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Fast Company

Foursquare Steps Up its Location-Based Content With Zagat, HBO Deals

$\"\"$

Conscious of the advancing, diversifying competition to its location-based gaming/info services, Foursquare is not sitting on it\'s laurels: It\'s announcing new partnerships with some big-name media companies to add content to its system.

First up is a deal with Zagat, which\'ll add some named-quality reviews to Foursquare and act as a promotional vehicle: Foursquare players will be able to earn a special \"Foodie\" badge if they check into the right eateries--a lot like the special reward badges that the deal with Bravo kicked off in January. Zagat itself will get a boost, as its traditional stomping ground is invaded by crowd-sourced review systems like Yelp, and you could almost argue the deal with Foursquare is more of a \"if you can\'t beat \'em...\" maneuver than anything else.

There\'s also other news that Foursquare\'s about to enter into content deals with Warner Bros and HBO. Warner is promoting the new movie \"Valentine\'s Day\" while HBO is trying a promotional deal for \"How to Make It in America,\" and there\'s word that the History Channel is still mid-negotiation. Location-based tie-ins like Bravo\'s, Warner\'s and HBO\'s do make sense, of course, though they\'re effectively just the same kind of simple placement advertisements, designed to raise awareness of a new product, that have been used since advertising began ... but you can imagine that the History Channel\'s tie-up with Foursquare could yield some much more interesting results.

What\'s all this going to do to the Foursquare experience? At this point it\'s hard to tell, of course, but it is clear that Foursquare may have to tread a very careful line. If it goes in for this sort of extra content placements with too much gusto, it risks swamping the user-to-user mayorships competition that really drives the way it works at the moment. In this regard Foursquare is a little like Twitter, since they both lacked a way to tie their real-time status-updating tech to advertising--in Twitter\'s case this was a deliberate maneuver.

[via New York Times, VentureBeat, AdAge]

Eat-onomics With Gary Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farm

$\"Gary$ For the past 26 years, Gary Hirshberg and his organic yogurt empire known as Stonyfield Farm have been teaching consumers--and businesses--that sustainable living isn\'t only healthy, but profitable. The $340 million company is an industry leader and a driving force in the sustainable food movement.

Fast Company: What do you think is the biggest challenge facing sustainable food right now?

Gary Hirshberg: We don\'t know what real food is as a culture, as a society. We\'re not ready to pay for it. We have this illusion that food not only can, but should be, cheap. I call it an illusion because we do end up paying it, through our bodies and also our planet. We really have to restore to help the financial state of our farmers. There is a whole host of consequences to eating unsustainably, but we don\'t measure them because they\'re externalities. They don\'t appear on our income statements, but they\'re real costs. One in three kids born after 2000 will be a diabetic, and that\'s one in two if it\'s Hispanic or African American. Two-thirds of Americans are obese or overweight, and we\'re spending billions to deal with those problems. Those are the consequences of cheap food. It\'s not cheap at all.

FC: What does Stonyfield do to tackle that problem?

GH: For 26 years we have paid farmers fairly, and that makes us niche--organics right now is just 3.5% of U.S. food. The good news is, that\'s $23.5 billion of sales, but 3.5% of total food. What that means is, we\'re still a rounding error, we\'re still at the starting line. And price is the impediment there. There are a thousand reasons to eat sustainably or organically. There\'s only one not to, but it\'s a big one.

We pay our farmers anywhere from 60% to 100% more than what conventional farmers get paid. But it\'s very difficult for us to charge our customers 60% to 100% more, so we end up subsidizing that ourselves, either with lower profits or just spending less on advertising. The fact we pay our farmers correctly, it changes the entire business model.

FC: If you could only make one recommendation to consumers regarding sustainable food, what would it be?

GH: When you shop, you\'re really voting for the kind of world you want. What we should understand is, whether you\'re in the airport, in a supermarket, in a convenient store or a restaurant, every time you select one item, it has a ripple effect far, far, far beyond that momentary product. It is power. We should use that power for good. I\'m living proof of that. We started with seven cows. And millions and millions of people have voted with their dollars for Stonyfield, and now it\'s a $340 million company. We are what we eat, but more importantly, we are what we buy.

FC: What did you eat for breakfast today?

GH: You\'ll be totally shocked. I had my wife\'s homemade granola and a Stonyfield Oikos plain yogurt. Shocking, huh?

