David Lidsky's Blog, page 4738

Wheeeeee: The Business of Roller Coasters

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As theme parks open for the season, so do their marquee-attraction thrill rides. This year, 63 new roller coasters are expected to open around the world, including two vying to be the world's fastest. Buckle in as we roll through the numbers.

PILGRIMS PLUNGE at Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana, is the world's tallest water ride at 135 feet.

Six Flags and Cedar Fair (which owns Cedar Point and 10 others) are the two largest independent amusement-park operators in the U.S. Each...

Notes From Apple's Quarterly Financial Report: Doubled iPhone Sales, and What Leak?

 

 

Apple had a press-only conference call today in which the company announced (boasted, really) its quarterly earnings. There's a lot of insidery info, or at least info that's too accounting-nerd-focused for anyone to really care about, but the important thing is that downturn or no downturn, Apple is making outrageous amounts of money.

The first quarter of 2010 has been Apple's most profitable non-holiday quarter in history; revenue is up 49%, gross income is up 90%, and, after the...

Today in Most Innovative Companies

News of note from our Most Innovative Companies, including Apple, Google, Facebook, and Disney.

Apple: Now that Apple is attacking the market from all angles with its trio of iP's -- the iPod, iPhone, and iPad -- the final piece of the puzzle is its iAd mobile advertising platform, which could drive gross profit margins up nearly 38% this year. Apple's iAd is also projected to eventually represent 8% of AAPL stock value -- that's double the stock value projection for the iPad, which will...

Does Privacy on Facebook, Google, and Twitter Even Matter?

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Illustration by Frank Chimero

Farhad Manjoo discovers the problem with Web privacy -- and it's us.

What was Google thinking? When the search company launched Buzz a couple of months ago, engineers came up with what they thought was a clever way to kick-start the new social-networking service: They would build Buzz directly into Gmail. Kick-starter number two: Buzz would mine your contacts so you didn't land in a sterile service all by your lonesome (which is what happened with Google Wave)...

Skyonic's Texas Carbon Capture Facility Will Turn CO2 Into Baking Soda

Skyonic's plan to commercialize Skymine, a process that scrubs SOX, NO2, mercury, and other heavy metals from industrial plant
exhaust and converts leftover CO2 into sodium bicarbonate, was just a glimmer in the company's eye as recently as February. But this week Skyonic announced that it is opening a carbon mineralization demonstration
facility at San Antonio-based Capitol Aggregates, one of the biggest cement
plants in Texas. The plant comes courtesy of a $3 million DOE grant that also...

WANTED: Microsoft Arc Keyboard

Microsoft-bashers might not have noticed, but Microsoft has been putting out fantastic PC peripherals for years. The company pioneered ergonomic keyboards with the Natural Keyboard back in 1994, and its Sidewinder and IntelliMouse mice have, along with Logitech and Razer, been among the best in their field. I'm typing this right now on the Wireless Entertainment Desktop, a damn good and very sleek keyboard. Microsoft's peripherals are usually far better than Apple's form-over-function...

Lenovo's L Series: The Greenest Laptops on the Market?

There is no shortage of sustainable laptops on store shelves--Apple claims that its MacBooks make up the world's green line of notebooks and Sony has a laptop with a plastic enclosure made out of recycled CDs--but now Lenovo claims that it has the greenest laptops on the market, just in time for Earth Day.

Whether Lenovo's claim holds up is debatable (what defines "green?"), but the L series does have some impressive sustainable features. The Lenovo ThinkPad L series of 14- and 15-inch...

How an N.C. Furniture Maker's Bright Green Roof Powers Up Its Bottom Line

From where Abel Zalcberg sits in his office at OFM headquarters in Holly Springs, North Carolina, he can't see the 250-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system on the roof, but its ROI is a glaring factor in his bottom line. His company -- an office and school furniture manufacturer, distributor, and wholesaler -- will produce over 300,000 kilowatts of electricity per year with the solar farm, and it won't use a watt of it. It's all sold to Progress Energy, a Raleigh-based power company. OFM's...

Are Your Texts Supporting Tea Partiers?

Angry about your cell phone service? About American politics? A promotional e-mail from The Nation magazine and CREDOMobile advises that you channel your frustrations with both by making the switch to their baldly progressive mobile phone carrier service.

Delivered yesterday to Nation e-newsletter subscribers, the subject line asks "Has your phone company supported Michele Bachmann? Find out now."

That's Bachmann, the Republican Congresswoman from Minnesota's sixth district, Tea Party...

The 20 Best Graphic Artists Under 30, Selected by Print Magazine

Looking to hire a young, hotshot graphic designer? Print Magazine should be your sourcebook. Each year, they produce the New Visual Artists issue, highlighting the 20 best graphic artists under 30 years old. They graciously sent FastCompany.com work from 2010's crop, and here, we've created a 10-person teaser of the profiles you can find on their site.