Fast Company

Google Chrome Updates to Version 6, Slims Down Even More

Dan Nosowitz — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 03:48:52 EST

Google Chrome may have been late to the browser game compared to Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari, but in two short years it's managed to become a formidable option--maybe even the best browser around--and is gaining market share fast (up to 7.5% these days).

The most notable new features include a streamlined UI, form autofill, and extension syncing. The UI change is what will hit most users first. The already-sleek UI is trimmed down even more, reducing the two menu icons (the wrench and paper page) into just the one, and moving the "bookmark this page" icon into an interior menu.

Power users, or those who jaunt back and forth between computers, will love the extension sync feature, which keeps all of your extensions handy no matter what machine you're using. Extensions are synced just like bookmarks, preferences, and themes--just sign in, and it's like being at home. Same with the autofill form feature, making it easier to fill out the many forms that require all the same information.

The changes may be minor, but they're all welcome. If you haven't checked out Chrome, I'd really recommend it--it's my personal favorite browser, thanks to its speed, flexibility, lightweight size, and the do-everything search bar. The newest version of Chrome can be downloaded for free here.

Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, can be followed on Twitter, corresponded with via email, and stalked in Brooklyn (no link for that one--you'll have to do the legwork yourself).

Facebook Tests Stalker-Friendly "Subscribe to" Feature

Dan Nosowitz — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:05:25 EST

Facebook is testing a new feature that allows any user to "subscribe to" another user. What with having hundreds of friends, multiple news feeds and only so many hours in the day, you might miss out on what your ex-girlfriend is doing these days--and that will not stand!

The "subscribe to" feature gives you notifications whenever someone to whom you've subscribed takes action on Facebook, from status updates to photo uploads to wall comments. The new feature doesn't seem to extend as far as Facebook Places check-ins--Facebook says it only applies to updated statuses and new content. Here's their statement:

Yes, this feature is being tested with a small percent of users. It lets people subscribe to friends and pages to receive notifications whenever the person they’ve subscribed to updates their status or posts new content (photos, videos, links, or notes).

AllFacebook notes that while this is sort of creepy for individuals, it could be used to great (and less weird) effect with public pages (eds. note: Please stalk Fast Company on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/FastCompany). Imagine following a band, and never missing when that band sends out a Facebook message with new tour dates. You could see how business and other groups would find the feature pretty useful, especially since it distills the true fans from the casual ones who join every page.

In the wake of pretty much continuous privacy scandals, it's unclear how Facebook will make this feature seem palatable. It doesn't exactly allow anything that wasn't possible before, but it makes obsession much easier. Perhaps Facebook would implement a way for users to approve subscribers?

In any case, the feature is merely being tested now, and may or may not ever be implemented for the general public. How do you all feel? Is this a valuable new tool, or a step over the line into creepiness?

Dan Nosowitz, the author of this post, can be followed on Twitter, corresponded with via email, and stalked in Brooklyn (no link for that one--you'll have to do the legwork yourself).

Pepsi Refresh Project Announces Do Good for the Gulf Finalists

Ariel Schwartz — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:50:58 EST

Earlier this summer, Pepsi announced that it would dole out $1.3 million in grants for Gulf oil disaster-related projects as part of the Refresh Project, Pepsi's online cause marketing campaign that asks participants how the company should give away cash. Now the wisdom of the crowd has whittled down potential Do Good for the Gulf grant recipients to 32 finalists.

The final projects span a variety of themes, but they all have one thing in common: They impact local communities and are implementable in a year or less. Among our favorites: a $250,000 grant for mental health services for oil disaster victims, a $50,000 grant to provide shelter to animals that lost their homes after the oil disaster, and a $25,000 grant to build seafood farms to help displaced seafood workers.

The winners won't be announced until September 22, but a Refresh Project representative tells us that the finalists are virtually guaranteed to get cash barring any paperwork issues.

Even after Do Good for the Gulf ends, the larger Refresh Project will continue. Pepsi plans to give out a total of $20 million in grants in 2010 in six categories: Health, Arts & Culture, Food & Shelter, The Planet, Neighborhoods and Education.

[Do Good for the Gulf]

Ariel Schwartz can be reached on Twitter or by email.

eBay's Shtick in a Box: Reusable Shipping Container Is Innovation Expo-Winning Idea

Ariel Schwartz — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:54:30 EST

EBay is perhaps the ultimate online destination for used goods, so it only makes sense that the site is taking its hand-me-down sensibilities a step further with the eBay Box: a shipping container designed to be sent from sellers to buyers and back until the container becomes a soggy heap of post-recycled mud. The box, which is made out of 100% FSC-certified material, features water-based inks and requires minimal tape to close.

