Fast Company Magazine

Quit Your Media Job Today: A Freelancing Endorsement

On Friday afternoon I got a frustrated message from a fellow music writer. AOL Music, she said, was closing down. Soon thereafter employees of the media property, including Spinner editor Dan Reilly confirmed the news. "Well, we all just got laid off," he Tweeted. "AOL Music is finished." My first ... More >>

At Least Our Robot Overlords Will Get Us Drunk

They may not have the same handsome waistcoats or knowledge of hard shake theory as their human counterparts, but robot bartenders can make up for what they lack in style with, hmm, with a digital design system that "monitors alcohol consumption and blood alcohol levels by inputting basic physical d ... More >>

Teenagers Who Eat With Their Parents Are Happier. Seriously.

Remember those family dinners your parents made you endure as a kid? If you do, you probably had a more cheerful childhood than your friends whose meals were parent-free. Fast Company reports that researchers at McGill University found the frequency with which families dine together is "strongly cor ... More >>

How to Make Insects Look Good Enough to Eat

Bugs are an ideal food source--high in protein and easy to farm in huge quantities without hurting the environment. Though they're snacked on all over the world, and occasionally in the U.S., the biggest problem here has always been one of marketing. So, how do you convince an insect-averse culture ... More >>

Goodbye Ketchup Woes: MIT Introduces Non-Stick Condiment Bottle Coating

Ketchup bottles can get a little annoying. You're always struggling to shake the stuff out and even plastic squeeze bottles won't do the trick sometimes. Some guys over at MIT have it all figured out. They've created LiquiGlide, a "super slippery" coating that will make stuff like ketchup and mayo ... More >>

Occupy Wall Street Journalist Tim Pool Hit By Masked Man Last Night

Luke RudkowskiThis guy hit a journalist last night.​Hundreds of people marched through Manhattan last night to protest the mass arrests in Oakland the day before. In some ways, the action was a lot like many Occupy Wall Street marches that have come before -- chanting, weaving through neighbor ... More >>

Obama Admin Okays Monitoring of Reporters? No, No, Says Homeland Security Flack

The web is abuzz today with reports that the Department of Homeland Security has approved collecting of personal information from television anchors, news reporters, bloggers, and anyone else who uses social media. The so-called Media Monitoring Initiative allows the government to keep data on peop ... More >>

Fashion Week: Sofia Coppola and Lisa Marie Presley Check Out Anna Sui; 3.1 Phillip Lim Wants You to Fly a Kite for Spring

Angela AshmanAnna Sui​ Sometimes Anna Sui, who is known for her love of everything retro, can design collections that feel too groovy to be modern. But for her spring collection, which she showed last night at Lincoln Center, Sui pulled her influences from all the right sources for a collectio ... More >>

Link Found Between Pesticides and ADHD; Peruvian Food Next Big Thing (Again)

​BaoHaus's Sweet Bao fries, portabello fries at Sea Grill, and cactus fries at Toloache are just some of the alternatives to French fries around town these days. [NY Post] Now that we finally have healthy food in school cafeterias, food trucks selling junk are parking nearby to lure kids away ... More >>

The Ace Hotel, or 'Ass Hole-tel': Free-Associations

​We thought we put this one to bed a few months ago, but as it turns out, we're talking about the Ace Hotel again. Remember how hip it is? Or "not quote-unquote hip, per se"? It's hip again, or continues to be hip, or continues to be quote-unquote not not hip. This time, the angle is that the ... More >>

Bench Made of 5,000 MetroCards Looks Cool and Uncomfortable

via Co.Design​Where do MetroCards go when they die? Since there's no proof of MTA heaven (yet), we have to just assume they get tossed with the rest of the subway trash. How sad! Our little yellow friends that grant us access to all of the transportation New York has to offer are forgotten one ... More >>

How New Yorkers Describe Themselves in Their Online Dating Profiles

The "shy" map.​Ooh, infographics! Dating infographics! According to these enlightening maps by R. Luke DuBois, which appear today on Fast Company's Co.Design blog, America is quite diverse with regard to how we like to describe ourselves on our online dating profiles. In certain places (like W ... More >>

Craigslist Crime is Rampant and You Could Be Next, According to Craigslist Competitor

​We're going to play this game where we talk about an interesting news story from today, but instead of naming the company that made it a news story to get publicity based on unscientific lies about Craigslist, its competitor, we're just going to call that company Craigslist Competitor, even t ... More >>

Bill Clinton Only Sent Two Emails as President

​"I sent a grand total of two emails as president," Bill Clinton said at the Ford Foundation's Wired for Change conference in New York today, "one to our troops in the Adriatic, and one to John Glenn when he was 77 years old in outer space. I figured it was OK if Congress subpoenaed those." (C ... More >>

Benihana Sues Over Crap Review

BenihanaGet out the knives! It's fight time!​It's a good thing Yelp isn't popular in Kuwait. Because that would mean a lot of lawsuits would be coming up. Yes, Mark Makhou, a blogger in Kuwait, has been sued for $18,000 for writing a negative review of chain restaurant Benihana on his blog ... More >>

