BETA WAY TO GET AROUND

Okay, most of us geek types can already recite Google Labs’ project list in their sleep and madly worship the Labs graduates (say, Docs & Spreadsheets, GOOG-411, Scholar and, of course, Google Earth.) But we’re particularly goo-ga over the latest one.

Google Transit, naturally in Beta (as, by the way, good ol’ Gmail still is), helps you get around town without using a car. Just plug in your starting point and your destination, and you’re on your way. (How does it feel to walk in those shrunken-carbon-footprint feet?) The neat service uses Google Maps to get bike/walk route ideas and directions using public transporation down to the specific bus route number, the cost of the trip and the estimated travel time.

Alas, this transportation genius is only available in 19 US cities — and Japan (?!) But we know how fast the Google folks can churn out their magic (yep, if you haven’t gathered by now, we’ve been drinking the Goolaid), so no doubt Philly will make the cut at some point. (Especially given our very own Septa already has a similar but much more low-tech service on their website that can only benefit from being picked up by high-traffic, high-buzz Google.)

We only have one question — given the brilliance of the serivce itself, how come no one in Mountain View had the same “d’oh” moment we did and thought of the oh-so-obvious bike-tires-over-two-O’s logo? Do we have to come up with everything? Come on now.

OFF-ISLAND FASHION

Trailing behind the buzzing publicity beehive that was New York Fashion Week, Brooklyn Fashion Weekend kicks off today at Empire-Fulton State Ferry Park. It’s a showcase for emerging design talent (including unforgettable character Malan Breton from Project Runway 3) and a chance for fashionistas to get the goods before they get hit the way-out-of-95-percent-of-the-population’s-budget price range.

This year’s event, themed Circus Couture, is part theatrical magic, part runway (and part major Target sponsorship).

Behind the show is the BK Style Foundation, a non-profit inspired by the recognition that Brooklyn is brimming with artists and underexposed talent. The org aims to assist young desingers in building and bettering their lines, while also providing a professional backdrop for business. And because they’re a non-profit, proceeds from the show end up in various charity causes.

That should make you feel a little better about shelling out a year’s lunch money on one of Malan’s creations.

FRASIER’S FAVORITE DESSERT

Although it may not feel like it around here these days (yes, it is always sunny — and warm — in Philadelphia and Al Gore was probably right that we’re on our way to bathing in a soup of melted glaciers and our own sweat), summer’s winding down. Time to trade in the sherbet for that alluring glass of oh-so-autumny cabernet sauvignon.

Wait, wait. Now you can do both, thanks to Wine Cellar Sorbets: “The adult desert for sophisticated palates.”

The concept is the brainchild of wine-head-meets-culinary-artist David Zablocki and scientist-with-an-MBA Bret Birnbaum, a couple of childhood friends from Queens. Today, the two vinopreneurs have various stores in New York, New Jersey and Florida already carrying their creation, their sorbets are served in a bunch of upscale restaurants, they’ve been covered by a number of top-tier magazines, and they cater private A-list events.

All sorbets are seasonal and come from vintages, varietals and viticulture regions from where the wines were produced. On top of all the flavors already available, the sorbet sommelier is planning to make Tuscan Sangiovese and Port Wine Sorbet paired with a dark chocolate top hat.

Mouth watering, drool may drip on keyboard. Must step away.

UNTRIVIA

You may remember last year when a non-profit called RenewUS set out to mobilize people to get their energy from alternative sources and pressure their utilities providers to make those available. A pretty hefty task, you may say. RenewUS made quite a bit of buzz in the eco-blogging community with their envirol video.

And then they disappeared.

Well, turns out, they didn’t. They just rebranded as ClimateCounts, “a collaborative effort to bring consumers and companies together in the fight against global climate change,” and set out to fight global warming from the bottom up. Maybe they realized people need easy, actionable everyday changes to start making a difference, and the whole face-off with utilities companies may have been just a bit much.

