David Lidsky's Blog, page 3004
April 20, 2015
Why Norway Is Ditching FM Radio
Norway is abandoning FM radio for all-digital broadcasts in 2017.
No more FM? Norway is becoming the first country to scrap FM broadcasts and switch to all-digital broadcasts for radio. The country does not use the AM band for radio transmissions, and the new regulations—taking effect in 2017—would require listeners to obtain digital radio receivers or listen in on the Internet. An official statement by the Norwegian government frames the switchover as a tech-savvy cost-cutting move.
Google Almost Bought A Near-Bankrupt Tesla In 2013
With his electric car company on the verge of bankruptcy, Elon Musk turned to Google and very nearly sold Tesla.
In early 2013, Tesla was near bankruptcy. Founder Elon Musk turned to his friend Larry Page, cofounder and CEO of Google, to buy out Tesla. The deal went past handshake territory and both company's lawyers drafted up negotiations, but somewhere along the way, the deal fell through. By May 2013, Tesla had turned everything around and posted its first quarterly profit. A report in Bloomberg today reveals just how close Musk came to selling Tesla to Google.
Why Epicurious's Apple Watch App Doesn't Include Recipes
One of the world's most popular recipe platforms takes its first stab at wearables, and there's not a recipe in sight.
You're cooking a 2-inch prime ribeye in a cast iron pan. The slab of raw meat cost enough that you hid the receipt from your spouse. And you really don't want to screw this up. Should you flip it yet? Should you wait? You can't decide. That's when you get a tap on your wrist, and you know it's time.
15% of Epicurious.com's users still print recipes.
From MIT: This Shiny Nail Art Is Actually A Tiny Bluetooth Trackpad
Inspired by the decorative nail stickers popular in Asian countries, the NailO allows you to control your devices without touching them.
Ever try to cook while using your laptop or your iPad to read a recipe, watch a movie, or Skype? You're probably still cleaning eggy fingerprints from the keyboard. Thankfully, a new invention from MIT Media Lab could make navigating a device while your hands are otherwise occupied much easier by turning your thumb nail into a tiny trackpad.
5 Great Ideas For The Future Of Flying (And One Really Terrible One)
The good news, there's more room to store your bag. The bad news, there may be a lot more people on your plane.
Every year, the brightest minds in the airline industry assemble in Hamburg, Germany, for the Aircraft Interiors Expo. For the most part, it's a boring trade show full of talk about seat textiles and fuel economy. But it also includes exhibitors like Boeing and Airbus, which announce plans for cabin design that are bound to impact your travel in years to come. With that in mind, here are the best ideas we spotted from the show—and one really, really bad one.
4 Ideas For Redesigning The Pot Logo
The pot leaf gets a heady update.
For decades, the pot leaf was a potent symbol of the counterculture, an unnuanced logo adorning everything from lighters to T-shirts and endlessly doodled in teenagers' notebooks. Brandish a pot leaf, and you conjured a world: High Times subscriptions and communes along the Russian River and Dick's Picks Volume 29. That the logo looked like bad clipart was just part of its scruffy charm.
Just Your Typical New Mexico Image Recognition Startup Spun Off From A Government Lab
Far from Silicon Valley, Descartes Labs aims to turn a national research facility's AI research into new ways of understanding the world.
On a recent Friday afternoon, I was riding the San Francisco subway when the doors opened at a station and Mark Johnson stepped into the car. It was a pleasant surprise to see him . . . but not that much of a surprise. Over the years, Johnson has worked at a bunch of startups I've covered, including Kosmix (acquired by Walmart), Powerset (later one of the foundations of Microsoft's Bing) and Zite (which was bought by CNN, which later flipped it to Flipboard). He's the sort of guy I think of when I think of Bay Area startups.
Can't Focus In Your Open Office? Wrap Yourself In This New Cocoon To Tune Out Distraction
No one can sneak up behind you now.
What if, instead of crouching over your desk in an open office, you could kick back in a cocoon-like space where no one could sneak up behind you and start talking? At the very least, you'd probably be more productive.
Four Rule-Breaking Lessons From The First Woman To Run The Boston Marathon
How Kathrine Switzer's history-making move in 1967 led to a career advocating for women in sports.
When Kathrine "K.V." Switzer took her place at the starting line of the 1967 Boston Marathon, wearing a bulky, grey sweat suit and lipstick, she was about to make history. No woman had ever officially entered and run the venerable race before, although she had heard that a woman ran it the previous year without a bib number. Switzer had been training hard with her coach, Arnie Briggs, at a time when it was widely believed that women simply didn't have the physical capability of running the 26.2 miles that make up a marathon.
April 17, 2015
The Recommender: Rick Tetzeli, Ex-Burger Slinger
The best things on (and sometimes off) the Internet this week, curated by Fast Company employees.
[image error]Rick TetzeliPhoto: Celine Grouard for Fast CompanyName: Rick Tetzeli
Role at Fast Company: Executive editor. I assign and edit stories for the print magazine.
Twitter: @tetzeli
Titillating Fact: I once worked the takeout window at Jack-in-the-Box in Tucson, Arizona.
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