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Avatar, in other words, has none of the selling points that are supposed to guarantee hit status for a big-budget movie. Yet James Cameron's enviro-epic, with no famous name attached to it but its writer-director's, is not just a blockbuster; it's king of the world. Since premiering on Dec. 18, it has proceeded to shatter most existing box-office records at home and abroad. It has been No. 1 every week, swatting away ambitious newcomers like so many mosquitoes. And like the best ambassador for Hollywood, it has earned most of its revenue - nearly...
...organic farm just outside Monterey, Calif., a super-eco building material is growing in dozens of darkened shipping containers. The farm is named Far West Fungi, and its rusting containers are full of all sorts of mushrooms--shiitake, reishi and pom-pom, to name a few. But Philip Ross, an artist, an inventor and a seriously obsessed amateur mycologist, isn't interested in the fancy caps we like to eat. What he's after are the fungi's thin, white rootlike fibers. Underground, they form a vast network called a mycelium. Far West Fungi's dirt-free hothouses pack...
...name is a nod to a Comcast technology initiative called Project Infinity, which CEO Brian Roberts unveiled at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show. Under Project Infinity, the company's video-on-demand views have more than doubled, to 14 billion cumulative views, over the past two years. Internet speeds have tripled. Comcast's online movie and television-show choices jumped from 3,700 in the first quarter of 2008 to 19,100 by the end of 2009. The company is changing, so Comcast feels the name should change with it. "At its core, Xfinity is infinite potential," says David Watson...
...just name it, say, Infinity? Lame, yes. But at least that would eliminate the X's giving folks the giggles. "This is a long-term investment," says Watson. "We're going to come out with a strong advertising campaign in a week, and it will be something we're going to build on. Our job is to make sure that people get what this stands for: more choice, more control than anybody else in the marketplace. So we're going to build on this. And people who aren't there right away, we're going to try to win them...
Good luck. Corporate-name changes have a mixed history. Some adjustments seem logical, like when a company wants to dissociate itself with a negative trait. For example, Philip Morris switched to Altria in 2003 (of course, by now most people know that Altria is associated with cigarettes). Accenture was fortunate. In 2001, the company changed its name from Andersen Consulting right before the word Andersen, as in Arthur Andersen, became synonymous with cooking the books. Now when you think Accenture, you think Tiger Woods scandal. (Guess they're not so lucky after...