David Lidsky's Blog, page 4763

Google Expands Google Earth to the Sea, Includes Mission Blue's Hope Spots Initiative

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Google's Ocean layer, which was introduced last year, is filled with hundreds of place marks, from natural features like coral reefs to man-made shipwrecks and geographic ridges and chasms. The data comes from organizations including the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Here's what you can do with it:

Double click on the "Explore the Ocean" layer and it will fly you to my
Ocean Overview video and 10 focus areas with...

Game Over: The Apocalypse in "Pixels"

If we're gonna have to go eventually, please make it be as fun as this. The short film Pixels envisions a world invaded by the planets of Atari and Nintendo.

The urban destruction as wrought by Donkey Kong and Pac-Man is entertaining enough, but the use of the pixel shape as a narrative element is downright brilliant. See if you can name all the games, and be sure to stick around for the closing credits.

[Pixels by Patrick Jean]

Topological Lounges, Backpack Sofas, and Chopping-Block Stools--Must Be Quinze and Milan

If you ever happen to visit the stunning Seattle Public Library or the brilliant new Wily Theater in Dallas, you might love the architecture--but you'll be sitting your butt on furniture designed by Belgian firm Quinze and Milan. They're a favorite among architects, because they create furniture that looks like it could actually be buildings. But they make mass-produced furniture as well, and they've sent Fast Company a preview of the pieces they'll be showing off in next week's Milan...

Wii Game "And Kensaku" Scores Players by Google Search Results

A new game for Wii (149,000,000 results) is launching in Japan at the end of the month that scores players based on their knowledge of Google's search engine results. And Kensaku (492,000 results) pits contestants against each other in a number of ways to guess which search term is the most popular. Game developer Shift has loaded 10,000 search results onto the game, but you can always update it using the Wii's Wi-Fi--so, the world is your oyster (1,440,000 results.)

As well as the basic...

HP's Memristor Tech Promises Faster, Bigger, Cheaper Memory Chips

Memristors are a seriously hot topic at the moment--we've seen several announcements about these tiny slivers of semiconductor which are the future of electronics, and now HP's got news too. Their memristors will beat flash memory, apparently.

For those of you who've no idea what a memristor is, here's a quick recap ('cause they're going to be so important in the future). The name is a bit of a giveaway--they're kind of "memory transitor/resistors." A transistor is a tiny electrical valve...

Infographic of the Day: The Tiger Woods Economy

Instead of a Green Jacket from Augusta, can we just get this man a jacket made of treasury bills?

Tiger's back at the Masters! If the man slips on the Green Jacket once again, you can bet it will become the greatest sports story of the decade. Even if he doesn't win, his mere apparance will herald the return of the biggest personality driven money-magnet the world has ever seen. (Witness this bizarro ad shamelessly featuring Tiger's dad Earl Woods. The image rehabilitation is in full...

Kindle and Nook to Go Retail: Can It Save Them From the iPad?

It's a hard time to be a traditional e-book reader (if any device that is two years old can really be "traditional"). Both Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook gathered plenty of their own buzz, and by all accounts Amazon is quite pleased with the Kindle's sales. But Apple's iPad has pretty much obliterated them in mindshare, making them look outdated and overpriced.

It's not entirely fair--after all, the e-ink readers both sport huge libraries (Amazon has about 450,000 titles, Barnes &amp...

How to Get Uncensored Google Search Results in China: Use a Smartphone

If you thought the whole Google-versus-China affair was over, then this news will be hugely puzzling: Google is reporting that its mobile search facilities in mainland China are now available...and they're uncensored.

This only applies to people accessing Google's search engine via a smartphone, which isn't a significant proportion of the population--smartphones
account for only 15%
of the entire mobile market there. But it's still a bizarre twist in this endless tale of search vs...

You're Overstimulated, and "Kapitaal" Proves It in Plain Black and White

A clever visualization reveals just how much information we deal with every day.

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Most everyone agrees that we live in an overstimulated age. But really, how overstimulated are we? Its not an easy to question to answer, but Kapitaal, a short animation by Dutch design-house Studio Smack, takes a worthwhile stab. They simply render all the stuff hoping to demand immediate attention in white, and everything else in black.

 

Studio Smack says that in making the video, they were...

iPhone 4 Rumor Round-Up: Multitasking at Last?

In a few hours, Apple will reveal the next-gen 4.0 software that'll run at the core of its next iPhone, the current iPads, and maybe existing iPhones too. Here are some predictions as to what the announcement is likely to include.

Multitasking

What it is: This is the big one--the ability to run non-Apple apps in the background, so that the code is still in action but not visible to the user. This is partly available already, but only for Apple apps (mainly on the iPod). But until now full...