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

While working at Facebook in 2009, Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever had a question: Why isn't there a place on the Internet where a question can be answered by someone who actually knows the answer? That question led the pair to start Quora , a Q&A website that allows users to share knowledge. You can pose a question, answer a question, and edit others' answers

What the Snuggie, the Roomba, and other innovative products can teach you about turning an unknown name and product into a consumer success. When TV commercials for the Snuggie launched in October of 2008, they were difficult to take seriously.

The government-sponsored competition to build the best ultra-fuel-efficient vehicles yields both automotive innovation and the next generation of car designers.

After decades worth of vision research, Minnesota-based conglomerate 3M has tuned up its Visual Attention Service, an algorithm that can scan all types of content to determine exactly where the average human eye is most likely to be drawn. Open a Website today, and you'll be struck with a circus of activity: bold headlines, splash images, dropdown displays, flashing ads. What grabs your attention the most?

MassMotion puts a large, intelligent, 3-D crowd into a building's design and finds out where you need bigger doors or more escalators. Humans react in a seemingly irrational manner during emergency evacuations; sometimes, people even get trampled in the process. But what if architects and developers could predict how large crowds might move through their buildings in the event of an emergency--and then tweak the designs to ensure that everything runs smoothly

There's been a rush of news from Apple this week: About OS X Lion , and the number of apps that Apple appears to be co-opting; about iOS and how it's incorporating more features from OS X; and iCloud, where Apple pushes all your details into the sky so all your devices can access them.

Breakthrough battery tech from MIT could mean recharging your EV would still involve the phrase "fill 'er up." MIT's been working on a really unusual new battery technology that turns upside-down the notions we currently have about rechargeable batteries. It involves a full rethinking of how a battery is designed, and could result in a reusable liquid that could be pumped into your battery to charge it in minutes

Webcomic XKCD has timed today's piece nicely, given how much the (i)cloud will be in the news this week... 1. Sony, for once, isn't in the hacking news this morning: Instead game making rival Nintendo is now reporting a serious attack on its servers.

For the third year in a row we have put together a list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business.

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

Trademarkia, a searchable repository of trademark and logo information, helps ensure that your business ideas don't infringe on anyone else's rights. It's also a great brainstorming tool for your brand--after all, "Twitter," "Yahoo," and "Googles" failed the first time around, and their trademarked names were ripe for the picking. Raj Abhyanker remembers one of his first encounters in the world of trademarks.

After years bubbling under the success radar, Pixel Qi has revealed a large high-resolution screen that works indoors and outdoors with equal ease. If it succeeds, it could change how and where you use computers

Readers respond to our cover story about Etsy founder Rob Kalin, a feature about spying on the competition, and Jason Fried's column about running a flat company. The World of Etsy Our cover story about Etsy founder and CEO Rob Kalin [" Rob's World ," April ] sparked a lively online debate

From the archive, we pose a question that's still as relevant as ever: Why has Memorial Day, like so many of our national holidays, been reduced to appliance sales, fast food specials, and vacation deals? With the recent near-collapse of our economy, the ways in which we understand and celebrate national holidays seem particularly challenged. This erosion of meaning is just one of many examples of the growing gap between the promise of America--freedom and opportunity through sacrifice and unity--and how people experience Brand America

Uploading your music to the cloud isn't as simple as you might think. As more data is stored online, the cloud takes more and more energy to maintain, forcing companies to get into the business of getting power as cheaply as possible