David Lidsky's Blog, page 4532

Best Defense Against Car Theft: Drive a Prius

You hardly need a car alarm if you drive a Prius. That's the conclusion of a new vehicle theft study from the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI). According to the report, thieves are after "chrome, horsepower, and HEMIs," but not "sedate family cars and fuel-sippers."

HLDI's report calculates the vehicles with the highest insurance claims for theft by taking into account the rate at which insurance claims are filed as well as the size
of the payments. Unsurprisingly, the rap song-worthy...

HP Names the Most Influential Twitter Users (Sorry, Martha)

The aim of the Influence Project is to find the most influential person online. Of course, as we assumed, it's extremely difficult to track influence, or even define what influence means on the Web. Is influence the same as popularity? Can it exist in a space as infinite as the Internet?

In a report released today by HP Labs, social media researchers ask the same questions when trying to figure what makes for an influential Twitter post. The answer? Get folks fired up. "To become...

U.S. Two-Faced on China: Happy to Spend There, Blocks Acquisitions Here

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Chinese tech firm Huawei, #5 on our list of the Most Innovative Companies 2010, has been in the news several times recently, for its new Android smartphone products and its surprisingly forward-thinking eco policies. But did you know that twice in the last month alone the firm has been denied the purchase of two U.S. companies, despite placing the highest bid on the table?

CNN writes about the matter in a piece published early this morning titled "Why America sees red in corporate China....

Coke! Cannibalism! Breasts! Lies! The Juiciest Bits in "The Social Network" [Spoiler Alert]

Bits of Aaron Sorkin's script for the David Fincher-directed film about the founding of Facebook, The Social Nework, have bounced around the Internet for a while. We got our hands on what seems to be the almost final entire script. Since Sorkin has a way of making folks labor through moody buildups--and this film is, at its heart, a melodrama about rich, white, geeks battling for privilege points (and, okay, innovating)--we thought we'd offer up some of the better lines. Call it free...

Tesla Leaking a Trail of Cash

When will Tesla Motors stop hemorrhaging money? The electric car pioneer made a splash with its NASDAQ debut last month, shifting up from $17 to $23.89 a share on the first day of trading. But this week Tesla reported a net loss loss of $38.5 million for this quarter--up from $29.5 million in the first quarter of this year.

Tesla assures investors that this hefty net loss is all part of its long-term plan. But it isn't the only setback this perennial startup has suffered in recent weeks...

Say It Loud: Is Twitter Working on a "Shoutout" Tool?

Twitter has been quickly and quietly evolving new features right from the start of its short and happy life. Now there's a rumor swirling that the site is about to implement a "shoutout" feature--a new way to give praise to a specific user.

The rumor has popped up at Louis Gray's Silicon Valley blog. Gray discovered an odd and official-looking Twitter feed called @twittershoutout. While 175 people are following the feed, it's private--and many of those 175 are people officially connected with...

Stink Bug: VW Beetle Powered By Human Waste Makes Debut

Electric cars seem downright inefficient compared to the Bio-Bug, a VW Beetle rigged to run on biogas, or methane gas generated from human waste during the sewage treatment process. The Beetle, designed by British sustainable energy company GENeco, performs like a regular car--except it can take compressed methane gas in the tank along with regular gasoline.

At first glance, the Beetle appears to be a publicity stunt for GENeco, which owns a number of waste treatment sites in the U.K. But...

Five-Pointed Laser Telescope Gives Astronomers Clear Shot to Heaven

Star gazing just got a whole lot better thanks to five green lasers punching a pentagon pattern 15 miles high in the sky.

Devised by an astronomy team in Arizona and funded by the National Science Foundation, scientists have created a method to get crisper views of larger swaths of the night sky. "The technologies we're investigating will be crucial to the full scientific exploitation of the next generation giant telescopes," said Michael Hart, an astronomer at the University of Arizona...

iPhone 4 Concretes Apple's Dominance of Mobile Web Use

Android phones are outselling Apple's iPhones, and even good ol' eccentric Mr. Eric Schmidt of Google is trumpeting figures like 200,000 activations per day. Portions of the Net are spinning themselves into a frenzy, but with so many more members of the Android army, versus the three handsets that make up Apple's iPhone brigade, it'd be shocking if it were the other way around.

Last month, according to Quantcast's new data on the iPhone's share of mobile Web traffic in the U.S., Apple's...

Now Chile Wants a Silicon Valley of Its Own - But Where's the Homegrown Talent?

How will President Pinera reconcile innovation with foreign importation?

Silicon Valley was and is a great thing, we admit--which is why Chile's President Sebastian Pinera has announced that Santiago will soon have a Silicon Valley of its own. A successful entrepreneur himself, President Sebastian Pinera wants to bring foreign entrepreneurs into Chile to work with top-notch local talent in order to infuse the local economy with a startup culture and offer several advantages to the outsiders...