Read more of Eat-onomics, part of our Inspired Ethonomics series:

Paul Willis of Niman RanchDave Corsi, VP of Produce at WegmansRoger Doiron, Founder of Kitchen Gardeners InternationalMike Yohay, CEO of Cityscape Farms

Infographic of the Day: Your Computer Use, Visualized Like a Jackson Pollock

You spend all day clicking a mouse. What\'s that look like?

$\"\"$

There are lots of heat maps of websites, showing where people\'s clicks and eyeballs go when they arrive at a page. But this is the first app we\'ve seen that lets you build one for yourself. Designed by Anatoly Zenkov and available on a Mac or PC, it\'s dead simple: You just run the app, minimize the window, and go about your business. The tracks show your mouse path, and the circles show where your pointer lingered--stopping points where you were working on the keyboard, away from the computer, or immersed in content.

You could almost use this as an ad-hoc tool for honing your site\'s UI, since it allows you to see exactly how people are interacting with a webpage or an app. If the app could track which activity you were involved in--and color code accordingly--it would be even cooler.

But the current version still paints a pretty picture of the way you use the web. As Flowing Data writes, \"In the end, you get this image that looks something like a Pollock.\"

For more Infographics of the Day, click here.

[Via Feltron and Flowing Data]

Why You Should Start a Company in… Austin

It used to be, if you were serious about starting a tech company, you went to Silicon Valley. But emerging entrepreneurial hubs around the country are giving startup aspirants options. In this series, we talk to leading figures in those communities about what makes them tick. Here, part five of our series.

$\"Seattle\"$

Seattle has Microsoft millionaires; Silicon Valley has--well, all kinds of bazillionaires. In Austin, they\'re called \"Dellionaires,\" after the local computer company that made them rich. But Dell isn\'t the only big company to come out of Austin. The city can also boast that it is the land of Whole Foods, Tivoli, and SolarWinds--and a launch pad event for hot new tech companies in its annual South by Southwest conference. Twitter captured the buzz at the event in 2007; last year, Foursquare was all the rage.

But when the Web site AustinStartup declares in its tag line, \"Ditch the valley, head for the hills,\" it\'s talking about more than just a smaller alternative to Silicon Valley. Located in the state capital, Austin\'s tech community has leverage when it comes to state initiatives that help support startup growth. And it\'s a good testing ground for government-related tech. It has also helped that Austin has a strong chamber of commerce, which sought to bring tech companies like IBM and to the region in the 1970s and 1980s, seeding the South with a source of tech talent.

Recently, Bryan Menell, publisher of AustinStartup and a director at The Dachis Group, spoke to FastCompany.com about what makes Austin\'s startup scene unique.

What makes Austin a great place for startups?

I think it\'s a combination of things. We have a pretty low cost of living in Austin. At the same time, there\'s a really high quality of life. The amount of home that you can buy here is much better than most places and we have nothing but land. But also there\'s the outdoors and then the sort of cool elements in the city, like South by Southwest. And so it just has those combinations and there\'s also a great kind of entrepreneurial ecosystem that we built over the years.

We have a large leading venture capital firm in town with Austin Ventures. Also Austin is a state capital and we have a huge university here with the University of Texas in Austin, which keeps a steady pool of really young smart people coming into the workforce all the time. So it\'s a real unique mix of state government and young smart kids.

Also, there is a state fund--they call it the Emerging Technology Fund, which is meant to help attract and fund technology companies.

How is it helpful to be located in the state capital?

Well, from a global city perspective, it provides a big base of jobs. The state government\'s going to be a big employer around Austin. And then there are just places where government meets technology. We just launched what\'s called the Texas Tribune, which is a brand new experiment and a very transparent bipartisan reporting of state government, so it\'ll be interesting. I work six blocks from the capital, so it provides interesting opportunities to sort of lobby the government around adopting technology and how to use new technologies for their benefit.

So Austin\'s great because of the quality of life, low cost of living, state capital, university--are we missing anything?

Just this entrepreneurial ecosystem or some people call it sort of like the entrepreneurial scene here. There are enough different things that we have going on, different tech groups and organizations that make it into a scene and it\'s less important that any one become big or become important, but the fact that there are just so many provides enough diversity for you to find what you\'re looking for if you\'re in the hardware and chip technology or if you\'re in the social software or enterprise. There\'s enough of that sort of scene here that people can find the things they\'re looking for.

Are there particular types of startups that would do better in Austin than others?

