David Lidsky's Blog, page 4742

Should We Stick Cows On Treadmills to Generate Electricity?

Energy-generating treadmills for humans? Been there, done that. William Taylor, a farmer in Northern Ireland, has decided to put idle cows on treadmills to produce power for his farm, according to Popular Science.

The inclined belt causes cows to slide off unless they continue to move forward. The forward-walking motion causes the belt to turn, spinning a gearbox that drives a generator. A feed box sits in front of the treadmill to keep the cows on their toes. 

It's not as crazy as it...

Johnson Controls: Energy Efficiency Spending Will Grow in 2010

Good news in the commercial building energy efficiency sector: Johnson Controls' fourth annual Energy Efficiency Indicator (PDF) report reveals that spending will grow significantly in 2010 after a decline last year. The EEI, which tracks investment plans and priorities of 1,400 executives in charge of North America's commercial building energy use, reports that 52% of those surveyed will invest in efficiency, up from 46% in 2009. And 60% of executives (compared to 55% in 2009) plan to to...

How Much Energy Does a Tweet Consume?

How much energy does it take to shoot off a single tweet? Not that much, according to Raffi Krikorian. Earth2Tech tells us that the Twitter developer recently gave a talk at Chirp entitled "Energy/Tweet," where he claimed that a tweet consumes approximately 100 joules of energy (0.02 grams of CO2 emissions). That means Twitter's carbon footprint is relatively low--the 50 million tweets sent out daily emit one metric ton of CO2. In 2006, a single American family emitted an average of 24...

Infographic of the Day: How to Pick the Perfect Typeface

A exhaustive flow chart that also tells the history of modern type design.

Why is it so hard to choose a typeface? Maybe it's because every single one designed represents months--even years--of teeth-gnashing by the designer, who saw some gap in the market and hoped to fill it with something brilliant.

But if you're not a graphic designer, these distinctions can be extremely obscure. Thiis flowchart, designed by Julian Hansen, helps. At first, it seems like a funny take on typeface selection:

Lenovo Wants in on Smartphone Biz, Acquiring Palm Could Be the Ticket

Computing giant Lenovo hopes that within five years, up to 20% of its revenues may come from mobile Internet devices. Could Lenovo buy Palm?

Lenovo's president and COO Rory Read made his points pretty clearly--he noted that his company plans to sell "millions" of smartphones in the next several years, plus portable devices such as netbooks, building up to tens of millions in time.

Read is, in one sense, confirming that his company has its finger firmly on the pulse of technology: We know that...

Infographic: The Catholic Church's International Sex-Abuse Cover-up

A single, jaw-dropping graphic that illustrates the scope of the scandal--and the organization-wide attempt to sweep it under the rug.

It's easy to think that amid the all of the allegations of sexual abuse currently scarring the Catholic church, the cover-ups that have followed have been locally driven. But as the current Pope Benedict scandal suggests, the church cover-ups appear to implicate its highest ranks--a point shown by this startling infographic.

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You'd probably expect a couple...

XAuth, An Alternative to Facebook Connect to Let You... Erm... Connect

One insidious way Facebook's worming its way into the social net structures of large parts of the Web is via its "easy login" system Facebook Connect. Now there's some competition from newcomers XAuth, if only they believed in themselves.

According to ReadWriteWeb, there's going to be an announcement about XAuth sometime today from its consortium of backers/developers--a group that includes Google, Yahoo, Meebo, and MySpace. RRW calls it "Facebook Connect but for every other social network...

Officials in China Find Labor Violations at Microsoft Supplier

Several days after the National Labor Committee reported that one of Microsoft's suppliers was maltreating its underage, overworked employees, the Chinese authorities have weighed in, accusing two companies of violating local labor laws. The Dongguan Municipal Human Resources Bureau has named Kunying Computer Products and Xieying Computer Products, units at the KYE plant in Dongguan City, as having failed to register its 16- to 18-year-old workers, and making them work "excessive...

Rollingstone.com Relaunches With Exciting Extras, but No Screams

Rolling Stone has rolled out its new Web site today, er, tomorrow. Or something. More importantly, for the first time in a long time, it's in charge of its own online destiny. A deal with RealNetworks, which ran the magazine's online presence, has expired, and so full control of the site is back in Jann Wenner's hands--and not before time. "Here's something we're excited about," they trumpet. "On April 19, we'll be relaunching a redesigned, reimagined rollingstone.com." Aaaand, cue dry...

Why Those iPhone 4 Leaked Photos Make Sense

A huge surge of excitement has surrounded pictures of what may, or may not be, the next-gen iPhone for 2010. The images surfaced at Engadget, sourced from someone who'd supposedly found the device dropped in a public place. The photos just show the powered-down device, since it apparently won't turn on any more...but when it did, it ran an unseen version of iPhone OS. Since the images surfaced, they've been questioned, reaffirmed, questioned again and defended again.

And that's about all you...