David Lidsky's Blog, page 4553

HTC Will Bring Sense UI to Windows Phone 7

HTC's Sense UI, a custom-made theme that sits over another OS and provides new functionality and a high level of polish, is probably the best regarded of all manufacturer-made custom UIs. Others, like Samsung's TouchWiz and Motorola's BLUR, are often less preferable than the untouched OS, but HTC Sense is often a major selling point on HTC phones like the HD2 (pictured), Droid Incredible, and Evo 4G.

But a new tide is coming. The OSes HTC had been improving with Sense, namely Android and...

Weird Internet Thing of the Day: Play "Snake" While Watching YouTube

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It's not clear how long this trick has been around, but I suspect it was implemented fairly recently, since the way it's triggered has surely been hit accidentally before. On some YouTube videos, it's possible to trigger a game of "Snake" that plays on top of the video itself. Check out the video above, shared by Kotaku, to see how it looks.

Snake is a basic game in which a "snake" (really just a string of dots) is led around in search of more dots. Dots are sporadically...

WikiLeaks Publishes 90,000 Military Documents, Points to Pakistan as Ally of Afghan Insurgents

WikiLeaks today released some 92,000 mostly-classified military documents relating to the nine-year-old Afghan War. The documents were given to three major publications, the New York Times, The Guardian UK, and Germany's Der Spiegel, several weeks ago, with an agreement that the information would not be published until today. The Times included a note to readers explaining the choice to publish classified information, the type of research undertaken to assure veracity of the material, and...

The Government's Landlord Smartens Up and Goes Green

By now you've heard plenty about smarter cities and even a "decade of smart," but what about a smarter courthouse? Or a smarter federal building?

Despite the flurry of deals signed by cities and even non-profits with the likes of IBM and Cisco (which announced a new pilot project around Akron, Ohio this week), the biggest score in the smarter sweepstakes is a government agency you've likely never heard of, the General Services Administration, and its real estate arm, the Public Buildings...

How to Save Nokia: Rip Out Its Bureaucratic Guts

Nokia's business may not be circling the drain hole, but it is in the toilet despite positive spin around its recent finances. How can the company be saved? A former exec knows: by flushing its middle management.

Juhani Risku wrote a book--Uusi Nokia (New Nokia)--that has been a sensation in Finland, but is only now hitting the English-speaking world, and The
Register gave it a close read. Risku is a former architect and industrial designer, and he was employed at a senior level inside...

Is Business Getting Girly? Don Draper Reports

Some things were just meant to be

As a rule I'm a 'never-before-noon' man. But one morning recently there it was, on top of the spread of magazines laid out for me on my desk. Cover story of The Atlantic Monthly, the magazine founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson and some cronies over a few drinks at the Parker House Hotel in Boston in 1857. Four words. "The End Of Men."

I glanced at the clock -- 11:15. But I picked up the ice tongs anyway, put two cubes in an old-fashioned glass and...

Industry-Wide Eco Index Will Rate Apparel on Sustainability

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Judging by the recent actions of companies like Walmart and Samsung, sustainability indexes (AKA green supply chain rating systems) are the next big thing in corporate social responsibility. So it isn't all that surprising that a group of 100 retailers and apparel brands are joining together to form an industry-wide Eco Index--a software-based tool that allows companies to track product impacts through a series of questions on labor and environmental efforts.

As expected, "crunchy" brands...

Raytheon's Pilot Helmet From the Future, Today

Raytheon is a name you may associate with turgid-sounding defense tech, but rarely anything that may rank as cool. This may change: It's just unveiled its Scorpion helmet digital info tech, which may sound familiar to fans of Blue Thunder.

Scorpion isn't a helmet by itself--it's an insert to existing helmets that injects a huge chunk of 21st Century wow factor into the business of flying a combat aircraft (which, lets face it, has quite a large wow factor all by itself). Designed to be...

DOE's Energy Innovation Hub Will Develop Fuel From Sunlight

Want to generate innovation? Build a hub to make it happen. The U.S. Department of Energy is embarking on an ambitious plan to speed up energy innovation with a $122 million cash injection for an Energy Innovation Hub in California. Dubbed the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, the research center will do exactly as its name suggests--develop a solar energy fuel conversion system through artificial photosynthesis and bring it to commercialization.

The DOE has selected an all-star...

"Greener Skies" Project Lowers Flight Emissions by 35%

This week, Alaska Airlines demonstrated a set of next-generation flight procedures that dramatically reduced fuel consumption and carbon emissions. Under the banner of its "Greener Skies" project, AA used satellite-based guidance technology that enabled aircraft to fly more efficient landing patterns, which are shorter and more direct. The Seattle-based airline estimates that such improved descent approaches would burn 2.1 million less gallons of fuel and cut carbon emissions by 22,000...