The box idea was the grand prize winner at eBay's annual Innovation Expo, a celebration of creative ideas from eBay employees. Designed for "simple green shipping," eBay believes that a single box reused five times could save nearly 4,000 trees, 2.4 million gallons of water, and conserve enough energy to juice up 49 homes for a year.

EBay will send out a pilot run of 100,000 boxes in October to all sellers who request them. Recipients can log on to a special website to report on the status of their boxes (and track them as they move from place to place), and after a few months, eBay will evaluate the program and figure out how to proceed.

We love the idea, but have one little concern: bedbugs. The little critters are becoming an increasingly large problem in the U.S., and sending nook and cranny-filled boxes from house to house seems like an easy way to spread bedbugs far and fast. Let's hope we're wrong--this is an idea that deserves expedited delivery.

Ariel Schwartz can be reached on Twitter or by email.

Google's Eric Schmidt Shown as Perverter of Privacy on Times Square Jumbotron

Ariel Schwartz — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:06:09 EST

Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto has become increasingly controversial in the past year as the Internet giant made private GMail contacts public with Google Buzz, collected personal information from Wi-Fi networks in Street View vehicles, and most recently teamed with with Verizon to hammer out questionable net neutrality policies. While it's possible (and maybe even probable) that none of this was done with malicious intent, Google's capacity to invade our privacy is scary. That's why Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, took to Times Square this week to protest Google's privacy invasions.

Consumer Watchdog's Times Square ad, which is visible on the 540-square-foot Jumbotron, portrays Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a creepy character in a Google-branded ice cream truck that drives down a street while collecting personal information from children. Text at the bottom encourages viewers to text a telephone number for more information (spoiler: the text results in a reply asking for your name and email address to "help stop Google from invading your online privacy!").

It's a move that will draw attention to Google's ham-handed privacy blunders from people who might not have otherwise been aware of them. That's a good thing for consumers, but Google might want to gear up for damage control. Check out Consumer Watchdog's full investigation into Google here, and watch the Times Square ad below.

[youtube 7aoGKAkM0oM]

Ariel Schwartz can be reached on Twitter or by email.

Huawei Pulls a Nokia With "World's Most Affordable" Smartphone: Ideos

Kit Eaton — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:26:17 EST

Huawei, famous mainly for 3G computing peripherals, is trying its hand at smartphones--and it's latest effort is pretty distinctive: It's bringing the smartphone to entry-level markets.

Huawei doesn't mess around in describing the phone. The Ideos is championed as "an affordable smartphone powered by the latest iteration of Android 2.2." And one of the headline facts is its price: "Between $100 and $200, depending on the market."

The smartphone is slowly but surely taking over the handheld world, and Huawei could be accused of attempting to pull a Nokia maneuver by aiming at the lowest common denominator. Ideos, however, is designed to "redefine" the entry-level smartphone concept by "combining high-quality hardware and software with a high price-to-performance ratio."

Here's how Huawei is going to do it. The phone is going to be available in a bunch of colors (black, yellow, blue, and purple) to appeal to the stereotypical youth market. It's got the ability to act as a Mi-Fi-like Wi-Fi router for up to eight devices (versus the Mi-Fi's five). We're imagining a huddle of younger WoW players in a coffee shop here, making the most of someone's Ideos' 7.2Mbps download speeds. In the press info, Huawei highlights functions like voice dialing, voice navigation, and apps running off the SD-card as well as 70,000 applications on the Android Market--all features coming from adopting the Google operating system. And Huawei's trick has certainly been to refine the design of the hardware to keep component costs lower, and including the free OS will have helped with this. The company hasn't skimped though--even while the capacitive screen is just 2.8-inches, there's a 3.2-megapixel camera, GPS and 802.11 n wireless compatibility.

You know what? This kind of sounds like the Nexus One, reinvented.

To keep up with this news, follow me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter.

The Corporate Conscience

Seth Godin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:08:39 EST

There isn't one.

Corporations don't have a conscience, people do.

That means that every time you say, "It's just my job," or "My department has a policy," or "All I do is work here," what you've done is abdicated responsibility--to no one.

It's convenient and even comfortable to blame the anonymous actions of many working in concert on a evanescent brand or organization, but that starts you on an inevitable race to the bottom. Organizations have more power than ever before. They are better synchronized, faster, and possess more tools to change the economy and the people in it than ever before. And the only option available to the rest of us is for individuals to take responsibility (it's not given) for what they do and how they do it.

The very same tools that permit organizations to synchronize their efforts are now available to you and to me. I guess the question is: will we use that power to humanize the systems we've created?

PS It's not just about being a good citizen: when bad behavior comes back to hurt the company, it hurts you, too.

