Fast Company

Facebook and Twitter Come to Xbox Live This Tuesday

Kevin Ohannessian — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:00:00 EST

EMBARGOED UNTIL THURSDAY 9:00 AM

The next update to the Xbox Live network will be coming Tuesday, November 17 according to Live's General Manager, Marc Whitten (left). The new features are contributing to "turning Xbox and Live into this rich media portal that continuously surfaces the most engaging things to do in the living room." he said.

As previously revealed, this update brings social networking to the Xbox 360 with Twitter and Facebook support--in an interface that has been tailored for the console. Whitten said, "We look at things like Facebook and Twitter as amazing social experiences, but also entertainment. We didn't want to copy and paste from the PC."

Craig Davison, Director of Global Marketing for Xbox, pointed to Facebook as an important new feature, "People are going to gravitate to looking at photos on the TV." Though over 300 million friend connections have happened on Live, that may just be the beginning--users will be able to convert Facebook friends to Xbox Live contacts. Whitten said, "It's going to be great for current users, but it's also great for new users who can see who is on Facebook and get their first 30 friends on Live."

With the PS3 finally getting Netflix, Microsoft has stepped up its game with additional media. The Last.fm music streaming service has been added to Live and the service's old video marketplace had been upgrade to a Zune marketplace with 1080p HD content that instantly streams. "If it takes longer to download a film, than to leave my house, rent a film, and watch it, then the promise of digital isn't there," Whitten said.

Each year there are new upgrades to the service, growing it from basic multi-player gaming to a media destination. Whitten said, "We run the business as three- and five-year plans mapped out, but we are constantly taking a look at what our users are doing or what is in the world to make it a more compelling experience." And with each upgrade the service hits new milestones. Since the launch of the Avatars in last year's update, members have switched their Avatar's clothes nearly 150 million times, for more than 10 million hours in the Avatar editor. With the launch of 1 vs 100 this year, the live game show has had half a million contestants compete each week.

All in all, Xbox Live now has over 20 million active members, with 114% growth in the number of new members joining in 2009. Live users have made more than one billion downloads. "It's about how we continue to push the definition of what living room entertainment is about," Whitten said.

When Design Is Also the Teacher

Tucker Viemeister — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:00:00 EST

Design has ramifications beyond the simple form and function--teacups are actors in rituals and environments are where we stage experiences. Turns out the design of my grade school building played a bigger role in my education than I thought.

I grew up in Yellow Springs, Ohio, home of Antioch College, where I attended the Antioch School. Arthur Morgan started it in 1921, the same year in New York that Elizabeth Irwin founded the Little Red School House and seven years after City & Country School opened. It was very progressive when progressive was really experimental! While we played with blocks and made up plays, from nursery school through sixth grade, the student teachers actually did experiments with us! Some worked and others didn't work so well!

Concurrent with my high school reunion, the Antioch School had its own funky little reunion. As I chatted with some other much younger alumni, I was amazed that many of us had had similar educational experiences even though the teachers and curriculum were very different. How could that be? What was the defining force?

Birch Hall at Antioch College, designed by Eero Saarinen and Max Mercer

Then someone told me that the building was designed by Eero Saarinen, the master architect of the TWA terminal at JFK (now part of the Rockwell Group-designed JetBlue terminal), the St. Louis Arch, and some of my favorite chairs, which you can all see at an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, Saarinen and the Spirit of Innovation. The simplicity of the Antioch School building that I took for granted as a kid was designed that way on purpose! Turns out, Saarinen was a major influence in Yellow Springs. In 1944 Saarinen and Swanson & Associates started a master plan for the Antioch College campus. In 1947, with a local architect, Max Mercer, Saarinen designed Birch Hall. In 1953 the Antioch School moved into the current school building on Corry Street, designed, they say, by Max Mercer with at least some influence from Saarinen (I say).

Antioch School plan sketch by Tucker Viemeister

The building is made from three rectangles, two dominant ones make an L-shape with a small thin one sticking up for the smoke stack. One side is the multipurpose "Big Room" for assemblies, plays and art. The long side of the L is a row of three square classrooms for each of the three age groups in chronological order. Sets of buffer rooms separate and connect them--the shared spaces made concrete the idea of transition: The younger kids could share the future in those small rooms, as the older groups shared the past.

