David Lidsky's Blog, page 4591

Redesigning Education: Designing Schools in a Spiky World

How can schools provide safe, sustainable learning centers, even in
urban environments? The latest in Trung Le's Redesigning Education
series.

Survey: iPad Owners Adore, Love, Lust After Their iGizmo, But Not the App Store

Why is there so much media coverage of Apple's iPad? Because it's selling by the ton, and the people who buy it love it. Seriously--they adore it: A new survey quizzed 6,000 owners and the stats are eye-poppingly positive. That's why. 

Technologizer solicited opinions from new owners about their iPads starting in early May--a whole month since the device hit the shelf, giving time for super-early adopter iPad buyers to get used to their device, and for more cautious buyers to be convinced...

Almost Genius: An AR Interface for Drawing in 3-D

Somehow, this weird little device actually makes a decent amount of sense.

 

 

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3-D design is currently the province of experts, with skills in MAYA or
CAD; it takes years to become proficient at these programs. A simple, fast and intuitive means for 3-D design is long overdue. But how would it work?

Jinha Lee and Hiroshi Ishii, two graduate students at the MIT Media Lab, created an interface with that very question in mind. "Beyond" comprises a glass table backed by a digital projector...

Infographic of the Day: Who Drives Worse, Teens or Seniors ?

Teens--but not by much.

Everyone grouses that seniors are a bit shaky at the wheel, but the data are surprising. When you compare those 65+ to those 15-20, the two groups are both nearly as accident prone, as this infographic by FSCarballo shows:

What's particularly surprising is that even in old age, males tend to get into far more car crashes than females. Morever, I bet that if you tweaked the data range on the senior set just slightly--examining, for example, those over 68--you'd find...

Intel's Robot Butler Serves, Clears, and Does Dishes

Our collective dream of a Jetsons-like future is inching closer to reality with a little help from Intel, which this week showed off HERB (the Home Exploring Robot Butler) to FastCompany.com. The robotic butler, built as part of a collaboration with the Quality of Life Technology Center and Carnegie Mellon University, uses six multi-core computers along with multiple sensors to perform various tasks around the kitchen.

HERB has some powerful capabilities. It can serve, toss things in the...

Move Over Twitter, Foursquare: Intel SENS Detects and Displays Everything Friends Are Doing

If you think privacy is a problem with the current generation of social networking applications, brace yourself for SENS (Socially ENabled Services), a new kind of social networking from Intel that literally shows you what others are doing. Fortunately, your friends are depicted in the form of something called a "shadow avatar" that translates real-life acts into actions on a virtual being--a concept familiar to gamers used to being represented by GC characters.

The technology, intended...

Amazon Upgrades the Kindle DX, All but Concedes Defeat to Apple

It's a big news week for Amazon: They've announced an update to the big-screen Kindle DX e-reader in a week or so, with an improved e-ink display and lower price. Way lower--down $110 to $379. Is this Amazon's first response to iPad?

The new Kindle DX will come with a graphite body, partly to make it stand apart from earlier incarnations of the device and partly to demonstrate Amazon does take some elements of style seriously (and, we also wonder, partly because a dark gray enclosure may make...

iFive: Whale in the Gulf, Oil Boss in Dock, Droid X vs. iPhone 4, Finland Makes Broadband a Right, Woot Rap Video

As you slept last night, and Roger Federer drowned his sorrows in the Chalkdust pub in Wimbledon, innovation was putting on the pancake makeup and stepping out of its FEMA trailer for a YouTube appearance.

1. While Hurricane Alex makes life difficult in the Gulf, a Taiwanese whale is hoping to make life easier. At three-and-a-half football fields in length, and ten stories high, the A Whale is the world's largest oil skimming vessel. Scientists are finding "Dead Zones" in the affected areas...

Intel's Robot Butler Serves, Clears and Does Dishes

Our collective dream of a Jetsons-like future is inching closer to reality with a little help from Intel, which this week showed off HERB (the Home Exploring Robot Butler) to FastCompany.com. The robotic butler, built as part of a collaboration with the Quality of Life Technology Center and Carnegie Mellon University, uses six multi-core computers along with multiple sensors to perform various tasks around the kitchen.

HERB has some powerful capabilities. It can serve, toss things in the...

Ebert: "I Was a Fool" to Disrespect Video Games on the Internet

In a huge 1800-word apology on his Sun Times blog, critic Roger Ebert admitted it was stupid to complain about games not being art--as he wouldn't review a film without at least sitting through the first 45 minutes.
But Ebert then bizarrely retracts his sort-of-apology to enraged gamers in the same opening paragraph, adding "I still believe this, but I should never have said so." So it's OK to think wrong things, just don't say them on the internet. Thanks for the advice, Ebert *THUMBS UP