The Hills Are Alive, in Google's Swiss HQ

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office, water-cooler

Published Nov. 4, 2009 at 12:30 p.m.
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There's lots of perks at Google HQ out in California, but the design itself is a snooze. Things are a lot more interesting at their just-completed engineering offices in Zurich, Switzerland ... The common spaces are particularly zany, and they play off of lots of tropes of Swiss culture. Above: Meeting rooms in the form of ski-lift gondolas ... The library, meanwhile, is very ski lodgey: ... The designers, Carmenzind Evolution (who also recently designed an office we just featured) say they

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Second Life Finds its Second Life as a Tool for Virtual Workers

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meetings, office, water cooler

Published Nov. 4, 2009 at 11:30 a.m.
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Say what you like about virtual world Second Life--it just keeps spinning on. And now it's getting an official enterprise offshoot, which companies can run on their own server for virtual, corporate, uh, fun. There's even going to be an app store ... Second Life Enterprise went live as an open beta version yesterday, after over a year of work and planning that involved IBM's help in creating a secure, firewalled instance of the virtual world. If you're a company with $50,000 to spare, you can

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Your Future Home's Roof Will Be Eco-Friendly Too

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conflict, management

Published Oct. 9, 2009 at 1:00 p.m.
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Scientists at MIT have invented a smart roofing material that takes a new thermal-management approach to eco-design. It's a different approach to previous efforts, of which there are many. We've rounded them up for you, starting with the latest, below ... MIT's Black and White Solution ... MIT's Thermeleon material is a composite of layers that makes it thermochromic--on exposure to heat it changes color from black to white. It works by sandwiching a common polymer between flexible plastic

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Balancing Tradeoffs: The Evolution of the Hippo Roller

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water-cooler

Published July 14, 2009 at 3:30 p.m.
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In 2008, 26-year-old industrial designer Emily Pilloton founded Project H Design, a non-profit that empowers designers around the world to support, create, and deliver life-improving product design solutions. Chapters now located in nine cities function as volunteer design firms, identifying and developing products that address issues of the four H's: Humanity, Habitats, Health and Happiness. As Pilloton worked to establish the first chapter, located in San Francisco, yet another H quickly came

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Time-wasting Video of the Day: May 21, 2008

Published May 21, 2008 at 10:15 p.m.

We know that a guy named David is going to walk away a winner after the tonight's finale of "American Idol." But, which David will it be?

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Fans should enjoy the fun before the Madness begins

Published Feb. 25, 2008 at 12:05 p.m.


A lot of local sports fans are looking forward to baseball. There is nothing wrong with that, provided they don't overlook the tenderloin of the college basketball season.

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