Reprinted from Seth's Blog

Seth Godin has written twelve books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. His latest book, LINCHPIN, hit the Amazon top 10 on the first day it was published and became a New York Times bestseller. His company, Squidoo.com, is ranked among the top 125 sites in the U.S. (by traffic) by Quantcast. Follow him at SethGodin.com or on Twitter @ThisIsSethsBlog.

The A4 Chip, Apple's Biggest Jewel

Kit Eaton — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:08:53 EST

Apple's special iTunes event was notionally about the snazzy new iPods and Apple TV, but it also reveals how much the company's future hinges on its house-brand ARM chips--the A4 silicon is now inside four keystone Apple gizmos.

When the iPad arrived, one of Apple's selling points was that it includes a custom processor--"custom silicon" as it was called. Apple's chip actually wasn't strictly its own, since it used licensed ARM architecture and is fabbed by Samsung, but the customization of the design is definitely a Cupertino affair. By having control over the design right down to chip level, Apple promises to deliver a vertically integrated product that is both good at raw computing power and consuming small amounts of energy from a device's battery.

When the iPhone 4 arrived this year, it wasn't much of a surprise to see the A4 in there: It has all of the same design requirements as for the iPad, and the computational power the A4 squeezes into the already-slick iPhone makes the device's performance a notable stand-out in the market. Using the same component also represents all sorts of economies of scale for Apple. It simplifies hardware-level coding matters, and the job of app writers, and Apple may even be able to negotiate on the unit price of the chips from the foundry as it'll be ordering so very many of them.

With yesterday's event, Apple launched a refreshed iPod Touch--containing, of course, the A4 chip. Everyone expected it, but Apple made sure to mention the fact. Then came the surprising "one more thing" announcement of the refreshed Apple TV, a tiny set-top box that runs a custom operating system (which has us wondering if iOS is hidden in there, somewhere, ready for a future update to bring the App Store to your TV) on top of low-power-consuming hardware... with an Apple A4 chip at the core.

With the exception of the iPod Nano, Shuffle and Classic all of Apple's small devices now run on the same processor. Apple's trumpeted it, aggressively patented it, and, apart from the manufacturing chain, is now no longer at the whim of another big company--and potential competitor--as it determines the upgrade path of its processors.

The Mac desktop line still relies on Intel's CPUs, of course. Apple took a huge step and switched from IBM Power PC architecture in 2006 after a 14-year run, so it's unlikely to change that very soon. But it seems inevitable that at some point, Apple will update its desktops using more powerful ARM-based designs--like the newly revealed Cortex A9 multi-core reference architecture--which could bring all sorts of benefits to Apple's cleverly multicore-centric OS X operating system.

Just as Apple has adopted an external style that extends across its entire product range, its silicon is now part of the company's design thinking as well. By the time the A5 (or A8?) chip arrives in 2011, it will be even more important to Steve's company.

To keep up with this news, follow me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter.

Singapore Stock Exchange Uses Peer Pressure to Encourage Sustainability Reporting

Jenara Nerenberg — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:55:05 EST

There is no mandate, and the government says it's simply making suggestions to companies listed on the SGX. So how can Singapore convince companies to adopt sustainability reporting? The answer appears to be public pressure.

The Singapore Stock Exchange, SGX, has put out a set of guidelines encouraging listed companies to adopt sustainability reporting. With a market cap of $480 billion, the securities exchange is a leading player in the Asia-Pacific region. The move by the tiny country appears to be a warming of its feet--the precursor to making sustainability reporting a requirement for all companies listed on the exchange. But for now, there is no mandate and the government says it's simply making suggestions. So how can the Singapore convince companies to adopt sustainability reporting? The answer appears to be public pressure.

The country has opened up the proposal writing process to the views of Singaporeans to get their feedback. "SGX is seeking feedback from the public on the adoption of sustainability reporting and its policy guidelines as a holistic approach towards corporate disclosure," according to the official release. "The Policy Statement and Guide will be available on the SGX website."

So, you or your Singaporean friends and family have until October 29th to make your views known, by emailing your suggestions, demands, comments, jokes, etc. to sustainability@sgx.com. Nothing like a little ol' peer pressure to get the country's leading companies to ramp up their sustainability efforts.

Sony, World Wildlife Fund Team Up to Crowdsource Green Tech - Using Sony Products

Ariel Schwartz — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:59:02 EST

Hot on the heels of GE's Ecomagination Challenge, a crowdsourced promotional effort to develop power grid technologies, Sony Europe has launched a promotional crowdsourcing venture of its own. Open Planet Ideas, a website launched in conjunction with the WWF and the design firm IDEO, is being billed as an "online community incubator for collaborative technology solutions to critical environmental issues."

