David Lidsky's Blog, page 4657

Japan vs. NASA in the Next Space Race: Lunar Robonauts

Japan just revealed some of its plans for space exploration, including the amazing hope of landing a robot explorer on the moon by 2015 and having an entire base of robots by 2020. Will they beat NASA in the new Lunar Space Race?

Japan just revealed some of its plans for space exploration, including the amazing hope of landing a robot explorer on the moon by 2015 and having an entire base of robots by 2020. Will they beat NASA in the new Lunar Space Race?

The robotic moonman plans involve...

Top 10 Most Creative People in Business

This year's 100 Most Creative People offers our own, idiosyncratic perspective on business. The selections reflect the breadth of news ideas and new pursuits at play in our business landscape. Here we present the top 10 from our list of innovators.

Ostara Aims to Stave Off Peak Phosphorous

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Forget peak oil. The next big crisis is peak phosphorous--a shortage of mined phosphorous for fertilizer. The problem is so bad that supply won't be able to meet agricultural demand within the next 30 to 40 years. But a Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-backed startup called Ostara thinks it might have the solution: a system that removes nutrients--including phosphorous--from wastewater and turns it into a slow-release commercial fertilizer called Crystal Green. The company's second commercial facility...

Forget Freemium App Sales, Meet Causium: The Charity Business Model

In the Interwebs era, there seem to be as many business models as colors in the rainbow ... yet few have the charitable cachet of "Causium." This is a wildly successful and public-spirited invention by software company Atlassian.

Just the other day Atlassian announced that through their Causium software distribution model they've amassed a grand total of $500,000 in charity donations. In this case the charity is Room to Read, a literacy improvement program that's a personal favorite of the...

iFive: Top Kill, Men Who Stare at Terrorists, Foxconn, Google, Crystal Meth

Friday's here, and with it, Fast's top five picks of what's been going on overnight, whilst you were snuffling into your pillows and dreaming of unicorns.

1. Operation Top Kill. It was on, then off, and now it's on again. Obama is off to Louisiana today, so we're praying for a miracle. And we're going to need one. Failing that, a Spill Czar. The Guardian is p(l)umping for Colin Powell.

2. Forget racial profiling--thank God. Latest idea from the geeks is that video game technology and

iFive: Top Kill, Men Who Stare At Terrorists, Foxconn, Google, Crystal Meth

Friday's here, and with it, Fast's top five picks of what's been going on overnight, whilst you were snuffling into your pillows and dreaming of unicorns.

1. Operation Top Kill. It was on, then off, and now it's on again. Obama is off to Louisiana today, so we're praying for a miracle. And we're going to need one. Failing that, a Spill Czar. The Guardian is p(l)umping for Colin Powell.

2. Forget racial profiling--thank God. Latest idea from the geeks is that video game technology and

One Laptop Per Child Project Announces $75 Tablet Might Actually Happen Now

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OLPC's founder, Nicolas Negroponte, is one of the best hype men in the tech industry. His aims are admirable--to create ultra-low cost laptops for the developing world. But he's also fond of announcing crazy products with completely impossible timelines and feature sets. The next version of the OLPC XO, the XO-3, may actually buck that trend.

When it was initially announced back in December, it seemed like yet another pipe dream, with an unrealistic artist's rendering to...

Palm's Lead WebOS Designer Migrates to Google Android Team

Matias Duarte is a legend in the world of mobile user interfaces, described rightfully as a "design guru." He created the interface for the original Sidekick phone (then called the Hiptop), then left to create the interface for the Helio Ocean, one of the hallmarks of modern mobile phone design. After making Helio one of the most exciting small companies in the pre-iPhone world, he moved over to Palm, where he designed what might be the best mobile OS ever made: WebOS.

Due to circumstances...

Apple Makes It Easier for Self-Published Authors to Sell Ebooks in the iBookstore

Apple's in an interesting position with the iBookstore, one it's never had in its years of successful content platforms: it has competitors. iTunes, both in music and video, was a pioneer; every other service, from Rhapsody to Napster to Zune, chased iTunes. But there's another giant in the ebook world, and its name is Amazon. And not only does Amazon have 80% of the ebook market, its store is available on Apple's own iPad.

The news that Barnes & Noble is also entering the iPad App Store,

Super Bowl 2014 at the Meadowlands From the Inside Out

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The announcement that the 2014 Super Bowl will take place in New York has raised eyebrows for one big reason: weather.

Of the decision, Greg Cote of the Miami Herald wrote: "The NFL, with this open-air Jersey Super Bowl, has hijacked our de facto National Holiday and sold it to the most bitter of surroundings." By "surroundings," he refers not only to the wind and cold, but to the "gray banks of sludge (far too ugly to be called snow)." But it's precisely a different definition of...