Sure, I think Austin is known for enterprise software companies, Trilogy and Tivoli and now Spiceworks and Solar Winds going public, so that\'s a huge base that people really know [about] Austin. Gaming has been solid, too, for a long time. Companies are bought and sold here, so there\'s a lot of gaming and multimedia stuff going on.

B to C [business-to-consumer] has been kind of bigger in recent years, companies like Home Away and CreditCards.com, and then we have a few of the kind of social media like CheapTweet, so we\'re starting to see a variety of different things going on. And then there are emerging clean tech and wireless and biotech areas, so I think those are the ones, as well.

So if you\'re going to create a new technology that is going to do real time reporting from the head of a drill bit in the Black Sea on oil, Houston is really your spot for that, I think--enterprise software is big, gaming is big, we\'re having some success in B to C and then, clean tech, wireless, biotech--we\'re trying to get a teaching hospital here in Austin to let biotech take off, so those are the areas and some of them are very big. There are probably six or seven major areas for Austin.

What\'s happening in the entrepreneurial system that makes it sustainable?

Austin\'s tech history is relatively young. I think that the Chamber of Commerce and the city leaders made a really concerted effort to bring technology here in the 1970s and 80s. They wanted to bring jobs to Texas and they wanted to make them tech jobs and clean jobs. It started with IBM and getting IBM to build a big plant here. I believe it was their Selectric-typewriter plant that was here and then it evolved and now, there\'s an IBM operating system group here and I think the AIX--Unix group I think is here and so there\'s a huge IBM presence now. But it took a while to attract AMD and other chip companies to come to Austin to build that.

We\'re past that stage, so I think now it\'s sustainable because there\'s enough of an ecosystem to sort of fuel it, but it helps to have a constant influx of smart new graduates coming from the University of Texas who love Austin. And if they\'re going to school here, they want to stay here. I\'ve even met a lot of people who went to school here, graduated and maybe took a job in Chicago or New York or the Valley or whatever and stayed a couple years and then when it comes the time to sort of get married and raise a family, they go, \'Oh time to go back to Austin to go do that.\'

The Chamber of Commerce initiative is interesting. Has that changed in any way?

Now the Chamber of Commerce\'s thinking is totally different. Before, they wanted to attract companies here, so the jobs will sort of follow. But now, they all want to make the quality of life in Austin great and bring smart people here, and they figure if the people are here, the companies will follow.

So is there a particular profile of an Austin entrepreneur that\'s unique from others cities\' entrepreneurs?

I think they are different. I lived in the Silicon Valley for a few years and I think Valley entrepreneurs are much more progressive and I think they are sort of keeping a score financially. No matter how much money they make or how big the exit was or whatever, they recycle and go try the next thing.

And I don\'t think Austinites are particularly like that. I think they\'re a little bit more relaxed, a little bit more of sort of socially aware, too. I know some entrepreneurs who have grown their companies, they have a very intense experience, done well, had an exit and then they sort of disappear from the scene and they go focus on the quality of their life and spend time with their family and friends and maybe they will be an angel investor or be an adviser, but they\'re just not interested in hopping back into that really crazy 18-hour a day, six-day a week frenzy. I think in the Valley, they live off that. They totally love that stuff. So I think our profile is a little more laid back.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanepope/ / CC BY 2.0

What Apple and Amazon Job Ads Reveal About the iPad-Kindle Battle Ahead

$\"iPad$

Both Amazon and Apple have new advertisements for job openings at their companies that, if you read into the details just a little, give away many a detail on the upcoming Kindle versus iPad conflict. It\'s going to be very interesting.

First up, and most surprising if you\'re an e-ink fanatic, is that one of Amazon\'s new jobs is for a \"hardware display manager.\" That title isn\'t particularly revealing, but get this: The specific expertise Amazon\'s looking for--at a senior level--is in \"the LCD business\" where you must know the \"key players in the market.\" There are also two different advertisements for experts in wireless technology.

And you know what that adds up to, particularly when you remember Amazon also just bought a touchscreen manufacturer? It means that much of what we suggested about the future design of the Kindle 3 may soon come true. Amazon looks like it\'ll be giving the next Kindle proper WiFi, which implies better Net surfing powers, a touchscreen (finally ditching that awful keypad), and yes, you guessed it, an LCD screen--probably in color. We\'ve noted before that e-ink, in its current guise, may be great at displaying plain text, but it\'s appalling at the quick-change pixel rates needed for Web browsing, let alone video. And this suggests a radical transformation of the Kindle into more of a multi-function slate PC, which is clearly in response to the coming tide of tablet PCs of all shapes and sizes.

