David Lidsky's Blog, page 4744

3% of VWs Going Pure Electric by 2020: Dr. Karl-Thomas Neumann, Volkswagen's Master of Electrification

EVs will play an increasingly large role, Dr. Karl-Thomas
Neumann, Chief Officer for Electric Traction at the Volkswagen Group, tells FastCompany.com. But combustion engines aren't going anywhere either.

In an interview about the company's plans for electrification, Neumann echoed the feelings of many EV experts when he explained that all-electric vehicles aren't yet realistic for the majority of customers. "EVs are coming, but they will have to be affordable," he said. "As we start to use...

Milan 2010: A 360 Twist on Rocking Chairs and a Design Wonderland Alice Would Love

FastCompany.com is scouring the goods at Milan 2010 design conference right now. Here's the latest batch of eye candy.

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Design Miami Designers of the Future, past and present: Peter Marigold (center) with members of the Berlin-based studio Beta Tank, whose black-and-white installation Beta Space transformed the back half of Milan's Spazio Fendi into an op-art playground, complete with inflatable balls.

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This year's Droog event, Saved by Droog, asked 14 international designers to reinterpret...

5 Things NING Got Right

Brain Trust: Ning chairman Marc Andreessen (he built Netscape back in the day), with Bianchini, at the company's HQ in Palo Alto. | Photograph by Art Streiber

In May of 2008 Fast Company put Gina Bianchini on the cover and heralded the "infinite ambitions" of the social network builder NING. The article called NING a "Perpetual Growth Machine." Ouch. One month ago Bianchini stepped down as CEO, and yesterday NING fired 40% of its workforce and announced it was killing the free community...

Wanted: Two Cycling Tools That Won't Make You Look Like One

Any of you own an iPad and a bike? No, I'm not about to serve up some weird little venn diagram that shows that people who use an iPad while cycling are more likely to break something than people who don't. Anyone who uses a bike in the city--and I am one of them--knows just how dangerous it can be. One's always worried that one will be squished, ignominiously, between a bus and a dumpster truck. So, one always looks behind one, to make sure said squishage won't take place. And then one...

Death By Smartphone: In-Car Sat Nav Doomed, at Least in Europe

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New research by Comscore has underlined something we always knew, but perhaps we weren't expecting to be so significant: Cellphone satellite navigation use in Europe is rocketing skywards at an amazing pace, at the expense of dedicated systems.

The data for cellphone GPS system use in February of this year shows that in five big Euro nations (Britain, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy) 21.1 million people used their smartphones for navigating from place to place. If that weren't a significant...

Fast Company Takes a Spin in VAIL's iPhone-Controlled Autonomous Vehicle

Distracted driving caused 6,000 automobile fatalities in 2008 alone. People probably aren't going to stop texting and fiddling around with gadgets while driving anytime soon, so why not make it a little bit less dangerous to be distracted? That's one of the things students and researchers at Stanford's Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab (VAIL) are attempting to do with their work on autonomous vehicles--cars that use sensors to drive themselves around without human interaction.

Fast...

Nalgene Ranks the Most and Least Wasteful Cities in America

It's time once again for Nalgene's annual ranking of America's most and least wasteful cities, a list based on a survey that measures waste, sustainability efforts, shopping habits,
transportation, and reuse of items among 3,750 people in cities around the country. The results are graded based on answers to 23 questions
that gauge wasteful or non-wasteful behaviors and actions.

Again, San Francisco came in first thanks to residents that ranked the highest in categories including public...

Death By Smartphone: In-Car Sat Nav Doomed, At Least in Europe

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New research by Comscore has underlined something we always knew, but perhaps we weren't expecting to be so significant: Cellphone satellite navigation use in Europe is rocketing skywards at an amazing pace, at the expense of dedicated systems.

The data for cellphone GPS system use in February of this year shows that in five big Euro nations (Britain, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy) 21.1 million people used their smartphones for navigating from place to place. If that weren't a significant...

Futures Thinking: A Bibliography

So you want to be a futurist? Better be ready to do a lot of reading.

As you probably picked up from earlier entries in the Futures Thinking series, foresight work is intensely information-based. If you're going to make grounded projections of future possibilities, you have understand both what has led us to the point we're at today, and what kinds of issues seem to be shaping up as emerging drivers. A few pieces to trigger some creative thoughts can help, too.

As I suggested in Futures...

Apple Lands Front Row Tickets to the Concert

 Proof, if you ever wanted it, that Apple is mos' def' getting into the idea of RFID technology for its devices. The firm has lodged a patent called Concert Ticket + that will enable it to get into the gig market, selling gig tickets over iTunes. As well as gigs, consumers will be able to buy tickets for sporting events, theme parks, and even wedding invitations--more about that in a bit--and even use their iPhones to get through the turnstiles. (Backup battery power: now a must.) Kinda...