David Lidsky's Blog, page 4531

The Top 5 Blown Calls That Technology Could've Stopped

Blown calls should be a thing of the past by now. New technology is helping refs avoid big flubs, catching fouls when they turn a blind eye or zeroing in on too-close-to-call plays through Matrix-style instant replay. We've already seen how successful these innovations have been deployed in tennis with its "Hawk-Eye" officiating; soon, this tech could be coming to football and also ... football.

A report out this week claims the NFL is in discussions with Cairos Technologies about possible...

Twitter Researchers Analyzing Millions of Tweets

Twitter is growing exponentially, and it's showing no signs of slowing up. Just last week, it passed the 20-billion tweet mark. For researchers, that means another 2.8 trillion characters of data to analyze.

It feels like almost every day we read yet another report aimed at charting the next big trend on Twitter. Today, for instance, HP released a study claiming to have analyzed enough tweets to discover the most influential Twitter users on the Web. In a realm of 20 billion tweets, how...

Desertification of Nebraska Not Enough to Convince Climate Change Deniers, Says Poll

The tipping point that turns skeptics into believers seems nearly impossible to reach when it comes to climate change. That isn't changing anytime soon, according to the Shelton Group's new Green Living Pulse study. The poll surveyed 1,098 consumers who buy green products on occasion, and asked climate change skeptics what it would take for them to believe that climate change is real and caused by humans. Answer: even an ice-free North Pole or a dustbowl on the Great Plains barely move the...

Glam: the Next Media Giant?

Glam Media is a rather glamorous operation in this down economy. The media network, which includes more than 1,500 women's blogs and media sites, turned a profit in October, snagging ad dollars where others struggled. The five-year-old company has $40 million in the bank, and has built its own ad tool to rival Google's DoubleClick.

We asked CEO Samir Arora about the significance of his recent acquisition of Sportgenic, why he hasn't been paid a full salary in three years, and why advertisers...

Your Computer Is Punk: A Rock Star's View of The Influence Project and Social Media

When I saw that Dave Allen—the original bassist for the seminal post-punk band Gang of Four and the digital anthropologist at the Portland-based ad agency/production shop North—was involved in The Influence Project, I knew he should talk to Jason Harris. Harris is the president of the SF-based ad agency/production shop Mekanism—the company producing The Influence Project with Fast Company—and a bassist who plays with the band Slumberparty. Though Slumberparty is no Gang of Four (yet, who...

iFive: Bankers Party, Apple in China, Net Neutrality, BlackBerry Nosiness, Wyclef in Haiti

iFive: The FCC runs, while Wyclef lands. That and other juicy tidbits.

1. Bankers rejoice at improving financial trends (albeit prematurely), and get down and dirty at company parties.

2. Apple starts to recover from its slow start in China with mounting evidence that it'll soon sell Wifi enabled iPhones on the mainland soon. And it's said to be gobbling up a Chinese gamemaker that already has a wifi phone on the market.

3. The Federal Communications Commission appears to be abandoning...

Twitter's "Who to Follow" Feature Should Always Recommend Kanye West

[image error]Twitter's newish "Who to Follow" feature is just starting to roll out to the majority of users now, and it's a nice little addition for those who want Twitter to more fully infiltrate their lives. It's sort of like Facebook's "people you might also know" feature, except, as TechCrunch notes, Twitter might actually be a more suitable venue for that kind of thing.

If you, as I and so many other people my age, grew up in one place, went to college in another, and moved to one or two more...

Google, Verizon Call New York Times's Net Neutrality Report "Quite Simply Wrong"

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Now that the hubbub from this debate has died down a little bit, we can get a sense of what's really going on. The story, so far: Yesterday, the New York Times published a story saying that according to top-level sources, Google and Verizon are in advanced talks to hammer out an agreement in which Verizon pushes some content (presumably Google's) to consumers faster, in exchange for money. That's pretty much a textbook refutation of net neutrality.

Net neutrality, of course, is the idea that...

How Many Books Are There in the World?

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Google's Books project, a six-year-old task to digitize as many of the world's books as possible, is an incredibly difficult and ambitious undertaking. Working alongside disparate library systems, governments, private collections, universities, and more has proven a challenge, one that's encountered all kinds of resistance. That's not even taking into consideration some of the most basic obstacles Google's had to deal with.

One of those basic obstacles is at the core of the entire project. If...

Wyclef? Why Not?

Sure, he's suspected of misappropriating funds from his own NGO (and America's IRS), but Wyclef Jean could be just the kind of marketing maniac Haiti needs.

How much attention does Wyclef Jean crave? He confirmed he is running for President of Haiti on the radio this morning (and just filed the necessary paperwork). Tonight he'll announce it all again on CNN's "Larry King Live." Remember that. We'll come back to it.

Tonight's bigger announcement in English (and maybe some Haitian Creole if...