Wally--a company that makes stunning modern yachts--and the French fashion house Hermes have teamed up to design a new boat: The appropriately named WHY, a full-blown solar-powered island.

Just unveiled at the Abu Dhabi Yacht Show (of course), the WHY is 190 feet long and a whopping 125 feet wide--making it a dream for any billionaire who can't find enough space off land for his phalanx of Cristal-swigging bikini babes. In all, the boat has the square footage of a mansion--some 34,000 square feet. As Wally's president, Luca Bassani Antivari, explained it to The Guardian:

Everybody's dream is to live on an island, in complete freedom, without constraint, with the independence that only self sufficiency can provide. A piece of land with a beautiful villa partly fulfils this aspiration because it is static. A yacht offers the freedom to move, but does not have the space of a property. WHY has it all.

Right you are! I'll take seven then, for each of the world's oceans.

The boat is meant to cater to 12 guests, with "master space", "guest space" and "common space." There's even an 82-foot pool and a 114-foot "beach" on the back. Supposedly, the massive fuel requirements of pushing the boat to a top speed of 14 knots will be offset by 9,700 square feet of photovoltaics on the roof. The $160 million pricetag is such a bargain.

The deal was announced Thursday as the French team heads into the new season with F1's first-ever Russian driver, Vitaly Petrov, partnering Polish driver Robert Kubica.

Renault team chairman Gerard Lopez says the deal "marks another important step for the Renault F1 team and Formula One in Russia."

Renault owns 25 percent of Lada's parent company AvtoVAZ, which is Russia's biggest car manufacturer.

Lopez said last month, when Petrov was presented by Renault, that the rookie driver's signing was partly to do with breaking into the Russian market.

“We are very proud to welcome CNN into the Lotus Racing family. It is a sign of the positive impact we have already made in the global business market that such a familiar brand, familiar to millions around the world as the definitive source of news and current affairs, has made the decision to partner with us,’’ said Lotus Racing team principal Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes said on the team’s website.

“The whole team and I are looking forward to working with CNN in the months and years to come on some very exciting campaigns.”

Chief executive officer Riad Asmat echoed Fernandes’ words in welcoming CNN as a new partner, adding that the team was garnering interest from Malaysian companies.

The Vancouver Winter Olympics has been crowned by many media outlets as the greenest Olympics ever--a title earned because of the city's commitment to CO2 offsets, energy efficiency, and recycling. And while some people gripe that Vancouver didn't do nearly enough, the 2014 Sochi Olympics in Russia may make the Canadian games look like a bastion of sustainability.

With four years left to go, the Sochi Olympics Committee has already succeeded in contaminating water with heavy metal waste, destroying bear and bird habitats, and downing thousands of endangered trees. The mess hasn't gone unnoticed by environmental organizations. The World Wildlife Fund suspended ties with the Sochi Olympic Committee last week and cut off communication completely with Olympstroi, the state Olympic construction agency. Greenpeace Russia has also stopped talking to Olympic organizers in the country.

Unfortunately, Sochi doesn't have much motivation to green its games. While countries gunning for the 2016 Summer Olympics spot had to prove their green mettle, Russia somehow scored its spot without outlining much of a sustainability plan. The WWF and Greenpeace are grasping at straws and trying to put pressure on the UN to help out. But if that doesn't work, it will be up to the public--and maybe even environmentally-conscious Olympians--to force Sochi into cleaning up its act.

These concept designs for Louis Vuitton, created by Dzmitry Samal, are both hypercool and hypermodern, and "inspired by architecture:"

But wait a second! Any fan of architecture and design will recognize that the strappy motif actually appeared previously in Herzog & de Meuron's Bird's Nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics---and, even earlier, in this stunning flagship store for Prada in Tokyo:

The similarities are hard to ignore, right? Which makes you wonder two things: How annoyed would Prada be if those LV handbags went into production? And why didn't Prada recognize that in commissioning such a showpiece showroom, they actually created not just floor space, but an amazing branding statement that they could have played out in lucrative accessories?

Which also makes you think: Next time a fashion house hires a starchitect, a smart requirement would be the building be so iconic that it can be translated into leather and plastic. After all, good architecture works at any scale--even tiny.

