ABC’s Nightline goes behind the scenes at Zappos to see why they have become the leading example in customer satisfaction and expose the company’s enviable corporate culture. By making investments in company moral, and customer satisfaction, their long-term vision has returned huge dividends. Zappos offers newly trained workers $2000 to quit and gives customers 365 days to return purchases with free shipping both ways. CEO Tony Hsieh has kept the call centers based in the US and says their number one focus is building the company’s culture. Whether they teach the practice in business schools or not, the proof is in the pudding. Also check out Zappos’ 10 Core Values.

At GDC 2009 in San Francisco, OnLive founder Steve Perlman and COO Mike McGarvey publicly introduced their company and the technology they have been working on the past many years. Taking cloud computing to a new level, their video compression technology has enabled them to compress video at speeds imperceptible to even the most hard-core video game enthusiasts. The compression speeds have allowed them to create a new delivery model for video games which now marks the advent of the seamless cloud computing experience.

Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of The World is Flat, speaks at MIT. Friedman discusses his experience of being inspired to write the original book, the fundamental ideas mentioned in his later edition The World is Flat 3.0, and how shares how that has lead to his latest book Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

Alex Lee, president of OXO, speaks at Gel 2008 on the company’s commitment to good design. Alex stresses how good ideas can come from anywhere and shares several stories of designs which have come from outside inventors.

In a well executed short, Jonathan Jarvis explains today’s credit crisis through excellent visuals and a poignant narrative. At a time when so many are learning for the first time how various aspects of the economy work, Jonathan’s video is a welcome surprise. Jonathan Jarvis is a Masters of Fine Arts Candidate at Art Center.

In “Deep Dive”, a now legendary episode, ABC’s Nightline goes inside IDEO and follows their design methodology while having them design a shopping cart from the ground up. Filmed in 1998, the video is still shown in design and business schools around the world. Although the IDEO Shopping Cart was never built as is, stores such as Whole Foods now utilize aspects of the design in their own modular mini-carts.

On a mission to put a pair of shoes on everyone’s feet, TOMS Shoes is giving away one pair of shoes for every pair purchased. Since December 1st 2008, TOMS has given over 115,000 pairs of shoes to children in need worldwide.

Jason Salfi, co-founder of Comet Skateboards, talks about how the company is using eco-friendly materials to create their fully biodegradable skateboards. The company has found a way to use soy-based resins, non-volatile paints, and a biocomposite wood substitute from e2e Materials to make the boards all in a location local to the raw materials.

Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division, has been showing their vision for the future where nearly every surface will be an interactive display. With the looming battle between companies over patented gestures as mentioned in Dan Saffer’s talk, it is now an arms race to see which company will infiltrate homes and office with gestural and touch based systems. Regardless, it is great to see some of the concepts explored in the video.

Lachlan Cash from Microsoft demonstrates using touch technologies for business applications. Moving beyond rotating and resizing photos, Microsoft Dynamics has adapted Microsoft Surface for use as a wearhouse management tool. And while Surface in it’s table top form may not make it into offices very quickly, with Windows 7 supporting multi-touch, there is a great chance that other form factors will.