But mainly Amazon is reacting to the Apple iPad. And in that regard, here\'s something else to chew on: Apple itself is advertising for a new employee. It\'s specifically looking for a quality assurance expert to work in the iPad Media Systems team, and if you\'re interested in applying you\'ll have to demonstrate \"knowledge of digital camera technology (still and video)\" and \"familiarity with and interest in photography, video as well as media file formats\".

And given what we know about the suspicious camera space inside the iPad chassis, which almost perfectly fits the Webcam units currently used inside MacBooks, this has us wondering whether the iPad really does have a camera--or it did have one that was removed at the last minute, or if Apple\'s now planning for the iPad 2.0 to have really advanced image collecting powers.

Clearly both companies have an eye on the near future development of their portable tech, and unlike more traditional media channels it\'s harder to hush-up what\'s revealed in job placements--which you also have to have in place way ahead of time if you\'re to successfully recruit people at the right point in a product\'s development. Amazon looks like it\'s not going to surrender the Kindle\'s crown without a fight, and upstart Apple is already looking at next-gen technology to include in its newest all-singing, all-dancing slate device. Regardless of what happens in the next few months when the iPad launches, how these two giants are going to slug it out is going to make for some very interesting news.

[Via Electronista, MacRumors]

At Last, a Flight Check-In System That Doesn\'t Suck
$\"Planes,$

Ho-Yeol Ryu

A revolutionary software system could take some of the tech turbulence out of air travel.

The groans that follow a canceled flight announcement aren\'t just recognition of instant inconvenience but also anticipation of frustrations to come: waiting in line, watching ticket agents hammer keyboards, wondering why getting on the next flight has to be so difficult.

Don\'t aim your ire at the poor ticket agent. The problem, says ITA Software CEO Jeremy Wertheimer, is the system. If you were able to see things from the other side of the desk without causing a security incident, you\'d understand that ticket agents are trying to pull answers from antiquated green-screen airline systems that can require weeks and weeks of training and black-belt levels of keyboard dexterity. \"The airline IT platform was developed in the 1950s,\" says Wertheimer. \"Almost all these programs are still running on mainframes.\"

Enter ITA, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, company that is set to introduce a new system that could revolutionize the business of flying you from point A to point B and make life easier not just for you but also for ticket agents and airline execs. This summer, after five years of development and testing, Air Canada is set to implement the first phase of the program, tentatively dubbed the Passenger Services System (PSS).

Chances are, you already use ITA\'s technology. Founded by Wertheimer and fellow MIT alums Dave Baggett and Carl de Marcken in the mid-1990s, the firm had its first hit in 2001, when it became the search backbone for Orbitz. Its software now powers two-thirds of all online flight sales in the United States and provides pricing info for leading travel sites including Kayak and Hotwire. \"ITA uses really smart tech and algorithms to bring back fast and accurate data,\" says Krista Pappas, head of business development for travel at Microsoft\'s Bing, another data partner. \"It has a unique ability to put together results in a fast, efficient, and accurate way.\"

That\'s what the company has been trying to do for airlines with the new PSS. The key, says Wertheimer, is simply exploiting five decades of advances in computer science. Software is at the system\'s heart. The agents\' Sputnik-era screens are replaced by a Weblike experience, and passengers arriving at departure gates to find their flight canceled need only to check their BlackBerry or iPhone for a message from their airline with flight alternatives and even credits added to their online frequent-flier account for the inconvenience.

The PSS automates potentially complex tasks -- such as rebooking and rerouting passengers -- that were previously left to agents. That frees staff to focus on an increasingly important part of the airline business: selling customers ancillaries such as extra legroom, access to electrical outlets, and onboard food-and-drink credits -- pitches that can now be personalized based on detailed online profiles the system builds. \"Other industries have been successful in understanding their customers,\" says Erin Daly, director of product development at ITA. \"We\'re building a platform that allows airlines to do just that.\"

The building process has been long, even for the wonks at a company that revels in challenges -- ITA famously advertises itself on Boston\'s trains with programming puzzles that job seekers must solve even to have a chance at an interview. According to Wertheimer, the single biggest hurdle was making the system modular. ITA wanted airlines to be able to implement their reservation system one piece at a time, or mix and match different parts (say, just the shopping-related functions and the flight rebooking piece), which meant the company had to build separate components that would work both individually and in unison. Even the testing required heavy lifting: In order to run trials on the PSS, ITA had to build simulators of all the other systems it would interface with, because there\'s no expectation that all of the world\'s 5,000-plus airlines will soon implement it.

