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October 31, 2007

Design: Tricked-Out Logos, Halloween-Style

I recently surveyed execs at different Web companies to see what they were doing for Halloween. It turns out that not only were many of their celebrations company-wide, they also inspired clever ways to promote the holiday through special content on or enabled by their Websites. (To find out more, check out the article here.)

But even without a specific Halloween function, many Websites are giving the holiday a fun nod through design. Smashing Magazine got knee-deep in Halloween action by asking readers to design a holiday logo for the website. The magazine also highlights sightings of logos throughout the Web specially revamped for the day, and readers have already responded with additional sightings. Google -- which routinely transforms its logo even for lesser-known occasions -- gets extra credit for figuring out how to signify Halloween without the ubiquitous pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns, although Mashable isn't a fan of the design.

I wonder: do whimsical holiday designs make these sites more inviting? What are your favorite Halloween Web designs this year?

Posted by April Joyner at 3:24 PM | Add Comment

Innovation Wednesday: This Post Will Eventually Be About Facebook

I just returned from one of the least innovative places I’ve been in a long time – Vernazza, Italy. Trust me, you should go.

I was there for a wedding of a dear friend. About 52 people traipsed in from around the world. The groom is a professional photographer and the bride, my friend, is a producer, filmmaker and media entrepreneur. As a result, the assembled group was a fun mix of creative types who enjoy adventure, people and each other.

My instructions were to take the train (three, actually) from Pisa to Vernazza, a tiny town that is part of the Cinque Terre, five ancient fishing villages along the Mediterranean coast that are linked by train, ferry and a well worn hiking path. Vernazza is impossibly beautiful and delightfully small; my instructions were to get off the train, walk in to town (only one cobblestone street to choose from) and head to a bar called the Blue Marlin, where beer and further instructions would await. It worked. It’s that kind of place, and my favorite kind of innovative. The personal kind.

Continue reading "Innovation Wednesday: This Post Will Eventually Be About Facebook"

Posted by Ellen McGirt at 12:02 PM | 1 Comment

Entrepreneurship: Is Marrying An Entrepreneur a Mistake?

This morning I had the pleasure of disagreeing vehemently with an online column entitled "Pitfalls of Marrying an Entrepreneur." The column's thesis seems to be that spouses of entrepreneurs should be prepared to take a back seat to their mate's business. Here's how they put it [n.b., emphasis is mine]:

[Entrepreneurs] feel they have a mission to create. And something in life normally has to give. That means a partner must be accommodating: willing to sacrifice almost everything for the business and willing to put up with the ego of their ambitious other half.

At one point in the piece, the author refers to entrepreneurs as "empire builders" who are "never satisfied." Empire builders? Are there not plenty of business-owners who a) start a business to sell it quickly or b) establish a successful business and just ride the wave?

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Posted by Chris Dannen at 11:40 AM | 3 Comments

Bathroom Blogfest: Toilet Terror

This being Halloween, it’s time to discuss the three scariest words in the English language: bus station restroom. I know. The image is probably too terrifying for the more squeamish among you, and is likely sending dozens of you reaching for the Purell.

But this is the week of the second annual Bathroom Blogfest, in which intrepid

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Posted by Linda Tischler at 10:41 AM | 2 Comments

October 30, 2007

Media: imeem's Triple Play

Social media network imeem recently announced its partnership with EMI Music, which means that EMI's catalog of music and video is available for streaming on the media sharing service. With this latest announcement, imeem now offers music from three of the "Big Four" in music -- Warner Music, Sony/BMG, and EMI -- with Universal Music as the final holdout. Steve Jang, imeem's CMO and head of business development, to whom I spoke yesterday, estimates that imeem has partnered with 75 percent of independent labels as well.

Imeem has built up a presence on the Internet quickly in its year-and-a-half of existence. The site has 18 million users a month and an average of 600,000 new users joining each day. According to comScore, imeem was the fastest growing social site in the US from September 2006 to September 2007, with 1,590 percent growth in the past year. Imeem has also had its share of coverage here at Fast Company among new tech companies to watch. (Click here and here to read the articles.)

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Posted by April Joyner at 5:38 PM | 1 Comment

Media: Online Video Newlyweds

The unlikely marriage of General Electric's NBC Universal and News Corp.'s Fox is official.

The wedded name: Hulu.com. The online-video site is expected to provide free episodes of 90 NBC and Fox shows. The site is also offering a few movies, such as Sideways, and a cool feature that allows users to embed full or edited clips of shows into blogs or e-mail them to friends.

Some critics have charged that Hulu.com's arrival in the online-video world comes too late to pose a threat to Google's YouTube. I, for one, don't see that as a feasible or necessary goal. I don't go to YouTube to watch a TV series; I go to see the clips of an old college buddy doing stand-up in a Chicago comedy club or to watch random user-generated content passed along by friends.

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Posted by Jason Del Rey at 2:41 PM | Add Comment

October 29, 2007

Technology: Sprint's Answer to the iPhone

In my hands I hold the HTC Touch, a compact take on the touchscreen smartphone. Is it cool? Yes. Does it one-up a certain Apple phone? No. But you can think of this Windows Mobile-based device as more fun than a Blackberry, and more business than the iPhone. But it's no mere copycat; the HTC has some cool interface tricks up its sleeve that are sure to make other smartphone owners covetous.

