David Lidsky's Blog, page 4603

Star Wars Girl Taps Female Geek Chic Market

How many Star Wars fans out there in a galaxy far far away are female? Probably more than you think.

According to Ashley Eckstein (above), the voice behind Ahsoka Tano on the hit animated series Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, the female fan base for the iconic sci-fi films is as high as 50%. To tap into that seemingly untapped audience, Eckstein is launching her own clothing line, Her Universe, next month at Comic-con, but gave Fast Company a sneak peak of the collection at the Star...

Neiman Marcus' Karen Katz Plans to Sell Luxury Through Social Media

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Photograph by Matthew Mahon

CEO-designate Neiman Marcus Group.

Big idea: To use the Web to turn luxury retailer Neiman Marcus into an authority and an educator on fashion. "We have a very robust online business, but convincing luxury houses to join us on the Web site has involved a lot of groveling," says Karen Katz, 53, who currently runs Neiman Marcus's department stores and will take over as CEO of the entire corporation in October. The next step is to better exploit social media. "People...

Apple Patent Filed For Buzzing, Tingling, "Feedback" Touchscreen

Apple's efforts to patent amazing technology that may power its future iPhones continue apace: It's just applied for a patent relating to mulit-haptic feedback. Your iPhone 6 touchscreen may actually tingle under your fingers.

The patent's title gives away much of what it's about: "Multi Touch with Multi Haptics." While touchscreen tech, popularized by the iPhone, has changed how people interact with their cell phones, it's far from an ideal system and there's plenty of room for refinement...

Electrolux Turning Plastic From the Ocean Into Vacuum Cleaners

Talk about the right marketing at the right time. Electrolux is taking advantage of our collective (and justified) fixation on the ocean by launching Vac from the Sea, an initiative that will turn plastic pollution from the ocean into Electrolux vacuum cleaners.

Electrolux is recruiting trained volunteers to gather plastic, either by diving after it or scooping it up from waves, from a variety of locations in the Pacific, Indian Ocean, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Baltic and...

Sony's Susan Panico on the Move, 3-D Gaming, and the Future of the PlayStation Network

We talk with Susan Panico, the Senior Director of the PlayStation Network. She tells us about the state of PSN and the new PlayStation Plus service.

Kevin Ohannessian: What's your favorite thing at E3 this year?

Susan Panico: Tomorrow's my day to walk the showfloor, so I've only seen our booth. I have to say being a long time Gran Turismo fan that I am really excited to see GT5 come out and show want one of the best technological teams we have, what they can do wit the technological prowess...

Children Frolic on Oily Florida Beaches, Time to End BP-Financed Tourism Ads [Video]

Want to bravely defy the BP oil disaster and spend a sunny day on the beach? Think again--at least if you're in Destin, Florida, where thousands of tar balls washed up on the beach this week. As recently as Monday, local beaches were completely clean.

In the video below, a child on Destin Beach gets oil stuck to the bottom of her feet. The mother is, apparently, prepared with a container of Goo Gone. Such is the reality of going to the beach post-oil disaster: suncreen, sunglasses, and Goo...

Apple Files For Buzzing, Tingling Touchscreen Patent

Apple's efforts to patent amazing technology that may power its future iPhones continue apace: It's just applied for a patent relating to mulit-haptic feedback. Your iPhone 6 touchscreen may actually tingle under your fingers. 

The patent's title gives away much of what it's about "Multi Touch with Multi Haptics." While touchscreen tech, popularized by the iPhone, has changed how people interact with their cell phones, it's far from an ideal system and there's plenty of room for refinement...

Twitter and FTC Settle Over Hacked Accounts

 

Twitter has settled with the Federal Trade commission after complaints that some of its accounts were hacked. The FTC claimed that "serious lapses" in data security at the social media site had allowed hackers to infiltrate users' Twitter accounts and send out fake tweets. Just 55 of them were accessed, 45 in January 2009, and 10 in April of the same year. One of those, however, happened to be that of President Obama.

The site was breached when hackers used an automated tool to guess the...

Loopt Founder: iPhone's New Multitasking a "Sea Change" For Location Gaming

Loopt's updated iPhone app is out. With it comes Star service as an add-on that turns Loopt into a sort of loyalty card for everything. What's more, Loopt is an iOS4 app and can run in the background. Loopt's founder talked with us about this new awesomeness.

Star is powerful, demonstrated by the fact that it's launch location-based-loyalty partner is Gap. We've connected with Loopt founder Sam Altman about Star, and he notes that he's "thrilled about the response to Loopt Star, where we are...

Robots With Mobile Phone Brains to Battle at AppCon Games

Cell phones plus robots equals cellbots--didn't you know? The organizers of the upcoming app-centric developer conference AppCon 2010 know all about them, and just for kicks they're having a Cellbot Hackathon competition.

If you're still clueless about what a cellbot may be, then just think about what a modern smartphone really is: It's a self-powered portable device, brimming with electronics and sensors, often with Wi-Fi connectivity, and it comes with the ability to run user-coded apps...