It was really only a matter of time before this happened. For years now, we’ve all been using bank cards, credit cards, and other forms of plastic currency to buy all manner of vinyl decals and skins for MP3 players, laptops, car windows, and countless other sticky-friendly surfaces. Isn’t it about time that our little plastic pals got in on the action, too?

Enter CreditCovers, the decorative skin for credit cards. With designs that are sure to please the same folks who love slapping skins on their iPods (the only explanation for the “slick, cool, super-dope” and “sticks real good” product descriptions and artwork with names like Ohmigawd! and Mizz Lady Pink), the $4.99 CreditCovers are guaranteed not to damage or otherwise interfere with the use of your card. Strange looks from cashiers? You’re on your own.

Having made a fortune off bare-breasted women, “Girls Gone Wild” founder Joe Francis is now setting his sights on the restaurant business.

A chain under the “Girls Gone Wild” brand name is being planned by Francis, whose Mantra Films Inc. has built a $100 million business videotaping and selling the DVDs featuring young women exposing their breasts.

“This is going to be about fun, lifestyle, youth, sun. It’s about everything ‘Girls Gone Wild,’” Francis said. “It’s going to be sexy without being sexual.”

There will be no stripping, topless waitresses or filming in the restaurants, Francis said.

The first two restaurants are expected to open by mid-summer in Mexican beach towns Cabo San Lucas and Cancun. Francis sees franchises popping up mainly in college towns in the United States and around the world.

Reuters

Don’t think the Second Life land rush is over. Now a huge real estate firm is entering the 3D virtual world, as the service’s headlong growth continues.

Real estate deals may be slowing in the real world, but in the three-dimensional online one of Second Life the market remains hot. Now Coldwell Banker, one of the nation’s largest real estate brokerage firms, is entering Second Life, aiming to help bring order to the chaotic world of virtual real estate.

Coldwell Banker will open a virtual sales office and start selling virtual land at 9 a.m. on Friday. The company released the information exclusively to Fortune.

It’s more evidence that the Second Life naysayers are on the defensive. Despite skepticism, software and system troubles, and extraordinary hype, the three-dimensional virtual world juggernaut continues.

Coldwell Banker has bought extensive tracts of property on the central “mainland” of Second Life. (Most companies own “islands” scattered all over.) It subdivided this digital land into 520 individual houses and living units, half of which it will sell and half it will rent.

Read more here.

World’s most successful investor reimburses his company for postage and phone calls for personal use, and doesn’t use company cars or airplanes.

The world’s most successful investor - and second richest man - is perhaps also its least lavish CEO.

Warren Buffett refuses to use company cars or airplanes for any business that’s remotely personal, and each year writes a big check to pay the company back for postage or phone calls used for personal pursuits, according to Berkshire Hathaway’s (Charts) annual proxy statement, released last Wednesday.

Sure, there are CEOs who have no qualms about having shareholders foot the bill for frequent use of company planes and other lavish expenses, but Buffett won’t be counted among their ranks.

Last year he reimbursed Berkshire $50,000 for personal expenses, so that shareholders wouldn’t be stuck with the bill for his postage stamps and phone calls home, according to the statement.

In fact, Buffett describes his payment as “equal to or greater than the costs” of his expenses.

Charlie Munger, the company’s Vice Chairman, paid Berkshire $5,500 for his share of expenses.

For the last 25 years, both Buffett and Munger have received an annual salary of $100,000 a year - a paltry sum compared to the amount of money they generate for Berkshire investors - and there are no raises in the pipeline. Perhaps it matters less when your net worth is in the billions, as is true of both men.

Neither Buffett nor Munger use corporate-owned planes for personal trips, opting instead to pay standard rates for the use of NetJets, a company that offers rentals of private jets. It doesn’t hurt that Berkshire Hathaway owns NetJets. The men use Berkshire-owned aircraft for business purposes only.

Buffett’s close attention to his impact on the company’s bottom line is an uncommon sight in corporate compensation disclosures.

