David Lidsky's Blog, page 4731

The New Benjamin? Not So Money

It may be more legend than fact but when it was time to choose a symbol for our new nation it is said that Benjamin Franklin preferred the turkey to the bald eagle.

Wish granted.

The new $100 note that the Treasury introduced on Wednesday is a missed design opportunity. It was created with the criminal mind in mind and it looks it. It is a kitchen sink of high-tech security features including a 3-D ribbon, color shifting images, watermarks, raised intaglio, security threads, and micro...

Smart, BMW, and Audi Opt for Art Cars at Milan 2010

Ever since the 70s, when Alexander Calder debuted BMW's first art car, the car as canvas has been embraced by cool-hunting auto manufacturers. The Milan Furniture Fair has increasingly become the place to view these editions. Here is a quick look at this year's offerings.

Time to Audit Your Facebook Privacy Settings, Here's How

Now that Facebook is loosening its data-sharing policies with third-party Web sites and applications, it's the perfect time for users to consider tightening up their privacy settings. This week the mega social network announced new personalization features that extend the Facebook experience to third-party Web sites--unless you opt out, that is. Here's a rundown of the new features, and how you can opt out if you choose.

The two new features Facebook launched of interest to users are...

3! 3! 3! Memes in 1! Amsterdam's Augmented Reality-Flashmob-Human-Statue Art Jam!

This weekend in Amsterdam you may see a whole bunch of people waving their smartphones around at once. It's the first social net/augmented reality flashmob, aka a fabulous way to combine three novel Net memes into one event.

The event's happening at Dam Square at 14:00 local time on Saturday, and it's been organized by Sander Veenhof, a self-professed "New Media artist," with the assistance of TAB Worldmedia for the code that makes AR browser Layar serve up his artistic event. Veenhof's...

Audit Bureau of Circulation Adds Paid Apps and E-Readers to Mobile Publishing Stats

For newspapers, the Audit Bureau of Circulation's figures count a lot, as their stats can determine a publication's advertising rate--for better or worse. Its interactive unit, the ABCi just announced, via a partnership with Verve Wireless, that it is to track how many readers are accessing news sites via mobile devices--but how much difference will it make to newspapers' falling revenues?

"With all the buzz around the iPad, and with use of mobile browsers exploding," explained ABC president...

The 10 Greenest Buildings of 2010 from American Institute of Architects

This week, the American of Institute of Architects and its Committee on the Environment announced the 10 best green buildings completed in the past year. It's filled with all manner of green technologies--from passive heating and cooling using heat pumps, to man-made wetlands, to reclaimed materials. Here's a slideshow of all ten.

Alex Bogusky's Bike-Sharing Baby, B-cycle, Launches in Denver

Denver's anxiously anticipated bike sharing program B-cycle made an Earth Day bow yesterday, with hundreds of cyclists taking a test ride around the Mile High City. The first large-scale bike-sharing program in the U.S. is the brainchild of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, whose chief creative insurgent Alex Bogusky first unveiled the bike prototype--a collaboration with Trek--at the 2009 SXSW conference.

The 400 B-cycle bikes are distributed among 40 "B-stations," mostly clustered around Denver's...

Turn-by-Turn Google Maps on iPhone Steer Google, TomTom, Garmin to Dead End

When the Motorola Droid, the first Android 2.0 device, was released back in November, one of its most rightfully buzzworthy features was Google's brand-new Maps with Navigation. It was unthinkable to offer turn-by-turn navigation completely free; dedicated GPS devices were (and are) still the norm, and the few smartphone apps are generally extremely expensive, with a monthly fee. And yet the Droid (and later, the Nexus One and Droid Incredible) offered it completely free. Garmin's and...

Microsoft, Amazon Post Strong First Quarters on the Strengths of Windows 7 and Kindle

Two of our Most Innovative Companies, Amazon and Microsoft, are among the many that reported their quarterly financial earnings today. And, because our list is exactly that good, both are showing healthy growth on the strength of new or new-ish products.

Microsoft's overall revenue is up 6% from this quarter last year, and would actually have been 8% but the purchases of the upcoming Office 2010 suite had to be deferred until next quarter, when the product is actually released. That bests...

Fancy Hands Finds You an Assistant for $30 a Month ... in the Cloud

I was headed to Mammoth Mountain, about five hours north of L.A., for a quick dose of late-season skiing. I'd been up there plenty, but this time I hoped to ditch the après-ski fare for once and try having a civilized dinner somewhere in town. Yelp reviews were scarce, and I couldn't find a decent dining guide to the area online. So I tapped Fancy Hands, a new personal assistant service where subscribers pay $30 a month to email requests (or tasks) to a team of assistants located throughout...