repulsive nature quite accurately. Creepy and certainly crawly, bacteria-like bugs representing different types and statuses of emails infest themselves into your inbox and onto your screen. One "animal" represents one received email and one category represents one "species", while the status and age of an email affect the appearance and motion of an "animal". Called Anymails, the prototype effectively makes opening your inbox on Monday mornings feel even more vile.

See the visualization in motion.