• A neat comparison chart to make sense of all these new unlimited wireless plans. [Gizmodo]

• Andre ‘3 Stacks’ is going beyond logo tees, polos, and hoodies with his new ‘Benjamin Bixby’ fashion line. [NY Mag]

• Netflix rentals, Xbox Live coming together as one? [MSNBC]

• Common plans a November release for his new album, ‘The Believer’. [MTV]

Kweli traveled all the way to the motherland to bring this one to life. Excellent track, dope video. If you still don’t have his latest album, ‘Eardrum’, you’re losing…get it!

The rumors have been swirling around the internet for the past few days now, but today Verizon Wireless officially unveiled its new series of unlimited calling plans. All three plans, which range from $99 to $139, include unlimited calls to anyone, anytime in the U.S., with the $139 plan including unlimited text messaging and data transfers. This is pretty major, given the fact that most major carriers offer no more than a few thousand minutes at very similar price points. Crappy phone selection aside, it’s good to see Verizon leading the way on this. With a growing number of people completely abandoning landlines and going strictly wireless (our generation especially), I’m sure that we’ll begin to see more carriers jump on the bandwagon with similar plans very soon.

UPDATE*:
Not to be out done by Verizon, the folks over at AT&T have announced plans to launch their very own unlimited calling plan beginning Thursday (2/22). Peep. Sprint, T-Mobile are you guys next???

UPDATE**
T-mobile joins in on the fun! Meanwhile, Sprint isn’t giving in to the peer pressure.

Based on outward appearance and reputation alone, most people wouldn’t normally associate Mobb Deep’s Prodigy with a “fine institution of higher leaning” like Morehouse College. Not to say that rappers and college don’t mix (don’t let the dropouts fool you), but in this particular case, the two are worlds apart. For starters, Prodigy, born Albert Johnson, has painted himself as a, well, “thug” for much of his career (cut it out, I can hear you laughing from here), while most Morehouse students and alumni are anything but. Seriously. Recently, while reading an article in the Village Voice documenting the rapper’s final days before beginning a 3 year prison sentence, I stumbled across a shocking bit of info that links P to ‘The House’ in a major way:

Prodigy carries a gun. It’s how he was raised. Though Albert Johnson comes from a long line of influential men–his great-great-grandfather, William Jefferson White, founded Morehouse College in the basement of his Baptist church in Augusta, Georgia

It’s almost unbelievable, I know. But imagine, in this age of bizarre hip-hop pairings, Morehouse officials jumping at the opportunity to align themselves with Prodigy based on this fact. Might we hear about young P receiving an honoray degree form the institution in the future? Or maybe delivering the keynote speech at one of their graduations? I seriously doubt it. But hey, these days you never know.

[via Village Voice]

• What’s he done for you lately? Good, clean, Barack Obama humor. [Obama's Your New Bike]

• HD DVD is dead. [Macworld]

• Dealing with White-Black Black-Black gentrification in Harlem. [NYT]

• Hit the Blackjack tables right the next time you’re in Vegas. [Wired]

It looks like I missed a really good one this year!

I’m a little late with this, I know, but I finally had a chance to check out Complex’s interview with Nike design veteran Tinker Hatfield. For those that aren’t familiar, Tinker is best known for designing the Nike Air Max 1 and a large portion of the Jordan signature line. In the interview he reveals some interesting facts regarding the Jordan brand (MJ hated the design of the X’s), and talks about the inspiration behind some of his most revolutionary designs (the Air Max 1’s were inspired by a French museum). What I found really interesting though, was his take on the current state of sneaker game:

Complex: Bape was made popular by their interpretations of the Air Force One. How do you feel about other brands mocking up Nike silhouettes?

Tinker Hatfield: It’s certainly a form of flattery. I feel in some ways though in the long run, it’s possibly hurting athletic footwear. I think we’re having more trouble promoting new performance designs than we have in the past. There are all these remakes and people are digging the remakes because they can actually participate in the remaking. I have to say I have a lot of limited edition Air Force Ones and Jordans and Air Maxes in my own closet. I think it’s really fun to wear them, and you can sort of put your own stamp of style into those kinds of shoes. It’s kind of a love/hate thing for me. I kind of hate it because it makes it harder to sort of convince people that this new kind of product is better than the old one, when they love the old one so much. But it’s kind of cool that they love the old one so much, and I was a part of that. So it kind of goes back and forth with me.

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To celebrate the fifth and final season of their hit show ‘The Wire’ (the realest show on tv, if you ask me), HBO asked the renowned streetwear/visual communications agency Staple Design to produce a series of limited edition hooded sweatshirts. In the end, Staple brought aboard 5 artists to created 5 uniquely designed hoodies; each representing a single season of ‘The Wire’, and limited to 20 pieces per design. Unfortunately, these hoodies won’t be available in stores–they’ve been given to the show’s cast and crew and a few others were auctioned off for charity. No Good! It wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on eBay though…*wink*.

[via Jeff Staple]

Over the weekend I stumbled across this interesting series of world flags that have been reinterpreted as graphs using real data taken from Amnesty International and UN reports. No photo editing was done here, just a clever, factual play on the original flag designs. In case you’re slacking in the geography department, that’s Columbia’s flag pictured above. Peep the full series here.

[via Brazilian Artists]

I’m no expert on architecture, but I certainly know a beautiful structure when I see one. Case in point: Beijing National Stadium aka ‘The Bird’s Nest’. Designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, this 91,00 seat stadium wrapped within a network of twisted steel tracks, will serve as the centerpiece of this year’s Olympics in Beijing. You can peep some interior shots of the structure, along with an article on its design here.

[via The Guardian]