David Lidsky's Blog, page 4740

Tumblr Is Turning a Billion Page Views Into Cash, but Not Through Ads

Tumblr is the Twitter of the micro-blogging world: It's stunningly simple, growing rapidly in popularity, and has had obscure plans to earn revenues. Until now, that is. They've unveiled a novel business model.

Tumblr has just completed round C cash-raising activities, as AllThingsD noted, and scored $5 million from investors Spark and Union Square (also the sole investors in its previous investment round) which brings its cash-raising efforts to a grand total of $10.2 million. Though that...

Google Places: All Up In Your Business

Local Business Center, the service that local businesses use to hand a virtual shingle from within Google Maps, is being renamed Google Places. Along with the name change, Google's added a heap of new features to help firms connect with potential customers. As well as simplifying the way businesses connect with Place Pages and Google Goggles, the relaunch will sew up even more advertising dollars--and, somewhat bizarrely, offer businesses the chance of a free photo shoot with a photographer...

Kartell's CEO Claudio Luti On the Design-Giant's 2010 Collection

How do you keep a 60-year-old furniture firm on the cutting edge of design?

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Last week, Kartell, the 60-year-old Italian furniture giant, presented its 2010 pieces at the Milan Furniture Fair, in a massive black and white booth, each set against an inky backdrop to highlight its unique form.

The booth was a hive of activity, swarming with press, buyers and retailers. Presiding over it all was Claudio Luti, Kartell's 63-year-old president and CEO. Luti, the son-in-law of Kartell founder Giulio...

Infographics of the Day: What's Up with that Crazy European Ash Cloud?

Real-time information about the ash cloud, and the airports that are gradually being reopened.

Six days ago, a volcano erupted in Iceland, halting most European air flights and stranding hundreds of thousands of people. Today, the flights are finally starting to begin again--and we finally have a couple infographics that make sense of the entire mess. Together, they tell you quickly about the scope or the problem--they're also being updated in real-time with information about the ash cloud...

The iPhone 4 Leak Saga From Start to Finish

Over the weekend, Gizmodo gained possession of a fourth generation Apple iPhone. This is a monumental scoop for a gadget blog--indeed, most any news outlet would be thrilled to unveil such a coveted new device before Steve Jobs had a chance to do it himself. And while you're likely to read about this coup in mainstream news outlets across the globe, not many of the news outlets writing about Gizmodo would have allowed themselves to procure the device the way the "world's most fun technology...

Ford's Sync Brings the App Revolution to Your Wheels, With Voice Control

Ford's in-car Sync system, which we revealed in detail earlier this month, is already jam-packed with digital cleverness. But now Ford's gone one step further: Not only will it be able to do the usual smartphone voice control tricks we already knew about, but you'll speak to control the apps too.

Ford's got one eye on the future, where we've all got super-clever smartphones on us at all times, and one eye on safety with this technology. The idea is that when you connect up a Sync-compatible...

Sharps Compliance Turns Used Syringes Into Cement

Every year, 9 million people self-inject with syringes for medical conditions, producing 3 billion used syringes--and that doesn't include the needles used for illegal drugs. Instead of sending the syringes to landfills, Sharps Compliance wants to turn medical waste into PELLA-DRX, a pellet-like material that can be used in energy-intensive industries like cement, lime, and steel.

Sharps' waste conversion process shreds and sterilizes used needles, syringes, lancets and repurposes them into...

Robovie's Plastic Butler Bot Gets An Upgrade, Goes on Sale

Just the other day we were giggling with glee at Robovie's diminutive MR2 companion robot. Now the company's trumped itself: Robovie's R-Ver.3 is out. He's taller, can cope with rugged terrain, and you can pre-order him. For real.

This chap is rolling out of the Advanced Telecommunications Research institute in Japan, with the assistance of robot makers Vstone, and he's in two versions, with slightly different designs. The main purpose of the child-sized bot is to be an assistive technology...

Chinese Attack on Google Aimed at Universal Password System

 

 

Gaia, recently renamed Single Sign-On, is the password system that allows one login and password to access all of Google's services, including Gmail, Maps, Picasa, Search, and Reader. The New York Times has a source who says the hack targeted Gaia, and could have dangerous security ramifications in spite of Google's quick action to patch holes.

The theft began with an instant message sent to a Google employee in China
who was using Microsoft's
Messenger program, according to the person...

Game Designer Kellee Santiago Responds to Roger Ebert's "Video Games Are Not Art" Rant

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Aside from a certain leak of a certain phone, no topic has garnered as much blog and Twitter attention as Roger Ebert's expansion of his "video games are not and cannot be art" theory. His refrain? "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy
of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets." Kellee Santiago, whose TED speech on the very subject was refuted, point by point, by Ebert, responded herself.

Ebert's theory necessarily rests on there...