Remember Chatroulette? 50,000 Naked Men Do Daily

​"Everyday, about 50,000 new men are trying to get naked," Chatroulette creator Andrey Ternovskiy tells Fast Company in a new interview. That's 10% of his daily users. The oppressive nonstop nudity may very well be the reason the site's popularity has plummeted since it first made a splash in ... More >>

Live-Bonging the Prop. 19 Vote with Broam Chronsky

​As the results of America's midterm elections come to light, the Village Voice's expert panel of political thinkers and shapers will be weighing in live over the course of the evening. Covering California's landmark vote on whether or not to legalize Marijuana, Proposition 19, is our special ... More >>

Verdict Against Ford Worth $131M For SUV Death Reported First (and Best) on Twitter

​In 2001, New York Mets prospect Brian Cole was killed when his Ford Explorer flipped on the way home from spring training. Fast-forward to September 2, 2010, when a Mississippi jury awarded $131 million to Cole's family. Have you heard this story? Probably not, because no media was on hand to ... More >>

Location Check-Ins Are Meandering Toward Mainstream Consciousness

via ostiko.com​Every time social media inches closer to our "real" lives, people recoil (and then share everything). Remember when people first started tweeting their mundane daily activities -- singing in the shower, burning scrambled eggs? So off-putting! And now? It's been largely put to rest b ... More >>

Facebook Lawsuit: Teens Are Too Young to "Like" Anything

​Teens can drive at 16, but should they have the freedom to "like" Justin Beiber's fan page? A lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Court alleges that Facebook unfairly takes advantage of teens because with that preferential button-push, they endorse a product (or person, or thing, or ... More >>

VisualFriend.com (with Visual Benefits) Makes iPhone Dating as Creepy as It Is Portable

​Pre-dating (dating foreplay, if you prefer) is becoming more personal than ever. Now that the iPhone 4 has video capability, early-adopting tech nerds are already using it to date online via VisualFriend.com, "the newest free online dating service that brings singles, FaceTime, and your iPhon ... More >>

Mezcal Still the Next Big Thing; Pinot Grigio Makes a Comeback Among Snobs

​Officials are moving forward with plans to replace the dated bar cars on Metro-North Railroad's Connecticut trains with new cars that look more like a sit-down pubs on wheels. [Wall Street Journal] VinPerfect, a new type of screw cap that regulates air into the wine bottle, joins the synthet ... More >>

Will "The Ultimate Chart" Change The Way We Quantify The Ubiquity Of Eminem, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, And Justin Bieber?

​A common complaint about music charts in the post-sales age is that, with their reliance on SoundScan data and airplay numbers, they miss other avenues for popular consumption, from YouTube streams to--shh!--free downloads. BigChampagne, which started off as a service charting the popularity ... More >>

Star of Double Rainbow Video Speaks, Plus More Double Rainbow Riffs (Video)!

via Fast Company​Our personal favorite item of the week may well be the melodious, amazing Double Rainbow Auto-Tune that we posted about on Tuesday. You know, the guy goes hiking in Yosemite, witnesses a double rainbow (maybe even a triple rainbow), and goes...orgasmic about it. If you haven't ... More >>

Fast Company Names Most Inspiring People in Sustainable Food

parttake/photobucketSome thumbs are greener than others.​Feeling green, perhaps, Fast Company has listed its 10 "Most Inspiring People in Sustainable Food," including farmers, chefs, and urban planners. (Unsurprisingly, a certain organic supermarket chain CEO is noticeably absent from the list ... More >>

Google Street View May Get Ad Updates -- Whether There's an Ad or Not

​Google Street View maps are fun and informative, and soon they may be be an ad venue as well: PC World reports Google has obtained a patent on technology for "identifying groups of features in an online geographic view of a real property and replacing and/or augmenting the groups of features ... More >>

Job Fears May Get Worse, But Corporate Training Will Rock!

Fast Company admits corporate policy compliance training films are a drag, but they've found someone who can "Make Corporate Training Rock": Russ Berland, who devised vignettes in the manner of The Office to spice up the traditional sexual harassment don't-do-this scene and such like. Here the bos ... More >>

Corporate Political Leanings Chart Threatens to Skew Christmas

​Fun for political obsessives: Fast Company informs us that the Good Guide, a green-products advocate, has analyzed the political contributions of several companies to create a Democratic-to-Republican litmus graphic by means of which their readers may decide whether they want to support said ... More >>

Quick Hits

​Academia -- that's where all the money is, kids. Fast Company has some photos of the Julliard School's lavish new facilities at Alice Tully Hall. Cost: $325 million. Grady Sizemore nude, everybody! You won't catch us posting this, alas, as the Indians have put out an APB, saying the photos a ... More >>

Helsinki "World Design Capital" for 2012; New York Lags Badly

​ The International Council of Societies of Industrial Design has announced at their World Design Congress that Helsinki is the "World Design Capital" for 2012. Fast Company has a nice photo series of design highlights from the Finnish capital, and they are dazzling. Eindhoven was the runne ... More >>

Tina Brown Discovers Poverty, "Gigonomics"

Rightbloggers' "Conservatism 2.0" Closely Resembles Earlier Versions

Horoscope

They Came From Within

Master Class

Jimmy Heath Gets His Due