David Lidsky's Blog, page 4545

Enterprise Adds Electric Vehicle Rentals, WeCar Sharing, Massive Tree Planting

Say hello to electric car-renting-sharing fusion goodness.

Next time you stop by Enterprise Rent-A-Car, your vehicle rental may be electric and by the hour. These and other wide-sweeping company changes were announced earlier this week as part of a company overhaul.

Another new feature is car-sharing, similar to what is already offered by Hertz Connect and pioneer Zipcar:

"WeCar car-sharing technology -- complemented by Enterprise Rent-A-Car's extensive local car rental network -- provides a...

Coming Soon: Wireless Electric Vehicle Charging

Looks like we released our electric vehicle charger slideshow just a little bit too soon. Autobloggreen reports that a wireless charge station may be released sometime in the next few years courtesy of Evatran, a mysterious startup with the tagline "Energy without limits."

Evatran's Plugless Power charging station, unveiled this week at the Plug-In 2010 Conference, consists of a a permanently mounted car adapter along with a fixed parking block and control tower. An adopter-equipped vehicle...

Stop Freaking Out About the 100 Million "Hacked" Facebook Profiles

There's a story going around today that a "white hat" (the good kind, sort of) hacker pulled data from 100 million Facebook profiles and posted them online. The hacker, a "security consultant" by the name of Ron Bowles, collected user IDs, names, URLs, and all kinds of other data from those profiles, and made it all available as one massive torrent file. Sounds bad, right? It isn't.

The BBC, among others, is painting this as a terrifying hack of Facebook. But the thing is, all of the data...

The Inside Story of WikiLeaks's Latest Bombshell

[image error]The Columbia Journalism Review has a really interesting piece up about WikiLeaks's latest news coup and how it all came to pass. WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, is a famously independent and skittish entity, and has never to my knowledge coordinated with a news organization. So how exactly did three major news publications publish simultaneous in-depth reports using WikiLeaks's information?

Apparently, it wasn't Assange's idea--at least, Assange didn't spearhead it. Nick Davies, a...

Amazon Reveals Sleeker, Faster Kindle and New $140 Wi-Fi-Only Version

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Amazon today announced the new Kindle e-book reader, which, in accordance with its past naming traditions, is simply called the Kindle. The name hasn't changed, and there are no crazy new advances--color e-ink and video are still years off, and may never be worth the trade-offs in price and quality over LCD--but this is definitely the most lust-worthy Kindle yet.

After the (now last-gen) Kindle was mysteriously out of stock yesterday, our own Kit Eaton made some predictions. His third guess...

Facebook Tries to Cash-In on Q&A with 'Questions'

Facebook today announced the launch of a new project called Questions. It's still in beta, and will only be available to about 1% of Facebook users at first. But it puts Facebook into yet another competitive arena against Google and other companies that are trying to cash-in on the Q&A.

Google's total dominance over the keyword-based search market has led other companies to try and corner the market on a more direct, Q&A type search. Ask.com recently relaunched with a Q&A strategy, and Google...

How Oakland's Walmart-ization of Weed Could Choke Out Small-Time Growers

The closer marijuana comes to full legalization status in California, the more likely it is that the plant will be treated like any other crop--that is, as an industrial cash cow that often squeezes out small farmers. And the marijuana industrialization process is, in fact, already beginning. Oakland, California, became the first city this week to allow large-scale industrial marijuana cultivation.

As a result of the new policy, four lucky Oakland marijuana entrepreneurs will be allowed to...

Coming Soon: Wireless Electric Vehicle Charging

Looks like we released our electric vehicle charger slideshow just a little bit too soon. Autobloggreen reports that a wireless charge station may be released sometime in the next few years courtesy of Evatran, a mysterious startup with the tagline "Energy without limits."

Evatran's Plugless Power charging station, unveiled this week at the Plug-In 2010 Conference, consists of a a permanently mounted car adopter along with a fixed parking block and control tower. An adopter-equipped vehicle...

NOAA State of the Climate Report: Get Ready for a Warming World

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's just-released 2009 State of the Climate report bears few surprises for those who follow climate science--the past decade was the warmest on record, and the Earth has slowly been heating up for the past 50 years.

The difference between this and every other climate report, however, is that NOAA gathered research from 300 scientists in 48 countries to produce a compelling document that covers every aspect of our planet's climate. The report...

Aspen Institute Amplifies Green Jobs Collaboration With Energy and Environment Awards

Blue Green Alliance named winner in Non-Governmental category.

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"Collaboration" and "green jobs" are buzzwords in the climate change scene these days, but The Aspen Environment Forum, in collaboration with National Geographic, just made them buzz a whole lot louder.

They've given the Blue Green Alliance this year's Aspen Institute Energy and Environment Award for the "Non-Governmental Organization" category. The Blue Green Alliance pairs labor unions with environmental organizations to expand...