David Lidsky's Blog, page 4609

Investigation Supports Longtime Sea Shepherd Reports of Japan Bribing International Whaling Commission

Japan is so desperate to preserve its whaling industry that the country has resorted to bribing small nations with cash and prostitutes, according to a recent investigation from The Sunday Times of London. Undercover reporters from the newspaper disguised themselves as representatives of a Swiss billionaire seeking anti-whaling votes at the next International Whaling Commission's meeting, set to take place later this month in Morocco. The reporters found six countries (St Kitts and Nevis...

Bing Challenges Google With iPhone App Boasting Barcode Reader, Social Net Features

Bing just upped its effort in the search engine war against Google with an updated iPhone app. Just in time for iOS4's firmware update, the app has a bunch of tweaks, but one, real Google-beater: Barcode scanning for quick product IDs. 

Among the usual security fixes and UI adjustments, Bing iPhone's new camera view system is the real gem. It's like several existing iPhone apps that've popped up over the last year which take advantage of the better camera in the 3GS phone to image barcodes...

BP Now Using Police to Strongarm Activists With Cameras

We've covered BP's unsavory attempts at blocking journalists from filming the Gulf oil disaster before. And while we were surprised to learn that the oil giant hired mercenaries to strongarm private citizens, it now appears that BP also has the local police in its pocket, as evidenced by the experiences of Drew Wheelan, the conservation coordinator for the American Birding Association.

Mother Jones directs us to the video below, which shows the Louisiana police warning Wheelan to stop...

Google Voice Now Available to Everyone (in the U.S.)

Google Voice, which began as an app called GrandCentral before Google bought it back in 2007, is a difficult beast to explain. It's sort of like a phone management system--it gives users one number which, when called, rings however many devices that user wants (cellphones, landlines, work phones, whatever). It provides an alternate web-based voice mail system which transcribes voice (sometimes well, sometimes with odd and hilarious mistakes) and pops the messages into your email for...

Tesla Only Sells 10 Cars a Week, But Still Has Plans to Build a Cabriolet, Van, and SUV

Tesla Motors' well-publicized struggle with growing pains is something of a soap opera. There's divorce, bankruptcy, plane crashes, sports cars, and lots of uncertainty--and the longer we watch, the more complicated things seem to get. With the EV startup set to launch its initial public offering next week, the juicy tidbits keep coming. The latest: while Tesla is only selling approximately 10 cars per week, though the company is still planning to sell a Cabriolet, van, and SUV model...

Adidas: We're Beating Nike in the World Cup Brand War

Nike may be tooting its horn about the brand awareness buzz it's stirring up as part of the World Cup, but Adidas has just fired back in the war of words with some hard figures: Its sales will near $2 billion from soccer in 2010 alone.

Adidas CEO Herbert Hainer couldn't be more direct: "After the first 10 days it is already clear that this World Cup will be a great success for Adidas. We will not only achieve our ambitious goals in football, we will over-achieve them." And though Nielsen...

Brightcove Adds Flash-Based SDK for Android to Its Stable of Developers' Tools

Brightcove, the cloud-based online video platform, has just unveiled an app SDK and mobile templates for Android that uses Flash 10.1--which was given a full launch today by Adobe. Now publishers and website developers will be able to bring video that adapts on demand to an Android mobile user's device--similar to what it did with its iPhone SDK for iOS. Given that more and more people are accessing video content on their cellphones, this can only be a good thing.

A couple of months ago...

Design Students Give Red Cross a Brand Transfusion

The cash-strapped Red Cross gets new ideas; students get real-world experience.

One day last spring, Serin Inan and Yina Ma, two design students at Parsons the New School, stepped up to the classroom podium, nervously giggling. And for good reason: They were about to detail to executives from a global humanitarian aid organization, the Red Cross, its problems--ranging from logistics to branding--and how design could make it better. (All in their second language of English, no less.)

The...

Fish Nibble Your Feet in the Nightclub Ambience of This London Spa

Introducing Aqua Sheko, London's first "fish therapy" beauty spa

This is Aqua Sheko. It's a beauty spa in
London. That the decor, by 7Gods, looks like the lounge of
a chichi seafood restaurant, what with the slick black furniture and
the underlit fish tanks, is perhaps all too fitting. The spa is a place
for noshing. Except, instead of you nibbling on the fish, the fish
nibble on you.

Your feet, in any case.

The spa bills
itself as London's first "fish therapy" outpost. Here, women and...

Mind Games: Will NeuroSky Power the Thought-Controlled Consoles of Tomorrow?

NeuroSky, as well as having a slightly ominious sci-fi-ish name, has just succeeded in raising nearly $12 million in funding to develop its business. What's its business? Also very cool and sci-fi-ish: Brain sensors for mind-controlled games. 

Remember that mind-controlled game from Mattel--Mindflex--that hit the news last year, with all sorts of references to the Force and so on? It's powered by some NeuroSky sensors. The technology is an advance on the sort of tech used for decades to...