David Lidsky's Blog, page 4732

Twitter Social Media Business Sales

First Twitter outgrew its nest, the one made popular by a flock of tech savants who, themselves, had outgrown their blogs. Only now, though, have the social media site's founders finally figured out how to shake the money from their branches. But will the businesses and people who chirp from Twitter's limbs also cash in?   

The funny thing about social media networks is that, each time a new one starts off, no one quite gets it--in some cases, not even the folks who started the damn things...

Cleantech Open Alumni Rake In $65 Million In First Months of 2010

The Cleantech Open, the world's largest cleantech business competition, has helped launch successful startups like Cool Earth Solar, Adura Technologies, and BuildFast. Now Cleantech Open alums are getting more love than ever as the competition announces that two 2009 finalists--Micromidas and Ecofactor--have secured venture capital funding. Cleantech Open alums have also scored a record $65 million in VC funding and grants during the first months of 2010.

The competition deserves kudos for...

White House Retrofit Ramp-Up Program Boosts Local Energy Efficiency Projects

The White House is continuing on its energy efficiency bent with the Retrofit Ramp-Up program, a $452 million cash infusion for U.S. communities to make energy efficient building retrofits accessible to both homeowners and businesses. The program will offer grants (PDF) to 25 communities, including Indianapolis, Indiana; Boulder County, Colorado; and Los Angeles County, California.

Each community project will take a slightly different tactic to energy efficiency. The $10 million Indianapolis...

Roadside America: 11 Relics of the Lost Highway

For 30 years John Margolies has been documenting the diners, drive-ins and motor lodges that remain along our highways as box stores and strip malls slowly erase the quirk and character of consumerism.

Delightfully Horrifying: Apple's Photo Booth Effects, in Real Life

Ew. Also: Ew!

You know those photo booth effects that come with Apple's Webcam? Pretty cool, but if you translate some of those fun-house distortions into real life, the effect is truly horrifying.

That's exactly what Brookyn-based designer Mark Pernice did, starting with with still from Photo Booth. He then took that still to F/X sculptor Christian Hanson, who transformed the grotesque caricature into a mask that would scare Osama bin Laden from his cave. Pence intended the piece to go into...

Why Google and ITA Are Meant for Each Other: Hiring Puzzles

Consider, if you would, a theoretical lonely hearts ad. Peripatetic puzzle fanatic seeks similar. Must be rolling in Benjamins, like primary colors, travel, the eternal quest for knowledge, and free food, including the stuff in trays found on airplanes. Is this perhaps the secret message that ITA, the company that creates the software underlying almost every online travel transaction, sent out as it looked for a buyer for its $1 billion business?

There are myriad reasons why Google and ITA...

White House Swings Open Its Digital Doors to Developers

The government's plan to make its online presence more user- and owner-friendly has been a long-term plan of the Obama administration. Last year, the White House switched from a proprietary content management system to Drupal, and on Wednesday it went a step further, announcing the release of some of its custom code "for anyone to review, use, or modify."

For the people, by the people, indeed.

For the American people, this means a bigger, better communication portal, which allows them to...

Middelfart, a New Building by 3XN, Smells Better Than Its Name

A spiky new bank headquarters that bleeds green.

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3XN--which, along with Snøhetta and BIG is one of the three most buzzed-about architects currently working in Scandinavia--has just completed its latest project, a headquarters for the Middelfart Savings Bank on the sleepy Danish island of Fyn. You'd never guess by looking at it, but the building is deep green.

The most obvious feature, the spiky window awnings, are canted at a very specific angle to lend shade during summer months, when the...

USAF's Little X-37B Space Shuttle: More Military Than NASA's

The fuss about NASA's future and the end of the Space Shuttle overshadowed one fact: NASA's not the biggest space agency in the U.S. The military is test-launching its own tiny space plane today, in fact, and it's damn creepy.

The vehicle in question is the X-37B. The "X" gives away its experimental status, the "B" is a reference to the fact the original X-37 was a Boeing/NASA technology testbed that actually underwent basic automatic in-atmosphere unpowered flight testing with the help of...

Apple Snubs Adobe, Adobe Snubs Apple, Google Nuzzles Adobe, You Do the Hokey Pokey...

The spat between Adobe and Apple rumbles on: Yesterday Apple did something rare, and directly addressed what it sees as Adobe's flaws. Meanwhile Google pledged to keep supporting Adobe's platforms on its Android OS. Ohoho yes.

Background: Apple has never supported Flash technology on its paradigm-shifting iPhone, citing poor performance, a degraded user experience, battery and CPU-cycle munching at the hands of the inefficient software, and so on. When the iPad launched, many wondered if...