The Antioch School, designed by Max Mercer

Windows: one whole side of the building was floor to ceiling industrial windows so the kids could look out of their classroom to the vast world they lived in (actually the college golf course). The flat roof seemed to float over the big band of clerestory windows on the other side of the room. So although you couldn't actually see out the other side, you were constantly shown that there was more out there--literally another side to the story.

That is what I realized talking to that younger graduate--that the architecture taught us, through plan and elevation, to look out of our classroom. Understand the context. See both sides. Learn about what those other sides have in common and how they affect each other. The design of the building was one of Antioch School's experiments that worked the best!

Read Tucker Viemeister's blog What's Cookin'?Browse blogs by our other Expert Designers

Tucker Viemeister leads the Lab at Rockwell Group, an interactive technology design group combining digital interaction design, modeling, and prototyping for hotels and restaurants, casinos, packaging, and products. The LAB seeks to blur the line between the physical and virtual, exploring and experimenting with interactive digital technology in objects, environments, and stories. Tucker also co-founded the collaborative Studio Red with David Rockwell that was dedicated to innovation for Coca-Cola. Since joining Rockwell Group in 2004, Tucker has been instrumental in the design and development of JetBlue's Marketplace at the JFK International Airport, "Hall of Fragments," an installation that opened the Corderie dell'Arsenale at the 2008 Venice Biennale, a "living wall" for the lobby of the Sheraton Toronto, the traveling Red Lounge for Coca-Cola, and MGM City Centre in Las Vegas.

Via Wheat-Based Plastics, Ford Slashes Petroleum and CO2 Emissions

Ariel Schwartz — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:30:18 EST

Last year, I had the chance to check out a number of green building materials in Ford's vehicle pipeline. Some of these materials have yet to see the light of day--Indian grass molding compounds, anyone?--but Ford has finally brought wheat straw-reinforced plastic to market, in the 2010 Ford Flex's third-row storage bins.

It's a bigger deal than you'd think. The natural fiber-based plastic, which contains 20% wheat straw bio-filler, cuts down on Ford's petroleum usage by 20,000 pounds each year, reduces CO2 emissions by 30,000 pounds each year, and represents an innovative use for the waste byproduct of wheat. Now that wheat straw plastic has proven to work in the Flex's storage bins, Ford may bring the material to center console bins and trays, door panels, and armrest liners. That means even more of the 30 million metric tons of wheat straw waste that are tossed by the wayside in the Flex's production hometown of Ontario will get a second life.

Ford isn't the only car company to explore alternate uses for recycled and bio-based materials. Last year, 9% of all materials made out of high-density polyethylene (milk cartons, laundry detergent bottles, etc.) were used in U.S.-based automotive parts. Up to 10% of all plastics in GM cars are made of recycled content, and Toyota plans to make 60% of its interior vehicle parts out of plant-based materials in the next year. So if it's successful, Ford's bet on wheat straw means your next vehicle--whatever the brand--might contain a whole lot more wheat.

[Via CNN Money]

Geekiest Chic: Computer-Generated Jewelry

Cliff Kuang — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:00:31 EST

Nervous System designs custom, high-tech jewelry on the cheap using rapid prototyping.

What do you get when you combine the brains of one Harvard-educated architect and one MIT Media Lab vet? Nervous System, a company that makes bespoke jewelry using generative algorithms.

These pieces are cheap, compared to the custom data-visualization jewelry and furniture we've covered before--just $25 to $50 for a ring or necklace. And that points to a seachange in custom design. While rapid prototyping and computer modeling usually produces expensive one-offs, Nervous System is actually showing how those technologies aid in very small-scale production. As they tell Design Glut in a new interview:

What advice do you have for creatives going into business for themselves?

Jesse: We've just focused on doing things that are interesting, exciting and new. We've gotten our stuff out there and then let the blogs and press spread it.

Jessica: There has never been a better time than now to be out on your own, as a designer or businessperson. It has never been easier to get your product out there. Through the Internet, you can get exposed to everybody at almost no cost. You can send your things out to manufacturers and just get a couple pieces made by rapid prototyping. It's easy to explore and see what it's like to have a business, without putting in a huge amount of investment. People should just start doing it. Even if it's just in their weekends or evenings.

