Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

Taking a rare peek into what really goes into creating the fresh, local ingredients your waiter rattles off when explaining that day's specials. This summer Dan Kluger, chef at ABC Kitchen (this year's James Beard Foundation Award winner for Best New Restaurant), accompanied several food writers on a road trip to New York's Hudson Valley to tour some of the farms (and one distillery!) that supply Manhattan's hottest restaurants, including his own.

Productivity is a hot topic because so many people (especially entrepreneurs) are productivity-challenged.

We all can learn a lesson or two on how to correct a negative image. Here's what Domino's is doing right.

Thanks to credit crunches and slow sales, experts say the key to budgeting for 2012 is being prepared for the worst. Here are the simple steps to building a bulletproof budget.

Most ideas never happen because they get abandoned along the way.

Got a beef about the bathroom in your local Arby's? Tell John Sperry. He's up to his ears in customer complaints.

Rare earth metals--a group of 17 chemical elements found in solar panels, wind turbines, electric car motors, lithium-ion batteries, and more--are critical to a future reliant on clean energy. The problem is that China has the majority of the supply , and it has used that leverage to slow exports and raise prices

The average pro football career lasts three and a half seasons.

It's just four days until Apple's "let's talk iPhone" press event, and we still don't know if we'll be seeing one new iPhone or two--and no idea if they're called 4S, 5, or just 4 and 4S. There's a good reason for this, namely Apple's strict code of silence , which must've been dialed up a notch or two since the inafmous Gizmodogate affair before the release of the iPhone 4 last year. There is, as you might imagine, a lot of discussion about this online, ranging from pure speculation to genuine hardware clues, so we've dug through the dross to find some diamonds for you

Every year, an organization called Improbable Research offers up the Ig Nobel Prize , a Nobel spoof award that it is given for science innovations "that first make people laugh, then make them think." This year, our favorite entry came from researchers at the Shiga University of Medical Science, who developed something called the wasabi alarm, a fire (or general emergency alarm) that slashes noise pollution but might make anyone nearby feel sick.

Intermittency is a well-known weakness of solar and wind power--they're good when the sun shines and the wind blows, say critics, but what about when it doesn't?

In our Fast Talk series, innovators and entrepreneurs answer questions about making good products and breaking bad news. David Cohen, founder and CEO of the prestigious accelerator TechStars, discusses his approach to telling entrepreneurs they didn't make the cut, or worse... The pioneering technology accelerator TechStars did something for its own business rather than the fledgling companies in its program last week, raising $24 million in venture funding (bringing their total to $34 million) from some 75 venture funds and angel investors.

Organic farmers have a wealth of alternatives to synthetic insecticides--biological pest control, row covers, and even natural insecticides. A company called AgriSolar has a different alternative: a solar-powered system that attracts, disorients, and ultimately kills insects. The system is incredibly effective, if AgriSolar is to be believed.

AlphaDog If Boston Dynamics' BigDog quadruped robot gives you the willies with its amazingly animal-like skills at tromping across difficult land at speed, then don't watch the video of BD's newest iteration of its military assistant robot, AlphaDog. [youtube SSbZrQp-HOk] BigDog was really the development prototype for AlphaDog, suffering from an enormously noisy engine and fairly limited operating range and payload powers. AlphaDog, on the other hand, is closer to a production dog droid that could actually accompany troops on the battlefield: It's quieter, can carry 400 pounds and run 20 miles without needing more gas, versus BigDog's 340 pounds and 12-mile range.

Betabrand's techies are beating fashionistas at their own game. Memes are helping build this e-commerce business one web-friendly, gimmicky item of apparel at a time