MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation and The Body Shop have launched the extended HIV prevention campaign Say Yes to Safe Sex last week. We have the pics of the NYC launch event with – Durex and Solange Knowles.

The Body Shop and Solange Knowles launched the campaign coupled with free in store Durex condom hand outs as part of the global HIV/AIDS safe sex campaign in conjunction with MTV Networks. To get lips moving about this vital issue, The Body Shop now sells their “Tantalizing Lip Butter” to help raise funds for HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention.

Approximately $5 from every purchase of the fruity lip butter will benefit the Staying Alive Foundation, a charity empowering young people around the world to protect themselves and their communities against HIV and AIDS.

To make sure the campaign reaches as many people as possible they have now opened the dedicated interactive site www.yestosafesex.com to involve visitors and encourage them to share the word (through facebook in particular as it seems).

At times you’ve got to ask yourself: where am I supposed to hide that condom thing (of course you might choose not to hide but to show them off in a big plastic condom bag also)? And often you might get tempted to just put it somewhere in your wallet.

The only problem is that your wallet is not made for this – it will crush your life insurance in no time. That’s what Christopher Leo thought, so he quickly designed a condom friendly wallet, where the condom is the star and may be hidden behind your credit cards.

So next time you try to hide a rubber in your wallet, remember there’s someone out there owning this technology since January 2009. I imagine this technology helps in two ways – a bigger wallet makes you look more desirable (ok hopefully not) and the protection is there at your service, too.

This week I thought I’d share some design work with you. Mauro Gatti, an Italian illustrator whose style I admire, has shared his ideas with us.

I think it all doesn’t take too much explaining here, it’s just beautiful to look at. His art is full of colors and ideas and you can see the rest of his work at his site thebrainbox.com.

The Belgian condom brand Love Condom has a new flash website. Frequent readers will remember the Love Condom for its Bill Gates ad stating “I finally discovered an efficient antivirus“. As you can imagine the whole campaign caused quite some social media coverage back in October 2008.

Now you can create your own character on the new homepage which is quite limited to four functions:

• The home and overwiev page – where you get an overview over “the big noses family”
• The create your own part – where you can create your own big nose character
• The wall of fame – with all the other creations
• STD info – with a really limited text about STDs

Your creation can then be sent to friends of yours and added to the gallery.

I’ve been meaning to get into posting online community and online dating related topics for a while now and here it is. I’m especially happy to introduce you to a fellow Swiss startup that makes handy little tools called “Pokens” to help you connect with other people.

Let’s assume you’re getting to know a lot of people at a party or a business meeting. How can you possibly store all of their contact information in an easy way (even more now that everyone has at least 10 different online social network profiles and no one’s asking for phone numbers anymore)? Enters Poken a cute little usb device that you’re going to carry on you from now on.

The little pandas, aliens or geishas (at the time being there are 8 designs) will store all of your networking information and upon “high fiving” another Poken you’ll exchange addresses and may connect online later. Later, meaning whenever you have any computer with Internet access ready, you can sync your contacts to your own profiles without much further ado.

Your bee will store up to 64 contacts and keep them handy for you.

We have word that Sagami released a new model for the Japanese market just in time for Valentine’s Day, 14th of February 2009.

The product is called Sagami Original 0.02 Premium and is supposed to be the thinnest polyurethane condom available on the market. It is an addition to their preexisting product family Sagami Original Premium (as you may have guessed).

What makes it really special is the price tag of about 2000 Yen (22 USD) for 4 pieces. The black look gives it some sort of luxury aura.

Some of the advantages reported by Sagami are:

There are definitely many uses for condoms, some of which I’ve previously introduced you to like condoms as props in Indian action movies or as party lights. Today I’d like to show you another creative way of using your condoms, which even I had not imagined. Although it becomes obvious if you think about it.

We will be doing some cooking today. Yes, you heard right. I’ve come across a recipe on Bookkake for a breakfast egg that includes pigs’ bladders. Back in the time animal intestines were used as condoms, now we’re going to use a condom to cook us up some egg using a recipe from 1877.

The recipe for “The monster Egg” or “Boiled Egg Gargantua” may be found in The Decadent Cookbook by Medlar Lucian und Durian Gray.

The iCondom by Contex was a perfectly done viral (considering the iPhone craze at the time) for Contex, a condom brand mainly sold in Eastern Europe (Russia). Now, almost one year later there’s a new “edition” out there. So this is basically a short update to the story.

This time there are no commercial interests behind the creation of the graphics. It’s just a work by graphic designer Mauricio Estrella uploaded to his deviantART profile… Actually he states he doesn’t have anything to do with Apple or condoms. “In fact, I don’t use condoms”, he says.

Read on after the jump to get to the functions of this fantasy device.

It’s not unusual: condoms have become a natural part of our everyday lives long ago and that’s a good thing. They are in fact so connected with the human beings that they are to be found in many depictions of our lives like in movies, video games like Fable II, comics, you name it.

I can imagine, however, that the newest one I’ve come across may challenge some people’s tolerance (not mine for sure…) and I’m interested to see what our readership thinks about it.

Let me introduce to you: the Doll House LifeStyles Condom Box by tiny details.