David Lidsky's Blog, page 4684

Japan's Flimsy Ikaros Space Kite Due to Launch to Float on the Solar Wind

Japan is due to fire a H-IIA rocket into space tomorrow, with a rather special payload aboard: The Ikaros space yacht, a beautiful vehicle that's an experimental test bed for solar sail technology. 

The launch is scheduled for early Japan time on Tuesday morning (1844 EST today), and the H-IIA is actually carrying two major payloads: In addition to Ikaros, it's ferrying the Venus Planetary Climate Orbiter aloft too, a partner vehicle to the Venus Express space craft already launched by the...

CITE (And Fast Company) Showcase Star-Spangled Design

Last year, Dutch-raised, Brooklyn-based designer Alissia Melka-Teichroew curated a show of Dutch design at the CITE showroom, during New York's International Contemporary Furniture Fair. And that was cool and all. But this year, she's back at CITE, and the show--which was co-sponsored by Fast Company--hits closer to home. "Cite Goes America" focuses on American-made design. And perhaps more than any other show in recent memory, it show that America is finally producing world-class...

Google's TV Ambitions To Get Limelight this Week?

Maybe Apple should've spent a little more time tinkering with its "hobby" project, Apple TV--Google, Sony and Intel are jockeying to steal its position at the heart of your digital entertainment system. This week they'll launch a Smart TV project.

Big rumors are that Google's executive team is due to reveal its plans during this week's developer conference in San Francisco. It'll be dubbed Smart TV, and it will build on the ever-growing trend towards Internet-enabled television by combining...

Online Privacy: Check Yourself (Before You Wreck Yourself)

Online privacy is at worst an illusion, and at best harder to come by than ever--and it's making headlines every day. Facebook's under fire for everything from its labyrinth of confusing privacy settings to apparently banning users who want to share. Google inadvertently collected data transmitted on open Wi-Fi networks its Street View cars drove by. People search engines like Spokeo make your photo, salary, and home address accessible at the press of a button. Privacy breaches (or just...

DuPont Tweaks Printing Tech to Make Cheaper Screens: 50-Inch OLED TVs Here We Come

We've heard so very much hype about OLED tech that it's slightly disappointing to see how few devices have an OLED screen so far. It's because the manufacturing is tricky and expensive--but this is something DuPont thinks it's cracked.

DuPont's research team have been examining the manufacturing process that makes OLED screens possible, and have innovated a new system that's both faster and more reliable. OLEDs, unlike LCD screens, are self-illuminating: Each pixel is a tiny light source...

Infographic(s) of the Day: BP's Success Minor in Context of Spill's Spread

Infographics that illustrate all the weekend's news about the leak.

Over the weekend, BP managed to staunch a small portion of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. That's been the only successful measure to fight the leak so far, but it's only a partial fix. BP didn't cap the well--the so-called "top hat" containment dome has been scrapped.

Rather, they dropped a four-inch pipe five feet from the leaking well's 21-inch mouth. As BP illustrates, it's a little bit like  sticking a straw in...

Google Stops Wi-Fi Mapping Project After "Mistakenly" Scoring Personal Data

AFP reports that Google is frantically attempting to get rid of data the company now wishes it hadn't acquired. Google sends out cars across the world for mapping purposes as well as photographing at ground level for Street View. They've also been using those Street View cars to map unsecured Wi-Fi hotspots, presumably to insert them into Google Maps so travelers will be able to find places with available wireless Internet.

It's a cool idea, but apparently some information found its way from...

Booyah $20 Million in the Black, Friended by Accel's Jim Breyer

Booyah, the location-based game firm that's big on virtual goods, is earning real-time fans--and backers. The Palo Alto startup, led by Keith Lee, has amassed a not-to-be-sniffed-at $20 million from Accel Partners, whose Jim Breyer now has a seat on the Booyah board. Should Foursquare and Gowalla be worried over Booyah? Hellyah.

The firm's MyTown app, rather like the aforementioned location-based apps, is gaining 100,000 new users per week, and now boasts 2 million. That's eight times as...

The Brains Driving Obama's Gulf Oil Science Team

President Obama, frustrated at slapdash efforts to stem the leaking gulf oil, has done something remarkable: He's pulled together a crack science team. Among its members an H-bomb scientist and an expert in nanotech and robotics.

The President's new effort came together very quickly last week, and we don't yet know much about what they're up to (other than that they're very busy). We do know who they are though, and by digging into their individual bios, and looking at each scientist's...

Groupon Acquires Groupon Clone CityDeal, Expands to Europe Extremely Easily

Groupon's great, but confined as it is to the US and Canada, a void was left in other parts of the world for clones. CityDeal, which operates in most of Europe, is one of those clones. CityDeal is active in 18 countries, from the UK to Turkey and Italy to Finland, and typically uses a different domain name for each nation, which is different than Groupon's sign-in local system on its single site.

The deal will merge all CityDeal properties under the Groupon banner--good call based on the...