Gartner released its worldwide mobile sales numbers for both hardware and smartphone OS, and they're not much of a surprise: Nokia's first in hardware sales. It's OS, Symbian, has 46.9% of the marketshare. RIM, makers of BlackBerry, trail way behind with 19.9%; iPhone OS manages 14.4%; and even the much-buzzed-about Android only snags 3.9%.

So why should Nokia be scared as hell? Because Symbian's (currently in its S60 version and ubiquitous in Europe) death grip may be loosening.

New mobile OSes, such as Google's Android, Palm's WebOS, and Apple's iPhone OS, are snapping up first-time smartphone buyers with easy-to-understand, finger-friendly interfaces. Apple, it's worth noting, nearly doubled its OS marketshare in 2009 (from 8.2% in '08 to 14.4% in '09), bumping Microsoft out of the No. 3 spot. More importantly, though it and other Nokia competitors showed the kind of true innovation that leads to all-important mindshare. Mindshare doesn't necessarily translate directly into sales numbers, but it's a good indicator--and Gartner's sales numbers show movement in that direction.

RIM's BlackBerry OS is as dated as Symbian, yet it's shown remarkable staying power with business types--and it's even making a nice little push into the mid- to low-end consumer market with well-made, inexpensive phones like the Storm and Curve. That leaves the two non-RIM pioneers of the pre-iPhone smartphone, Microsoft and Nokia, with legacy products that can't help but look dated. And that's not opinion: the Gartner numbers back it up.

Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Nokia's Symbian are the only two mobile OSes to lose marketshare in the past year, with its users flocking to iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, and (at least one or two, right?) WebOS. And in the coming year, that pattern is going to continue: Android is picking up steam and spreading across the globe, Apple will release a new iPhone, BlackBerry will continue to be adored by the briefcase set, and WebOS will continue to be liked by all 50 people who own Palm phones. Microsoft understands the problems this pattern indicates, which is why it opted for a complete, radical, drastic reboot of Windows Mobile in favor of the awkwardly named but fabulous-looking Windows Phone 7 Series.

And what does Nokia have? Its last flagship phone, the N97, was universally panned (Gizmodo said it well in its review: If this is the best Nokia can do, they're doomed), and Nokia's executive VP even admitted the phone was a "tremendous disappointment." Symbian S60 is a whopping eight years old, and showing it--several lifetimes old in the mobile world. Nokia does have a new OS, called Maemo, bundled into the new N900 Internet tablet/phone, but reviews have called it "half-baked" and "an experiment." Its Meego venture with Intel is absurdly ambitious, but Nokia has given precious little information on what the Linux-based OS will actually look like--not the most encouraging sign for software that's supposed to take the world by storm this year.

Nokia needs to do something to shake up their business now, while they're still on top, because the tide is moving in the wrong direction. Pretty soon, iPhone, Android, and maybe even Microsoft won't be upstarts--they'll be challengers.

1. Language is important. Tell people you “work out of my home office” or that you “work from home.” Never say, “I work at home.” That suggests you create window treatments freelance in your spare time. “Home office” sounds more professional when you’re giving someone your phone number for work.

2. Some people like to dress for work, even though they never set foot outside their houses. Others like to lounge around in sweats or pajamas. It’s a matter of personal choice. But if you prefer the latter, change clothes at least once at night and once in the morning. Casual is fine. Crusty isn’t.

3. Talk to someone from the office at least once a day. Long silences are nervous-making. 

4. Gossiping, Web surfing, popping out to do a little shopping at lunch—those are healthy ways to decompress when you’ve spent an hour commuting and another three hours sitting in an uncomfortable chair drinking pallid coffee from the kitchenette and trying not to overhear the conversation in the next cubicle. At home, where all is relative peace and luxury, such activities seem to me Caligula-scale decadent. Still no one can work eight hours without pause. So establish some useful, non-fun things to do during work breaks that don’t induce guilt. 

5. If you have children, explain that when your door is closed they should not disturb you. If they fail to comply, explain that if they continue to interrupt then you will miss your deadlines and lose your job, which will force the family to live on the streets and sell all their toys for food.

6. Stay caffeinated. we don't need to explain, or tell you how many!

.......thanks to Leigh Buchanan at INC magazine.