Features

The Beauty of Simplicity

Marissa Mayer, who keeps Google's home page pure, understands that less is more. Other tech companies are starting to get it, too. Here's why making things simple is the new competitive advantage.

The Simple, and the Simply Awful

A pantheon of technology products that marry great performance with simplicity of design--and those that miss the mark.

Fast Cities

They're 15 up-and-coming hubs for creative workers--places that draw people who are talented, tech savvy, and tolerant. Meet the home of your next big opportunity.

Global Fast Cities

They speak English, and they have the right mix of technology and tolerance to attract talent. They're the international cities competing with the United States for the global talent pool.

It's Never Been This Hard

For a nimble diving company based in Louisiana, Hurricane Katrina posed enormous challenges--and offered huge opportunity.

Fast Talk: Wising Up the Idiot Box

If you think the changes in TV in the past five years--TiVo, digital cable and satellite, and video on demand--are radical, you haven't seen anything.

Walking the Walk

Is it possible to run a billion-dollar public company and save the world at the same time? Timberland's CEO Jeffrey Swartz is trying to find out.

A Shoe's Footprint

You expect to know what goes into the food you eat, but what about the clothes and shoes you wear?

Getting on the Same Page

Book publishing is a difficult and contentious business. Upstart Berrett-Koehler has a more collaborative--and profitable--model.

M-Powered

A skunkworks at BMW builds customized, high-performance screamers. It's also building a better BMW.

Inspiration Junkies

Three guys in a beat-up RV have been collecting career advice from the likes of Michael Dell and Sandra Day O'Connor. Now they're spreading the gospel on college campuses across the country.

Mail Call

Michael Eskew, the up-through-the-ranks CEO of UPS, on what he does for Brown, and what Brown has done for him.

Next

Back in the Box

By trying to latch onto the flavor of the moment, many companies forget what made them great in the first place.

Life-and-Death Design

Good design is more than just a better-looking egg beater. In some cases, it's the difference between life and death.

Toy Story

What will prove this year's Tickle Me Elmo? Here's how three companies are taking on the notoriously fickle holiday toy market--and what their prospects are.

If Popeye Were a Biochemist

Well, blow me down: Spinach is not only good for you, but one day might be good for the environment, too--in the form of batteries.

60 Seconds with Bill Joy

Sun cofounder and Silicon Valley bad boy Bill Joy on the future of startups and where he's placing his venture-capital bets.

Year of the Economist

Freakonomics, economic hit men, undercover economists. This ain't Adam Smith.

Datebook

Critical calendar listings for November.

Web Graffiti 2.0

A new application based on social bookmarking lets humans, as opposed to algorithms, index the Web.

Analyze This

Many tech-analyst blogs read like a symposium of your most boring college engineering and economics professors. Here are three exceptions.

Point, Click, Design

How an inspiration during a bout of food poisoning eventually became the popular photo-sharing Web application.

Playbook

Credit Where Credit Is Due

There's no I in team, the saying goes. But then again, there's no team without you. How to get props without looking like a prima donna.

Water Cooler: Help Wanted

The Fast Company roundup of what you'll be talking about this month when you talk about work.

Sugar Shock

It's 3 p.m. You're getting sleepy. Can the latest "super" snacks perk you up?

Voice Over Wi-Fi

A wi-fi handset that could usurp your cellphone--and where you can use it.

Cell-phone Confidential

What your wireless carrier doesn't want you to know when you go international.

Reading List: Smartbomb

Video games are big business. Meet the folks who made it so in this month's book.

Other Recommended Reading

One Billion Customers and Let My People Go Surfing

The Corporate Shrink

Advice from our Shrink on strip-club invites.

Workplace 1.5

Managing teleworkers--at home, at work, as Starbucks.

More Great Stuff

No Way to Run a Business

Our monthly letter from the editor.

How Low Can It Go?

Each month this year, Fast Company will celebrate 10 years of publication by reviewing and updating one of our favorite editions from our first decade.

Feedback

Letters. Updates. Advice.

Diving Right In

Notes from the Gulf Coast