Sony is asking participants to get inspiration from nine existing Sony technologies: wireless microphone, GPS, presence sensing, sweep panorama, peer-to-peer software, PSP Go, remote video monitoring, dye sensitized solar cells, and FeliCa (contactless wireless communication between two devices).

And the ideas have to be feasible using current technology. Sony explains:

We’re not trying to create new products here: that’s the job of our engineers and designers. The spirit of this challenge is what we call "the art of the possible." We think that the answers to some of our biggest environmental challenges could be solvable with the tools that we already have. All that’s needed is applying them in radically new ways.

To that end, Sony plans to release all information and documentation from the winning idea into the public domain. Because Sony is purely altruistic here--never mind that all the ideas involve Sony products and all of the advisers who will judge the entries are Sony employees.

And unlike GE's $200 million prize bounty, Sony won't be offering any cash.

Can a crowdsourced competition without a major reward really take off? We'll find out soon--submissions will be accepted from October 11th until November 29th.

[Open Planet Ideas]

Ariel Schwartz can be reached on Twitter or by email.

M2Z's Free, Wireless Nationwide Broadband Plan Killed: Thank the FCC

Kit Eaton — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:12:48 EST

Despite a seemingly stout business plan, and all the financial, social, and educational benefits it would bring, the FCC's just turned down M2Z's application for a coast-to-coast free wireless broadband system.

The FCC did not elaborate on why it turned down a plan from a new company called M2Z which would've created a U.S.-wide, free wireless broadband network. M2Z's trick was going to be to use a spare bit of the radio spectrum, the 2GHz "AWS-3" band, and earn itself cash by embedding ads in its free Net service as well as licensing out part of the spectrum it would then be controlling for other commercial uses. The entire nationwide system could've been up and running inside 10 years, and 5% of M2Z's revenues would've gone straight to the Treasury.

Ignoring all the potential commercial benefits, educational uses, opportunities for new businesses to spring up that utilized the free network, and all sorts of enterprising stuff that isn't even dreamed up yet, the FCC has finally ceased its deliberations, and has completely denied M2Z's application. Early on, the plan ran afoul of puritanical concerns about how it could be used for viewing pornography--but the FCC's intention to filter porn ran into opposition with civil liberties groups.

The FCC is known to have heard complaints about M2Z's plan from existing wireless carriers. Though M2Z's network would've operated at under 1 mbs peak speeds--meaning it was very slow by today's standards, and probably snail-like by tomorrow's--its free pricing may well have tempted many folks away from spending cash with an established ISP. Those carriers are now reported to be pleased with the FCC's decision, though they argue it's in line with the greater National Broadband Plan. Whenever that actually gets off the ground.

To keep up with this news, follow me, Kit Eaton, on Twitter.

Burger King Going Brazilian in $4 Billion Buyout

Jenara Nerenberg — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:16:14 EST

An investment firm backed by a trio of wealthy Brazilians is buying the fast food franchise.

Burger King is being turned over to Brazilians and becoming a private company. The New York Times first reported on the sale of the global fast food giant to the investment firm 3G Capital, which is based in New York but funded by Brazilians. Several news outlets are now reporting that the deal will be finalized today, pending any last minute problems. Brazil is a rapidly developing "BRIC" country, and not the first to purchase an American company--although few acquisitions have cut as close to Main St. as this one.

It turns out there is a precedent: 3G previously had a 6.7 percent stake in Wendy's, and 3G's principals (a trio of wealthy Brazilians) are also largely responsible for the merger of InBev and Anheuser-Busch. The buyout is viewed by Burger King as a "turnaround opportunity, one that draws upon the operational expertise gained in its beer and retail investments."

Burger King has more than 12,000 restaurants around the globe, but the economic downturn has hurt sales in the U.S. and Canada this year. The chain last changed hands in 2002, when TPG, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners and Bain Capital bought the King from the U.K. spirits behemoth Diageo. Since then, the chain has pursued an aggressive strategy of expansion into international markets including China, Russia, and Latin America. And the Brazilians are not Whopper virgins: There are already 93 restaurants in the country.

And 3G, should it succeed in acquiring Burger King, would continue the chain's international build out. America's fast food takes over the world yet again, through burgers and beer.

If Apple's Ping Is Social, Then Where's My Facebook Friends?

Austin Carr — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:26:00 EST

Yesterday, Steve Jobs boasted of iTunes' 160 million users when introducing Ping, Apple's new social music network. But anyone wading into the service this morning will find an empty community save a few artists (Lady Gaga, Yo-Yo Ma) and a few potential followers (Rick Rubin). Sure, early adopters are always a small crowd--but this is Apple, not some startup. Shouldn't we expect Ping to be a vibrant social network? Shouldn't there at least be some auto-integration with my other networks, namely Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter? Apple thinks so--the company even claims that iTunes 10 users can connect to Facebook. Yet that connection is nowhere to be found. Here's why.