The Touch, which will be available for $249 with a 2 year contract, hits the market on November 4. Its biggest advantage is its size; if you've ever lugged around a bigger smartphone, you know they can feel like bricks. The Touch is sized at just 3.9 x 2.2 x 0.5 inches, and weighs a scant 4 ounces -- perfect for a shirt pocket or tiny purse. So how well does it actually work?

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Posted by Chris Dannen at 2:34 PM | 9 Comments

October 26, 2007

Technology: FireBlogging

If you've ever been tempted to call Twitter useless, reconsider; the service is allowing thousands of Southern California residents to stay safe by receiving up-to-the-minute geographical information about the spreading fires. Twitter's short, instant updates are perfect for bare-bones, factual updates, and and it's not the only Web service helping out panicked Californians. Several Google Maps mashups have emerged with dynamic blaze information and evacuation details, and a number of blogs are tracking the destruction chronologically to allow people to predict if their homes will stay safe.

Luckily, technology is serving SoCal while officials are struggling to; according to one former California State Fire Marshal, citizens' courses of action are often decided on an individual basis with only the information at hand, since "fire officials don't know exactly when evacuations should occur." However, the Internet is famous for its vulnerability to misinformation. Should people switch off their computers and rely on TV news to get more credible and actionable information?

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Posted by Chris Dannen at 1:31 PM | 3 Comments

Education: Growing Up Green

The November issue of Fast Company includes a feature on "50 Ways to Green Your Business." Indeed, concern for the future of the environment has become a key component of social responsibility, and companies looking to enhance their public image (and save money) are jumping on the green bandwagon. But what about that other hub of social responsibility: the one that grooms the next generation of leaders in business and other fields?

Precisely because environmentalism has become an increasingly important component of social responsibility, the push to "go green" has begun to spread to K-12 schools. The New York Times ran an article yesterday on one school's adoption of environmentalist efforts. As the article points out, these efforts have extended from recycling programs to environmental themes, hiring sustainability officers, and even incorporating green design into new school buildings.

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Posted by April Joyner at 1:09 PM | Add Comment

October 25, 2007

Inside Baseball: The Man who Puts the Socks on Fenway

If you're watching the World Series tonight, as I am at the moment, you've seen that cool Red Sox logo on the infield grass. Let me introduce you to the man responsible for that creative touch, Dave Mellor, director of the grounds at Fenway Park. He appeared in Fast Company a few years ago and explained how he came to be an artist on the baseball diamond:

"Baseball runs in the family. My grandfather played in the majors in 1902 for Baltimore, and when I pitched in high school, I hoped to play in the majors one day. Then a month after graduation, I got hit by a car. My baseball career was over. But during physical therapy, I thought about how I loved being outside, how I grew up taking care of people's lawns, and how I loved baseball. I decided to study land horticulture and agronomy in college and become a groundskeeper."

The designs on the field? They started as a fluke.

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Posted by Chuck Salter at 10:56 PM | 1 Comment

Design Thursday: Partying on at the National Design Awards

“First, I’d like to apologize for my attire, and its lack of festiveness,” Paul Simon, wearing a tasteful, but banker-like business suit, said to the largely black-clad crowd at last week’s National Design Awards. Simon was on hand at the gala to present the award for graphic design to celebrated book designer Chip Kidd, who had also designed the cover of Simon’s newest CD, “Surprise.” Clutching the foot high sculpture, Simon noted, “This award, though somewhat napkin-like, is much nicer than a Grammy.”

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Posted by Linda Tischler at 3:30 PM | Add Comment

Sustainability: When Furniture Attacks

I was a little alarmed by an article I found in the San Francisco Chronicle this week about the myriad of toxic chemicals that are used in all types of furniture. These are the beds we sleep in each night, the tables where we eat our meals, and the couches we curl up on to watch T.V. While I'm not surprised that certain household products, like floor cleaners and paint, contain hazardous substances, it's not something I ever really considered when it comes to furniture.

The dire news: there are many known toxins that are used in the making of furniture that have adverse effects ranging from extremely unpleasant odors to liver damage. For example, formaldehyde (a chemical used in embalming) often shows up in wood furniture, and polyurethane foam can contain chemicals that have been known to lead to complications of the nervous system.

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Posted by Liz Webber at 12:00 PM | 1 Comment

Sports: Blacklist the Patriots!

Before the start of the NFL season, Eric Gillin, editor of Esquire.com, compared this year's New England Patriots to Communist China. At the time, he focused mainly on positives, including the team's enormous potential and the "for the greater good" mentality of its players, as the basis for the comparison. So it was only appropriate when Chairman Belichick and the Patriots, adding an ironic twist to the analogy, were caught spying on their opponents. But now, with the team squashing the capitalistic impulses of fans everywhere, it's getting downright scary.

As reported last week, "The New England Patriots have won a bid to get the names of all the fans who bought or sold -- or tried to buy or sell -- tickets to home games through online ticket reseller StubHub."

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Posted by Matthew Finkelstein at 11:54 AM | 11 Comments

Design Thursday: Gapminder's (and Google's) Revolutionary Design for Data

As anyone who's ever dipped into, say, the United Nations' statistical databases knows all too well, the presentation of data is in dire need of a design makeover. With its ant-sized type and near-infinite columns of bland-on-bland numbers, the UN's statistical tables—in fact, probably all statistical tables—are impenetrable to all but the most relentless of data-miners. And yet, in an eye-opening presentation at last week's Connecting'07 design conference in San Francisco, Hans Rosling proved that it doesn't have to be that way.

