David Lidsky's Blog, page 4685

YouTube Celebrates Five Amazing Years: Holding Out for Profitability in the Sixth

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Since it launched in 2005, YouTube has become one of the few Internet properties that's much more than a domain name. Like Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Twitter, YouTube has become an essential service of the Internet. It's a utility, a social network, a search engine, a source of online storage, and an endless source of consternation for content owners. Some quick numbers:

YouTube now gets two billion views per day, 30% of which come from the US. The three most popular videos are Lady...

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...

JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America Called Out For Financing Mountaintop Removal

Mountaintop removal is one of those instinctively gut-wrenching things--it's never pretty to see natural habitats blown open to make room for coal mining.  And yet, many of the biggest banks in the U.S. continue to fund the practice, according to a report from the Rainforest Action Network.

Nine banks--Bank of America, Citi, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Wells Fargo, GE Capital Corp, JPMorgan Chase, PNC, and UBS--have funded $3.9 billion in loans and bond underwriting for companies...

Famous Designers You Probably Haven't Heard Of, But Should: Robin and Lucienne Day

As if your design dance card wasn't already full, there's a film debuting tomorrow that should be on your radar, or at the very least, its stars should be. Contemporary Days: Robin and Lucienne Day Design the UK, is a documentary featuring the British design duo whose abstract, modernist design helped transform and uplift a post-World War II Britian.

With their focus on furniture and textiles, the couple appears to be like a British Charles and Ray Eames--they even designed similar-looking...

The Italians Are Coming!

An effort at boosting Italian culture abroad will get a splashy new outpost in New York.

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Italian culture is everywhere in New York: in restaurants, design shops, and neighborhoods. But the real Italians aren't satisfied. The Triennale di Milano, a government-funded program that aims to recolonize the world with contemporary Italian culture, has announced that they're planning on building a sprawling gallery/restaurant/cafe/shop in New York, designed by Michele De Lucchi and Pierluigi Cerri...

Search Warrant Used to Raid Gizmodo Blogger's Home Reveals Apple's Involvement

CNBC is reporting that Judge Clifford Cretan, who approved the original search warrant which led to the raid on Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen's house, is releasing the warrant itself. It's an easy decision to make; Wired already released the name of the person who sold the iPhone to Gizmodo, and most of the details are extremely public knowledge. So what does the warrant show?

First, it shows that Apple did indeed call the San Mateo police department to report the iPhone stolen and request an...

Deloitte: Electric Cars Won't Be Adopted Quickly

Sure, it would be great if the electric vehicle revolution took place in a matter of months or even a few years. But changing the planet's vehicle infrastructure takes time. And a new study from Deloitte Consulting says electric vehicles will only have 2% to 5% of the U.S. market share in 10 years.

It's a slightly disheartening statistic, but consider this: Deloitte claims that advanced EV batteries are expected to cost an average $600 per kilowatt hour in 2014, compared to today's cost of...

Obama: No More Irresponsibility in Deepwater Drilling

Obama ripped into oil company executives this morning in a speech, accusing them of making a "ridiculous spectacle during the congressional hearings in this matter" on Wednesday, with "executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else." Harsh words, but not unexpected. After all, these three companies are attempting to dodge blame at the same time that the public demands accountability from them.

More surprising were Obama's...

Googlefail: Nexus One's Web Store to Close, Sales to Go Via Normal, Boring Channels

We'd suspected, then heard, that Google's Nexus One phone simply wasn't living up to the hype, and now Google's taking the rareish step of admitting this. It's redirecting N1 sales efforts from its odd online shop experiment to real stores.

In a blog post today titled "Nexus One changes in availability," Google reveals that while it's "very happy" with Android's overall penetration into the smartphone market, and the innovation in the Nexus One device that "has found its way into numerous...

Almost Genius: An Umbrella With Built-in Cup Holder

My hand! It buuuuurns! It buuuuuuuuurnnnnnns!!!

We really wanted to love Jung-Woo Lee's umbrella for Ek Design. At a glance, it's got the whiff of genius. If you've ever walked through a city holding an umbrella, you've probably thought that the truly annoying thing about rain is all the contortions created by having one hand totally occupied: You drop something, but your two hands are full. So you cradle your umbrella between your cheek and your clavicle. And whoosh! The wind takes your...