David Lidsky's Blog, page 4701

Good News of the Day: U.S. Carbon Emissions Dropped 7% in 2009

The massive oil spill off the Gulf Coast has left a bitter taste in our mouths, and for good reason--how could this happen at the same time that the environmental movement is finally rallying popular support? But all is not lost, according to a new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The U.S. managed to slash carbon emissions by a record 7% in 2009--a drop of 405 million metric tons. That's the biggest percentage decline since emissions data collection began in 1949...

Microsoft's Translating! Telephone Almost Flawless, Instant Interpreter

Universal communication unhindered by language differences is still a distant dream, but Microsoft's Translating! Telephone, exhibited at this week's Silicon Valley TechFair, brings it a little closer to reality. This VoIP program combines three Microsoft technologies--speech recognition, translation, and text to speech--to create a speech to speech and text to speech translator that's surprisingly accurate.

The translator, which automatically trains itself to recognize your voice, is...

Day One at the World Economic Forum on Africa

Does design have a role at the World Economic Forum? Robert Fabricant's second report from Dar es Salaam.

My first full day at the World Economic Forum on Africa starts off well. I run into John Ledgard by the elevators at my hotel. John covers Africa for The Economist, and is one of handful of people that I know here. Might be the last semi-familiar face I will see till dinner time. From here on out I will need to explain what I do and why I am here to a pretty diverse audience, few of whom...

Facebook Adds Unlike to Pages, Still Won't Go for the Thumbs-Down Dislike Vote

Wow! Facebook just added a dislike button! That's amazing, to see the mega-social net finally bowing to user requests to... um... oh. Nope. It's not a "dislike" button like that, it's more an "unlike" facility for Pages. Still...baby steps, eh?

The addition of an "unlike" to Facebook's new pages may seem like a minor tweak--after all, one can already easily deselect the "like" option when one has accidentally professed enthusiasm for an incorrect status update, image, and what not on the...

Iron Man 2's Secret Sauce: 3-D Printing

Exclusive pics of the 3-D printing process behind the Iron Man 2 costumes.

Iron Man 2 opens today! Are you excited? Really? Huh. Well, keep reading anyway. You know someone's gonna drag you into a showing.

On screen, with all those suits whirling into place, you'd probably assume that the "costumes" are merely virtual. Actually, they're not: Maybe the most cutting-edge facet of Iron Man 2's production was the real-life fabrication of the suits. Using 3-D printers, the film's production...

Facebook Fronts on Foursquare, Drinks McDonald's Milkshake

Watch out, Foursquare--you may just be the leading location-based "check-in" game out there, but there's a big player eyeing your turf: Facebook. Zuck's about to step to you. And he's got a posse.

Rumors are swirling that Facebook is finally going to be getting into the location information arena, adding in the ability for users to geotag their status updates--possibly this month. Whether or not this will come with an official Facebook-coded "check-in" facility is unclear, though if it did...

Infographic: Banking Gone Wild

A graph of the 2000 largest companies in the world reveals the crazy size of the banking sector. Talk about too big to fail.

This elegant chart, created by Tiffany Farrant for GDS Digital (the second from her today, we know; we can't help it), started as merely a visualization of the Forbes 2,000, which lists the 2,000 largest companies in the world. And it does it's job with tremendous efficiency--it's pretty interesting to see, roughly, how big chemicals companies and media companies and...

Infographic of the Day: The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill's Impact, Part 2

The numbers are truly tragic.

On Monday, we posted this elegant summary of the emerging oil-spill disaster. Today, the designer, Tiffany Farrant, and Next Generation Oil and Gas, have produced an even better follow-up.

The ugly, ugly takeaway? A $500,000 safety valve--which BP actively resisted buying--could have prevented this. And now the costs of the spill are estimated to be around $23 billion. And that's if everything continues as is, and the spill is actually capped in two months' time...

ARM's Smart Meter Market Stirs Apple-ARM Speculation

The Smart Grid's eco- and money-saving powers may be a bit of a media-darling topic at the moment, but did you ever ponder what tech makes this all work? ARM is leading the game. Which may mean Apple could play too. Here's why.

This week saw the release of smart meters by European makers Accent that have at their core some neat low-power consuming electronics that make the things tick. Such systems need CPUs because of the power monitoring and network chattering they do to make the whole...

Facebook to Add Location Features "as Early as This Month," McDonald's to Be First Partner

[image error]

AdAge reports, as have so many others over the years, that Facebook is preparing to launch location-based services as soon as this month. The impetus for this expose? Mack-D's. McD's? Sir MacIntosh of Donald's? Mickey-D's? That's it. That last one there.

As early as this month, the social-networking site will give users the ability to post their location within a status update. McDonald's, through digital agency Tribal DDB, Chicago, is building an app with Facebook would allow users to check...