Rosling's Trendalyzer software, developed by his adult children and recently acquired by Google, takes the UN's demographic stats (among many other sources) and magically transforms them into brilliantly hued, moving animations that instantly convey global trends in mortality rates, income distribution, and much, much more. Along the way, he demonstrates that our notions of the "developing world" are only about 40 years out of date—thanks in part to the fact that few of us have had the forbearance to seriously delve into the data.

Take, for example, the myth that the world is sharply divided between "Us" (the "Western World," where families are small and lives are long) and "Them" (the "Third World," where families are large and lives are short). Rosling, who plotted the average life expectancy and family size for every country in the world, shows that this conventional view of the world is correct—if you're looking at 1962 data.

But with a click, Rosling brings the data to life, and brilliant bubbles (representing countries) float across his graph. As the years flash by, the gap between the industrialized and developing countries gradually closes. In the 1990s, the AIDS epidemic pulls some countries (mostly African) back into the abyss of rapidly increasing mortality rates. But by 2003, we find that we are living in an entirely new world, with the vast majority of countries clustered in the upper-left corner of the graph—where families are small and lives are long. Vietnam, for example, has the same family size and life expectancy in 2003 as the US did in 1974. Deep poverty persists, of course, but it's pockmarked across the entire planet, in places as diverse as New Orleans and Poland.

If we don't look at the data, we miss the vast social changes that have swept across Asia and the rest of the so-called developing world. Thanks to Rosling's design breakthrough, which can be viewed in all its glory at Gapminder, the data has now been gloriously brought to life.

Posted by Bill Breen at 6:50 AM | Add Comment

October 24, 2007

Pop!Tech: Catching up with Bill Shannon and John Legend

Funny thing about Pop!Tech. It draws such a Fast Company crowd that it was like a reunion with people I've written about over the years. A couple of colorful examples:

I interviewed Bill Shannon, aka the CrutchMaster, several years ago, because he's such an unusual and agile innovator. Born with Perthese's Disease, a degenerative hip condition, Shannon is unable to put much weight on his legs without severe pain. He became a stunning dancer and performance artist anyway. He reinvented his crutches first. They're custom-made, from titanium tubes and rounded rubber ends that allow him to spin and move freely, like no one I've seen.

Over lunch in Camden, Shannon described how he continues to push the boundaries of performance. Last spring he took to the streets of Chicago for a piece he called Traffic. As he skateboarded through downtown using his crutches like ski poles, the audience followed him in a bus, watching monitors shot from the bus and a tiny camera on his shirt. He wore a mic so they could listen to his running commentary.

After the Pop!Tech gala dinner on Saturday, Shannon performed in a parking lot for the crowd, which parted into two lines as if they were watching a drag race. This photo is my best attempt to capture Shannon's crazy kinetics - part break-dancing, part gymnastics - in action.

John Legend, who appeared on our February cover, performed as well.

Continue reading "Pop!Tech: Catching up with Bill Shannon and John Legend"

Posted by Chuck Salter at 6:11 PM | 3 Comments

Entrepreneurship: What's With Chocolate?

In the last few days, the world has seen a morass of chocolate-related news. The New Yorker has a story on the hippie-go-lucky founders of Dagoba Chocolate, the popularity of which has surged on a reemergence of interest in natural cacao. Artist Cosimo Cavallaro has just opened a gallery show in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York featuring life-size statues of nine religious figures -- in chocolate (witness "My Sweet Lord," a massive chocolate Jesus.) Some teenager in Britain has made news by creating a booming chocolate company out of his house in Shropshire, just by thinking up peculiar flavor combinations.

And yet, the New York Times reports this week that Hershey's profits have plummeted by almost two-thirds, and Cadbury Schweppes has moved its chocolate production from England to Poland, and plans to cut over 7,500 jobs in the process.
What's going on with chocolate? And what does it mean for entrepreneurs like the British teenager?

Continue reading "Entrepreneurship: What's With Chocolate?"

Posted by Chris Dannen at 11:49 AM | 4 Comments

October 23, 2007

Sustainability: Sainsbury's Serious About Saving Energy… And Engaging its Shoppers

It's been a fashion statement for a few seasons now. Being Green is In. If you're a corporate entity trying to be socially responsible, there's no hotter way than endeavoring to save the earth.

Ever heard the expression if you're going to get wet you might as well go swimming? This weekend, Britain's 3rd largest supermarket chain will make a splashy show of corporate social responsibility by giving away 1 million green friendly light bulbs to its customers, in exchange for an energy saving pledge to help the environment.

The journalist in me is inherently suspicious of such moves on the part of large corporations; I tend to label them as attention seeking gambles in an effort to attract positive media attention. But in this particular case I really do think Sainsbury's deserves some kudos for its initiative (here at Fast Company, we have a previously established familiarity for the connection between light bulbs and saving the world.)

Timed to coincide with the turning back of clocks across the country, on October 27th, Sainsbury's is offering free Philips 11 watt bulbs (equivalent to 60w incandescent light bulbs) to encourage customers and colleagues to switch to greener alternatives during darker months.

