pantone pattern recognition

Softbank Mobile: choose from 20 colors

Shinsei Bank Visa Cards: choose from 32 colors
Pantone Folders (via Eddie Wong)iPod Nano (okay, that's only 5 colors)
Have you seen other brands offering multiple color choices?

unlikely connections

I'm a big fan of Momus, the eye-patched musician-cum-cultural-commentator who writes a column for Wired. He writes about almost everything, from design to music to pop culture and to all things Japanese, and I find him always insightful and funny. I guess, most of all, I like his endless capacity to make the most unlikely type of connections. Writing in his own blog, he tells what he's up to: "I was in Scotland, then had a couple of days back in Berlin to write my next Wired column (connecting Apple's Get a Mac ads to Norman Mailer's essay The White Negro)".
What he'll come up with I have no idea but I'm already looking forward to reading it. His Wired columns here.

pattern recognition in movies

Just a quick follow-up on the previous post.
Perhaps it's not a coincidence that the same director who gave us "Any Given Sunday" also gave us "Platoon". Just a thought.

a case of pattern recognition in the bathroom

Another pattern recognition example. A while ago, I had read on "How Magazine"'s blog about these design toilet papers, from Portuguese company Renova, and I filed it certain that I'd use it for something.
Now, one of my favorite bloggers, Lisa Katayama, who writes the interesting and incredibly funny Tokyo Mango, came up with these examples of printed toilet papers. She says that these printed toilet papers have existed in Japan for a very long time.
I can perfectly understand "doing your thing" with a black toilet paper, with "skulls", or with the "inflation dollar bill", but with the "Happy Birthday" one, I guess I totally missed the cultural manifestation here.