David Lidsky's Blog, page 4558

Misnamed iPhone App Makes Mailing and Driving Safe-ish

You know how you still fiddle with your phone to send and receive emails while you're driving, even though you're not supposed to? Yeah, I know you do. There's a new iPhone app designed to help keep you safe, called "Text'n'Drive."

Text'n'Drive actually works to read out and send new emails, not SMSes--which one may think are the little communication snippets that most tempt drivers to interact with--but still, the principle is sound, and the app will probably appeal to business types who...

Skype Call & Click Creates New Advertising Revenue Stream

We all know Facebook has 500 million users--heck, it's even advertised on movie posters now. But many often forget another service that boasts more members than Mark Zuckerberg's social network: Skype. Today, the Internet-phone service announced Click & Call, its first foray into advertising. And with more than 560 million registered users worldwide, Skype's new service is almost guaranteed to be a success.

Click & Call enables customers to call certain phone numbers for free that are...

iFive: Tony Hayward Gone By October, Obama and Cameron, New Star Discovered, Energy Dept Goes Online,

While you were sleeping, innovation was doing things. Yep, things. I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you.

1. Remember the ocean floor seepage close to BP's containment cap? Apparently it's coming from another well and, says Admiral Thad Allen, a drip is not a leak. Something else that could be escaping from BP is Tony Hayward -- not, however, as a drip, but as a resignation. The Guardian reckons he'll be an ex-employee of the firm, which has tabled around $7 billion of assets for a...

Flipboard iPad App Pretties Up, Declutters Your Social Web Life Into Magazine Form

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Developers are starting to realize that while the iPad might be little more than a "giant iPod Touch," it needs to be treated very differently. You can't just scale up--you need to think about how the device is used and how you can take advantage of its magazine-sized screen. Apps like Pulse, the snazzy news-reader app, are starting to figure out how to make the iPad more than it appears, and this new one, Flipboard, hopes to do the same for the social web.

Flipboard...

BP Photoshops Crisis Center Photo With Stunning Ineptitude

On BP's "Response in pictures" site, one photo, purported to be taken on July 16, 2010, sat for days, unquestioned. The photo shows BP's Houston Command Center, a desk with some massive monitors, lots of complicated things happening on them, and employees monitoring the situation in the Gulf. But all is not as it seems.

Yesterday, AmericaBlog took a good, hard look at the photo--but in retrospect, a mediocre, slightly firm look would have sufficed. The photo was altered in Adobe Photoshop CS4...

MOG's All-You-Can-Download Music Service Launches on iPhone and Android

Streaming music to a mobile device is just starting to be both feasible and desireable. The ability to stream a huge catalog of songs right to your smartphone at any time, for a small monthly fee, is really enticing. You can forget about storage space, or remembering to sync everything you might want to listen to while you're out. And for the price of one album per month, you get access to millions of songs.

Rhapsody and Spotify are the two major players in this world. Rhapsody is established...

Google Officially Enters the Energy Market

Google's entrance into the energy market has been a long time coming. Earlier this year, the Internet giant formed an energy subsidiary, dubbed "Google Energy", and soon afterwards Google announced that its first direct investment in utility-scale clean energy would go towards NextEra Energy Resources' wind energy project in North Dakota to the tune of $38.8 million. Now Google reports that it has entered into a 20-year green Power Purchase Agreement with NextEra--and Google plans to sell...

iPhony 4: Did Steve Jobs Mislead the Public About Delaying Korean Launch?

At Friday's iPhone 4 presser, aka Antennagate, Steve Jobs was tasked with bringing Apple's credibility back up to snuff after angering customers over the phone's nagging reception issues. And just as many cell phone companies such as Nokia and Blackberry cried foul when Jobs unapologetically showed how their phones suffered from a similar "death grip," it seems there is someone else calling foul: South Korea.

During the conference, Jobs announced that plans to ship the latest iPhone to...

iPad and Record Mac Sales Boost Apple's Quarterly Revenue to Highest Ever

Apple may have been fighting some lousy press in the past few weeks, but its third quarter earnings, released today, show that the company is still raking in cash. Apple might as well buy a currency printing press at this point: revenue was up 78% over last year, at $15.7 billion, with a profit of $3.25 billion.

Interestingly, gross margin is actually slightly down from the year-ago quarter, likely due to the iPad, the low price of which means less profit for Apple.

Speaking of the iPad, the...

The State of Internet Music on YouTube, Pandora, iTunes, and Facebook

"More people are engaged with music than ever before," said Tom Silverman, chairman and CEO of Tommy Boy Records. "It's a hockey stick going up; it's an incredible opportunity that so far has eluded us." Silverman was speaking this morning at the New Music Seminar in New York City, where he and Eric Garland, CEO of Big Champagne (who also unveiled the Ultimate Chart today), gave a State of the Music Industry address. Even if you aren't a player in the industry and only an avid music...