David Lidsky's Blog, page 4613

Online Privacy: What If Your Valuable, Personal Online Data Got Old and Died?

Online privacy is a hot potato.

VC notables Venrock, Kleiner Perkins, and Accel Partners are all betting big bucks on privacy startups. "Privacy is a big issue, and it's going to get bigger because people realize it can be used against you. That spells market opportunity," says Ted Schlein of Kleiner Perkins.

Meanwhile, the government is preparing to update existing legislation that protects individuals' personal data further, meaning someone's going to get burned. We're looking at you...

EADS Debuts World's First Four-Engine All-Electric Aerobatic Plane

We know what you're thinking, those Red Bull Air Races are so cool, but do they have to be such gas-sucking spectacles?

No. Enter Cri-Cri, the world's first four-engined all-electric aerobatic plane. Developed by the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), the plane made its debut at this week's Green Aviation Show in Le Bourget, France.

EADS' plane has some impressive stats: 30 minutes of autonomous cruise flight at 68 miles per hour, 15 minutes of
autonomous aerobatics at...

Blue "Lightsaber" Laser Can Blind, Burn Flesh, and Costs Only $200

That little hunk of frost-coated hardware in the photo is the Spyder III Pro Arctic blue handheld laser. It's being marketed as the closest thing to real-life Star Wars lightsaber ever. Because this $200 piece of Chinese gear can fry your retinas. 

The product's sales spiel is pretty no-nonsense: "For the first time in history, direct blue laser diodes have now become available in the consumer market. The laser powered home theater projector is the first of a large family of audio and video...

Why 3D Is Better When It's In the Palm of Your Hand

We tend to think of 3D as being a large display affair--movie screens, or more recently, widescreen televisions. But last week Nintendo revealed the 3DS at E3. This next-generation handheld gaming device will feature a 3.53" 3D display that does not require the use of viewing glasses.

At first glance, handheld devices might seem inferior for displaying 3D visuals compared their large-screen counterparts. But there are limitations to large, fixed displays that don't constrain handhelds. In...

Inflatable Buildings That Could Earn $10 Million a Year

Using clever, super-green construction methods, Woods Bagot proposes a building system that would make use of the stalled sites littering New York.

[image error]

In New York, the most glaring signs of the Great Recession are the stalled construction sites littering the city--boarded up, dusty, and desolate eyesores.

The architecture mega-firm Woods Bagot may have a solution, which they've just unveiled: Temporary, inflatable buildings that let the developers make money while they wait for their finances...

Infographic of the Day: The World's Most Dysfunctional Countries, Ranked

Yay! Afghanistan and Iraq made it! Oh, right: You don't want to top this list.

[image error]

Foreign Policy magazine is up with its 2010 Failed State Index, a massive project that tries to figure out what countries are on the verge of total collapse thanks to corruption, war, crime, and everything in between. This year, they've supplemented their findings with a handy dandy infographic.

Somalia, with a score of 114.3 out of 120, comes out on top, with Aghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan close behind. That...

Toshiba's Trio of New Laptops Includes a Dual-Screen, Windows 7 Oddball

Toshiba announced three new laptops today, two of which are slightly unusual and one of which is completely bonkers. The most normal is the Portege R700, an ultraportable with some legitimate power. The R700 is business-focused (hence the drab, ThinkPad-like design), but with a full Intel Core processor and a mere inch of thickness, it's a pretty impressive bit of hardware (it shoots air over certain internal components to stay cool). At less than three pounds, it's about as light as a...

$149 Nook: The E-Reader's Demise Begins With a Race to the Bottom

Barnes & Noble has just revealed its Wi-Fi-only Nook, the first serious attempt at undercutting Amazon's Kindle e-reader business with a store and hardware combo. But it's more than that: It's a sign of the changing e-reader game.

The Nook Wi-Fi is basically the same as the original 3G-enabled Nook e-reader, with all the expensive 3G wireless tech taken out. Think of it as the Nook equivalent to the Wi-Fi-only iPad--and just as with Apple's machines, the simpler device costs less as there's...

Michael Grätzel's Solar Cells Get Stylish With Color and Translucent Materials

Michael Grätzel may be the closest thing to a living legend in the solar energy world. A professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the Swiss scientist discovered a new type of thin-film solar cell--dubbed the dye-sensitized solar cell (aka the Grätzel cell)--in 1991. Now, nearly two decades later, Grätzel's invention is taking off, with companies like Konarka, Hydrogen Solar, and Sony developing the cells for commercial use.

Grätzel's cells, which are inspired by the...

Wiring A Smart City In the Desert

Is Dubai the world's smartest city? Maybe not in the sense that it mortgaged long-term infrastructure with $100 billion in very short-term debt, but "smart" in a way IBM, Cisco and other tech heavyweights would be envious of. One advantage of building a city from scratch is that each of Dubai's 60,000 modern buildings is equipped with the state-of-the-art in lighting, HVAC, and security systems--all of which can be wired to the Internet.

Last week at the Realcomm 2010 conference in Las...