According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Park City, has seceded from the state of Utah. The city, with guidance from the Chamber of Commerce and Park City’s Restaurant Association declared itself “The Independent Republic of Park City.” Rather than naming an official flag or flower, the city decided on a cocktail as its symbol. Each year, the citizens of this exclusive resort town renew that bond, by selecting a local bartender’s signature libation.

The blueberry mojito was picked as the official Park City signature cocktail for the 2007-2008 ski season. It was created by Bonnie Ulmer of Deer Valley Resort. Her mojito - a mix of premium rum, soda water, blueberries and lemonade - will be spread across Park City promotional brochures and Park City’s Web site, hopefully proving to out-of-state visitors that it is possible to get an alcoholic drink in teetotaling Utah.

Fast Company takes a look at design’s increasingly central role in today’s economy.

Forty years ago, Thomas Watson Jr., chairman and chief executive of IBM during its most explosive period of growth, famously proclaimed, “Good design is good business.” Corporate America, however, barely looked up from its work. Except for a few mavericks such as IBM, Kodak, and Xerox, it would take years for design to move in from the fringes of business. But today, companies are creating products and services that delight customers with the grace of their fit and finish, and their exacting performance. Design, in short, is becoming an ever more important engine of corporate profit: It’s no longer enough simply to outperform the competition; to thrive in a world of ceaseless and rapid change, businesspeople have to outimagine the competition as well. They must begin to think–to become–more like designers.

GrandCentral is a new web app that lets you consolidate all of your phone numbers into one number, meaning someone can call you on your GrandCentral phone number and all of your phones–cell phone, work phone, home phone-will ring.

If you don’t want every one of your phones ringing each time someone calls your free GrandCentral number, you can set rules by friends, family, work, and others, defining where the calls should be directed. When a user leaves a message, you can listen to it online or directly on your phone.

[via Lifehacker]

Business Week, curious about Apple Computer’s consistent ability to deliver new products that people love, takes a close look at Apple’s Senior Vice-President for Industrial Design, Jonathan Ive.

While Steve Jobs sets the direction and provides the inspiration for the company, Ive melds Apple’s unique creativity with the nuts-and-bolts required to make beautiful things. Apple’s innovation success is due greatly to this alchemy between chief designer and powerful boss.

Most of Ive’s team live in San Francisco, and rumor has it that the starting salary for the group is around $200,000, some 50% above the industry average. They work together in a large open studio with little personal space but great privacy. Many Apple employees aren’t allowed in, for fear they’d catch a glimpse of some upcoming product. A massive sound system pumps up the music. Ive invests his design dollars in state-of-the-art prototyping equipment, not large numbers of people. And his design process revolves around intense iteration — making and remaking models to visualize new concepts.

Ive’s team at Apple isn’t the usual design ghetto of creativity that exists inside most corporations. They work closely and intensely with engineers, marketers, and even outside manufacturing contractors in Asia who actually build the products. Rather than being simple stylists, they’re leading innovators in the use of new materials and production processes.

Ive refused to speak to Business Week for the article, enforcing his company’s well known policy of secrecy, and deepening the mystery behind the brand.

Funny woman Laura Kightlinger is starring in, writing and producing The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman, a humorous series on the Independent Film Channel.

Kightlinger worked as a writer and consulting producer on Will & Grace, and had a recurring guest role on the series as Sheila, a nurse at a fertility clinic. She was a Correspondent on The Daily Show in 1998. She currently is in the cast of the HBO sitcom Lucky Louie. In other words, she’s nothing like the marginal Hollywood character she plays on IFC.

The LA Times sees “the tall, gangly and witheringly sarcastic Kightlinger as a throwback to an earlier era — the ‘handsome woman’ in dress slacks, with an acid tongue and hard-knocks wit. It was part of Katharine Hepburn’s comedic charm, or later, Lucille Ball’s.”

According to USA Today, an upscale hot dog chain is about to open five locations in the Miami metro.

Franktitude, whose motto is “All bite, no bark” will offer salmon dogs, tofu dogs, chicken dogs and 100% beef hot dogs on whole wheat or poppy seed buns. Wasabi mayo, banana chips, avocado and cole slaw are some of the more interesting toppings offered.

Franchising opportunities will soon be available.

Good news for wine, beer and cocktail lovers…According to CNNMoney.com, you should say “Yes!” when a colleague or client asks you to join him or her at the bar.

A study conducted by two economists and published Thursday in the latest edition of The Journal of Labor Research, says that drinkers earn 10 to 14 percent more than those who refrain from drinking.

More specifically, the study found that workers who drank in a social setting earned more than those who tipped a glass at home.The study contends that social capital, which entails everything from a person’s charisma to the size of their social network, can be enhanced by drinking.

Those who drink socially, for example, may have an easier time finding a new job if they had made more business contacts, the authors claim, or they might strengthen relationships with co-workers or clients that could ultimately affect their salary.

Associated Press writer Pat Eaton-Robb looks at a positive new development for fans of college athletics, particularly fans of smaller schools.

Many schools, and now some conferences, have begun showing football and other sports on their Web sites.

“We can produce our own television and reach, literally, the entire world on the Web, without having to go through the issues of, is there cable availability? Is there satellite availability? Is there advertising support?” said Jeff Orleans, commissioner of the Ivy League.

He expects most of the league’s sporting events will be online within seven years.

This season, the entire nine-school Big Sky Conference will Webcast all football, basketball and volleyball games, using technology from Salt Lake City-based SportsCast Network.

The current issue of American Express Publishing’s Departures Magazine looks at the ever-sophisticated coastal city, Charleston, South Carolina. The editors may have taken a clue from sister publication, Travel & Leisure, which ranked Charleston the #4 Best American City in July.

The article mentions new art galleries, fancy hotels, custom cobblers and hatmakers and the fact that young people from New York and San Francisco are moving in. The city also boasts a vibrant culinary scene.

Charleston has, in recent years, grown steadily richer with culinary talent.

“When I was growing up, there were four restaurants—and one of them was a Shoney’s,” says Linda Wohlfeil, who leads private tours of the city’s grand old homes, including her family’s on the Battery. But now there’s Hank’s Seafood, presided over by Frank McMahon, who trained at Le Bernardin; Hominy Grill, where Robert Stehling does a fresh take on old-school southern cooking; and Fig, a spare, chic dining room that serves Mike Lata’s Slow Food versions of traditional dishes.

Mercato, where Jacques Larson–a pupil of New York chef Mario Batali’s–helms the kitchen and McCrady’s, which occupies a 218-year-old former tavern, are also mentioned.

Live opera and movie theater popcorn will soon be available under the same roof. New York’s Metropolitan Opera is going to start broadcasting live performances in movie theaters later this year in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain.

They’re also planning to put additional shows and archived shows online. It’s all part of a plan to appeal to a wider audience by making opera more accessible to the masses. 

“This is a unique opportunity to raise our profile and grow our audience. Opera will now enter the digital era,” Peter Gelb, the Met’s new general manager, said in a statement. 

The Met said it would broadcast live six Saturday matinees starting with the new English-language adaptation of Julie Taymor’s “Magic Flute,” conducted by James Levine, on December 30, and “I Puritani,” starring Anna Netrebko, on January 6.