Aaron Levie talks cloud storage at BoxWorks. Photo: Michael O'Donnell/ZatPhoto

On first pass, Aaron Levie is your typical 20-something Silicon Valley CEO. Jeans. Orange sneakers. Unkempt hair. And in many ways, his company, Box.net, is a typical Silicon Valley story. Friends build product in dorm room. Product takes off. Friends drop out of school and land millions of dollars in investment capital.

But with its peer-to-peer file sharing application, Box.net operates in a different space than the typical Silicon Valley startup. It’s an enterprise outfit. Drawing on their lives as consumers, y...

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Fetish

Photo: Jens Mortensen

Before building prototypes of the Knoll Generation chair, designers spent hundreds of hours watching video of office workers. What they learned: Nobody sits still. Even the most slothful desk jockeys lean, twist, and turn. Where ordinary office chairs have rigid frames that limit movement, the Generation boasts an elastomer backrest that’s more flexible than a sideshow contortionist. Bend, twist, stretch out for a nap — you’ll feel almost weightless. Even better, the slick, nearly tip-proof ...