David Lidsky's Blog, page 4717

"This American Life" Doubled Number of Donations Using Haiti Model of Mobile Giving

Funny/sad/thought provoking/brilliant/informative/infographable public radio show This American Life (oh wait, I forgot to add "Peabody-Award-Winning!) is in less danger than a lot of public radio shows, because it's great and everyone rightfully loves it. But it's still available as a free podcast, and given its popularity, that hosting costs lots of money. So the show has two fundraisers per year by necessity.

As an experiment, in December 2009 the show tried out a new mobile giving method...

Microsoft Gets Steve Jobs' Back, Decrees H.264 as Its Video Web Standard

What? Microsoft and Apple seeing almost eye-to-eye on something? Yes...it's true and concerns a bit of a hot topic on the Web at the mo: Video standards. After Jobs' Adobe take-down, MS has said it'll only support H.264 video in Internet Explorer.

Microsoft's blog posting on this matter it's almost as frank as Steve Jobs' open letter of yesterday. Noting that there's been "a lot of talk" about this on the Web, MS is taking the chance to "talk about" its point of view, which is this: "The...

HP Reported to Have Axed Its Windows 7-Based "Slate" Tablet

HP's Slate has received the most buzz of any so-called iPad competitor (keeping in mind the irony and/or painful realization that we're playing into Steve Jobs's hands, since the Slate was announced well before the iPad), but it had essentially a different philosophy. The iPad is a scaled-up smartphone; it runs a mobile operating system, complete with mobile apps (iPhone OS), as well as a mobile (albeit high-speed) processor (Apple A4, rumored to appear in the next iPhone). The HP Slate, on...

Adobe Executives Respond to Steve Jobs's Flash-Bashing

Apple's leading man himself, Steve Jobs, posted a long explanation of why his portable OS (iPhone OS) doesn't support Adobe's Flash, a contentious omission that's led many to call the iPhone's browser "incomplete." Characteristically, his arguments are clear and easy to understand, but pull no punches.

The six main reason he cites:

• Adobe's products are "100% proprietary"• Most web video is also viewable, in some form or another, on iPhone OS. You may need to use a separate app, but with the...

Santa Clara County Officials Want to Take Toys From Fat Kids

Why are kids fat? Toys. Or that's one logical takeaway from a proposal by the Santa Clara County (California) Board of Supervisors. They want to ban Happy Meal toys and other promotions that attract children to high-calorie, unhealthy food.

But is the ban itself obtuse?

Supporters of the measure--parents, doctors, and public health administrators--pointed out that obese children turn into obese adults. One doctor, who runs a clinic focused on childhood obesity, said that he has a 5-year-old...

Dutch Government Uses Augmented Reality to Shame Citizens

Humans may be good as a general rule, sure, but it's hard to deny the inhumanity of the many pedestrians that left the so-called "homeless hero" to die on the streets of NYC after he saved a woman from a mugging two weeks ago. In an apparent effort to prevent similar incidents, the Dutch government has placed augmented reality billboards strategically throughout Amsterdam and Rotterdam thoroughfares. But unlike other augmented reality applications that have some sort of informational or...

Deutsche Bank Converts Horrid '80s Towers into Horrid '80s Eco-Towers

Deutsche Bank is set to become carbon neutral, starting with the world's first LEED Platinum retrofitted skyscrapers. Too bad they're so damn ugly.

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We've all heard the refrain: The greenest buildings are the ones that
already exist. But what if a building is so hideous, so bland, so
utterly devoid of beauty that, green or not, it's an affront to the
very conceit of architecture?

Deutsche Bank's Frankfurt
headquarters are just such a building. Actually, a pair of buildings,
two...

Microsoft Cancels Innovative Courier Tablet Project

According to sources familiar with the matter, Microsoft has cancelled Courier, the folding, two-screen prototype tablet that was first uncovered by Gizmodo.

We're told that on Wednesday, Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer execs informed the internal team that had been working on the tablet device that the project would no longer be supported. Courier had never been officially announced or acknowledged as a Microsoft product.

It was clear from the prototype information last year that had leaked...

Is the Gulf Oil Spill Louisana's Next Katrina?

The recent BP oil spill in the Gulf is, simply put, a disaster. If you haven't been keeping track of the ultra-depressing news, here's what's happening: A BP rig exploded, caught fire, and sank. An oil spill ensued. Federal officials estimate that 5,000 barrels of oil are leaking each day. But what's most worrying is that the growing oil slick is expected to make landfall on the Louisiana coast by Friday, with Alabama and Mississippi expected to have oil on their shores as well by Sunday...

Infographic: Nike Puts NBA Playoff Teams in a Twitter-Based Battle Royale

A real-time Twitter visualization, perfect for NBA fanatics.

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Stamen--one of the best firms working today in the burgeoning field of interactive information design--has just dropped their latest project, a real-time Twitter interface for Nike.

It's a pretty simple affair: Tweets about the eight NBA playoff teams are shown in real-time, in what amounts to a huge bar chart. You can read the tweets as they're posted, but the more tweets a team is getting, the larger its tile appears.

There's...