In order to claim a bulb, customers need to pledge to replace a light bulb with an energy saving light bulb, take re-usable bags for shopping rather than use disposable bags, unplug the phone charger when it’s not being used, keep the fridge and freezer running efficiently, switch to taking more showers than baths, try drying clothes outdoors or hang them up inside, rather than using the tumble dryer.

Along with its light bulb giveaway, Sainsbury's will also reduce the energy it uses in stores for the weekend by 45 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of enough electricity to power 22 households for a whole year.

Continue reading "Sustainability: Sainsbury's Serious About Saving Energy… And Engaging its Shoppers"

Posted by Saabira Chaudhuri at 6:09 PM | Add Comment

October 22, 2007

Technology: The Camera Phone Evolves

In college, I took an anthropology class. One of the first things we learned was that most people don't know our species' correct Latin name. We think we're homo sapiens, but we actually haven't been homo sapiens for some time. Present-day man has an upgraded moniker: our correct scientific name is homo sapien sapien, which, translated, means "the clever, clever human." So what does this have to do with cell phones?

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Posted by Chris Dannen at 2:48 PM | 2 Comments

Technology: The Ringing Could Soon Be Everywhere

I was on the subway with one of my louder friends the other day when he said something particularly embarrassing. Red-faced I shushed him vigorously and looked furtively around to see how many people were chuckling. Talk about anticlimactic. Nobody.

Every single one of our surrounding co-passengers who sat within earshot had headphones planted firmly in their ears, seemingly content to just sit back and let the music keep them company. I was amazed.

It's not really a new phenomenon that many people who ride New York's subway carry iPods or other MP3 players. I just had never had an occasion to notice how large this number actually is. People keep inter-personal interaction to a minimum-- no looking, no talking, no touching (well not of one's own volition anyway). The music is just another way to keep the invisible walls impenetrable.

Listening to music on the subway isn't a bad thing at all – before it seems like I'm heading down that path -- but last week's incident (or lack of) has made me think about how public transport systems are increasingly being populated by more and more gadget wielders.

A recent piece of tech news: In the near future, possibly even next year, people may be able to freely use their cell phones on airplanes flying over EU airspace. Plans have already been developed to allow mobile phone usage above 3000 meters, without the risk of interference with the aircraft navigation systems.

Less newsworthy is the fact that New Yorkers will soon be able to use their cell phones underground. The Metropolitan Transport Authority recently announced a plan by which all 277 subway stations would be wired for cell phone and wireless Internet connectivity over the next six years. Reportedly, Transit Wireless, the company that will be installing the equipment, will also provide the MTA with the potential to extend the cell phone and wireless capabilities to subway tunnels. So far, the MTA has indicated no intention of doing so. Some seem to think they should.

Now I love using my phone; I love chatting with people. And particularly when I'm suspended in a tubular vacuum, staring blankly at the Delta ad in front of me and trying to decrypt the garbled sounds from above that are meant to keep everyone informed, the prospect of having a familiar voice just a button away to help pass the time sounds pretty appealing. The problem? It sounds pretty appealing to just about everyone.

Technology itself -- if intended for humane purposes, to facilitate interaction, solve a problem or make life easier -- can be wonderful. Problems arise around the way in which people choose to harness this technology. Sometimes, depending on the type of device and the way people choose to use it, too much technology can be a bad thing.

Continue reading "Technology: The Ringing Could Soon Be Everywhere"

Posted by Saabira Chaudhuri at 10:33 AM | 3 Comments

October 20, 2007

Live from Pop!Tech: Knowing and Respecting Your Customers

Sarah Joseph, the creator and editor of Emel, a Muslim lifestyle magazine, shared a telling story in her presentation Dialogs With/In Islam this afternoon. She showed a slide for a commercial, what appeared to be a straightforward ad for bleach. On the left is a pair of light green socks; in the middle, a washing machine; on the right a pair of clean white socks. A + B = C. Got it? In the Arab world, nobody did. They read right to left. So the ad made no sense ("Green dye? Right, I'll rush right out and buy some.").

One theme that comes up again and again here at Pop!Tech is the importance of knowing your audience - your customers.

Paul Polak spoke of this bottom-up strategy the first day of the conference when he described interviewing the farmers that International Development Enterprises set out to help. He asked them which problems needed solving instead of assuming he knew their work better than they did.

Victoria Hale, the founder of Institute for OneWorld Health, the first nonprofit drug company on the planet, picked up on this same point today. Her organization delivers drugs that combat the diseases of the poor, which traditional companies neglect. The solution goes beyond having the advanced technology to make effective medicine for black fever and malaria. One World Health takes a bottom-up strategy, building local support for the organization in the communities it's helping. In the seven years they've been working to cure Indian children, they've become Indian. "Manufacturing is the easy part," Hale says. "What we need to understand is the human impact."

Posted by Chuck Salter at 4:49 PM | Add Comment

October 19, 2007

Live from Pop!Tech: Friday's Closing Thought

"A hundred years after we are gone and forgotten, those who never heard of us will be living with the results of our actions." – Chris Luebkeman, paraphrasing Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr.

Luebkeman, director of Arup, a global design, engineering, and urban planning firm, is trying to put an end to the "Homo-Deficitus Age," in which we spend and use more than we have. He's helping create what he calls the world's first completely sustainable city.