But ITA certainly hopes that at least a handful of them will buy soon. Longtime customer Air Canada is the only one that has signed on so far, but ITA says that deals with other airlines are in the works. While the privately held company is doing fine financially -- it has barely touched the $100 million in venture funding it raised in 2006 -- it has also had to devote half of its workforce to building the PSS over the past five years. \"Only occasionally do you get the opportunity to do something so crazy big,\" says Wertheimer. \"It\'s one of those projects where it\'s a millennium of work.\" Now he has to hope for an equivalent return on that investment.

Guess That Highway Sign!

Photographer Josef Schulz has a game for all the semioticians out there.

$\"Josef$

If Lacan and Rosenquist went on a road trip, they might come back with something like Dusseldorf-based photographer Josef Schulz\'s Sign Out photo series. Schulz traveled the country photographing highway signs and then photoshopped out all the text, leaving only bright colors and clean geometry. Can you tell what they are?

With Vegas\'s sensory overload back on the architecture scene, buildings becoming more and more media-friendly, and even Google maps updating its billboards, it\'s refreshing--and surreal--to see signifier-less signs (or is it the other way around?). Denny\'s has never felt so Zen.

$\"Josef$

[Via today and tomorrow]

Poster-Size Heroin Stamps Bring Awareness to Public Health Issues

$\"Heroin\"$

Heroin, like any product, relies on branding to tell its story. GOOD Magazine alum Liza Vadnai has teamed with the Stamp Collective to gather photos of heroin stamps (branded stamp-sized bags of heroin), blow them up to poster size, and eventually show them in an exhibit entitled \"Edge Markets: Heroin Use, Stamp Aesthetics, and HIV.\"

According to the Collective:

Blown up larger than life, these beautiful, fascinating and unsettling images of the stamps hint at a complex chain from supplier to dealer, the dynamics of drug markets and the story of the marketing of addiction on the streets of NYC. Their disturbing beauty compels the viewer to consider addiction and some of its preventable consequences (e.g. HIV and HCV infections, mass incarceration). The graphic images on the stamps mirror the political and social climate of the moment, creating a fascinating narrative.

$\"Heroin\"$

The project still needs more cash to get off the ground, however. $1,171 has been raised on microfunding site Kickstarter--$2000 is required before April 1 to make sure the exhibit has enough funding to cover production costs, an opening night event, and educational materials. You can learn more about the project (and donate) here.

[Via GOOD]

Work Smart: Mastering Your Social Media Life

$\"Work$

When you\'re active on the Web, keeping up with all your online accounts can feel like a full-time job. You want your high school friends to find you on Facebook, your co-workers to follow you on Twitter, and business associates to find you on LinkedIn. But there are only so many hours in the day, and too many Web sites to check in and update. The good news is that you don\'t have to hire a personal assistant to update all your profiles. With the right strategy, you can manage multiple accounts with minimal effort. Here\'s how.

First, make social network activity come to you. Pick your primary channel of communication and route all your notifications from various services to come through it. I call this funneling. For example, you check your email every day. Most every service can send you email alerts when you receive a message or get a new follower or comment. You can funnel Facebook messages, Flickr photo comments, Twitter direct messages, and LinkedIn questions all to your email inbox. (Don\'t forget: if email alerts come too often, change your settings to reduce the volume. On LinkedIn, for example, you can get a weekly digest email instead of instantaneous alerts every time.)

Second, interact with multiple services from a single interface. If some of your friends use Facebook and others use Twitter and others update their own blog, keep up with all those news streams in a single place like your RSS reader, or a tool like TweetDeck or FriendFeed. You can maximize your time even more and broadcast updates to multiple services in one shot. From TweetDeck or Digsby, for example, you can post a status update to both Twitter and Facebook at the same time.

Finally, split up your social media accounts for personal and business purposes. You don\'t want your boss to see that you\'re tweeting from the beach on a sick day, and you don\'t want your Mom to read about the hot date you had last night. Designate different accounts for different purposes and configure your privacy settings accordingly. While you don\'t want your social life to feel like work, keeping up a presence online and doing it well can pay off in business contacts and job leads down the road.

Gina Trapani is the author of Upgrade Your Life and founding editor of Lifehacker.com. Work Smart appears every week on FastCompany.com. Last week: Conquering Your Email Inbox.

The Treehugger\'s Ivory Tower Gets Plantinum LEED

Yale\'s high-performance Kroon Hall also pulls off the near-impossible feat of looking at home on a campus with legendary Gothic architecture.

