David Lidsky's Blog, page 4593

Interview: Blip Boutique's Mary Fagot, Creative Force Behind Robyn's Killing Me Video

The oil spill is killing me. My suitcase is killing me. But mostly it's Robyn's interactive twideo that's killing Twitter users. The firm behind it is Blip Boutique, an L.A.-based collective led by James Frost--the guy behind Radiohead's House of Cards video and Mary Fagot, ex creative director of Capitol Records.

Mary spent the last year at the Hyper Island school in Stockholm to
boost her skills in interactive and digital art direction, and through
that met Thomas Bjork, who was working at...

Wanted: A Toy Robot For Design Snobs and Gundam Nerds

Behold Cubebot, the world's most tasteful robot.

Design snobs and Gundam nerds might be worlds apart on, oh, pretty much everything, but one thing they can both agree on is this: the awesomeness of David Weeks's Cubebot.

Cubebot is both a toy robot and an art object. You can fold it into a box as if it were some sort of Tony Rosenthal sculpture or sic it on your model RX-78 till mom yells bedtime -- whatever. Designy types will love it because of the Cubist reference and because it's made...

Sony Recalls 500,000 Melting Laptops, While Apple Gets an iPhone 4 Press Roasting

Product recalls aren't hugely common but are always an embarrassing PR event ... and as recalls go, Sony's one announced today is a pretty big deal. Over half a million Vaio laptops are at risk, it seems, of running hot enough to melt. 

The actual issue is in the computer's temperature control circuitry, according to Sony--there's some design flaw in the system that prevents it effectively cooling the CPU (and other hot-running parts) down enough. At some critical thermal moment, the...

Missed Chinese Connections: Why You'll Have to Hook Up With Asian Army Hotties the Old Fashioned Way

Security issues have forced the Chinese military authorities to clamp down on their troops' Internet use. As well as a moratorium on blogging, the 2.3 million military personnel are forbidden from using online dating sites, personal websites and even visiting real-world Internet cafes. As opposed to those in Second Life, presumably.

The cyber-rules--just one part of a lengthy edict from the Communist Party's Central Military Affairs Commission--are brief, yet to the point. According to

How Honeywell Is Redesigning The Skies For Quicker, Greener, Less Painful Flying

Bob Smith, Honeywell's CTO, talks with FastCompany.com about the technology that will soon control the skies overhead.

If you've flown on an airplane anytime recently, at some point you probably sat in seat, bolt upright, uncomfortable and thirsty, as your airplane sat idling on the tarmac—only to hear the captain's voice crackle overhead: "Well, folks, we're currently number 35 for take off. It's gonna be awhile." You probably blamed lots of things: the sluggish airline people; the...

IDEA Spotlight: Speech Therapy Made Easy

The Palatometer projects tongue movements onto a computer screen, providing a clear visual of how you thpeak -- sorry, speak.

[image error]

Used to be, therapists would put your tongue through all sorts of unspeakable horrors to determine the particulars of a speech impediment -- coating it in honey and charcoal powder, prodding it with a tongue-depressor, the list goes on. A new device by Rocketship, Inc. and CompleteSpeech makes it easy to see precisely what your tongue is doing, without turning your...

Greenpeace Launches Aggressive Campaign Against Costco

Greenpeace gets a lot of flack for its aggressive, embarrassing campaigns against corporations, but the simple truth is that they often work. That's why we have some hope that the organization's most recent campaign, which derides Costco's lack of sustainable seafood policies, could result in real changes.

The campaign, dubbed "Oh No Costco!" highlights Costco's practice of selling 15 out of Greenpeace's 22 red-listed species (destructively farmed seafood). The company also refuses to answer...

Green Cremation, Burials Offer Sustainability in Death

Funerals get Gore-y.

When is a green burial inappropriate? We're all for biodegradable coffins and environmentally sound funerals, but some recently-introduced methods may go too far.

Chemical & Engineering News points us to a number of possibilities for green--and slightly gruesome--burials and cremations. A wSwedish company called Promessa, for example, plans to dunk corpses into liquid nitrogen, break them down into small, freeze-dried pieces, suck away excess water with vacuums, and place...

Congress Interested in Google's, and Others' Investment in Chinese Censoring

The Google-China saga took a twist yesterday as Google adjusted how its site works under the Chinese censor rules. And today Congress is getting interested in U.S. roles in Chinese censorship. So is China a no-go or a go-to business prospect?

On Tuesday, rumblings from within Google indicated it may be
reconsidering its trick of redirecting Google China users to a Hong
Kong server in order to work around censorship laws. The Chinese
authorities have found another saber to rattle--Google's...

Bsquare's Snapdragon CPU Dev Kit: Smarter Smartphones, Apps En Route?

The App Store Wars keep getting more interesting: Software firm Bsquare just announced it'll be releasing a developer platform to support Qualcomm's low-power-eating but powerful Snapdragon smartphone CPUs. More apps are en route.

Bsquare's press release states that today it's announcing the "Launch of MSM8655-Based Snapdragon Mobile Development Platform With Android OS and Brew MP," which is slated for a "Q4 2010" arrival. As well as confirming that Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon chips...