Apple purchased a 100-acre plot of land from Hewlett Packard last month for $300 million that’s only two miles away from the brand’s main base. So what do you think Steve Jobs is going to do with it?

Right! Build Apple City, a residential area for engineers and developers that will be joined to the main campus via underground tunnels and not allow any harmful emissions to go forth from the site, according to TreeHugger.com.

Spanish newspaper El Economista reports that famed architect Norman Foster has been hired to do the job, partially because of his similar work in Abu Dhabi on Masdar City, a development that will run entirely on solar and other renewable energy sources and serve as the home base for the International Renewable Energy Agency.Continue reading...

Jeff Bezos may be the founder, president, CEO, chairman of the board, and owner of 20% of Amazon, but he’s also an incredibly creative, brilliant thinker. After all, this is the guy who started up the human-spaceflight company, Blue Origin, back in 2004.

New evidence of the Bezos brainpower has become public in the form of a patent filed in February (along with Amazon VP Greg Heart, to give credit to another Amazonian) to create tiny airbags that would protect a falling phone, according to TheRegister.com.

The technology would use a “phone's accelerometer to detect when it is falling, and deploying tiny airbags to cushion the impact,” the site reports. Who knew your phone has a cat-like "accelerometer"? Jeff Bezos, that's who!Continue reading...

"Big City Farmer," above, tells the story of a Chinese farmer named Gao, whose garden is near a coal-fired power plant in Shanghai — but the air and soil are clean enough that his crops flourish, thanks to innovative technology from Siemens, as revealed only at the very end.

Siemens A.G., a global power in electronics, electrical engineering, energy and healthcare has built a reputation since its founding in 1847 for innovation and service, and Peter Löscher, the 12th C.E.O. in the company’s history, sent a clear message to his 405,000 employees in 190 countries when he took over the reins.

“The culture of the company was actually formed over a long period of time, through longevity of leadership. So for me the important thing was to come in and say Siemens doesn’t need a revolution. We will go for an evolution but with speed, speed, speed,” said Löscher, in an extensive profile in The New York Times.

The brand is also going for an evolution with heart, heart, heart — via small stories of real people, relaying the impact of the brand on everyday lives.Continue reading...

The BMW Guggenheim Lab, which opens tomorrow in New York, gives new meaning to pop-up art.

Reclaiming a rat- and rubble-infested 2,000 square foot East Village lot between Houston and East First Street, the Lab is a social experiment in urban living — through October 16th, when the pop-up co-branded installation takes off on a six-year world tour to inspire eight other cities.Continue reading...

MAC Cosmetics has been known for some fairly far-out collaborations, but this one's definitely the furthest-out collaboration the Canadian-born makeup brand has forged to date. MAC's fall collection, slated for Sept. 29th, is modeled by American artist Cindy Sherman, the art world's queen of reinvention and cosmetic disguise.

Known for putting herself into sometimes haunting, often disturbing images that she stages, styles and photographs, Sherman has been reinventing her image and pushing buttons long before Madonna and Lady Gaga (both previous MAC collaborators) thought to do the same.Continue reading...

What do you get when you put 480 Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars together, 20 shoes high x 24 shoes wide, weighing 400 kg, with 20 modules, and each shoe mounted on a servomotor that can rotate 180 degrees? 

Converse's European ‘The Canvas Experiment,’ an experiential project that handed over the brand's iconic Chuck Taylor All Stars to artists to reinvent.Continue reading...

England's famed Twinings brand produced one of the classier Royal Wedding-themed nods, with a special royal-tea in honor of the nuptials of William and Kate.

Its next limited-edition release isn't a tea, but a design, created by the woman who created the stunning emerald dress worn by Kate's sister and maid of honor, Pippa Middleton, at the wedding reception.

British fashion designer Alice Temperley has created an exclusive, bespoke "Temperley for Twinings" print to celebrate its "new and improved blend" of Earl Grey tea, which Twinings is credited with creating.

As Twinings notes, the "print brings to life the incredible journey of the original Earl Grey blend, created by Twinings in 1831, as it travelled across the oceans from China to the UK. This exclusive print will be featured across a range of products, including a limited edition scarf."Continue reading...

The Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-134) successfully took off on its 16-day mission at 8:56 a.m. EDT this morning from Cape Canaveral in Florida, making NASA's second-to-last shuttle flight. Atlantis, scheduled for June, will be NASA's last shuttle mission in space.

Showing a sense of humor on a poignant day, NASA released a Star Trek-like poster in honor of the team on board, led by Commander Mark Kelly (whose wounded-but-recovering wife, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was in the crowd watching as her team tweeted).Continue reading...