Jesse: I was giving a talk yesterday at MassArt, and one thing the professor mentioned ties into that. In traditional manufacturing, the designer might get thousands of units made because that will bring down the cost. Then you're stuck with thousands of units that you have to sell. I've seen people at shows with ceramics they've gotten produced, and at the end of the show they just want to give them away. They've already paid for the thousands of them, and they just need to get rid of them. But now there are manufacturing technologies that allow designers to do small runs and not make such an investment. You can just test out the waters--see what works and go with that.

Amazingly, the project is even kind of open source. To educate their customers on their process, they've posted the applets they use, and you can play around with them. If you want, you can then order a customized piece of your own devising.

The two principals, Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg, now plan on turning what's already a full-time business towards bigger scale projects, ranging from furniture to housewares, and eventually, full-on architecture.

Read the full interview at DesignGlut.

Yee-haw! Texas Dominates Best-Performing Cities Index

Dan Macsai — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:30:17 EST

Perhaps that famous photo illustration should read, "Everything's bigger--and better!--in Texas." Lone Star cities, led by Austin (#1) and Ft. Hood (#2), lassoed nine of the top 16 spots on this year's Milken Institute/Greenstreet Real Estate Partners Best-Performing Cities Index, which ranks U.S. metros based on their ability to create and sustain jobs.

Why Texas? For one, many of its residents work in the oil, gas, and alternative energy sectors, which in recent months have proved considerably more stable than, say, finance. (Sorry, New York City.) And Austin, home of Web mecca South by Southwest, received a special shout-out for its strong tech industry. Tack on Texas' uncanny ability to lure workers and corporations away from higher-cost states--every day, about 1,000 people move there seeking jobs--and it's no wonder Milken gave kudos.

"In a period of recession," says Ross DeVol, Milken's director of regional economics and lead author of the report, "the index highlights metros that have adapted to weather the storm. As we move forward in a recovery that still lacks jobs, metros will be further tested in their ability to sustain themselves."

Of course, the news wasn't all good. Biggest losers Pensacola, Florida, (down 124 spots, to #157) and Merced, California, (down 111 spots, to #184) were hit hard by the housing meltdown, which took a heavy toll on their construction sectors. And several Michigan cities, such as Flint (#200) and Detroit (#199), stalled alongside the U.S. auto industry.

Check out the full report, including lots more data and an interactive U.S. map, here.

[Image via Café Press]

Google Lets You Search World Bank Data

Chris Dannen — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST

Whether you think the World Bank is an engine of worldly improvement or a bunch of corrupt plutocrats, you'll probably still want to look at their exhaustive trove of data, which Google made available today.

Google has mashed up its public data search with the World Bank's API (who knew?) and the result is this: a robust data system that capable of giving you real data-driven results to questions like "life expectancy in Brazil" or "energy use of Iceland." (Below, some graphical comparisons of various nations' GDP.)

While the data might be World Bank's, the interaction design is all Google. Clicking results lets you play with interactive charts which are fully embeddable, and can be created either statically or always-updating dynamic graphs.

Query results are based on 17 indicators of "World Development" tracked by the World Bank. You can see those indicators here.

Google says on its blog that the World Bank data program is in keeping with its intention to support fact-based debate. If you've come to believe that those words are synonymous with The Daily Show, then take a look at the video below to see what Google means.

Nau Pop-Up Shop Is Serious About Sustainability

Stephanie Schomer — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:30:21 EST

West-coast based clothing company Nau is opening a pop-up shop in New York for the holidays, and is taking the word "sustainable" to the next level.

Here/Nau/NYC opens Thursday in Soho, featuring its line of eco-friendly clothing. But what's interesting about the store is that everything--apparel aside--has been collected from waste products in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Rolling racks have been constructed from old piping, wood, and wheels from an abandoned go-kart. A weathered ladder doubles as a shoe display. Tables made of cardboard and recycled metal stand as product displays. Gathered branches act as artsy ceilings to fitting rooms, which are veiled by coffee-dyed cloth. If I didn't already know, I would have never guessed that these items had been scooped up from the streets in the past few weeks--the store looks clean and streamlined.

Gordon Seabury, CEO of Horny Toad, which owns Nau, said that New York is the market with the largest online demand for the brand, which made bringing the pop-up store to the city a no-brainer.

"From the product aesthetic, to the fashion, to the function, it suits this market," he said. "We're bringing sustainability to the consumer in an authentic way, and this market is ready for it."

