David Lidsky's Blog, page 4721

Today's Fast Company Assignment: Do Cancer Research in Your Sleep

As my story "Look Who's Curing Cancer" describes, IBM's World Community Grid is a project of breathtaking scope and ambition. The idea couldn't be simpler: Let scientists use available downtime on computers to perform math that helps accelerate cancer, AIDS, and other public health breakthroughs. Using algorithms, researchers design virtual experiments to assess up to millions of molecules that could lead to an effective drug. This is astronomically more than they can test by doing physical...

Apple's Multitouch Plans Mean Fingers Dancing on Touchscreens

Apple's just been granted an important patent on multitouch gestures. This almost ends the debate on who "owns" multitouch, and simultaneously gives us a glimpse into how we'll interact with slate PCs and touchscreens in the future.

As they note over at Patently Apple, the patent, numbered 7,705,830 is going to be an incredibly useful one for Apple. Specifically it covers detecting multiple finger contacts with a touchscreen, and a system for tracking where the initial contacts are and where...

HP Agrees to Buy Struggling Palm for $1.2 Billion

HP announced today that they will acquire (and presumably save) Palm, for a price of $1.2 billion. This is a pretty unexpected move--Palm had been put up for sale a few weeks ago, but HP was not one of the rumored buyers. Given that its flagship WebOS mobile operating system (appearing now on the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi) is one of only three currently available modern consumer mobile OSes (the others being Android and iPhone), the company was viewed as a slightly risky but valuable property...

Wall-E: Reconfigurable Walls at Stanford d.school Make Each Class the Perfect Size

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Can classroom design influence the quality of learning? Anybody who's sat in the back row of a big lecture hall with empty seats up front can tell you it's a perfect setup for disengagement--or for updating your Facebook page.

It's a problem central to space design at the new Stanford d.school building, and one that planners solved with a massively reconfigurable wall system that lets instructors create the perfectly sized space for each class.

The school's second floor is, essentially, one...

Elon Musk: More Tesla Models Coming Soon

Agitated by all the back-and-forth about when Tesla will discontinue its signature Roadster EV? Elon Musk wants to quell your fears. The Tesla Motors CEO announced during a speech on Tuesday that the auto startup has a number of new cars up its sleeve beyond the upcoming Model S sedan.

Autoweek reports from the scene:

The Model S is due in 2012, and Musk says the company is narrowly focused on getting that sedan to the market on time. The car will start for less than half the price of the...

Google Threatens Booze Site Groggle. Do they Have a Keg to Stand on?

This is Groggle.com, an Australian price-comparison Web site that hunts down the cheapest alcohol for your pleasure (and pain, the following day). It's just been sent a cease-and-desist letter by Google.com--for those of you not in the know, it's an online search engine firm based in the U.S. which is diversifying into other markets. And it's all to do with the Groggle founders' choice of name.

Cameron Collie and Alec Doughty registered the name with the Aussie trademark office last year, and...

Today's Fast Company Assignment: Do Cancer Research in Your Sleep.

As my story "Look Who's Curing Cancer" describes, IBM's Worldwide Community Grid is a project of breathtaking scope and ambition. The idea couldn't be simpler: Let scientists use available downtime on computers to perform math that helps accelerate cancer, AIDS, and other public health breakthroughs. Using algorithms, researchers design virtual experiments to assess up to millions of molecules that could lead to an effective drug. This is astronomically more than they can test by doing...

Are You a Twitter Messiah? Trst.me Measures Your Influence

Data analytics firm Infochimps has released a tool that's both amusing for the casual Twitterer and useful for professionals--it's roughly the equivalent of Google's PageRank tech for tweets, and calculates how influential a Tweep is: Trst.me.

There are other Twitter ranking schemes out there, and Twitter itself has featured "important" Tweeps in different ways, but Infochimp's newest creation borrows its model from an extremely highly regarded system that's backed with some serious math in...

Bank Uses Stefan Sagmeister's Wit as Ethical Currency

Of all the industries who should be running clever, inspirational advertising right now, banks need to step it up the most. A new
campaign from Standard
Chartered might give Goldman Sachs some ideas for how to redeem themselves once their hearing ends. The new campaign for the bank is entitled "Here for Good" and features ads with objects arranged into inspiring typographical messages. Sounds familiar, we know, but Standard Chartered has definitely earned our trust in one area: Instead...

First Offshore Wind Farm in the U.S. Approved

Wind energy advocates scored a huge victory today with the announcement from U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that the country's first offshore wind farm, dubbed Cape Wind, will be built in the Nantucket Sound. The 130-turbine development could provide up to 75% of all electricity for Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket.

Land turbines abound in the U.S., but the $1 billion Cape Wind offshore project has been mired in controversy for the better part of the past decade. Opponents of...