Several hundred million Chinese residents are expected to move from rural areas into cities over the next quarter-century. Dongtan, in Shanghai, will be one of those destinations. Arup is working with local officials to add the necessary homes and infrastructure while integrating sustainable practices and technology. Dongtan is designed to generate its own energy, using a variety of sources, from wind to recycled trash. Public transportation will run on hydrogen fuel cells. The city's three villages will be surrounded by land reserved for farming.

Somewhere Holmes is surely smiling.

Posted by Chuck Salter at 11:49 PM | Add Comment

From the Editor of Fast Company: Crude Ideas

Do you remember when oil blew through the $50-a-barrel mark? The anguish and fear were palpable. The markets shuddered. After crude first crossed the $60 line in 2005, oil companies were called to testify in Washington. A national panic seemed to be setting in.

As of this writing, oil is north of $80 a barrel. If the panic is muted--we Americans can get used to anything, apparently--the fact remains that cheap oil, or at least what we now think of as cheap, is gone and unlikely to come back soon.

That's painful, economically. A $10-per-barrel hike is said to trim as much as 0.4% from GDP in the United States annually, or roughly $50 billion. For individuals, it is a regressive cost, falling hardest on those with the least resources. For businesses, too, it is a brutal tax, with the proceeds going not to public education or social programs or health care but to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela and Russia.

Continue reading "From the Editor of Fast Company: Crude Ideas"

Posted by Robert Safian at 11:00 PM | 1 Comment

Live from Pop!Tech: Losing Books from the Library of Life

That's how Cary Fowler of the Global Crop Diversity Trust eloquently describes the ongoing extinction of agricultural crops. As the planet heats up, plants are facing a situation they haven't seen before. Between climate change and natural disasters and war, we're losing seed varieties every day. Once they're gone, they're gone - one less option in the food chain. No wonder Fowler calls our diversity of crops "our most valuable natural resource on Earth." It's the stuff of life.

His solution? A massive vault under construction in the side of a mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. Six hundred miles from the North Pole, this seed bank, partly funded by Norway, will function as the world's agricultural safety deposit box. Each vault can store about 1.5 million bar-coded samples. "The technology is not pie-in-the-sky," says Fowler. "You've got it in your kitchen. It's called a freezer."

Posted by Chuck Salter at 4:21 PM | 1 Comment

Fish on Friday: Yesterday, I was very afraid. Today, I’m safe & sound.

For a long time, I’ve been worried about something I had the power to fix. It is something important — not life & death, but in the next tier. The amazing thing is, I could have made the worry go away any time I wanted.

I’ve been worried about my computer.

Like most people, my life is packed into my computer.

Continue reading "Fish on Friday: Yesterday, I was very afraid. Today, I’m safe & sound."

Posted by Charles Fishman at 3:19 PM | 1 Comments

Education: Does Money Talk?

What motivates workers to exceed their duties? Or to stay in their current positions when equally or even more promising opportunities may exist? The idealistic answer is "love of the job" -- and most people who do both these things indeed love their job -- but the realist, capitalist, answer is "more money!"

For most teachers, however, "more money" doesn't exist as a possible motivator. They receive the same base pay, regardless of their skill, talent, or location within a particular district. But as insiders and outsiders have cast a critical eye upon American education, the idea of merit pay has increasingly come up for discussion.

Most recently, the New York City Department of Education has decided to experiment with a plan to offer performance bonuses to teachers in "high-need" schools -- those in the city's poorest neighborhoods. It isn't a conventional merit salary or bonus program, however, as the bonus money will be given to the schools themselves and then divvied up among teachers at the discretion of the principal and a "compensation committee."

Teachers' unions have often been critical of the idea of merit pay, arguing that it fosters favoritism and that most school districts don't have a uniform system of evaluating its employees -- from school to school, standards vary. These two factors could lead to animosity within the staff of a particular school or district, undermining the value of teamwork in a profession where it is very necessary. But the New York plan doesn't reward individual teachers directly. It takes the approach of looking at a school to see whether its teachers have made above-average strides, thereby encouraging collaboration among teachers within a school in order to receive extra payoffs.

This plan, however, may have some of the same weaknesses in evaluation as the oft-derided No Child Left Behind. How will schools' eligibility for bonuses be determined? What if one class led by an exceptional teacher performs well but others fall flat, despite efforts at collaboration? At least the plan only regards bonuses and not salaries -- which most likely makes it a less contentious issue than, for instance, programs like the Teacher Advancement Program, which institute ladder categories for teachers up to the level of "master teacher" and corresponding increases in pay.

Whether or not the NYC bonus program receives ultimate raves, it acknowledges that "love of the job" may not be enough of an incentive for teachers in the most challenging environments. This acknowledgment doesn't make education any less noble. It just offers another motivation for teachers to do their jobs even better -- the same incentive that virtually all other professions have taken for granted.

Posted by April Joyner at 1:24 PM | Add Comment

Live from Pop!Tech: Questioning Our Slow Instincts and Speed Limits

A lot of what you hear at Pop!Tech sparks more questions than answers. So let's start today with a couple of questions inspired by the morning session.

Why do we duck to avoid a screaming foul ball but not change our daily habits to save the planet?

