David Lidsky's Blog, page 4758

Twitter Acquires Tweetie, the Best iPhone Twitter Client: What's Next?

The news came this weekend that Twitter has agreed to acquire Atebits, the cleverly named company behind Tweetie, a Twitter client for Apple's iPhone and Mac platforms. This is a huge step, and a glaring indicator, for Twitter as a company--how it'll manifest itself for Twitter the service isn't quite so clear.

Fred Wilson, a major investor and director for Twitter, hinted last week that Twitter was about to start "filling the holes" in the service. Third-party services, he says, sprung up...

Coke + Emeco: Get Hitched, Spawn Chairs

Now you can have your Coke and sit on it too.

On the eve of the world's biggest furniture fair, two classic brands -- Coca Cola and Emeco, manufacturers of the iconic 106 aluminum Navy chair -- are announcing the rainbow-hued progeny of their new collaboration.

Each new Emeco 111 Navy Chair is made of 111 recycled plastic bottles. Over the course of a year, Emeco estimates it will process more than three million PET bottles to produce the product, which will be sold for $230 at Design Within...

Microsoft's Project Pink Social Networking Phones Coming Monday

Mockups of Microsoft's Project Pink hit Gizmodo way back in September, even before Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7, and the distinction between the two isn't always that clear. To the best of our knowledge, there are two Pink phones, possibly named the Turtle and Pure--one is a vertical slider like the Palm Pre, the other is a horizontal slider like the Motorola Droid. But the prevailing feeling seems to be that these phones won't be competing with the Pre or the Droid--they may not even...

Redesigning Education: Rethinking the School Corridor

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"I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at
education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder how we
could have tolerated anything so primitive."- John W. Gardner, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, "No Easy
Victories" (1968)

Education reform is in the air and taking root in thousands of classrooms across the country. From overhauling No Child Left Behind to closing poorly performing schools and raising student expectations, the push...

LEGO Educates Kids About the Wonders of Renewable Energy

There's no better way to make change than by teaching the kiddies well, right? That's presumably the thinking behind LEGO's new Renewable Energy Add-On Set, a supplement to the LEGO Simple & Motorized Mechanisms Set.

LEGO provides the details:

When the Renewable Energy Add-On Set is combined with the customized activity pack, students will explore renewable energy sources; investigate energy supply, transfer, accumulation, conversion, and consumption; and use measurements and data analysis ...

Seeking Mobile Magic as Search Engine Use Shrinks

Short of a cataclysmic event (such as discovering a planet with little aliens who deliver your queries via cute bubbles out of their mouths) nothing will loosen Google's stranglehold of the search engine market. However, the firm's mammoth US market share was down slightly last month, according to figures released by Experian Hitwise earlier this week, and confirmed by comScore. All very heartening for Google's rivals, until you factor in the news that search engine use in the US is slowing...

"American Trademarks" Traces the Origins of Our Logo Lust

In the year 100,010, some evolved species will be digging through ancient digital rubble and find a strange visual iconography made of tiny colorful squares with rounded corners. They will diligently attempt to decipher what we meant by "I am T-Pain," "Doodle Jump," and "Zombie Farm." Finally, they will conclude that our native tongue was something called Apps.

Every day new apps are introduced for the iPhone, iTouch, and now the iPad (not to mention Android apps). Each represents a new...

Terracycle Goes National in Walmart Stores

Terracycle is on a roll. First the startup installed a pop-up shop in New York City's Port Authority, and now the company has announced a deal that will put its cookie wrapper pencil cases, recycled paper trash cans, and other upcycled products in 3,429 Walmart stores nationwide.

Terracycle has come a long way in its nine years of existence. The company started out selling plant food made from worm waste products and more recently has begun to repurpose
packaging from brands like Frito-Lay...

T. Boone Pickens Bringing Wind Power Plans to Minnesota

Oil magnate T. Boone Pickens gave up on his ambitious plan to build the world's biggest wind farm in the Texas panhandle long ago, but he never completely lost his interest in wind power. In January, Pickens announced a plan to cut the Texas wind turbine order in half to 334 GE-branded turbines. Originally, half of the turbines were supposed to go to a wind farm in Minnesota, and half were supposed to go to Canada. But now the all-American billionaire has nixed the Canada plan and decided...

Optical Illusion: Make Your Computer's Download Progress Bar Dilate Time

I just added a software upgrade to my Mac, and for the Nth time was suckered into one of my reluctant pastimes: staring at that progress bar. Yet it turns out that with a trick or two, that icon can make time seem like its flying.

We've got Chris Harrison, a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University and an expert in human-computer interaction, to thank for this little gem: According to Chris, with the slightest bunch of graphical tweaks, a download progress bar can be made to seem like it's...