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

In a fast-changing world, get ahead by upgrading your technology for these four processes. As a successful small business owner in 2012, there is no doubt you've been smart in running your operation. You've made it through some difficult times and that requires organization, a solid business model, and an ability to adapt

Silicon is a unique material that has revolutionized electronics; it enables engineers to put millions of electrical devices onto a single chip. Replacing the electrical currents in this technology with beams of light could enable even faster information processing. Qian Wang at the A*STAR Data Storage Institute and co-workers1 have now designed a crucial component for such optical chips — a connector that links the silicon chip to an optical fiber.

A new theory developed by Prof Gerrit van der Laan, from the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and Diamond Light Source, and published this week in the journal Physical Review Letters, provides a powerful sum rule that scientists can use to explore the properties of novel materials, such as those used for spintronics devices.

User experience is a priority that should, in some way, find a home within the design of any new-media strategy.

Smartphones with HDTV reception chips and in-car television sets are big business in Taiwan, China, and Brazil. Now the travel-friendly tech behind mobile DTV is making its way to the United States.

A pint-sized version of the iPad is coming, says one analyst.

Breaking news from your editors at Fast Company, with updates all day. Fair Labor Association Inspects Foxconn Factories . Apple has asked the Fair Labor Association to conduct a round of audits on several suppliers including Foxconn in China.

Social is one of the hottest trends in enterprise software, and many companies are considering rolling out products and services that make it easier for employees to share information with each other and communicate with customers and suppliers. Social software covers a lot of ground, but in general, products in this field enable people to share ideas and documents, find expertise and connect with colleagues, and communicate interactively with others. Gartner reports that “social software technologies as a whole are among the most hyped in the industry at the moment,” but is quick to warn companies that different social software technologies are “at different levels of maturity.” Meanwhile,

Like Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, women are driven to do business better and more flexibly, and make work better for everyone. Every businesswoman who acquires any public profile has her family life raked over: How does she do it?

Land and See: Infrared and 3-D vision systems combine to help pilots avoid crash landings.

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Helping your employees set work-life boundaries is easy and prevents burnout. So why aren't you doing it

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland has found an iron-based superconductor that operates at the highest known temperature for a material in its class. The discovery inches iron-based superconductors—valued for their ease of manufacturability and other properties—closer to being useful in many practical applications.

How many are you putting your customers though? I'm sure you, like me, have spent too much time in customer service hell as a consumer. With apologies to Dante, it’s at least nine circles: The never-ending voice mail phone tree The requirement to repeat your name, account number, etc., ad infinitum Hold, hold, hold The ominous sound, mid-conversation, of the dial tone The disappearing clerk The line that's always 20 people deep The agent who doesn’t understand your question The “I’m sorry, but I don’t have the authority to do that” response The clerk who's busy texting someone who's clearly more important than you I'm sure there are more

It's the threat you never see coming. In fact, even after you crash and burn you still might not recognize it. Sometimes the biggest threat to your start-up is the one you can’t see.