All raw materials used in Nau products are either renewable or made of synthetic polyesters created from recycled material, but are designed to be long-lasting and convenient. They use classic lines and colors to ensure that each item has a long life.

"If something is sustainable, but it's cool for one season and then you never wear it again, you've negated the sustainability factor," said Mark Galbraith, general manager of Nau. "It doesn't have a useful life."

The products are useful, yes. But cheap? Not exactly. Nau's outerwear can run as much as $450, and merino and cotton shirts are around $100. It's pricey, especially in this economy, but the Nau team says these items will fit any part of life.

"People tend to assume that if it's sustainable, it's a little granola," Galbraith said. "But we apply our thinking to an urban lifestyle. Throw it in a bag, wear it to dinner--you don't have to get in costumes for every thing you do."

For example, the women's Modus Trench ($425) is water- and wind-proof, but design-wise, it's suitable for an evening out. Galbraith demonstrated to me how, if you roll it up, it really is small enough to throw in a handbag.

Seabury said that above all, he hopes the store, which will stay open until December 31, makes people actively think about sustainability. "We're really putting the brand and our product in a leadership position to be an educator," he said, adding that the store will generate interest by hosting private events, fundraisers, and public events with live music and art each week.

"Our ideals are behind everything," Galbraith added. "The world doesn't need another clothing store, but someone that can look under every rock and say, 'how can we do it better?'"

Demi-God of Art Designs Bridge

Cliff Kuang — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:00:08 EST

Olafur Eliasson's design for a Copenhagen footbridge hides a subtle social agenda.

Recently it was announced that Olafur Eliasson--a giant of contemporary art--was set to design a bridge in Copenhagen, and we've just received pictures of the project.

When it's completed in 2012, the 32-meter Cirkelbroen ("circle bridge") will connect Christianshavns Kanal and Applebys Plads, via a loopy, winding path. The span will also provide the final link across the many canals of Copenhagen's inner harbour. Thus, the entire route will become traversable by foot or bike.

Eliasson might be best known for his Waterfalls project in New York, which was up last summer. But that project didn't give a very clear idea of what his main obsessions are--he's less into creating public spectacle than tweaking our perceptions in subtle ways.

For the bridge, his idea was to create a span with no straight path through--instead, it's a series of five circular platforms. Rather than speeding people along, is slows them down, and creates a meandering public space. Visually, the masts of the platforms are meant to evoke a sailing ship, an icon of the city's roots as a trading harbor. The entire project is expected to cost DKK 34 million ($6.8 million).

If you're curious, here's a couple of pieces that made Eliasson famous in the art world. The first was gigantic indoor sun and mirrored ceiling that he installed in the cavernous main hall of London's Tate Modern:

Another is the fantastically beautiful and nearly impossible-to-photograph Beauty, which consists simply of a misting mechanism, a spotlight, and a darkened room. When you're inside it, it seems like you're walking through a rainbow-colored ghost:

Wonderwall's New Godiva Outpost in Toyko

Cliff Kuang — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:00:38 EST

In Japan, Wonder Wall is the go-to firm for dramatic, big-ticket interior design. Their newest project, in Tokyo, is the Godiva Chocoiste flagship store in Tokyo's Harajuku district.

The biggest draw is the second-floor ceiling, which looks as if it's dripping in chocolate. The entire facade is open to the street, so you can see the simultaneously goofy and swank interior at once: patrons eat their purchases under the chocolatey ceiling while shop clerks scoot around the sleek space below.

Checkout Vidafine for more pics, and don't miss Wonder Wall's beautifully designed Web site.

[Via NotCot]

Do Solar Curtains on Buildings Make Sense?

Ariel Schwartz — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:30:38 EST

Forget the Iron Curtain--we'll all be living behind solar curtains if Konarka Technologies has its way. The organic solar cell company has teamed up with Arch Aluminum and Glass to test out so-called "solar curtains," or walls of solar panels integrated into buildings. The curtains, which are made out of Konarka's plastic solar film and encased in glass, are certainly attractive. But do they make sense?

