Microsoft Reverses Course, Locks Down Tablet Hardware In Apple-Inspired Move

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The close integration between hardware and software has become an iconic Apple trick.

Whales Return to NYC Harbor

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[audio of blue whale song] That's the song of the blue whale, the largest animal on the planet . It's been sped up five [OR: 30] times faster so that our ears can hear it. In reality, these infrasound songs were captured in 2009, off the coast of… Long Island

A Starry Night on Sark Island

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Photograph by Chris Floyd FORGET BLUE skies -- for a growing community of stargazing tourists, darkness is all they want. "People have never seen the Milky Way," says Rowena Davis of the International Dark-Sky Association, which identifies the earth's best locales for appreciating the heavens

Electronic Cigarette Maker Develops The Smoker’s Foursquare Check-In, Tries To Get You Laid

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The founder of Blu Cigs, battery-powered electronic cigarettes that mimic the look and feel of traditional cigs and deliver vaporized nicotine to users, believes he's discovered an innovation that could help his company compete with R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris. Jason Healy, president of the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company, and his team have spent about a year developing the "Smart Pack," a first-of-its-kind e-cig pack which features unique ID technology that detects nearby e-smokers.

Report: Google Ties 25% of Employee Bonuses to Success in Social

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" Google hasn't gotten social right yet," said Marissa Mayer, VP of consumer products, in a recent interview . Well, company employees better get social right soon--if they want to earn a good chunk of their bonuses, says a new report.

100 Blue Angels: A Personalized Kickstarter for One Marine Biologist

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Wallace "J" Nichols is crowdsourcing his life's work. And saving his home in the process. It's difficult to make it as an independent scientist.

Star.me Makes the Web Messier, More Fun

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Humorist and TED speaker Ze Frank tells FastCompany how his new startup can help save us from living our entire online lives in blue and white. Ze Frank, the performer and humorist who once won a Webby for his personal website, is a guy who is plainly awed at the oddity of human beings on the Internet. He says the blue-and-white sterility of our popular social networks--Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare--is threatening to choke out the messy, weird home-made kitsch once typified by MySpace pages and message boards

The Perils of Expansion

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It's a quandary that every successful restaurateur faces: Do you stay fiercely loyal to your original location, a la chef Gabrielle Hamilton and Prune, the much-loved NYC restaurant she's been running since 1999? Or do you go the way of the Flays and the Batalis of the restaurant world, expanding your empire to include Vegas outposts, cookware, and a line of designer Crocs?