David Lidsky's Blog, page 4695

Zombie Blood Quenches Thirst, Boosts Energy, Turns Consumers Into Braindead Horde

When did energy drinks get weird? When they arrived on the scene, I swear they were straightforward sports products with zappy names. Now there's Zombie Blood. Seriously: Zombie Blood. But is it a real thing or a marketing ploy for a different product?

Apparently Zombie Brains is all about "4 grams of whey protein, caffeine and not even a trace of brains." Hmmm. What does it do to you? It "delivers up to four hours of energy," presumably in a human-digestible format, rather than stuff to...

The Next Generation of Sports Games: iPads, Web-Connected TVs, Laptops, and Cell Phones

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Sports video is kicking off a wave of data-rich and customized online viewing.

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To see the future of live video, tune in to a Lakers-Cavs game on your cell phone or a Yankees-Red Sox showdown on your new iPad. Pro sports leagues are teaming up with broadcasters such as ESPN, Web distribution outfits such as Akamai, and data wizards including IBM to deliver HD-quality coverage, on-demand graphics, and social-networking tools on multiple devices. Sports is moving the ball forward; it's not hard...

Have a Break ... In a Kit Kat Chair?

Free furniture is the new 30-second TV spot.

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Here's something we haven't seen before: adverts that transform
into chairs, no tools required! Thrown up around a handful of Gen-Yer
haunts in New Zealand recently, these flat-pack plywood
posters, each a DIY project in waiting, are the latest gimmick experimental ad campaign from Kit Kat -- like a grown-up version of a cereal-box toy.

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Except more useful. They can be assembled in a few minutes by pulling off the poster's six wood pieces then...

SolPix: A Giant LED Display That Doubles as a Solar Shield

SolPix, a prototype for a combined media-wall/solar blind premieres at the Cooper-Hewitt.

SolPix combines two of the biggest trends in facade architecture: Solar shielding and media walls. It functions first as a set of
heavy-duty blinds that can shift according to the strength of the sun.

But the blinds themselves have photovoltaics in them, as well as LEDs. The PV array uses the energy it gathers to create the media
facade pictured below:

In addition, the system monitors its own...

Sustainability Faceoff: Verizon vs. Sprint

There are some practical concerns in the battle between Sprint and Verizon--phone selection, for example, makes a big difference. But there are also a number of sustainability concerns to take into account, as explained in The HIP Investor, by R. Paul Herman.

Sprint has received significantly more attention for its sustainability initiatives, mostly because they have been flashier. The Samsung Reclaim, for example, was Sprint's first "green" phone, featuring recycled plastic, soy-based ink...

Is Twitter a Reliable Polling Machine? Not Yet, Says Carnegie-Mellon

Could Twitter become a cheaper replacement for polling firms such as
YouGov in the future? A research team at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh has gone through a billion tweets in an attempt to discover whether sentiments posted on the social media site reflect opinion polls. Noah Smith, assistant professor of language technologies and machine learning at the School of Computer Science, says that, although the results were a little bumpy on a day-to-day basis, the opinions...

From Washable Maxi Pads to Eco Coffins: The Future of Sustainable Product Design

We're familiar with sustainable products in the green generation we live in--low-impact electronics, energy-saving appliances, and recyclable materials are the norm. But designers are always looking for ways to improve the technology of sustainability, to create even more efficient, far-reaching green products.

First Two Crew Chosen to Be Locked in a Can for Mars500 Mission Test

Just how grueling will a trip to Mars be? To find out, six people are going to spend 18 months in a steel capsule somewhere in Russia, with no way in or out and a 20-minute delay in all communications with the outside world. The first two ground-based "cosmonauts" have now been selected for the big
Mars500 experiment, Romain Charles, a Frenchman, and Diego Urbina, a Colombian-Italian.

The longevity test will determine how easily a 500-day mission to Mars might work out from the human...

Boeing Rapid-Prototypes Its Phantom Ray Spy Plane Into Flight

Boeing's newest research aircraft got a public unveiling yesterday, which is interesting for such a future-facing aircraft that's surely destined for a ton of cloak-and-dagger work. It's an unmanned spy plane, and even its looks are creepy.

It's called, fittingly enough, the Phantom Ray--words very suited to its future spying role and its sleek lifting-body shape that is highly reminiscent of those wondrous flat fish. Rolled out yesterday at Boeing's St. Louis plant, it's actually not...

Infographic of the Day: Relief Wells, How Do They Work? BP Explains

How the "relief well" would work.

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill continues, unabated: A giant, 40-foot-tall containment chamber got junked up with ice crystals and failed to staunch the leak. BP has already started drilling a "relief well" in the hopes of diverting oil and allowing the original leak to be plugged. Trouble is, the new relief well will take months to complete.

But this time, BP has decided to get out in front of the bad PR with infographics. To explain how a relief well works...