First off, how does one find "People" on Ping? When downloading iTunes 10, Apple suggests on its website: "Find even more music fans with a quick search, by sending email invites, or by connecting to your Facebook account." But since a Facebook account can't be connected as promised, one must depend on quick search (impossible to search for friends when they are not registered on Ping) or email invites (a pretty desperate method to finding buddies). So where did that Facebook incorporation go?

Answer: Out the door because of Facebook's demands for "onerous terms," says Steve Jobs. All Things D caught up with Jobs yesterday at the press conference, and asked why Ping didn't have Facebook sharing or linking--the process of syncing friends from another social network. Jobs explained that they had held meetings with Facebook for "a variety of unspecified partnerships" but that discussions had hit a dead-end.

Though it's unclear what Jobs meant by "onerous terms," it's possible that the talks had ended over the different usership of each service. Facebook's network is all about sharing; Ping's service is aimed at buying. That is, in order to register for Facebook, one needs an email address; in order to become a member of iTunes, one needs a credit card. Ping's central purpose is to foster more song purchases through friend and artist recommendations. The question then becomes: If Facebook allowed its users to port over to Ping, would they have to add credit card information? Would Facebook have access to this data? Does Apple even want Facebook co-opting its users (and vice-versa)?

The same can be said of other networks such as Google and Twitter--but what about MySpace? It's interesting that throughout this Facebook-Ping debacle, no one has even brought up MySpace integration. The once-popular social network made a name for itself through music and music streams, but if Ping works--providing users a streamlined social network with artists and one-stop shop for music and other media--MySpace will become irrelevant (if it isn't already). Still, it's no surprise that MySpace and Facebook are popular among record labels and artists--wouldn't an incorporation with the service instantly bolster Ping's artist social network? Currently, its artist community is limited and eclectic: U2 and Katy Perry, Linkin Park and Jack Johnson, Diddy and Taylor Swift. Wouldn't iTunes want to expand that part of its social network?

Ultimately, Ping isn't focusing on Facebook or MySpace integration as much as it is focused on selling music. Ping is an inherently store-based social network--it cannot even be accessed without first going through the iTunes store. Most importantly is iTunes' huge user-base of registered credit card members--the service boasts more than even PayPal! How many could Facebook possibly have?

Thus Ping is the more exclusive of the two social networks. And until Apple opens up its borders to other social networks such as Facebook, Gmail, MySpace, and Twitter, "exclusive" will just have to remain a euphemism for "empty."

The Downside of Clean Natural Gas: Contaminated Water

Ariel Schwartz — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:37:59 EST

Natural gas is undoubtedly a practical source of electricity generation; it's plentiful, burns relatively clean, and produces minimal carbon dioxide. All good things--unless you happen to live near a drilling site with irresponsible owners. ProPublica reports that residents of Pavillion, Wyoming are being told not to drink their water and to even use ventilation when showering so as to avoid an explosion. Because apparently, they're all lathering up with benzene, phenols, metals, naphthalene, and methane.

Test results from the EPA are pretty ugly: oil compounds were found in 89% of all drinking wells that were tested in the area, methane was found in 7 wells (out of 23) and 2-butoxyethanol phosphate (a fire retardant and plasticizer) was found in 11 of the wells.

The EPA claims that it doesn't know the cause of the contamination, but EnCana, the oil and gas company responsible for most of the wells in the area, says it will pay for the cost of residents' drinking water--even though it won't admit to having anything to do with the contamination.

This is, of course, something that could happen at any drilling site. But it's a sobering reminder that natural gas is not a sustainable source of energy, and it can be dangerous, to boot.

Ariel Schwartz can be reached on Twitter or by email.

Are You Working With Energizers or Rotten Apples?

Robert I. Sutton, PhD — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:57:05 EST

In this excerpt from GOOD BOSS, BAD BOSS: How to Be the Best ... and Learn from the Worst, Robert Sutton tells us about those employees that elevate an office, and those deadbeats and downers that can destroy a company.

Bring on the Energizers

Rob Cross studies social networks: how information, ideas, and influence travel through the Web of relationships that compose every team and organization. A few years back, Rob and his colleagues were designing a survey to map the connections among employees within several big companies. They wanted to identify what kinds of employees were top performers and brought out the best in others. They hypothesized that people who were renowned for having expertise, spreading technical knowledge, and best positioned to gather and weave together information from others would be seen as top performers. At a professional services firm they were studying, an executive argued they were missing something:

We have some of the brightest consultants in the world here. But some are more successful than others, and it has much more to do with what I call buzz than a slight difference in IQ. Our high performers create enthusiasm for things. ... They create energy, and even though this is intangible it generates client sales and follow-on work as well as gets other people here engaged in and supportive of what they are doing.