Konarka's pilot project will take place at an Arch office building in Tamarac, Florida, where the south and east-facing walls will be covered in solar cells. The cells are expected to generate 1.5 kW of power for the facility, but panels of Konarka's plastic cells only have 3% efficiency (compared to 22% for ultra-efficient silicon cells). Add in the high costs of installation, electrical wiring, and maintenance, and the solar curtains hardly seem worth it.

That's not to say we should give up on building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) forever. Konarka claims that it has produced cells in its lab that get up to 6.4% efficiency. These cells could one day be commercialized. Konarka and Arch will find out potential manufacturing and installation costs for the solar curtains once the pilot project is over, but for now, we should probably remain content with rooftop solar.

[Via Greentech Media]

New EU Cookie Law Smacks Of Windows Vista's Constant Nagging

Chris Dannen — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:00:04 EST

Regulators in Europe have approved a new law that would require users to approve each cookie stored by their Web browser. Cookies are little informative tags that tell a Web site details about your last visit there.

The EU Council chambers in preparation for a meeting in October, courtesy of the EU Council.

The law contains a caveat for cookies that are "strictly necessary," referring to those that help a user maintain an online shopping cart, for example. But all other cookies will prompt a barrage of pop-up approval dialogues, perhaps reminding users of the over-active super-ego of Windows Vista. Microsoft's new version of Windows aims to ameliorate the barrage of approval requests.

The law could also bruise online advertisers, whose ad modules collect click-counts and other analytical data that help to determine pricing. The Wall Street Journal suggests that the impracticality of the cookie law went unnoticed because of a "bigger argument" about a new "three strikes" law being considered by the EU Council. That law would allow authorities to punish peer-to-peer piracy by cutting off a user's Internet access.

Forget the Interview Pipeline, Find Job Candidates Before You Need Them

Nick Corcodilos — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:30:04 EST

A business says it needs to hire great people. Yada, yada, yada. No problem, go for it, some might say. But an Ask The Headhunter reader insists on more specifics:

Q: Hiring great people is a noble goal but it raises two challenges: how to attract candidates with those rare, valuable qualities into your pipeline, and how to identify them in the interviewing process when everyone is telling you how talented, motivated, curious, and ethical they are. Thoughts on that?

Let's talk about two fatal flaws in the entire recruiting/hiring process. First, we try to attract people when we need them. That limits us to cold, calculated, rushed recruiting methods that don't work well. Worse, these methods stimulate rote responses from candidates to trigger our interest in them.

We've all seen it--candidates with the "I'm your (wo)man" smile on their faces. To recruit effectively, we need to attract good people long before we need them, so our relationships will be based on common interests, not common desperation.

Second, we can try to "attract people into our pipeline" all day long. But the ones we want aren't out looking for pipelines. We must find and enter their pipelines, their career tracks, the critical points in their work lives. People make career changes only at certain points. We can be there waiting for the best when they are ready, or we can be out chasing people who are chasing jobs.

My suggestion: The people we want are all around us on discussion threads throughout FastCompany.com and other work-related forums, talking shop. Talk shop with them, get to know them, establish your own cred and you'll always have someone to turn to when you need help. The Zen of it is this: You can't really identify the people you want in the interview process. At that point, it's too late, and it's all too scripted. You identify them on the street, on the job, and in the throes of dialogue they're engaged in with their peers. Then you follow them and get to know them. Talk to them about a job when you know them well enough. Not when the pipeline needs to be filled.

Yada, yada, yada, the pipeline needs to be filled. Do it long before you need to hire anyone.

Nick Corcodilos is the author of How to Work with Headhunters. He also writes the free weekly Ask The Headhunter Newsletter. Ask The Headhunter is a registered trademark.

SightUnseen: Lifestyles of the Young and Designy

Cliff Kuang — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:00:07 EST

A new design blog provides an all-access pass to the lives of designers.

Today marks the launch of a new kid on the design-blog scene: SightUnseen, dedicated to the lifestyles and obsessions of designers.

The site was created by Monica Khemsurov and Jill Singer, two former editors at the hoary design bible I.D., and designed by Thomas Porostocky, another I.D. alum best known for his infographics for Good, Wired, and Seed.

The site's a bit different from most others out there: Rather than documenting only new work, it's dedicated mostly to the lifestyles of designers--that is, the stuff that inspires them; the stuff they buy; the insides of their homes, studios, and factories; and just plain-old goofs, such as Dominic Wilcox's fantasy designs for celebrities.

