Liquid Treat

Now in the midst of a massive renovation, Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum has been closed to the public since July 2011, but now you can sneak a peek into the extraordinary collection -- one object at a time. The New York museum recently debuted Object of the Day, a blog that features a new collection of work daily annotated by staff curators, conservators, educators and design enthusiasts. Check in frequently to learn about objects that span 30 centuries and four curatorial departments, from drawings and graphic design to product design and textiles.

Does Spy vs. Spy send a thrill up your spine? Do you enjoy Al Jaffee’s famous Fold-in? Stock "The Lighter Side of…" your bookshelf with Totally MAD (Time Home Entertainment), a new collection of the humor magazine’s high-quality idiocy on the occasion of its 60th anniversary. Organized by decade, the book includes the work of veteran MAD contributers, essays about the magazine's cultural impact, a foreword by fans Stephen Colbert and Eric Drysdale, and a removable set of 12 classic covers. "Each print was selected for its uniqueness, artistic achievement, and classic timelessness," note MAD's editors, "and is suitable for framing or wrapping fish."

Shrinking newspapers are putting the squeeze on photojournalism, but some online media outlets are moving to pick up the slack. Slate recently launched Behold, a photo blog that aims to feature the "best, funniest, most inspiring photography projects around." The site, which has a companion Tumblr for the truly text-averse, is a delightful mix that ranges from archival images (long lost Robert Capa shots, Bill and Hillary Clinton as youngsters) to hot-off-the-proverbial-presses fare (photos of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy) and even artful combinations of the two: don't miss Shawn Clover’s composite photographs that blend the San Francisco 1906 earthquake with present-day street scenes.

Once upon a time, most any Microsoft Word session began with an annoying inquisition from Clippy—that animated paperclip who was forever trying to help you write letters. The universally loathed Microsoft "Assistant" and his friends (wizard Merlin, a cat named Links) return on a wave of nostalgia as a Javascript project from Seattle-based Smore. Adding them to your website is as easy as cutting and pasting some code. "Our research shows that people love two things: failed Microsoft technologies and obscure Javascript libraries," say the creators of Clippy JS. "Naturally, we decided to combine the two."

Let there be...Loomi! The modular, makeable, paintable, recyclable light is a design-minded DIYer's dream. It arrives in pieces: 33 quadrilaterals of sturdy matte card stock that can be interlinked to create lights of all shapes and sizes. "It's not that hard! Honest," promise the Brooklyn-based team of friends who developed Loomi -- with the help an expired Danish patent from the 1970s and a successful Kickstarter campaign. "If you follow our instructions, you'll be up and lighting in about 20 minutes. And remember, you only have to build it once!"

Who needs poetry when you have "Shatoetry"? That's the rather clunky name of a smartphone app from William Shatner, whose career has taken him from the command of the USS Enterprise to madcap Priceline commercials. Released this week on the Apple App Store, Shatoetry allows users to choose from a library of pre-recorded words to create unique phrases that are then played out in Shatner's voice. "People all over the world have been listening to my voice for so long, but they've only ever heard what I wanted to say," says Shatner. "I wanted to give people a means to express their thoughts and ideas, using my voice."