$\"Kroon$

Kroon Hall, the recently completed home of Yale\'s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, has just been awarded a Platinum LEED--the highest designation offered by the U.S. Green Building Council. That\'s a great-big green feather in the school\'s cap: While LEED has grown to encompass thousands of buildings, Platinum is still quite rare in developments as big as Kroon, due to the added expense it requires. Solar panels and LEED certified architects don\'t come cheap--so it\'s pretty awesome to be Yale and have so many rich folks to tap for donations!

Designed by Hopkins Architects, Centerbrook Architects, and Atelier Ten Environmental Designers, the building\'s performance stats are impressive: It uses 81% less water and 58% less energy that a typical, comparably sized building. The first is thanks to a system that uses waste water from sinks and showers in the toilets and irrigation system; stormwater is also collected for the later uses, after being collected on the roof and grounds and being filtered by aquatic plants on site.

Meanwhile, much of the energy savings come from the solar panels covering the roof--these provide 25% of the building\'s energy needs, despite New Haven\'s often-grey weather.

$\"Kroon$

But really, what\'s kinda remarkable about the building is how well it suits Yale\'s Neo-Gothic architecture. It isn\'t super-sexy, but it solves problems with aplomb.

Academic buildings are always a difficult challenge: It\'s rare that a modern building--much less a green one--fits in so well to such an historic setting. (Just witness Columbia\'s hideously bland student center, Lerner Hall.) For example, the roofline manages to integrate the solar panels while being just interesting enough to draw attention away from them. It\'s not too wild, just nice looking, so it blends. Meanwhile, the exterior brickwork does a pretty solid job of fusing the modern and classical.

[Via Centerbrook and Jetson Green]

Portraits of Consumption: Visualizing the Statistics of Waste in America

Chris Jordan\'s body of photographic artwork focuses on the startling statistics of American consumption. Numbers are translated into visual representations--what would all the pollution in the ocean look like? How much space would five seconds of waste take up? Some of these depictions take up whole walls of gallery space. Here are some of the images from Jordan\'s latest book, Running the Numbers.

Stanley and Fiona Druckenmiller: The Most Charitable People in the U.S.?

$\"Stanley$

Slate recently released its annual list of the largest American charitable contributions, and the results may surprise you. Familiar faces abound, with Bill and Melinda Gates, Michael Bloomberg, and George Soros all taking top spots. But Stanley and Fiona Druckenmiller? John M. Templeton? Who are these people and why are they giving so much money?

Stanley Druckenmiller, the CEO of Duquesne Capital, has opted to give $705 million to the Druckenmiller Foundation, which supports medical research, education, and poverty-fighting initiatives. Just last year, the foundation gave a $100 million grant to New York University\'s Langone Medical Center to build a neuroscience institute.

The late John F. Templeton, dubbed \"the greatest global stock picker of the century\" by Money Magazine in 1999, offered up $573 million in 2009 for the Templeton Foundation. The organization was founded in 1987 to research relationships between science, religion, spirituality, and health. Templeton\'s latest cash infusion makes his foundation among the 25 richest grant-makers in the country.

It\'s hard to say if these are actually the most charitable people in the country--if you have $100 to your name and you give up $75 to charity, you have billionaire Templeton beat. Nevertheless, we can\'t begrudge anyone on the list for hoarding their wealth. Check out the top 10 below.

RANKDONORSOURCEOF WEALTHTOTALPAIDRECIPIENTS1Stanley F. and Fiona B. DruckenmillerFinance$705 Million$705 MillionDruckenmiller Foundation2John M. TempletonFinance$573 Million$573 MillionJohn Templeton Foundation3William H. (Bill) III and Melinda F. GatesTechnology$350 Million$350 MillionBill & Melinda Gates Foundation4Michael R. BloombergMedia and entertainment$254 Million$254 Million1,358 arts, human-service, public-affairs, and other groups5Louise Dieterle NippertFamily wealth, Investments$185 Million$185 MillionGreenacres Foundation6George SorosFinance$150 Million$150 MillionCentral European University,Fund for Policy Reform7Eli and Edythe L. BroadFinance, Real estate$105.2 Million$65.2 MillionBroad Foundations8J. Ronald and Frances TerwilligerReal estate$102 Million$2 Millionother groups,Habitat for Humanity International9William P. Clements Jr.Oil$100 Million$0University of Texas Southwestern Medical Foundation10Pierre and Pam OmidyarTechnology$92 Million$61 MillionHawaii Community Foundation,other groups

[Slate]

Why Brands Should Strive for Imperfection

$\"advertising\"$

We\'ve seen and heard this commercial a thousand times, the one with the flawless model posing in an ad for facial-blemish cream... an extremely powerful cleaner that removes every trace of dirt in one effortless wipe... the picture-perfect baby modeling the 100% waterproof diaper. In these scenarios, there\'s not even a hint of a single red spot, a stubborn stain, or a bedraggled mother. This is the story of the past 50 years of commercials, and they all have one thing in common: perfect brands in perfect environments.

