David Lidsky's Blog, page 4777

Henry Edward (Ed) Roberts, 1941-2010

Ed Roberts is perhaps best known as the developer of the MITS Altair 8800 in 1975, a device which is widely credited for having sparked the revolution in personal computing. The Altair 8800 was a build-it-yourself hobbyist kit consisting of switches, with no display, and MITS had little faith that they'd sell even 200 units, enough to break even on the project. But thanks to a cover story in an issue of Popular Electronics, MITS was flooded with offers, receiving several thousand in the...

Verizon Slashes Palm Phone Prices Absurdly Low: Could Be the Ideal iPad Companion

Pity Palm, and pity both the Pre and its operating system, WebOS. Palm can't compete against the likes of Google, Apple, and Microsoft, the monoliths slugging it out for smartphone supremacy: it doesn't have the bottomless pockets, the lucrative media content partners, nor the sheer size to pump out a new handset every six months. Every Palm story of late has had the same theme: Palm is dying. And it might be true, but it's really not their fault. After all, Palm's WebOS, the operating...

iPad Hands-On: New York Times Fires Up Video, We Take Requests Via Twitter [Video]

A few days ago Fast Company asked via Twitter what you would do with an iPad if you got your hands on one. Okay, we were being a bit sneaky. We were looking for things to do when tech writer and Mac chronicler Andy Ihnatko came in and hosted a hands-on tour for us--days before the device hits stores. We picked a few of the tricks you tweeted and took the iPad through its paces. Along the way, we discovered that The New York Times is farther along in making its pages iPad compatible than we...

Twitter Predicts Box-Office Sales Better Than a Prediction Market

Researchers at HP Labs discover that Twitter can predict, with astonishing accuracy, how well a movie will sell.

We've all got the vague intuition that Twitter allows you track, in real-time, what people are concerned about or obsessed with. But this is a little freaky: Two researchers at HP Labs, Sitaram Asur and Bernardo Huberman, have discovered that you can actually use Twitter mentions to predict how well a movie will do in it's first couple weekends of release. What's more, the...

From Addiction to Apathy: The Five Stages of Foursquare Use

Foursquare, the smartphone app that gives you points and badges for "checking in" at clubs and convenience stores, is about to reach the one-million usermark. That's a big deal. But it's also a reminder that, try as we might to cover its every move, most of you haven't tried Foursquare yet. (Or you're using its scrappy archrival, Gowalla.) Here's what to expect when you do:

Stage One: CuriositySo you've gotten 27 emails about this Foursquare thing, and stupid blogs won't shut up about it...

Obama's New Fuel Efficiency Standards as Unlikely as Obama Presidency

The 2011 Volkswagen Touareg Hybrid would not make 2016 standards

In a move that seemed to appease environmentalists angered by yesterday's expansion of offshore drilling, President Obama announced today that he was significantly raising fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks. According to a new regulation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Environmental
Protection Agency says that 2016 models will have to deliver around 35 miles per gallon as well as improved...

Happy Fossil Fools Day!

If you're tired of sifting through the endless fake news stories today, consider harnessing April Fool's Day shenanigans for good with Fossil Fools Day, an annual environmenal demonstration day led by the Energy Action Coalition and Rising Tide. The event's tagline is "pull a prank that packs a punch"--in other words, do something to shake up the fossil fuel industry.

This year, Fossil Fools Day actions have been ultra-creative. Some of our favorites: 3,000 fake "Fossil Fool's Weekly...

Twitter Predicts Box-Office Sales Better than a Prediction Market

Researchers at HP Labs discover that Twitter can predict, with astonishing accuracy, how well a movie will sell.

We've all got the vague intuition that Twitter allows you track, in real-time, what people are concerned about or obsessed with. But this is a little freaky: Two researchers at HP Labs, Sitaram Asur and Bernardo Huberman, have discovered that you can actually use Twitter mentions to predict how well a movie will do in it's first couple weekends of release. What's more, the...

Attention, Cities: You Can Sell Your Excess Wastewater to Nuclear Power Plants

The problem: Five Arizona cities--Phoenix, Mesa, Glendale, Scottsdale, and Tempe--are facing severe cash shortages. The solution: selling billions of gallons of wastewater to the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in a move that will bring $1 billion to city coffers over a 40 year period. It's a unique use for treated wastewater, which is often used in landscaping and on golf courses. Palo Verde is the first nuclear plant ever to use reclaimed wastewater for cooling.

AZCentral explains...

Comedian Hijacks Entire Commercial Break of Stand-Up Gala for Charity

While some people are of the belief that the commercials are the best thing about TV, most of us use the ad break as a chance to do something else--murder our mothers-in-law, stitch profanities into our boyfriends' underwear, or search for the Higgs boson down the back of the sofa. On Monday night, however, a British broadcaster is doing something a little bit different that might call a halt to the average power surge caused by viewers flocking to boil the kettle as they are bombarded with...