Dan Gilbert, the author of Stumbling on Happiness, argued that as humans we're hard-wired to respond to the most immediate threats. Our brains are essentially "out-of-the-way-machines," programmed to duck to survive the here and now. With long-term or gradual threats, we're oblivious, somehow unperturbed. "Scientists lament that global warming is happening so fast," says Gilbert, "but global warming isn't happening fast enough. It fails to trigger our alarm so we remain sleeping in a burning bed."

How do you get in touch with your inner tortoise?

Speed yoga. Drive-through funerals. Al desko dining. Carl Honore, author of In Praise of Slowness, cited these latest examples of how our focus on speed is out of control and doing more damage than good. You see the backlash in the slow food movement, the slow email movement, the slow sex movement (in Italy, naturally). Slower is better, Honore says, but that doesn't mean shunning technology and unplugging altogether. "You have to be fast now, but not fast all the time. It's about slowing down at the right moments."

Posted by Chuck Salter at 11:21 AM | Add Comment

October 18, 2007

Live from Pop!Tech: Thursday's closing thought

"Martin Luther King Jr. didn't change the world by saying, 'I have a complaint.' "
-- Artist Chris Jordan

Posted by Chuck Salter at 8:30 PM | Add Comment

Live from Pop!Tech: My Kind of Dinner Party

The beauty of this conference is the range of speakers. It's the sort of eclectic gathering that would make for a helluva dinner party.

At one end of the table you'd have Paul Potak asking, "Why is it that 90 percent of designers and engineers are solving the problems of the rich, instead of the people who need it most?" Since founding International Development Enterprises more than 25 years ago, Potak has focused on solving the problems of struggling small farmers since some 446 million farmers worldwide are trying to squeeze a living out of less than five acres. IDE's technologies, including a nifty treadle pump, has brought 17 million of them out of poverty by boosting their business.

Next to him, you'd have John Shearer and Sheila Kenney explaining the beauty of their energy breakthroughs.

Continue reading "Live from Pop!Tech: My Kind of Dinner Party"

Posted by Chuck Salter at 8:18 PM | Add Comment

Live from Pop!Tech: Today's Social Capitalist Assignment

Overwhelmed by the thought of tackling world poverty? Join the club. When you hear that three billion people live on less than $2 a day, it's hard to know where to begin.

Enter Kiva, a super convenient microfinancing nonprofit started by husband and wife entrepreneurs Jessica and Matt Flannery, who were inspired by Grameen Bank's Muhammad Yunus. You go to the Kiva site, choose a cash-strapped entrepreneur in the developing world, and lend him or her money (as little as $25, via Pay Pal) to grow the business. "I wanted to get involved in international development," Jessica told the Pop!Tech crowd. "But I wasn’t sure how. How does a random white girl from middle-class Pitsburgh get involved?"

In the two years since starting Kiva, the Flannerys have helped more than 20,000 Third-World entrepreneurs gain access to more than $13 million in funds.

You can make loans as an individual and as a group. So. How about teaming up today with your colleagues? Make a loan and track the progress of that business. You get your money back along with the satisfaction of helping an entrepreneur.

Posted by Chuck Salter at 12:48 PM | 0 Comments

Sustainability: Aussies Tell Greenhouse Gas Offenders to Fess Up

Carbon dioxide belchers down under, beware. A new law passed by the Australian government will require the nation's largest businesses to report on greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption starting in July of next year. Officials say the public has a right to know who the country's biggest polluters are.

The law applies only to the companies and facilities that emit the highest amounts of greenhouse gases, with the intent of protecting small business from further regulatory burdens. However, stricter limits will be imposed over the course of three years to increase the number of companies reporting.

My first thought on learning about this law was that it would never work in the U.S., or it will at least take years before anything like it comes about. While some effort has been made on the state level, the national government has showed little interest in recent years in interfering with big business's role in contributing to global warming.

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Posted by Liz Webber at 11:50 AM | Add Comment

Live from Pop!Tech: The Art of Giving Consumerism Stats Emotional Punch

Greetings from the beautiful Opera House in Camden, Maine, the site of Pop!Tech. Assuming my Wifi and laptop battery don't fail me, I'll be sending you highlights from this dynamic conference over the next couple of days.

The artist Chris Jordan kicked things off this morning by showing us how he turns dry, abstract statistics about the impact American consumers have on the environment into something meaningful and emotional. "We can't feel statistics," he said. "And I want to feel it."

So he takes jaw-dropping numbers - 130 million cell phones discarded every year, 11,000 jet trails created every eight hours - and conveys these quantities visually. The phones look like a black swirling sea. The jet trails looks like a blanket of snowflakes. He shows the New York City skyline transposed against the millions of reams of office paper we go through in a day to make the excess hit home. He even practices his version of pointalism, using 106,000 aluminum cans (which we go through every six seconds) to create Seurat's masterpiece " A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte."

His work is at once beautiful and disturbing, and I can't begin to do it justice. You have to visit Jordan's web site to see for yourself.

Posted by Chuck Salter at 10:59 AM | Add Comment

October 17, 2007

Al Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize; I Yammer About Him On Fox Business News.

The brand, spanking new Fox Business News network is doing an hour-long segment on “Al Gore, Inc.” -- the many facets and accomplishments of the former Vice President, tomorrow, October 18th, during the 7:00a hour. I’ll be on around 7:30am to discuss my cover story, “Al Gore’s Million Makeover." Should be interesting, eh?