But there is a strong case to be made for imperfection. Nothing is ever perfect, and even when it appears to be so, we are subconsciously looking for the flaw. Because our point of connection lies in imperfection--it\'s what makes something unique and, ultimately, authentic. Since perfection can now be had at the stroke of a digital brush, and the food we eat can be manipulated to look brighter and fresher, rounder, and yes, perfect, we have an increasing need to know what\'s real.

Let me share a story about what happens when a brand does give in to imperfection. Some months ago a major European cosmetic brand was forced to cut costs. They were not alone, but the only way they could do this was by reducing the length of their TV commercials. They decided to cut their regular 90-second spots down to 30 seconds. The big dilemma they faced was about which scenes to cut out. Instead of taking the conventional route--opinions and guesswork--they used a neuro-scientific tool based on EEGs whereby brainwaves of consumers were measured and evaluated. By scientifically analyzing the commercials they were able to assess which scenes were the most emotionally engaging.

To everyone\'s surprise, one scene--the one all the senior executives wanted to cut out--showed to be the most powerful of them all. It was a scene in which two ladies were huddled close, with one touching the other\'s cheek as she was crying. For want of a more diplomatic description, the client referred to it as \"the lesbian scene.\" Whether it was the notion of lesbians or crying women, the prevailing thought the client had was that this particular scene would negatively affect their brand.

But based on the EEG results, the 30-second commercial was cut and tested. To everyone\'s surprise it showed that not only were consumers substantially more emotionally engaged, but when asked to pick a product in a simulated retail store, they ended up \'buying\' 35% more of the brand. Consumers embraced what advertisers were scared would not be perfect enough for them. In fact you may very well recognize the commercial--it\'s still running.

When you stroll down the aisles of a supermarket, every product stacked on the shelves--from bread to bath salts--features perfect pictures of the perfect fruit or the perfect smile or the perfect cookie. But if you ask customers about the criteria they want their products to have, more and more will say they\'re looking for a product that\'s authentic. The thought of gigantic factories churning out millions of cookies, or food being injected with additives that boost the \'natural\' color or enhance the aroma, or irradiation processes that keep old fruit looking new--well, all these sophisticated processes just seem to generate feelings of enormous distaste and even horror in the minds of consumers.

I recently visited Trader Joe\'s where the luxury chocolate Ghirardelli was on sale. Ghirardelli was selling \"bulk\" chocolate chunks packed in large brown paper bags branded with old-fashioned handwriting. The bag contained hand-made chocolates cut into uneven pieces--some large, some very large and some tiny bits. There was no doubt that this looked as fresh and authentic as it could be --until I happened to buy two bags and coincidently discovered that all the uneven, hand- cut pieces had a perfectly matched partner in the second bag. The broken chunks were no accident at all but were molded to look like random broken pieces.

There was a very clear plan to appear home-made, and for a while, I believed it...and bought it.

Studies show that the people we relate to best are those who we perceive share our weaknesses--those who mirror, or at least seem capable of mirroring the mistakes we tend to make. Take for example the most watched videos on YouTube. Are they perfect? Hardly. Most are by amateurs whose work looks amateurish. We watch reality shows on television, and despite all predictions that they\'re on their way out, reality shows keep inventing ever-new situations (Jersey Shore, anyone?). Regardless of such evidence, brands continue in their quest to present only the perfect, because it\'s quite simply not in the vernacular of advertising culture to really tell it like it is.

Please don\'t misunderstand me. I\'m not asking the ad agencies to focus on the negative aspects of a brand. What I\'m suggesting is to show how life really looks. Babies do not stay clean when eating their pureed food, and apples are never all the exact shape and size and color. Messages portraying perfection are not trustworthy. No one actually believes them. We don\'t believe candidates applying for jobs who claim they do everything perfectly. We don\'t believe the person we sit beside at a dinner party who tells us everything in their life is just perfect. So why should we believe in perfect brands? We don\'t. So it\'s about time advertising changes their tune and strives for a little imperfection.

