David Lidsky's Blog, page 4566

NYC's First Electric Vehicle Charging Station Is Free, Has a Valet

GE may be taking its time in launching designer electric vehicle charging stations, but Coulomb Technologies is already deploying free charge spots en masse. The startup, which is installing nearly 5,000 public and home charging stations across the U.S. as part of the $37 million ChargePoint America program, unveiled its first New York City station this week.

Drivers will be able to juice up for free for the first 30 days at the station, located in an Edison Properties parking facility on...

BP Oil Gusher Finally Plugged...Maybe

After 87 days of unsuccessful attempts to plug the Gulf oil gusher, BP may have finally found a solution. A cap mounted on the Deepwater Horizon site's leaky well earlier this week has stopped all oil from spewing out--for now.

The trickiest part is yet to come, however. BP still has to perform a number of integrity tests to make sure the cap works. From BP's website:

The well integrity test will last at least 6 hours and could last up to
48 hours. During the test, the three ram capping...

Fast Company Is Hiring an Editorial Assistant

The editorial team at FastCompany.com produces a lot of great material. But we can do better. And we will, with your help. We're looking for an Editorial Assistant.

The position involves performing a variety of editorial duties, including creating newsletters, scheduling stories, making corrections, doing research, and yes, writing stories. The applicant should have a bachelor's degree in a relevant area such as Journalism, Liberal Arts, etc. Prior experience working and writing at a media...

Zachary Lieberman on DIY Gadgets, Making Fonts With Cars, and the Holy F**k Moment

Eye-trackers, devices that use small cameras to measure the motion of eyes, are often used to assist the disabled in digitally highlighting and spelling text. The technology is extremely expensive, with costs ranging anywhere from $10,000 to $15,000 for each pair. Yet Zachary Lieberman, the co-creator of OpenFrameworks and an assistant professor at Parsons, developed an eye-tracker for only $50.

Speaking at our recent Most Creative People event, Lieberman (featured as #36 on our list) told...

BP Buys $100 Million Biofuel Business

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There was a time not so long ago when BP tried to brand itself as being "Beyond Petroleum." That tagline is, of course, laughable now that BP has turned the Gulf into a giant petroleum bathtub. But the tainted company is still trying to save itself with alternative investments. Case in point: BP's $98 million play this week to purchase biofuel startup Verenium's cellulosic ethanol business.

BP has invested in Verenium before. The pair previously worked together on two 50-50 joint ventures...

The New Rupee Symbol Unveiled to the World

The Indian Finance Ministry unveiled its choice for the new Rupee symbol today--and it's an amalgam of both eastern and western letters, using the Devanagari "Ra" and Roman capital "R."

India's currency has been strangely bereft of an official
symbol to use when denoting it in text. Googling for "rupee symbol" returns a barrage of different results, revealing the typographic disarray that existed--until now.

The new symbol is the creation of Indian Institute of Technology assistant...

Study: OMG, Facebook's Ending Tomorrow! What Do You Do?

What would Facebook's 500 million active users do if the world's largest social network were to be shut down? Better yet, would you do?

That was the topic covered in a study conducted at Stanford by Andreas Weigend, the former chief scientist of Amazon, who asked respondents to imagine a scenario where Facebook were shut down and all its data destroyed. Can we live without the service? The results provide insight into what matters most to users of social networks.

According to the...

How to Make Your Supply Chain Human Rights Friendly

 

Your cell phone could be promoting child warfare. Your laptop
could be a product of illegal trade. Your mp3 player could be linked to human
rights abuse. Some of the materials used to produce these gadgets, that is.

Apple, Dell, HP, Intel and Nokia are among the companies that
trade materials through supply chains in the eastern Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC), which contributes to basic human rights abuse in the region, according
to a recent paper by...

Power Players and Profanity: Talking About Talking Dirty

I have been blogging about the strategic use of swearing (see here and here), which was originally inspired by Dan McGinn's great post at HBR on "Should Leaders Ever Swear?" This was followed by a podcast at HBR where I talked about the same subject. NPR got wind of all this and I was interviewed for a story that aired on NPR, on All Things Considered. It is called "Power Players and Profanity", and it a four minute segment that covers characters from Carol Bartz and Michelle Obama, to...

John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog, on Google's Political Influence and "Misguided Motto"

As Google grows in size, so does its political influence. And, while this may not overly worry most people, there is one man who is keeping a close watch on the search engine firm. He is Consumer Watchdog's John Simpson, and one gets the feeling that he revels in his role of giant-killer.

Simpson thinks that Google enjoys far too much power in Washington--not least in the White House, where Deputy CTO Andrew McLaughlin is seen as been too close to his former employers. And last week, Inside...