David Lidsky's Blog, page 4766

Rupert Murdoch Calls for the iPad to Kill Paper-and-Ink Newspapers

Rupert Murdoch's banging his "Google is a thief!" drum again in an interview at a National Press Club event. Then he praised the iPad. Then things got really freaky. Murdoch, News King, would like the physical newspaper to die.

The only unifying take-away from the scattered talk was that Rupert Murdoch will support any media he can bend to fit his mission and bottom line--and vow to exterminate the others.

Speaking at the event at George Washington University, in front of a crowd of news...

Solar Impulse Takes First Successful Test Flight

Biofuels may be the most mainstream option for powering the airplanes of the future, but solar power shouldn't be completely overlooked--just take a look at the Solar Impulse, a completely solar-powered plane that just finished its first test flight, a 1.5 hour trip above Switzerland. The Boeing 747-sized plane, which features 12,000 solar cells on its wings, reached an altitude of 3,937 feet and an average speed of 44 mph during its 87-minute flight.

This wasn't technically the first test...

Expect Tablet PC Ads To Be More Like TV Product Placements, Says Yahoo

Yahoo's got its eye firmly fixed on the tablet PC revolution, and the potential for new profits: It's been working on a whole new advertising system with the glossy PCs in mind. With Apple's rumored iAd system en route, it looks like good timing.

Mobile advertising is a massive growth industry--and with Apple and Google both making purchases of hundred-million-dollar mobile ad businesses, it will soon be growing even faster. But until now, the digital ad industry has had only two targets: the...

Almost Genius: A Mouse Made for Your Feet

The design is meant to aid those without use of their arms. That it doesn't yet exist tells you much about product development--and suggests a new solution to the bigger problem.

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Like any good design idea, you can understand how the Toe Mouse works at a glance--and why it was designed.

Liu Yi created it for those without use of their arms, the form is based on a blockbuster design we're all familiar with, the flip flop. The ergonomic shape allows easy gripping between the big toe and the...

NRC: Improving Fuel Economy of Buses and Trucks is Easy

Trucks, buses, and tractor trailers are some of the biggest gas guzzlers around. You might think, then, that improving the fuel economy of these hulking vehicles would be difficult. But according to a recently released report from the National Research Council, improving fuel economy could be fairly simple.

Next100 points us to the report, Technologies and Approaches to Reducing the Fuel Consumption of Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicles, whch explains that  advanced diesel engines and hybrid...

Using Legos to Explain the World's Toughest Challenge, in the Next Fifty Years

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Dr. Hans Rosling is a legendary TED presenter: He's appeared there a half-dozen times, using stats in ingenious ways to dispel common myths about the developing world. A professor at Karolinska
Institutet in Stockholm, he's got a way of making complex forces intuitive, in stunningly short order, using infographics.

For example, check out this short video, where he uses a few Legos to illustrate the problems of population growth--and the central misconception about the so-called developing...

Rupert Murdoch Calls For The iPad to Kill Paper-and-Ink Newspapers

Rupert Murdoch's banging his "Google is a thief!" drum again in an interview at a National Press Club event. Then he praised iPad. Then things got realy freaky. Murdoch, News King, would like the physical newspaper to die.

The only unifying take-away from the scattered talk was that Rupert Murdoch will suport or any media he can bend to fit his mission and bottom line--and vow to exterminate the others.

Speaking at the event at George Washington University, in front of a crowd of news media...

Crib Sheet: Wikileaks and Its Spokesman, Julian Assange

"We open governments," states the  Twitter bio of Wikileaks, a whistle-blowing website that broke the story of a US helicopter attack in Iraq three years ago. Over a dozen people were killed, including two Reuters journalists, and despite Reuters' best efforts to obtain the military's video of the video using the FOI act, it remained a mystery. Until Wikileaks posted the video on a website this week.

Wikileaks was set up three years ago as a site for leaking sensitive information--and its...

Made To Stick: Presentations That Stick

How do you avoid that bullet-riddled PowerPoint presentation that everybody loves to hate? Here are three ways (presented without bullet points).

[transcript of video:]Maybe you've seen a PowerPoint presentation that looks something like this [visual: heinous PPT template]. Maybe you were the author of a PowerPoint like that. This is a little unfair—usually people will throw in some clip art to jazz it up a little [visual: ridiculous smiley-face clip art]. How do you avoid the dreaded...

Today's Most Innovative Companies by Popular Demand

Harris Interactive polled close to 30,000 folks to find out what companies have the best reputations in corporate America. A yet-to-be-released part of that study tested the public on which companies had the most innovative products and services. Harris provided Fast Company with the list. Here are three of the top five, stacked against our own list of innovators.

Apple: Looks like public perception matches up with Apple's reputation as an innovator. Cupertino ranked #1 on Harris...