When it comes to those last globs of ketchup inevitably stuck to every bottle of Heinz, most people either violently shake the container in hopes of eking out another drop or two, or perform the "secret" trick: smacking the "57" logo on the bottle’s neck. But not MIT Ph.D. candidate Dave Smith. He and a team of mechanical engineers and nano-technologists at the Varanasi Research Group have been been hold up in an MIT lab for the last two months addressing this common dining problem. The result? LiquiGlide, a "super slippery" coating made up of nontoxic materials that can be applied to all sorts of food packaging--though ketchup and mayonnaise bottles might just be the substance’s first targets. Condiments may sound like a narrow focus ... Continue reading →

"I was always trying to convince [Instagram CEO] Kevin Systrom to partner with us--we wanted to be the print button on Instagram pretty badly," says Adrian Salamunovic, cofounder of CanvasPop, the service that turns digital photos from sites like Facebook and Instagram into physical prints. "We really harassed him, the poor guy. But he was always very cool about it--always supportive. Whenever we’d communicate with Kevin, he’d always just ask, 'How is the API working for you? What we can do to make it better for you?' It was never, 'How can you help me make more money?' Honestly, revenue seemed to be the last thing on his mind. Maybe that’s why the product is so authentic." Systrom had myriad opportunities to monetize, but business ... Continue reading →

I have been told specifically that I will be able to punch Justin Bieber in the face. It is mid-March, and I am standing on the patio outside Conway Studios in Hollywood, where Bieber is recording his new album, and I have been waiting for him for hours. Fifty-one hours, to be precise, at least if we're counting the two times that our meeting has been postponed so far. This time, however, I have been assured that Bieber is really coming, and that he wants to fight me. He's due to arrive at any minute now, which is good, because I can't wait to draw some Canadian teenybopper blood. Justin Bieber is now 18 years old. And when you're a teen superstar who has just ... Continue reading →

"What we are trying to do is make an operating system and a computer more like a web service." That’s the vision Caesar Sengupta, product strategy lead for Google Chrome OS, laid out for me last year, as the company was gearing up to launch its own cloud-based operating system to compete with Microsoft and Apple. It was a big bet at the time, and one the search giant is still banking on: that consumers want the desktop to feel more like the web. Windows 8 is a bet that users actually want the web to feel more like a desktop.But lackluster sales signal that perhaps Google is taking the wrong approach, or at least that it’s too soon for such a radical change. Chrome ... Continue reading →

Larry Page recently called Google+ the company's "social spine." If that's the case, then Google's backbone might be much weaker than Page has been letting on, at least according to a new report from RJ Metrics. This week, the data analytics firm provided Fast Company with exclusive new insights on Google+. The findings paint a very poor picture of the search giant's social network--a picture of waning interest, weak user engagement, and minimal social activity. Google calls the study flawed--we'll explain why in a second--and has boasted that more than 170 million people have "upgraded" to the network. RJ Metrics' report, on the other hand, is yet another indicator that Google+ might indeed just be a "virtual ghost town," as some have argued. Let's start ... Continue reading →

Welcome to our annual celebration of business innovators who dare to think differently. They're the ones taking risks and discovering surprising new solutions to old problems. This year, they tell you exactly how they do what they do. Click on their names in the list below to find advice and read about their career milestones. Or for tips on a set of creative skills, browse the tool box to the right. Continue reading →

"I have a phrase which is massively inappropriate, but I'm happy to use it," said Bill Nguyen, of Instagram. "They're just mice nuts--and I mean that in the most kind, polite way I possibly can." That was Nguyen last March, comparing Instagram to rodent testicles--in the kindest way possible--as he promoted his new startup, Color, which was set for launch later that month. Of course, Instagram would go on to become one of the world's fastest growing social networks, and it's in the process of being bought for $1 billion by Facebook, a service Nguyen called "broken" and predicted it wouldn't survive the post-PC era. Color, meanwhile, is on what appears to be its third pivot--earlier this week, the startup was touting a new partnership ... Continue reading →

Last year, when serial entrepreneur Bill Nguyen stopped by to show off the first iteration of Color, his $41 million photo-sharing app, I asked how a service driven entirely by proximity could ever get off the ground if it didn't have users to first populate the "elastic" social network. "We have a little secret we're working on," he said, with his characteristic smirk. "We think we have a way of introducing this to 200 million people all at once." At the time, Nguyen was hinting at possibly teaming with Twitter--a partnership that apparently never came to fruition. But now, we have some sense of what that partnership could've looked like: Today, the startup unveiled a partnership with Verizon to provide exclusive features to 4G LTE ... Continue reading →

Game-maker OMGPOP is Zynga’s latest toy. Zynga snapped up the startup for $200 million after OMGPOP’s Draw Something, a sort of Pictionary for your smartphone, took off in popularity, rocketing to some 50 million downloads. Now Zynga, a publicly traded company, is trying to prove it spent hundreds of millions of dollars on more than just a blank piece of paper and a few digital crayons. Yesterday, the company’s advertising platform for Draw Something was unveiled for the first time--and, if not handled with some finesse, it’s a great potential example of forced brand interaction. Advertisers now have the option to purchase drawing terms related to their brands. When a user opens Draw Something, the game gives three options to choose from--say, tennis, pancake, or ... Continue reading →