CNN Money

A Houston-based charity will auction Enron executives’ custom-made desks on eBay, which have a minimum bid of $25,000 each.

Once the center of power, the desk of former Enron Corp. founder and chief executive officer Ken Lay is up for sale on eBay Inc.

The Houston-based charity Saving Animals Across Borders is also auctioning the desk that Jeffrey Skilling and Richard Kinder used when they were presidents of the now-defunct energy company.

Lay and Skilling, who also served as CEO, were convicted in May 2006 for their role in the accounting fraud that led to the collapse of Enron in 2001. The bankruptcy erased billions in investors’ money and wiped out the pensions of thousands of Enron employees.

The custom-made desks with “an elegant Makore Pommelle veneer” have a minimum bid of $25,000 each, which so far has not been met. The auction began Friday and runs for 10 days.
Skilling is now serving a 24-year prison term in Minnesota, while Lay’s conviction was vacated following his death from a heart attack in July 2006.

Numerous Enron-branded items are currently for sale on online auction service eBay (down $0.18 to $31.56, Charts), ranging from coffee mugs to stock certificates. The company’s twirling “crooked E” logo from its headquarters in downtown Houston sold for $33,000 at auction in 2002.

The desks were donated by a member of a company that bought one of Enron’s two towers in 2003, a spokeswoman for the charity said.

Reuters

A few years ago, a new sexual classification emerged on the scene. As funny as I thought it was when I first heard the term “metrosexual,” I think it’s even funnier that it stuck around. Oh no, metrosexuals weren’t just a passing fad –people now comfortably identify themselves as such. Now it appears there is a new name for members of the fashion-forward jetsetting set, “Jetrosexuals.” Also known as “flash-packers,” jetrosexuals revel in fashion and travel.

Applied to individuals who travel worldwide in search of fashion bargains, jetrosexuals are known for having their passport ready to go at a moment’s notice, and an eye for stylish, cheap faux couture clothing. Most commonly found travelling from the US to Asia in search of a bargain, jetrosexuals are known to carry little more with them than an iPod and the latest issue of Vogue.

Apparently, the new trend is being fueled by two things: Ridiculous airline discounts that chop $1000 fares to Asia to less than $50 from gateway cities, and the booming Asian textile industry.

And it’s not just the jetrosexuals who are evolving — the money spent on textiles and fashion in Vietnam has brought about dramatic change in the economic and cultural landscape of Hoi An. Although still conjested and plagued with poverty, this city is now known as a tailoring hub. It all started years ago when European and American designers began outsourcing the production of their fabrics to Asia.

I was curious to find out what (besides a plane-ride across the Pacific) separates jetrosexuals from people who take the subway down to Chinatown to buy fake Louis Vuittons. Apparently, quite a lot. Jetrosexuals don’t just take a copy of Vogue with them for reading on the plane — they take it to show tailors how to copy the garments. So, in a matter of hours, a jetrosexual can arrive in Hoi An, point to a Marc Jacobs jacket in a glossy fashion mag, and get back on the plane to L.A. wearing what appears to be a $1000 couture coat. In other words, it’s made-to-order knock-off couture.

Surprisingly, (unlike a fake Vuitton) this violates no copywright laws in the U.S. Unless a Marc Jacobs label is stuck in the back of the garment, there is nothing stopping a tailor from copying a designer garment.

fastcompany.com

There’s one thing they always say about money - you can’t take it with you.

So before you go, you can at least arrange for a memorable send off.

One company in England has taken that directive quite literally to heart, creating a bizarre new business that sits on the tentative border between creativity and extreme bad taste.

Vic Fearn and Company is a 160-year-old entity that makes coffins. That doesn’t sound terribly exciting, but recent customers may make you think twice about that impression.

They’ve been coming in asking for exotic caskets to be buried in to reflect their passions in life.

It started with an odd request from a woman who was a big fan of the Royal Air Force’s acrobatic team the Red Arrows. She wanted to be interred forever in a model of one of their fighters. Read the rest of this entry »