Link About It: This Week’s Picks

Snackwave, re-inventing the phone call, JR on Ellis Island and more in our weekly look at the web

1. Pro Bono Don’t you hate it when house guests request listening to something other than everyone’s favorite band, U2? Fret no further, new smart speaker Pro-Bono exclusively plays the band’s new album Songs of Innocence—you know, the one Apple recently attempted to force on all iPhone users? Through Pro-Bono, even if someone selects a song from a different band, the speaker overrides it and …

Interview: Paul Budnitz of Ello

The founder of the internet's new unconventional, ad-free social network explains its honest origins and its exciting future

We’ve long been supporters of multifarious designer Paul Budnitzwe even collaborated on a Cool Hunting bicycle with the Kid Robot founder. So when he began telling us about his new project, Elloan ad-free social networklast May, we knew something exciting was in the works. Now in full Beta mode, the free, invite-only network is doubling in size daily, and garnering even more attention in a …

ListenUp: The Mixtape Project

For London Design Festival 2014, designers like Tom Dixon and Industrial Facility made playlists for #SuperStimuli

For this year’s London Design Festival, the Ace Hotel in Shoreditch played host to four different designer installations for “Super Stimuli,” a show curated by biannual magazine Modern Design Review (check out our Instagram of Michael Marriot’s lamp). Right next to the Ace, new vinyl-only store Sister Ray offered a musical accompaniment to “Super Stimuli” with The Mixtape Project, which showed off playlists created by …