David Lidsky's Blog, page 4734

The First Windows Phone 7 Smartphone Leaks--And It's From Dell

Just when you thought it was safe to write Dell off in the mobile world, they come out with this bombshell of a leak, published first by Engadget. Take the leaks with a grain of salt (some of the images are clearly mockups), but don't dismiss them outright--these look very possibly real, and very exciting. Check out this post for the leaked Android phones.

The Lightning maybe the most interesting of all the phones, since it's the first real prospective Windows Phone 7 phone (man, that doesn't...

McAfee Update Causing Tens of Thousands of Spontaneously Broken Computers

McAfee pushed out a firmware update for its anti-virus software that's wreaking havoc on tens of thousands of Windows XP computers. Looks like some bad coding triggers the deletion of a certain file that triggers a false positive in McAfee, which in turn snowballs into a huge mess of constant, unstoppable restarting and broken network functionality.

Here's the statement McAfee sent to Engadget:

McAfee is aware that a number of customers have incurred a false
positive error due to incorrect...

San Francisco: Open-Source Government [Fast Cities 2010]

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It's a good thing Gavin Newsom checks his Twitter feed during meetings. Otherwise, San Francisco's mayor would've missed a life-changing missive about ... potholes? "It really made me wonder," he says. "What if we used social media to make our city services work better?" That stray tweet led to the city's first-of-its-kind Twitter account (@SF311), which encourages residents to send queries and messages about nonemergency issues. But it also underscores the city's open-source stance on...

Savannah: Renaissance Neighborhoods [Fast Cities 2010]

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SPACE LIFT: Savannah is bringing new life to failing neighborhoods by renovating abandoned homes and investing in community spaces. | Courtesy of City of Savannah and Department of Housing

During the '90s and aughts, many of Savannah's poorest neighborhoods spiraled into disrepair. Aging residents lacked the money and energy to maintain their properties; younger residents and business owners were fleeing in search of livelier communities. Fed up with rising crime and plummeting property...

Portland: Farm-Fresh Food [Fast Cities 2010]

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Portland has long been lauded for its farmers markets, but in February, the city welcomed a new high-tech tool to bring large-scale, farm-fresh foods to city hospitals, public schools, corporate cafeterias -- even Oregon state prisons. Think of FoodHub as the Match.com for the locavore movement. Wholesale food buyers log on to access thousands of small and regional producers, as well as info on varietals sold, minimum orders, insurance, and delivery options. Launched by environmental...

New York: Urban Farms [Fast Cities 2010]

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Illustration by Don Foley

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Illustration by Don Foley

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New York's concrete jungle is about to get more green -- and tasty -- thanks to Gotham Greens, which is building a hydroponic rooftop farm in Brooklyn. The eco-efficient farm will take a small bite out of the $2 billion in produce that's trucked into the city each year. Here's how it works.

1. Power FeedThe $2 million, 16,000-square-foot farm -- which opens this spring -- is powered by a 60-kilowatt solar-voltaic array.

2...

Today in Most Innovative Companies

News of note from our Most Innovative Companies, including Apple, Gilt Groupe, and Politico.

Apple: Was that stolen iPhone that Gizmodo revealed to the world Monday really "stolen"? Was its sale to Gawker illegal? The Daily Finance takes readers through Apple's legal grounding, trying to determine whether or not the selling of lost property in this instance warrants a lawsuit. According to Jeff Bercovici: "At heart is the question of whether the person who found the phone made 'reasonable...

Fast Cities 2010

Constructing the perfect city means blending the best and boldest ideas from across the nation. Here are 12 we hope all future cities will embrace.

Cleveland: Venture-Capital Mind-Set [Fast Cities 2010]

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GROUP THERAPY: By teaming up, traditional health-care competitors in Cleveland were able to reshape the city's economic future. | Photograph by Adam Gualt/Getty Images

"We were staring into the abyss," says Baiju Shah, CEO of BioEnterprise, recalling the 2000 recession that had slowed Cleveland's economy to a crawl. "It wasn't just a cyclical thing; there were global forces at work that were going to leave us behind for good." As the city bled jobs in traditional sectors, such as...

Infographic: The Definitive Venn Diagram of Primetime TV in 2010

How perfect is this?

So this sounds like it shouldn't work, but it does: Esquire's Joshua David Stein took it upon himself to create a Venn diagram of every single show in prime-time TV. While usually I post infographics and suggest ways they fall short, I find it hard to think of any possible way to improve this one. The more you look at it, the more accurate it becomes. And the picture of our collective zeitgeist is nothing short of amazing:

The one glaring omission would be Lost, which we...