The little blue sphere represents the entirety of our planet's water.
Wrote David Ponce on OhGizmo!, "We like to think of our planet as made up entirely of water. After all, over 70% of its surface is covered in water. But the truth is that there's comparatively very little of it. We're not saying there isn't much water. Just that if you put all the water (the oceans, the lakes, the water in the air and that frozen in ice and snow) in one place and compare it to the volume of the entire planet, it ain't much. As you can see in the image above, created by the US Geological Survey (USGS), all the earth's water would make up a ball with a diameter of 860 miles. The Earth itself in comparison has a diameter of about 7,900 miles. 860 miles isn’t much: it's the distance from Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas, and represents a volume of 332.5 million cubic miles."
"The USGS article that gave us the above picture also has a fascinating lists of water facts. Here's one: 'About 3,100 cubic miles (12,900 cubic kilometers) of water, mostly in the form of water vapor, is in the atmosphere at any one time. If it all fell as precipitation at once, the Earth would be covered with only about 1 inch of water.'"
Equally if not more profound is the graphic below, in which the tiny blue dot on the far right represents our planet's available fresh water.
Oil becomes trivial when considered against these facts.
Graphics by Jack Cook of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
[via Universe Today and Inhabitat]

As part of the recent Tokyo Hotaru Festival, 100,000 illuminated blue LEDs were released in the Sumida River. The massive installation of solar-powered spheres was meant to mimic a swarm of fireflies that twisted and bobbed along the river by moonlight. For those of you worried about pollution or safety, the lights were later caught downstream by giant nets. See much more over at Spoon & Tamago. (photos by jeremy v, makure, and ajpscs)

The Cat Café Neko no Mise is a coffee shop in Tokyo where you can relax, drink coffee, and pet kitties while you work on your blog or surf the web. You can even bring your own cat toys or order a treat for the cats to get their attention. Really? People are paying to have dozens of cats climb all over them while getting fur in their coffee? Why didn’t anyone tell me? I’ve been having this experience for free at home for years. I could open up a coffee shop in my own living room and make a fortune!

Launched today, DIY is an online community for creative kids. It allows them to build a portfolio of crafts and art projects either directly online or with the DIY iOS app. Kids can join by first picking their privacy-protecting animal avatar, creating a nickname and then building their portfolio. Parents can monitor their child’s activity for privacy purposes.

The RedBall Project is a travelling interactive art piece that takes the form of a giant inflatable red ball. The ball has shown up in several American cities as well as internationally in Barcelona, Tapei (video), and Sydney, among others. It will be touring the UK this summer in the lead up to the London Olympics. The RedBall project is by New York City-based artist Kurt Perschke.
VIDEO HERE: http://vimeo.com/13763174

deer-shaped pylons concept by DesignDepot

money warnings by Riccardo Pittaluga

Little Free Library is a grassroots initiative to build more libraries around the world than philanthropist Andrew Carnegie did (he built 2,510). The libraries in question are tiny dollhouse sized structures that serve as free community book exchanges. To date more than 200 have been installed in more than 20 countries. Little Free Library was founded by Todd Bol and Rick Brooks, both of Wisconsin.

Drawing apparatus by Robert Howsare

The Bottled concept by Dutch designer Ka-Lai Chan is a simple carrier for taking empty returnable bottles back to the supermarket for recycling (a recycling method that is common in Europe).