Check it out--fun stuff for anyone interesting in peeking behind the often forbidding facade of modern design.

*Full disclosure, as a former editor at I.D., I worked with Singer and Khemsurov, and I also donated to their Kickstarter drive, which sought to raise money for the launch. Yes, the design-journalism world is very small.

Hawaii's Deep Blue Solution to A/C Woes

Ben Paynter — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:30:22 EST

The design is complex, the island logic simple: Find a cheaper way to cool tropical buildings and you can spend less on imported oil. All that money saved on overhead means--Aloha!--more clam shells for everyone to dump back into the economy.

That's the $200 million gamble going on in Honolulu right now, where Honolulu Seawater Air Conditioning just got the green-light to build one of the most elaborate "ocean thermal" projects in the country. By 2012, a complex network of pipes extending five miles off shore and 1,800 feet deep will begin pumping frigid deep sea water to help chill downtown office buildings.

Though variations of the concept have been tried at Cornell University and in Toronto and Sweden (the National Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority uses a smaller version of the technology to save about $4,000 a month), this is a big deal for Honolulu, where the confluence of steep plane tickets and a steeper cost of living means 10.5% fewer people visited the state as a whole in 2008. The drop-off cost hotels a whopping $156 million and merchants millions more in lost surfboard rentals and stagnant puka-shell necklace sales. Things have rebounded a bit, visitors are reportedly spending far less freely (PDF file). Also, Hawaii imports more than 90% of their mostly oil-based energy needs from other mainlands, racking up the highest energy bills of any state in the union.

The deep water cooling process is far more simple than it sounds. As you can see from the diagram below, Poseidon's most abundant resource won't actually be pumped into buildings themselves; the 40-degree briny water will be transferred to a cooling station where its energy will help cool a small batch of fresh water, leaving less chance that a sprung gasket would flood cubicle farms like a beached Titanic. Of course any leak in the system would be a heck of a lot easier to mop up than, say, the Exxon Valdez.

The payout: An estimated 75% reduction in traditional energy consumption saving 147 million barrels of oil and 84,000 tons of carbon dioxide, annually. Over time, the millions potentially saved on utility bills can be injected back into the vacation economy.

Of course, to ensure ends meet, the Honolulu projects seems to have been purposely under-built. HSAC President Bill Mahlum estimates his pipes pump about 28,000 tons, enough to cool about 40 buildings, depending on their size, but Honolulu's shoreline actually has capacity for more like 45,000 tons of usage, so those who don't sign up early will likely miss out.

Sadly some condo rental owners who tried to develop their own quick fix in recent years--newer construction residential buildings with individual air-conditioning systems that can be shut down when the tourist season slumps--won't have the centralized infrastructure to opt in. And continuing to rent those places might soon get harder if competing resorts take advantage of the money-saving deep water tech. Mahlum has already expressed interest in running another pipeline just a few miles away to the luxe resort mecca Waikiki.

[Photo by Chris Chappelear]

Joule Biotechnologies Figures Out How to Make Fuel from Air

Ariel Schwartz — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:00:18 EST

It seems impossible, but biofuel startup Joule Biotechnologies claims that it has successfully produced fuel out of thin air--sort of. The company's mysterious engineered microbes require just sunlight and CO2 to squirt out ethanol, diesel, or other hydrocarbons.

Joule's Helioculture process uses photosynthetic microbes placed in a non-freshwater solution. The organisms capture sunlight and produce "Joule liquid energy," which is similar to biofuel but isn't derived from biomass.

Unlike similar algae fuel solutions, Joule's process doesn't require feedstock or fresh water and can be conducted on non-arable land. The process also produces a whopping 20,000 gallons per acre, compared to 400 gallons per acre for corn ethanol. According to Joule, this is all possible because of the discovery of genes inside its proprietary microbes that allow for the direct synthesis of alkane and olfin molecules--the chemicals involved in the composition of diesel fuel. From there, it's easy to generate ethanol and other types of fuel.

Sound too good to be true? Some people think so, but Joule claims that it has already generated fuel using its process in the lab. Next up: testing out the process in a pilot plant by 2011. At the very least, we don't expect Joule to run out of money any time soon--the startup was founded by Flagship Ventures CEO Noubar Afeyan, and it has raised an undisclosed amount of money from the firm.

[Via Gas 2.0]