PressLift: A More Efficient Way to Bombard Professionals With Information There are many things I like about my job (even when I'm not writing about Lady GaGa and naked iPhone apps). Getting bombarded with email press releases, especially when they contain gargantuan file attachments with titles like "FULL_POWERPOINT_DEMO," is not one of them.
Updated Wed Oct 26, 2011
Meet Siri: A Virtual Personal Assistant That Actually Works, Deciphers Drunken Slur [Editors note: Back in February 2010, Fast Company was wowed by a neat little iPhone app called Siri. "As you can see, using Siri is a lot like talking to a really, really well-informed friend," Dan Macsai wrote in a post, which we've dug up here. In April 2010, Apple bought Siri. Today, Tim Cook reintroduced Siri as a primary addition to iOS 5. Turns out what wowed us then is what wowed Apple watchers today, too.]
Updated Tue Oct 4, 2011
Between Aerosmith And American Idol, Steven Tyler Gets Around The bass-mouthed rock star turned Idol judge's music worlds overlap in more than one way.
Updated Tue Aug 2, 2011
Rock Stars Lend Their Sound To Ugandan Women Of The Voice Project Rock stars covering fellow rockers helps one New York-based nonprofit raise awareness for Ugandan women's groups.
Updated Wed Jun 29, 2011
5 Steps To Designing The Ultimate Lunch Box SKETCH PAD Black + Blum offers the grown-up answer to the lunch box.
Updated Wed Jun 29, 2011
San Francisco: Open-Source Government [Fast Cities 2010] It's a good thing Gavin Newsom checks his Twitter feed during meetings. Otherwise, San Francisco's mayor would've missed a life-changing missive about ... potholes? "It really made me wonder," he says. "What if we used social media to make our city services work better?" That stray tweet led to the city's first-of-its-kind Twitter account (@SF311), which encourages residents to send queries and messages about nonemergency issues. But it also underscores the city's open-source stance on government.
Updated Mon May 16, 2011
Savannah: Renaissance Neighborhoods [Fast Cities 2010] During the '90s and aughts, many of Savannah's poorest neighborhoods spiraled into disrepair. Aging residents lacked the money and energy to maintain their properties; younger residents and business owners were fleeing in search of livelier communities. Fed up with rising crime and plummeting property values, residents staged protests. "They needed help," says Martin Fretty, who oversees Savannah's Department of Housing, "and they needed it soon." In response, the city launched Neighborhood Renaissance Savannah in 2000.
Updated Mon May 16, 2011
New York: Urban Farms [Fast Cities 2010] New York's concrete jungle is about to get more green -- and tasty -- thanks to Gotham Greens, which is building a hydroponic rooftop farm in Brooklyn. The eco-efficient farm will take a small bite out of the $2 billion in produce that's trucked into the city each year. Here's how it works.
1. Power FeedThe $2 million, 16,000-square-foot farm -- which opens this spring -- is powered by a 60-kilowatt solar-voltaic array.
Updated Mon May 16, 2011
The 10 Most Innovative Companies in Gaming From Zynga to Valve, these companies are changing how we play and who is playing.
Updated Tue Apr 19, 2011
Use Foursquare to Check In and Get Inspired Like CEOs of Our Most Innovative Companies We rounded up 100 places around the globe that rouse the people behind our 2011 list of Most Innovative Companies--no blasé corporate headquarters allowed. Here's how you can visit.
Updated Thu Feb 17, 2011
How TDK Upgraded the Old-School Boom Box TDK, best known for its cassette tapes, is hoping a next-gen MP3-compatible boom box will help revitalize its brand.
Updated Thu Jan 13, 2011
The ATMs of the Future The boxy frame, the greasy touch screens, the seemingly endless series of bleeps and bloops required to produce your cash -- there's not much to love about the modern ATM. Sure, it's better than the original, which dispensed only money, and only to people with accounts at its host bank. But ATM makers have sought to improve their product, in part because U.S. usage fell 20% in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, to 11.8 billion transactions.
Posted Thu Dec 2, 2010
Lady Gaga Is Last.fm's Most Unwanted Artist Lady Gaga has topped Last.fm's latest "Most Unwanted Scrobbles" list, meaning her tracks were most frequently deleted from user playlists last month. Is this the beginning of the end for Fast Company's Most Creative Person in Business?
Tue Sep 28, 2010
First Look: Bundle's Savvy New Features Prove It's More Than Just a Pretty (Inter)face This week, Bundle unveils its "Version 1.0" redesign, offering a host of new features including -- at last! -- the option to sync to multiple accounts.
Mon Aug 23, 2010