Needless to say, Gore’s recent run of exceptional luck has earned him this hour in the news – the Emmy for the cable network he co-founded with Joel Hyatt, Currrent TV, and his recent shared Nobel Prize for his climate change activism, for starters. But it’s also political season, and the Draft Gore movement is gaining some momentum. Unfortunately, I don’t think they’ll have a candidate at the end of the ride. And I’ll talk about that more tomorrow.

Tune in, if you can. I’d love to know what y’all think of the segment.

Posted by Ellen McGirt at 5:20 PM | 7 Comments

Innovation Wednesday: Facebook Settles New York Attorney General Investigation, Reaches for Checkbook.

Facebook settled an investigation by the New York State Attorney General's office in what must be record time yesterday, by announcing an agreement that will create and enforce new safeguards protecting young Facebookers from sexual predators and obscene content.

The scene at Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's New York City office was genial as the agreement was announced. Chris Kelly, Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer, did a fine job representing the company and setting out the terms of the agreement. Kelly wears pressure well; he seems to be exactly the kind of person you'd want to have in your life boat. (And he's strapping enough to dispatch a predator personally, should he encounter one.) The terms of the agreement are groundbreaking and should lead to a safer site.

They also sound pretty expensive.

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Posted by Ellen McGirt at 3:27 PM | 1 Comment

Innovation: Not Just a New York Cab -- A Canvas for a Cause

A few weeks ago, as I reluctantly trudged my way to the office after an unduly aggravating morning commute, I noticed a brilliant splash of color whiz by me. I spun around, but without my usual dose of caffeine and in the midst of a groggy pre-work daze, I wasn't quite fast enough to identify the perpetrator.

It was still summer, although the tail end, so I put it down to one of those meticulously dressed New Yorkers who pay homage to all the seasons by color coding their wardrobes to complement the weather outside.

A couple of minutes later, there it was again – an incongruously multi-colored shape. This time it slowed down enough to honk loudly as I tried to shrug my bag back onto my shoulder and avoid spilling my coffee, all in one ineffectively swift movement.

A regular, yellow New York cab. Regular except for the enormous flowers painted on its hood… What on earth was going on?

A few hours later my not so latent curiosity got the better of me. I finally put aside my work and Googled "New York cab painted flowers." Here's what I got:

Garden in Transit may be the most ambitious community collaboration and public art project in New York City history.

As part of this groundbreaking motivational art, education, and creative therapy project, thousands of kids in schools, hospitals, and community institutions are painting vibrant flowers -- symbolizing joy, life, beauty, and inspiration -- on adhesive weatherproof panels that will be applied to the hoods, trunks and/or roofs of thousands of New York City taxis. Beginning in September 2007 and until year's end, New York City will be visually transformed, as the ubiquitous yellow icon becomes a mobile artistic canvas or -- "Garden in Transit."

A project of Portraits of Hope -- a 12 year old non-profit program that was initially started to benefit seriously ill and physically disabled children, and later expanded to include a much wider array of both children and adults -- Garden in Transit is part of a series of projects that transform public landscapes and allow youngsters to showcase their work on a city- wide scale.

Beyond this, children who participate in Garden in Transit also participate in educational sessions in which they learn, and develop a dialogue, about important current affairs, community issues, the power of teamwork, individual and social responsibilities, and goals and achievements.

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Posted by Saabira Chaudhuri at 12:06 PM | 1 Comment

Entrepreneurship: "Obama Girl" Aims To Win Hearts & Minds

According to The Hollywood Reporter (and who doesn't love a post that begins like that?), the creator of the viral-video site BarelyPolitical.com has accepted an offer for the purchase of his site by a bigger video startup. BarelyPolitical is best known for its music video "I Have a Crush On Obama," in which a salacious young lady sings an R&B ballad to the Illinois Junior Senator, whilst wearing enough lip gloss to waterproof a pair of gym shorts. If you haven't seen it, please, avail yourself. Then we'll talk.

On its face, this video is, of course, absurd. As with many viral YouTube phenomena (this video got millions of hits), it combines 1) prurience, 2) a silly premise, and 3) amateur production value. Yes, it's funny. Yes, it will pleasurably waste two minutes of your day. But even after the immense success of other YouTube favorites, this is the first news of a real money-making opportunity growing out of viral popularity. So the big question is: who would pay money for this site that made this? And why?

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Posted by Chris Dannen at 11:59 AM | 1 Comment

October 16, 2007

Entertainment: Madonna's Moves Herald the Future of Music Distribution

Material Girl Madonna appears to be thinking not just like an artist, but also like a businesswoman. The 49-year-old singer has signed a groundbreaking record deal with concert promoter LiveNation, citing her decision to adopt a more comprehensive, unrestricted business model as her reason for abandoning Warner Music after 25 years.

The $125 million deal gives LiveNation the rights not just to Madonna's songs, but also to all the activities that go along with them: TV shows, films, sponsorship, websites, tours and merchandise.