$\"\"$ MARTIN LINDSTROM is a 2009 recipient of TIME Magazine\'s \"World\'s 100 Most Influential People\" and author of Buyology - Truth and Lies About Why We Buy (Doubleday, New York), a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Lindstrom is the CEO and Chairman of LINDSTROM Company and Chairman of BUYOLOGY INC. (New York and Tokyo) as well as BRAND sense Agency (London).

New Zhu Zhu Pets, Now With Celebrity Kid Names, to Take Manhattan Next Week

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You have probably been wondering what the company that brought the world Zhu Zhu Pets last holiday season has planned for next week\'s massive toy fair in New York City. Well wonder no more!

That company, Cepia Inc, has moved some $70 million worth of furry product, capitalizing on the parental desire to give kids what they want-- specifically, a pet--so long as there is no mess and no stink. Now they are adding a slight edge to the cute crowd already owned by about 7 million American households. The new lines, Zhu Zhu Rockstars and Zhu Zhu-Wild Bunch, feature the same sort of lovable, wheel-riding hamsters, only now they have fashionable haircuts and--could that really be?--even pet fauxhawks. And the new breed has names like \"Kingston,\" \"Rider,\" and \"Roxie,\" which CnnMoney.com says are taken from the kids of celebrities. The desired audience for these Zhu Zhus skews a little older than the previous editions.

A cynic might find fault with this faddish line and the gullible public\'s lust for the latest must-have little critter. But that same cynic is not charged with finding new and clever ways of making cash-strapped Americans open their wallets. And at $10 a pop, Cepia has landed on a price point that even the hardest-hearted cynics among us have to admire.

Image: CnnMoney.com

Loopt\'s Location-based Ads Hit the iPhone, \'Minority Report\' Here We Come

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Loopt, the location-based sharing service, has taken the logical next step for its system: Loopt on the iPhone now includes location-based advertising. We\'ve been expecting this, but is it a sign the floodgates of location-ads are open?

Loopt is in roughly the same game as Yelp, Foursquare, and a number of other players in location-based social networking. It\'s also a little like Google Latitude, in that users can see in more-or-less real time where their friends are located (and what they\'re up to, via status updates), rather than having to \"check in\" to specific locales like in Foursquare. So it\'s really perfectly logical that it take the step to deliver specific location-based ads to its users in geolocated real time too.

It\'s partnered with Mobile Spinach to give its users special offers and discounts from businesses that are near their specific location--meaning that you\'ll be able to get a discount by showing the Loopt alert message to a restaurant, for example. To start with it\'ll only work in San Francisco, since Loopt is combining its user demographic data with Mobile Spinach\'s list of local business to ensure that the right kind of service is delivered as an ad to its users, as well as being merely location-specific. Ultimately the system will roll out in New York, L.A,. and other U.S. cities, and it\'ll become more sophisticated in time.

This sophistication will actually give the advertising partners an amazing new vehicle for influencing sales: Say a coffee shop has a regular lull between 11 a.m. and lunchtime--it could time its Loopt-related discount ads to try to attract more drop-in trade at this time, or it could associate your Loopt account with a \"10 drinks and the 11th is free\"-type loyalty system.

All of which means that the business of advertising is going to get ever-more deeply wormed into our daily lives. Because though not all of us are users of location-based social networking, it is clear that it\'s an exploding phenomenon, and it\'ll continue to be so as more and more of us carry around location-aware smartphones. The reason location-based ads will boom is that they enable a degree of precision in audience targeting that\'s rarely been possible before, and that could mean lucrative returns for the companies concerned. And though your mind may be filled with Minority Report-style horror visions of nagging ads at every turn in a public street (assuming this tech develops to its highest possible level), this might actually be good for us as consumers: If you\'re going to get ads served up to you, come what may, wouldn\'t you prefer it if they\'re actually for stuff you\'re interested in?

Oh, and one last thing: We know Apple\'s going to be getting into the mobile ad game itself, thanks to its purchase of Quattro Wireless. It\'s also recently forced developers to strip any location-based ad powers out of apps, indicating that it too will be playing in this space (and who better to exploit the full powers of the iPhone but its inventors?). But Loopt escapes this injunction because location-sensing is actually a core feature of the application. Meaning Apple is, for the time being, happy to have competition in location-based ads.

[Via MediaPost]

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