So ClimateCounts started simple: they measured the carbon footprints of common household brands so consumers can start making a difference right at the store. So far, they’ve got 56 companies — they started with the most popular ones — but the list is growing. They ranked them using a 22-criteria scoring system, assessing 4 key benchmakrs: how the company measures its carbon footprint (22 posible points), how much they do to reduce it (56 points), how they support (or whether they try to block) progressive climate legislation (10 points), and how publicly transparent they are about all that (12 points). As a result, brands scored red (“Stuck”), yellow (“Starting”), or green (“Striding”) based on their overall score out of the possible 100 points. Here’s a topline of the scorecard‘s best and worst performers:

Top Striders: Cannon (77/100), Nike (73/100), Unilever (71/100), IBM (70), Toshiba (66), Stonyfield Farms (63)

Top Stuckers: Wendy’s, Jones Apparel Group, Darden Restaurants, CBS, Burger King, Amazon (all zilch)

On each company’s profile, there’s even an easy-email button to let the company CEO climate efforts are important. And just so you’re in the know when you’re in the store, you can download the ranking pocketpiece or the full-blown scorecard.

Worth mentioning: the entire non-profit is funded by Stonyfield Farms and Clean Air – Cool Planet. But despite the company affiliation, this sounds like the real thing: Stonyfield Farms has been donating 10% of their profits to, well, non-profits since their very inception, and they were also the ones who produced, quietly and publicitly-stunt-free, the aforementioned RenewUS A Crisis Averted film last year. (Not to mention the objectivity oozing from the fact they were ranked number 6, not 1.) We can help but get a bit warm and fuzzy when we see such a rare, genuine just-get-out-and-do-it approach.

IMAGINE

With the record industry ashambles these days, bands , artists and musicologists alike are looking for new ways to publish and relate to talent. There’s podcasting, free-market album sales, open-source remixing for legal sharing, and more.

But one music dream machine is taking things to a whole new level. Imaginary Albums is an “imaginary place dedicated to the imaginary dissemination of excellent music: full albums encoded at high quality, and available for free download.”

And by “excellent” they mean really, really what-are-the-major-labels-thinking-not-signing-this-band good. Like The Harvey Girls, whose eponymous album is a deep dive into melodic melancholy with a tint of snarky liveliness, all brilliantly harmonized. Or Laura Palmer‘s curious instrumental interpretation of still life. (Who knew acoustic guitar and an alarm clock could make sweet inanimate love together.) Or Tiny Creatures‘ bizarre-yet-brilliant foray into sonic electro-lounge.

As you’ll notice, a lot of this music is very experimental. And a lot of it you may hate. But here’s the thing with mainstream record labels (and perhaps the reason they’re no longer king in music culture): a long, long time ago they’ve stopped caring about the progressive, left-of-center players and have instead eaten themselves into blobs of Top-40-sales fat, sitting idly in a comfort zone of mainstream taste and lowest-common- denominator demand.

Sure, it’s the mainstream’s taste that drives a lot of music culture, but if “the mainstream” never gets exposed to novelty, controversy and a level of discomfort, that taste never gets the chance to grow. It’s a vicious cycle. An open-exchange market free of corporate constraints may just be the only way to put compelling conversation back into music culture.

Imagine that.

GIGS TO GO

While we’re on the music note, every once in a while we come across an underrated but super-utilitarian new service. Like Bands In Town — a social media outlet for the music-obsessed. Despite the leaves-something-to-be-desired interface, the actual service is pretty nifty (and rather similar to iConcertCal, which you may recall from way back in the Brain Pickings 1.0 days) and simple: just fill in a bunch of your favorite bands and artists (the little wiz already knows your location from the IP address) and you’re good to go. (Or, if you have Last.fm — which you may also remember from the extensive praises we sang it back in the day — BandsInTown lets you automatically synch with your existing music profile.)

You get a tag cloud of upcoming shows near you, then you can narrow it down by when you wanna see a concert (tonight only or not), distance from the city, max price range, and label type (unsigned, indie or major). You can also filter results by genre or tag. Needless to say, all the goodness is free. (Sign of the times, no? Social connectivity services could never live on a paid-subscription model now, great news for advertisers, especially the behavioral-targeting-smart ones.)

Okay, we just found out Madeleine Peyroux (oh, only the best neo-French jazz vocal to come by in decades) is coming to South Orange, NJ next month, so we’re off to plotting that getaway. Who’s in?

AS SEEN IN PHILLY

It’s frightening how, buried in our daily grind, we hardly ever look up and really see things. Just this week, we biked by something we’d passed a thousands times before but never noticed.

An unexpected gem tucked between Chinatown and crack row, this building stands proud right on high-traffic Callowhill as a delightful hallmark of the looked-at unseen.

Tomorrow, look up.