"The paradigm in the music business has shifted and as an artist and a businesswoman, I have to move with that shift," she stated. "For the first time in my career, the way that my music can reach my fans is unlimited. I've never wanted to think in a limited way and with this new partnership, the possibilities are endless." The singer's move is reflective of the transitioning state of the music industry, which is currently racked by two strongly opposing forces: the implementation and preservation of digital rights management methods by record labels on the one hand, and the constant erosion of the same by fans and users on the other. Radiohead's recent release of its latest album online added a third dimension to this already complex picture, bypassing the record labels altogether and sending the message that even artists themselves think it is perhaps time for labels to overhaul their existing business models.

"…the trend shows how desperate record companies, faced with declining sales and profits, have become… more and more music executives are beginning to conclude that DRM is not the solution to their problem. It is easily circumvented, makes life difficult for law-abiding fans and does nothing to prevent the copying and online distribution of music from CDs," states the latest edition of The Economist.

The Economist also points out that a compelling reason for the music industry to forego DRM is to dissolve the mammoth advantage Apple currently has in online music sales because of it. Legally downloaded songs are protected by Apple's DRM system, FairPlay, which allows the company to negotiate favorable terms with labels. Foregoing DRM would weaken Apple's monopoly by allowing others to sell songs for the iPod.

The bottom line: having to abandon DRM will force record labels to think more innovatively, and more comprehensively, about how to market their music. LiveNation's deal with Madonna is a prime case in point.

Posted by Saabira Chaudhuri at 6:01 PM | Add Comment

Sustainability: Toxic iPhones Face Lawsuit

The new iPhone may have won over the tech world, but for environmentalists and consumer advocates it leaves much to be desired. A report by Greenpeace released yesterday found Apple's latest gadget houses multiple kinds of toxic chemicals in parts ranging from the antenna to the headphone cables.

One substance that is particularly troubling to environmentalists is phthalates plasticisers (a toxin that makes up 1.5 percent of the plastic coating on the iPhone's headphone cables), which are known to cause sterility and other reproductive problems in mammals. Phthalates are one characteristic of the chlorinated plastic compound polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The EU placed a ban on using phthalates in toys and other children's products because of the associated health risks.

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Posted by Liz Webber at 3:21 PM | Add Comment

Media: A New Watchdog on the Block

When I first read a story Monday about a new investigative non-profit news organization called ProPublica, I had one reaction and one question: First, that this is a sorely needed group, considering the growing trend among news outlets of trimming and, in some cases, eliminating investigative units as advertising revenue continues to drop. (There are exceptions such as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and its 10-person Watchdog Team and the New York Daily News with its four-person Sports Investigative Team.

Second, Can the group really pull it off?

The group will be headed by Editor in Chief Paul E. Steiger, former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal. That's a good start. When fully staffed next year, ProPublica will employ 24 full-time journalists, dedicated fully to the kind of long-term, muckraking projects that require deep pockets and patient bosses, according to yesterday's release. ProPublica said its annual budget will be around $10 million, funded by several foundations and philanthropies, allowing the organization to give its content freely to news outlets of its choosing.

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Posted by Jason Del Rey at 11:08 AM | 2 Comments

October 15, 2007

Tech Monday: It's A Blog World After All

Back in the spring, there was some discrepancy about whether there are actually 70 million blogs in the world. David Sifry of Technorati posted "The State of the Live Web" in April and revealed a steady growth in blogs to the tune of 120k blogs each day. Of this great number, it was discovered, that perhaps only 15.5 million of the blogs are actually even active, and that perhaps blogging has reached a plateau.

"There are tech bloggers who say it's dying, but that doesn't mean for everyone else it is. Many of those bloggers were there at the beginning of the beginning, but to be quite honest, very few bloggers crossover outside of their niches. There's a viable future here. Magazines, radio shows, TV shows -- go out of business every day, blogging (blogging, vlogging, Internet radio, Internet tv) is the same thing," says Rick Calvert, CEO & Co-founder, BlogWorld & New Media Expo. "There's no sign at all that it has reached it's peak and dying, to the contrary, it's just the beginning."

Calvert created the Blog World event to cater to the next group of evangelists, those at the lower end of the long tail, who still have a lot to learn about blogging from a business standpoint as well as a technological standpoint. "There are sites out there with 80,000 readers a day who don't know how to monetize content, while sites with half that amount of traffic are making a living from it," he says.

Calvert and his organizers say Blogworld is the largest blogging and new media conference ever assembled, with more than 70 presenters. The speakers list includes a who's who of blogging, such as Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, Brian Clark of Copyblogger, Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post, Om Malik of GigaOm, and BJ Schecter of ESPN among many others.

"I launched the event because I wanted to attend an event like this, and when I went looking for it, it didn't exist. Coincidentally I run tradeshows for a living and I couldn't believe that anything like this didn't exist, so I created it," says Calvert. "There were many niche blog conferences: religious, political, tech, etc. This is all of them in one place, like any other tradeshow, like what NAB is to broadcasters."

And it's not only the bloggers who are attending the conference, but major media outlet representatives as well. "Every publishing, radio, and TV outlet is getting their staff to blog," Calvert explains.

Blog World is held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, November 8-9, 2007 with an Executive and Entrepreneur track on November 7. The program will include presentations on strategic marketing, brand building, monetization, increasing readership and influence, digital music and video integration, and many other topics of importance to bloggers.

For more info visit, BlogWorld & New Media Expo. Normal discount pricing ends October 19, with additional discounts for Fast Company readers who use the code: FASTVIP. The Fast Company 15% reduced rate will also be available after the normal discount period.