Inspired by this insight, they added a simple question to their survey: "People can affect the energy and enthusiasm we have at work in various ways. Interactions with some people can leave you feeling drained while others can leave you feeling enthused about possibilities. When you interact with each person below, how does it typically affect your energy level?" The possible answers were: 1 = de-energizing; 2 = no effect/neutral; or 3 = energizing. The colleagues in their team or business were then listed, and each was rated by every coworker.

Rob and his fellow researchers were stunned by how strongly this "energy" question predicted performance evaluations and promotions, and whether people stayed with or left an organization. They also found that the most successful teams and organizations had networks filled with interconnected energizers. Cross and his colleagues have since dug into the kinds of people who are energizers and why they succeed. "Energizers" aren't necessarily charismatic and bubbly; on the surface, many are understated and rather shy. But all create energy via optimism about the possibilities ahead, fully engaging the person right in front of them right now, valuing others' ideas, and helping people feel as if they are making progress.

The late Gordon MacKenzie held a position at Hallmark Cards as "the Creative Paradox." MacKenzie was a successful designer, led innovative design teams, and taught inspiring creativity workshops to everyone from kindergarteners to CEOs. In Orbiting the Giant Hairball, MacKenzie described how he sparked positive energy when he was Hallmark's Creative Paradox:

I became a liaison between the chaos of creativity and the discipline of business. I had no job description and a title that made no sense, but people started coming to me with their ideas, and I would listen to those ideas and validate them. When you validate a person, what you're really doing is giving them power--like a battery charger.

Again, energizers don't need to be bubbly or exciting. When I think of a soft-spoken energizer, Lenny Mendonca comes to mind, a partner at McKinsey who has held senior positions including head of the strategy practice and chair of the McKinsey Global Institute. Before I met Lenny, my stereotype of McKinsey partners was they were smoothtalking egomaniacs. Lenny is exactly the opposite. I remember a great dinner that my colleague Hayagreeva "Huggy" Rao and I had with Lenny at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company (which Lenny owns). Huggy and I were touched by how encouraging and constructive Lenny had been about research we were pursuing. Huggy, an astute observer, pointed out how closely Lenny listened, how he saw possible value in every person and every idea and-- unlike the two of us--rarely interrupted. Huggy and I are just two of Lenny's fans; he has the same energizing effect on everyone who knows him.

Rotten Apples: Bad Is Stronger Than Good

Unfortunately, accentuating the positive isn't enough. The best bosses do more than charge up people, and recruit and breed energizers. They eliminate the negative, because even a few bad apples and destructive acts can undermine many good people and constructive acts. The case for reforming or, failing that, expelling the worst offenders is bolstered by Will Felps's research on "bad apples." Felps and his colleagues studied what I call deadbeats ("withholders of effort"), downers (who "express pessimism, anxiety, insecurity, and irritation," a toxic breed of de-energizer), and assholes (who violate "interpersonal norms of respect"). Felps estimates that teams with just one deadbeat, downer, or asshole suffer a performance disadvantage of 30 to 40 percent compared to teams that have no bad apples.

These rotten apples are so destructive because "bad is stronger than good." For most people, negative thoughts, feelings, and events produce larger and longer-lasting effects than positive ones. Research on romantic relationships shows that unless positive interactions outnumber negative interactions by five to one, chances the relationship will succeed are slim. When the proportion of negative interactions exceeds this "five-to-one rule," marital satisfaction goes way down and the divorce rate goes way up. Similarly, a study that tracked employees' moods found that the impact of negative interactions with bosses and coworkers on employees' feelings were five times stronger than positive interactions. Negative interactions (and the bad apples who provoke them) pack such a wallop in close relationships because they are so distracting, emotionally draining, and deflating. When a group does interdependent work, rotten apples drag down and infect everyone else. Unfortunately, grumpiness, nastiness, laziness, and stupidity are remarkably contagious.

The upshot is that as a boss, you can't wait very long to see if these destructive characters will mend their ways. You need to intervene quickly. If pointed and persistent feedback fails, do everything you can to expel the bad apple. A few years back, I was teaching student teams working with Wal-Mart to help frontline employees become more aware of the environmental impact of the products they sold. The project had tight deadlines and a high-pressure presentation for executives. One team complained that a member had missed most meetings and wasn't doing any work. When I talked to him, he admitted to "blowing off" his team because he was busy interviewing for Rhodes Scholarship and a job at Google--but insisted he was so talented that he deserved to stay on the team. This student thought he was so smart that he didn't need to do any work. But he was just a rotten apple. He dropped the class once I convinced him he was headed for a lousy grade. The team went on to do wonderful work, and the deadbeat did not get the Rhodes Scholarship or the Google job.

