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Design

Boeing's 787 Leaves Us Hanging

In our Fast 50 issue, we praised Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner for its lightweight construction and streamlined design--features that contribute to the aircraft's remarkable fuel efficiency. The interior of the plane is roomy, with wider seats and aisles, and it has cool passenger-comfort features like overhead lighting that imitates the changing colors of the sky and a cabin that is pressurized at lower altitudes. Aviation geeks who were present when the prototype was unveiled last July described it as an almost religious experience.

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The Age of RND

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times lifted the lid on something the wired individual is beginning to experience more and more: being caught in a Realtime Knowledge Discontinuity (let's call it RND for short). RND sufferers have the distinct social disadvantage of having real-time access to information that their companions, interlocutors, and colleagues do not, by sheer dint of owning a convenient information appliance like an iPhone.

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Designing the Future

News typically doesn’t get blended in with art. Nor does the information in a lot of paintings, sculptures or other forms of art usually incorporate statistical or cerebral information. But an innovative new exhibit on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Midtown Manhattan does just that.

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Clorox & The Sierra Club Take On Method

Today's The New York Times' "Business of Green" special section has a fascinating article about the latest eco-marriage: Clorox and The Sierra Club. The "green trench warfare" Method's Adam Lowry refers to in our Fast 50 issue (#16) has officially gone full throttle. With Method and Seventh Generation head to head in sales clocking in at around $100 million, respectively, Clorox's newest posterboy is none other than Sierra Club heavy hitter Carl Pope.

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That Search Box....Can I trust it?

Many companies worry too much about their website design - instead they should worry about their Search boxes. While I don't have stats to blurt out right away, but it would be a safe guess that an average company's website gets 50% traffic from a search engine like Yahoo, Google, or Ask or for that matter MSN (90% of that may be from Google alone). Now that should tell you at least one thing for sure about your visitor - he/she has trusted a search box before getting to your website. Can you be confident your website's search engine can handle such a habitual user of a search box? Read more

Now It's Your Turn to Rank the Most Innovative Companies

In the March issue of Fast Company--careful, it's hot off the press--we unveil the new and improved Fast 50, aka the Fast Company 50. This year's list is our first-ever ranking of the most innovative companies in the world. But wait, you say, that's impossible. Can't be done. The world's too big! There's too much innovation out there to keep track of! Sloooow down, Fast Company! Read more