David Lidsky's Blog, page 4696

WANTED: BKoffie's Recyclable French Press to Go Cup

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Drip coffee, which 99.9% of the time is what you get when you walk into a coffee shop and order a coffee, is usually pretty poor. The minimal steeping time and paper filters deprive coffee of its natural and delicious essential oils, and often fail to impart much flavor besides bitterness (this is especially true of Starbucks, whose beans are already a bit over-roasted). There is, however, a very old and very simple method that nonetheless makes better coffee than even a drip machine with...

Skype's Newest Feature: Advertising

Skype users could, in the future, be exposed to on-site commercials as they make calls. According to Josh Silverman, the VoIP firm's CEO, Skype is "seriously considering" third-party advertising on its service. So, apart from the slightly depressing news that people who use Skype to stay in touch with their loved ones could soon find their sweet nothings interrupted by exhortations that Stain-B-Gone is the best product out there for removing nasty messes from fabrics, what does this mean?

It...

EPA Approves Corexit for Gulf Oil Spill Cleanup, But Nobody Knows What It's Made Of

The mammoth oil spill off the Gulf of Mexico is horrifying, to be sure, but the chemical oil dispersants that BP started using just a week after the spill may be hurting more than helping. BP briefly stopped using the chemicals so that the EPA could perform testing. Now the EPA has approved Corexit 9500 and Corexit(R) EC9527A for use in the spill, according to ProPublica. The big problem: Nobody really knows what's inside Corexit.

Trade secrets keep the exact ingredients from being...

Android Finally Beats iPhone in U.S. Sales: Variety Wins

Android fans will be celebrating the news that Google's smartphone OS has passed Apple's iPhone in total U.S. market share. But the reality is that the sales dominance of Android was inevitable.

In the first quarter of 2010, Apple secured a 21% market share, Android surged to 28%, and RIM's BlackBerry held strong at 36%. I don't mean to ignore BlackBerry here, but they've been dominating sales for so long, and with so little change in their fundamental business, that they're barely worth...

Square Brings Credit Card Swiping to the Mobile Masses, Starting Today

Now that Square is publicly available for iPhone and Android OS, with millions of card readers being shipped free-of-charge, Jack Dorsey tells Fast Company how his business model will disrupt the way you pay.

Starting today, Square aims to make credit card sales as easy for retailers with an iPhone as it is for some dude selling a couch on Craigslist.

With Square, anyone can accept credit or debit card payments by downloading the app and plugging a little plastic cube into the headphone...

Twitter Begins Testing Upcoming Business Tools

According to Mashable, Twitter just started sending out a few invites to test out the new Twitter Toolkit, a bunch of features included in the Twitter Business Center. Twitter says "only a handful" of accounts will be offered the chance to test out the beta, but that it'll be rolling out en masse soon enough. 

It's not a huge or groundbreaking set of features, but there are certainly some that business will find useful. Twitter Business Center accounts are automatically verified, so you know...

Android Finally Beats iPhone in US Sales: Variety Wins

Android fans will be celebrating the news that Google's smartphone OS has passed Apple's iPhone in total US market share. But the reality is that the sales dominance of Android was inevitable.

In the first quarter of 2010, Apple secured a 21% market share, Android surged to 28%, and RIM's BlackBerry held strong at 36%. I don't mean to ignore BlackBerry here, but they've been dominating sales for so long, and with so little change in their fundamental business, that they're barely worth...

The Fast Rise and Fall of the Nexus One, the Tragic "GooglePhone"

The history of the Google Nexus One is a lesson in hype, in marketing, and how one mistake can doom an otherwise solid phone. The news prompting this retrospection? Sprint has announced that it will not sell the troubled handset, dooming it to a life on perennial fourth-place network T-Mobile (and AT&T, sort of). But what happened? Wasn't the "GooglePhone" supposed to dethrone the iPhone and change the way we buy smartphones?

Rumors of the mythical GooglePhone have been around for years. The...

Day Two at the World Economic Forum on Africa

How do information and communication technologies influence innovation in Africa? Robert Fabricant's third report from World Economic Forum.

The second day of the World Economic Forum on Africa was packed, with one head of state after another marching through with their entourage. The big showdown was Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's appearance on a panel with Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe's current prime minister, to discuss Zimbabwe's future. Everyone was eager to see if he would put on a...

"Daddy, What's a Brand?" and 9 More Awkward Questions for Uncertain Times

Naked, without its logo

1. "Daddy, what's a brand?"
Chiquita, Victoria's Secret, The GOP, Amnesty International. They all use marketing and invite trust in a distinct belief system. They're all, to one degree or another, brands. For a brand, nirvana is when your good name is so widely endorsed that it enters the language. "Pass the Kleenex." "Google it." But that's the top of a long and slippery slope--look at Toyota and Tiger Woods. A healthy brand drives up your stock, and vice versa...