David Lidsky's Blog, page 4635

Zynga Launches FrontierVille, a Wild West FarmVille

Zynga's just revealed its latest tool to sucker you in to spending hours "casual gaming" on Facebook: FrontierVille--a revamped, updated version of its FarmVille app. But is this really a reminder of how fickle the casual gaming biz is?

Over at Venturebeat they're labeling FrontierVille as the most "elaborate" title from Zynga yet. It'll be extremely familiar to the millions of players of the older FarmVille title, and is essentially the same core game set in a different context. Your farm is...

Process Turns Liquid Sludge Into Energy and Fertilizer

We recently covered a startup, Ostara, that turns sludge liquid into high-quality commercial fertilizer. Now Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand wants to do Ostara one better with Wetox, a project that breaks down sludge and turns it into a number of byproducts, including fertilizer, water, steam, and acetic acid.

According to Water and Wastewater, Wetox uses a process called wet oxidation (get it?) to clean up sludge. In the past, the process has only been affordable enough for...

Coffee Table With Built-in Paper Shredder

Meet Papervore, the world's hungriest coffee table.

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So you have piles of bills you're terrified to open. What's the
responsible thing to do? Shred them in your coffee table, of course!

Papervore
by Brooklyn's Pigeontail Design is a coffee table and a paper shredder
in one. It'll eat pretty much anything you give it: magazines, tax forms, loan statements, whatever. Just stuff your mail into the table
top, then turn the manual crank, and voila! Your utility bill's
reinvented as confetti. (Also...

Zynga Lanches Frontierville, a Wild West Farmville

Zynga's just revealed its latest tool to sucker you in to spending hours "casual gaming" on Facebook: Frontierville--a revamped, updated version of its Farmville app. But is this really a reminder of how fickle the casual gaming biz is?

Over at Venturebeat they're labeling Frontierville as the most "elaborate" title from Zynga yet. It'll be extremely familiar to the millions of players of the older Farmville title, and is essentially the same core game set in a different context. Your farm is...

The 8 Most Important Videos of the Gulf Oil Disaster

In a larger-than-life event like the Gulf Oil disaster, words can only do so much to portray the bitterness, anguish, and absurdity of the situation. We must also rely on images and video to document the tragedy. We've shown you some of the pictures. Below, we take a look at 5 of the most important Deepwater Horizon disaster-related videos, both serious and humorous.

This video from National Geographic shows the Deepwater Horizon rig shortly after the April 20th explosion that caused the...

AOL's Hundreds of New Content-Generators: Journalism or Content Spam?

Abandon hope, all ye traditional journalists who enter here: AOL has plans to be the "world's largest producer of high-quality content" and is hiring "hundreds" more content-generators to fill up its 17 new "super networks" of content. 

Adage is reporting that the new staff will be journalists, editors and videographers, and they'll join the payroll throughout the next year, possibly doubling it from the current 500 editors. The big push comes directly from the president of AOL's media and...

Children and Seniors Safer With Ford's Inflatable Seat Belts

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Next time you stick grandma in the backseat of your 2011 Ford Explorer, take comfort in the fact that she might be saved in a crash by an inflatable seat belt that spreads the force of impact over five times more body area than a normal seat belt.

We had a chance to test the inflatable seat belt, first announced last year, at a dealership in San Francisco. The belt would deploy quickly in a real crash, but our test model inflated slowly and felt both snug and comfortable when fully...

Process Turns Liquid Sludge into Power and Fertilizer

We recently covered a startup, Ostara, that turns sludge liquid into high-quality commercial fertilizer. Now Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand wants to do Ostara one better with Wetox, a project that breaks down sludge and turns it into a number of byproducts, including fertilizer, water, steam, and acetic acid.

According to Water and Wastewater, Wetox uses a process called wet oxidation (get it?) to clean up sludge. In the past, the process has only been affordable enough for...

Augmented Reality Brings a Shadowy Fantasy Land to Life

A student at Parsons creates a whimsical fantasy world out of shadow, light, and augmented reality,

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For her master's thesis at Parsons, designer and programmer Joon Moon created "Augmented Shadow," a "fantasy ecosystem" rendered on an augmented reality tabletop.

Users interact with the project using blocks, which are followed by realistic, shadowy animations of houses. These appear to emanate from a single source of light--but are actually projected from overhead. Then things get...

AT&T's New iPhone Fees Forecast Smartphone Use

AT&T's iPhone tariffs just got a big makeover ... or possibly a downgrade in performance, depending on how you look at it. The iPhone 4 is driving the changes, and it actually tells us a lot about how we'll use 4G smartphones.

AT&T's moves are designed to adjust their tariffs to
better fit the profile of the average U.S. user on an iPhone. According to the
network, some 65% of its users consume under 200MB per month and just a
"fringe" 2% of data-hogs munch down over 2GB every 30...