Are You Hiring and Breeding Greedy and Selfish Employees? Take the Quiz

This is an excerpt from GOOD BOSS, BAD BOSS: How to Be the Best ... and Learn from the Worst by Robert I. Sutton, PhD. Copyright © 2010 by Robert Sutton. Reprinted by permission of Business Plus, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Quiz: Are You Hiring and Breeding Greedy and Selfish Employees?

Robert I. Sutton, PhD — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:04:05 EST

For those managers worried they are staffing their teams with a bunch of jerks, we have this handy quiz! Answer truthfully and learn if you are a leader of obnoxious superstars.

EGOS Survey (Evaluation Gauge for Obnoxious Superstars)

Answer true or false to each statement below. The people who get ahead at my workplace:

say "we" but think "me." see their peers as competitors, even "the enemy." remove subordinates' names from good work before passing it up the chain. belittle others' triumphs and successes. hoard their ideas because, after all, there is no reward for sharing them with colleagues. are chronic credit hogs. stomp on others on the way to the top. often ask for help from colleagues but rarely return the favor. are world-class backstabbers, remarkably adept at destroying the reputations of peers, subordinates, and bosses whom they see as competitors. stockpile resources and won't share, no matter how badly others need them. routinely rip apart colleagues--not just their ideas, but their reputations and self-confidence, too. are such all-star ass-kissers that their superiors adore them, but they are despised by peers and subordinates. negotiate for more and more goodies for themselves but never go to bat for others. conveniently "forget" to invite colleagues to high-profile meetings. do what is best for themselves first and rarely what is best for their team or the organization. say nice things to their bosses' faces but rip them to shreds behind their backs. don't waste time teaching or mentoring others. are black holes of information: it only goes in, never out to colleagues. insist on being "in the loop" but don't return the favor. live the 30 Rock mantra--"I'm going to get mine!" Scoring the EGOS

Add up the number of statements that you marked as true. This isn't a scientifically validated test, but here is how I would describe your workplace:

0 to 4: Help others succeed or get the hell out. If you are telling the truth, your workplace selects and breeds unselfish stars, and reforms (or drives out) selfish creeps.

5 to 10: Help others succeed, but watch your back. Your workplace is at the borderline between anointing collaborative versus selfish stars. People collaborate and there are rewards for doing so, but enough selfish behavior happens that anointed stars grab goodies and credit for themselves and protect themselves against getting screwed--especially by their most selfish and devious coworkers.

11 to 15: Watch out for number one, otherwise you are screwed. Your people are playing a competitive, "I win, you lose" game every day. Selfishness and backstabbing abound, and collaborators are crushed by the system. Even the most naturally cooperative people learn to become selfish and do a bit of backstabbing in such places, otherwise survival is impossible.

16 to 20: Kill or be killed. You are in a dog-eat-dog world where the only way for people to get ahead is to treat their coworkers as enemies and to crush their spirits and reputations every chance they get. No one lasts long in such a place without becoming an overbearing and selfish jerk who screws colleagues at every turn.

Are You Working With Energizers or Rotten Apples? Read the article

[Image courtesy of NBC]

Your Smartphone Will Soon Double as Your Wallet

Dan Macsai — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:27:30 EST

Photograph by Sue Tallon

The race is on to transform your smartphone into your wallet.

The Japanese call it osaifu keitai (cell-phone wallet). Flash your phone virtually anywhere you go for almost any purchase and it's automatically logged into a digital expense report. Eat frequently at McDonald's? Tap your phone to pay and your all-in-one debit card/receipt tracker/loyalty program may instantly offer you 10% off.

Today, if you want to enjoy these benefits, you have to go to Japan. But after years of talk, wireless carriers, banks, startups, and handset makers are now actively working to transform Americans' cell phones into mobile wallets. The goal: to snag a share of the processing fees associated with the $3.2 trillion in annual retail credit-card charges, and to turn the $1.2 trillion in cash and check spending into digital transactions.

For the past five-plus years, Visa and MasterCard have used near-field communications (NFC) chips in tap-to-pay credit cards and key fobs. Now they're embracing mobile phones as well. Later this month, Visa will release an iPhone case (developed with Dallas-based Device Fidelity) that makes the handset compatible with tap-to-pay consoles. This follows MasterCard's similar entry this summer, when it started marketing tags (developed with Atlanta-based First Data) that stick to phones. "Consumers already use phones for online payments," says Josh Peirez, MasterCard Worldwide's chief innovation officer, referring to downloaded songs and software. "The goal is to get them comfortable doing the same thing in the physical world."

