David Lidsky's Blog, page 4646

WANTED: HP's 30-Inch Monitor, and Its 1.07 Billion Colors

HP's oh-so-HP-named ZR30w monitor is an S-IPS type LCD, similar to the beautiful display in Apple's iPad--but so much better. It's a 30-incher, so you already know it means business, with a 2560 x 1600 resolution (over four million pixels in all) and a 3,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio. It has a DisplayPort and DVI-D input, as well as four USB inputs built right in.

Where it really shines is the color display, making it ideal for graphic artists, designers, and animators. The ZR30w can display...

Yelp and OpenTable Partner Up for Better Dinner Planning

Yelp helps you find the right restaurant, but stops there. OpenTable lets you reserve a table online, but offers no help in finding that restaurant. Are you feeling what I'm feeling? High fives all around!

Reported by the New York Times, Yelp announced today that they'll be integrating OpenTable's online reservation system directly into Yelp, so after you've found the restaurant you're looking for, you can reserve a table right there. You don't need an OpenTable account, as before; you can...

Fashion Frenzy: Gilt Competitor HauteLook Receives $31 Million in Funding

Fashionistas beware, the online fashion market is about to get busier. HauteLook, a members-only online sample sale site, closed a $31 million round of funding headed by Insight Venture Partners (they raised $10 million in funding last year). The company plans to use the money to attract new members, add new sales categories and amp up its social media and mobile platforms.

"People are paying attention to the flash sale space," Adam
Bernhard, HauteLook's chief executive, told The New York...

CyberCom is Seeking Real-Time Situational Awareness to Defend Military Network Attacks

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U.S. Cyber Command, a subdivision of U.S. Strategic Command launched last month to help shield the Defense Department against cyberattacks, has a big job in the months ahead. The command has to protect the entirety of the military's
computer systems, which consists of more than 7 million machines, 15,000
networks, 21 satellite gateways and 20,000 commercial circuits. Unauthorized users probe these systems over 6 million times a day. And now Army Gen. Keith Alexander, CyberCom's chief and...

Fashion Frenzy: Gilt Competitor HauteLook Receives $31 million in Funding

Fashionistas beware, the online fashion market is about to get busier. HauteLook, a members-only online sample sale site, closed a $31 million round of funding headed by Insight Venture Partners (they raised $10 million in funding last year). The company plans to use the money to attract new members, add new sales categories and amp up its social media and mobile platforms.

"People are paying attention to the flash sale space," Adam
Bernhard, HauteLook's chief executive, told The New York...

Elon Musk's Broke, But His Big Rocket Is Poised to Shoot Into Space

President Obama's plans for a more diverse and commercial company-inclusive space industry are primed to take a leap forward tomorrow, as SpaceX readies its Falcon 9 rocket for launch from Cape Canaveral. It's all subject to the weather, though.

Falcon 9 is SpaceX's flagship rocket, biggest in its Falcon rocket fleet. The vehicle will help ferry cargo up to the International Space Station in the years between NASA's retirement of the Space Shuttles and developing a new heavy-lift launch...

EPA's Updated Sulfur Dioxide Standards Will Cost Coal Plants and Save Lives

Asthmatics, rejoice: You'll soon be able to breathe easy. The Environmental Protection Agency updated its sulfur dioxide emissions standards this week for the first time in almost 40 years--a move that could prevent 54,000 asthma attacks and between 2,300 to 5,900 premature deaths annually. The standards will also cost coal power plants dearly, with the cost for implementation of the SO2 rules expected to balloon to $1.5 billion over the next decade. SO2 is a major component of coal power...

Fish Play Follow-the-Leader With Robofish, to Save Them From Turbine Doom

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Scientists have discovered that real schools of real fish can be steered along by artificial robot fish. Weird. But the news has big implications for green power production.

NYU-Poly's Dynamical Systems Laboratory, using the scientific thinking of Dr. Maurizio Porfiri, have been studying how schools of fish interact with an artificial "dominant" fish. The work is partly for the sheer scientific curiosity, but also because of interest in how wild fish may be directed through the ocean to...

Red, Hot, and Blue: The Hottest American Brand Is Not Apple

The strongest brands in America, according to a new study, are not American. They are German and Japanese luxury car brands: BMW; Mercedes; and Lexus. But the U.S. brand with the greatest "social currency" is one that has existed a mere ten years (and it's not even an Internet or tech company): JetBlue. (Read the full study here, PDF file.)

Overall Brand Social Currency Ranking

1. BMW
69%
Germany
2. Mercedes
68%
Germany
3. Lexus
66%
Japan
4. JetBlue
65%
America
5. Apple
64%
America...

Suddenly, Everyone's an Expert on Fixing Oil Spills

When it comes to halting the gush of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, we've heard all sorts of ideas. Nothing seems too outrageous at this point. From Kevin Costner's oil separation technology he invested in after the Exxon Valdez spill, to the possibility of using James Cameron's underwater robots he developed while shooting Titanic. Even tossing
a nuclear bomb down the pipeline doesn't seem too unrealistic when large groups of scientists begin to rally behind the cause. Ideas are great, but...