Magic Potion

The tiny shampoos and shower gels on offer in hotel bathrooms may boast increasingly well-designed labels and containers, but we can't help but imagine landfills teeming with almost-empty versions. Enter Clean the World, an Orlando-based nonprofit that is on a mission to collect all those discarded soaps and bottled unguents, sanitize them, and distribute them around the world to stop the spread of preventable diseases. Ready to do your part for this global hygiene revolution? Clean the World's website offers step-by-step instructions on how to hold your own soap drive, and next time you stay at a hotel, take a moment to mention the Clean the World Hospitality program (megabrands such as Mandarin Oriental have already signed on as partners). You’re bound to check out with a clean conscience.

Add a social spin to the art of collage with Mixel, created by designer Khoi Vinh (formerly digital design director for The New York Times) and developer Scott Ostler, co-founders of New York-based Lascaux Co. The new iPad app enables users to make, share and remix collages in a whole new way. Early reviews describe Mixel, which is free to download at the iTunes store, as a "gorgeous" and "addictive" "virtual sandbox for collaging and sharing images." Meanwhile, early usage patterns for the app suggest that Lascaux has a hit on its hands. "We see a lot of activity at night, and a lot of activity on Saturday, too," Vinh has said. "So it’s very different from the Web, which many people will surf during work. We’ve also heard a lot of people say, ‘I’m having Mixel withdrawal’ when they leave their iPads at home.’”

Orange you glad the new year is here? Pantone has declared Tangerine Tango the "vivacious, enticing" color of the year. It's a bold follow-up to the similarly tropical choice of Honeysuckle for 2011 and the previous year’s breezy Turquoise. "Tangerine Tango is an orange with a lot of depth to it," says Pantone Color Institute executive director Leatrice Eiseman. "Reminiscent of the radiant shadings of a sunset, Tangerine Tango marries the vivaciousness and adrenaline rush of red with the friendliness and warmth of yellow to form a high-visibility, magnetic hue that emanates heat and energy."

Art lovers short on wall space should check out s[edition], a London-based venture that hopes to create a market for limited-edition downloads of works by artists including Damien Hirst, Shepard Fairey, and Bill Viola. The online gallery offers digital images and videos that can be purchased for display on mobile phones, tablets and computers, or simply hoarded in one's virtual art "vault." Prices range from $8 for a Wim Wenders photograph to $800 for ownership of one of 2,000 digital editions of Hirst's "For Heaven Sake," a platinum cast of a baby's skull that is covered in diamonds.

Step 1: Acquire frame-by-frame digital images of a favorite film. Step 2: Stretch each one into a skinny line. Step 3: Reassemble the frames, in the order they appeared on screen, into a stunning, stripey rectangle. If that sounds like a lot of work, not to worry, there's a Tumblr for that! An anonymous film buff has created and shared with the world his or her growing collection of "Movie Barcodes." The colorful abstracts, many of which can be ordered as prints and posters, offer a fresh perspective on the color palettes and often fascinating chromatic pacing of films ranging from About Schmidt to Zoopraxiscope.

"If we don't, remember me," is a line from the 1955 film Kiss Me Deadly. It's also the title of a mesmerizing Tumblr-based showcase of "living movie stills." The collection of artfully animated .gifs includes memorable shots from movies ranging from Fellini's 8½ and Rosemary's Baby to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Napoleon Dynamite. Each subtly moving image is complemented with a line of dialogue from the featured film that is as thought-provoking (and vaguely unsettling) as the year-old website's own appropriated name.