The interim offerings will have a decidedly short shelf life. Nokia has announced that it will include NFC chips in all its 2011 smartphones, effectively forcing Apple, Research in Motion, and other rivals to follow suit. "Stickers and stuff are welcome bridges," says Gerhard Romen, Nokia's director of mobile financial services, "but demand is growing, and full implementation is what makes a technology go forward."

Analysts estimate NFC will become ubiquitous within the next three to five years, which will give wireless carriers newfound leverage in determining the future of the mobile wallet. Indeed, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon are reportedly working on a joint-payments initiative. (All either declined to comment or couldn't be reached.) "Not only do they distribute the physical devices and 'own' millions of customers," says Philip J. Philliou, of payments-consulting firm Philliou Selwanes Partners, "but they also understand how to do payments -- billings, collections, maintaining accounts -- on a massive scale."

That said, carriers are unlikely to go it alone. In Japan, a primarily cash-based society, NTT DoCoMo took control of the mobile-wallet market by buying a bank. A likelier scenario in the United States -- where consumers already love to buy now, pay later -- would be for one or more carriers to partner with or even acquire a credit-card network, so as to take advantage of its brand equity, processing savvy, and retail relationships. "Together, they can offer unparalleled fraud protection," Philliou adds. "And when risk decreases, so does cost."

The excitement surrounding the mobile wallet's potential is so fevered that in addition to carriers and credit-card networks, now banks, tech giants, and startups are all eager to lay claim to some part of this potentially huge new ecosystem. PayPal already lets users send money via text message, and Osama Bedier, its VP of mobile platforms and new ventures, envisions a service that stores gift cards and alerts customers when they're near a merchant. This past summer, mobile startup Loopt launched its Loopt Star program, an über digital-rewards card for such brands as Starbucks and Gap. U.S. Bank is working with Infosys to move beyond a basic banking app: It's developing a location-based "concierge" so smart (and potentially creepy) that it can offer a shampoo discount to shoppers browsing the hair-care aisle. As NFC tech proliferates, says Dominic Venturo, U.S. Bank's chief innovation officer, "we'll be able to make a business case for services that are even better."

This year, eBay expects U.S. consumers to buy roughly $1.5 billion worth of goods using its smartphone apps. It's a short leap, then, to using that same handset to pay at the Target in your neighborhood shopping center. "From the customer's point of view," says Robert Hedges, a partner at the financial-services consultancy Mercatus, "the question is, When is the banking industry going to catch up with us?"

iFive: Hawking vs. God, Layoff-Happy CEOs, Euro Shopping Spree, Walkmen vs. iPods, Hurricane Earl

Kit Eaton — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:34:36 EST

Soon the TV you flick on to watch the news before your morning commute may be cinema-screen-sized and 3-D. Innovation, even when your eyes can't take the early-hour strain.

1. Stephen Hawking's new book is due out, and the physics guru has apparently changed his mind about God, according to an extract published in the Times U.K. today. Previously the prof had been ambivalent--physics didn't rule out a creator, he thought, even while it reduced his powers to significantly less than godlike. Now he's saying "It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." No comment from God was immediately available.

2. Want to earn more? If you're a CEO, fire people. Lots of 'em. That's one conclusion from a new survey revealing that CEOs of the 50 U.S. companies that ditched the most staff between late 2008 and early 2010 were paid 42% more than the average for their peer group. Oh, and as a bonus? It'll increase your profits too.

3. Europe is seeing the strongest rise in consumer spending in years. Those Eurozoners have been forking over more cash in shops than since the start of the global economic slowdown in 2007. Europe, so thinkers now think, is more resilient in resisting financial glitches elsewhere in the world than some had worried. Our theory: thanks to Europop they listen to less Justin Bieber.

4. Even while Apple is injecting more and more deliciousness into its iPod lineup, Sony Walkman sales are reportedly surpassing the mighty iPod in Japan. How is this possible? The consumer research firm did admit that some Japanese MP3 fans were holding out for the new iPods, however.

5. Hurricane Earl girded his loins overnight, and this morning he's set his sights on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Warnings are clanging from there all the way up to parts of Massachusetts, after weather experts wiggled their digital fingers in the air to sample the climate, and their computer models suggested Earl will spin Northwards today. Earl doesn't care much for models, of course, has been building up energy to blow winds at over 145 miles an hour. Batten down the hatches, Eastern Seaboard! Tropical Storm Gaston is close behind, and expected to become a hurricane on Saturday.