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AOL CEO Tim Armstrong didn't have to go very far to discover his company was struggling. He just asked one of his employees

CEOs of two breakthrough, webby businesses show Fast Company how office policies built on frankness, trust, and occasionally awkward closeness engender a culture of success. Inside the multi-million dollar video streaming giant, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar has gone to extraordinary lengths to subvert his own power: He has no office, has a makeshift desk partly built from empty boxes, and personally takes each new hire out to lunch to learn what he or she thinks the company can do better.

The Fast Company reader's essential source for breaking news and innovation from around the web--updated all day.

It sounds like a reality show pitch: The legendary Facebook investor, PayPal founder, and thorn in the side of college deans everywhere announces what happens when 24 people, picked to live among mentors and innovation experts, stop going to school and start getting real--in business. One climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.

If your city isn't going to install bike lanes, make one yourself.

Microsoft just revealed its Windows Phone 7.1, a hotly anticipated update to its smartphone OS that boasts more than 500 new features. But it's not due on new phones until the fall--perfectly timed to coincide with the next iPhone arrival.

The Fast Company reader's essential source for breaking news and innovation from around the web--updated all day. Amazon Getting In The Tablet Game? Amazon is rumored to be prepping 7- and 10-inch tablets with proprietary operating systems, for the low, low prices of $349 and $449, respectively (cheaper than their Android counterparts)

The Fast Company reader's essential source for breaking news and innovation from around the web--updated all day.

Foodie and former dotcom entrepreneur Sharelle Klaus was frustrated with her nonalcoholic drink options in fine restaurants when she was pregnant with her fourth child in 2004. So she created her own. Sharelle Klaus —who in 1999 launched Planet Squid, an Internet portal for 10-to-14-year-olds that went under during the dotcom bust—wanted something to drink that would pair well with food, that was all natural, and not too sweet.

A short discussion with the man behind Hotspot Shield about web anonymizers, the Arab Spring, and why expats in Dubai aren't happy with firewalls. Fast Company recently had the opportunity to speak with David Gorodyansky, CEO of AnchorFree , on the use of his company's popular Hotspot Shield software during the Arab Spring. Although Hotspot Shield is best known as a product used to access services such as Hulu and the BBC iPlayer across national borders, it also played a crucial role in organizing uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya.

Sure, there are a plethora of baby-naming apps on the iPhone.

A new social network, MyCube, thinks that we devalue our information when we give it away for free. Founded by Swedish entrepreneur Johan Staël von Holstein, MyCube offers users the chance to monetize their data, through advertising or a system of "nanopayments." Johan Staël von Holstein doesn't seem to like Mark Zuckerberg. "I have 5,000 friends on Facebook," says the Swedish-born entrepreneur , who lives in Singapore, but was about to board a flight from Barcelona to Germany, and then to Dubai, when we spoke by phone

A 25-year-old Columbia Professor of Journalism, Vadim Lavrusik, is Mark Zuckerberg's media macher. Facebook now accounts for more than 5% of traffic for many major news outlets. As the Internet floods users with options from every possible newspaper simultaneously, many began filtering the firehouse of information through Mark Zuckerberg's site, using their friends' recommendations as an alternative to visiting the websites themselves.

Not only will these new bulbs save you money every month, they'll be tons of fun for amateur lighting designers, and can even increase home security. A Wi-Fi connected lightbulb that'll cost you just an extra buck a pop may sound crazy, but it's a soon-to-be reality that promises to transform your house into a mood-lit, low-power, eco-friendly smart home . That's the suggestion from NXP, a Netherlands-based semiconductor company that invented the Greenchip technology that will be in many Wi-Fi connected lightbulbs on sale by early 2012

Nokia is now crowdsourcing creativity. "Invent With Nokia" is a new program wherein anyone can submit an idea, and if it results in a patented Nokia invention, you get a cut