David Lidsky's Blog, page 4781

Free OS Android Too Expensive for Net-Enabled TVs, Says Panasonic

Google, we know, loves to extend its grasping business tentacles in as many directions as possible, so the company's execs will be interested to learn of this particular G-fail: Panasonic is rejecting Android for TVs, citing expense.

More and more TVs are going high-tech, and there are enough experiments underway to suggest that the average TV is going to become smarter and Net-enabled, possibly to maximize the utility of set-top box Net TV show and movie content. And Panasonic is the fourth...

Anish Kapoor Wins Competition to Design London's Olympic Tower

Over 375 feet high--that's 72 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty--Anish Kapoor's ArcelorMittalOrbit has been chosen as the monument to mark the London Olympics in 2012. The city's shy and retiring Mayor, Boris Johnson, has already nicknamed it the Hubble Bubble tower due to its striking resemblence to a shisha pipe.

Work is due to start on the steel sculpture, which the Mayor is hoping will become a rival to Paris' Eiffel Tower, in the next few weeks. The cost of the 1,400 ton steel...

Report: Clean Tech Investments to Climb Dramatically

Good news on the clean tech front: a report from Datamonitor claims that global investments in the sector will climb this year by an impressive 35% in the face of flailing climate change legislation.

According to the report, Challenges and Opportunities For Energy Utility Companies Post-Copenhagen, the resurgence in investments is a result of government stimulus packages offering up cash to renewable energy companies. At the same time, the Copenhagen summit encouraged private investors even...

Infographic of the Day: Does Being Old Really Make You a Republican?

Do our politics really vary wildly, as we progress from being scrappy, iconoclast teens to grumpy grandparents?

The dating site OK Cupid, which has turned their user database into all sorts of interesting infographics, has produced what might be their most fascinating set of charts yet.

Using 173,000 profile questionnaires, they managed to create, for each user, a gauge of his views on economics and social issues. Then, the company graphed these attitudes by age:

Looked at another way, when...

CEO Alan Mulally: Ford Still in Black but Also Green, Partners With Microsoft Hohm

[Photo: Stephen Wilkes]

Ariel Schwartz contributed to this report.

At his keynote address at New York's International Auto Show today, Alan Mulally rallied the nation's car manufacturers with a call to arms--and just a hint of boasting. If the industry doesn't wake up to the need for greener vehicles, such as hybrids and EVs, he warned, America will be hit hard. "We are, literally, fighting for the soul of manufacturing in the United States right now."

His company's latest victory in that...

Apple's iPad Stirring Developer Excitement, At Android's Expense?

Apple's iPad arrives on Saturday, so it's only natural that the tech media's in a fit of excitement about the thing. But so are the platform's developers, and according to some analysis Apple's even distracting devs from other markets.

According to one developer, Social Gaming Network, who was speaking to the Wall Street Journal, 90% of its developer team was occupied with the business of putting together apps for the iPad. Rephrasing Apple's own excitement about the opportunity to develop a...

Military Teaches Warthog to Guzzle Biofuel

Check this out for a brain-twisting juxtaposition: The U.S. military has successfully tested out a biofuel system for a "Warthog" A10 Thunderbolt II, one of the most feared combat aircraft in the World. Which is now fluffily green.

Specifically, the aircraft was an A10C, and the fuel that was pumped through its modified General Electric TF34-GE-100A turbofans was based on Camelina. This plant, also known as false flax, has been trialled on other U.S. military aircraft, and was converted into...

Redesign Hits YouTube, Still Doesn't Solve Its Monetizing Conundrum

A couple of months back, YouTube announced details of a mammoth site redesign, which has been available to some users for a few weeks now. And this morning, the Google-owned firm announced to partners that it is migrating all the videos onto the new site today.

The basic changes are these: The videos are bigger, the star system has been dispensed with, and the comments take up less space, with text and video comments sitting together. There's an AutoPlay On/Off button, and a clever little...

A Hopeful Response to Gore's Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's ultra-popular 2006 documentary film about climate change, may not be entirely responsible for the current sustainability craze, but it certainly hasn't hurt. There is one big flaw with the film, however: Its doom-and-gloom position on global warming, realistic though it may be, is outright depressing. That's where Carl Fechner's The Fourth Revolution -- Energy Autonomy comes in. The German documentary offers up the heartening news that the world could be...

How We'll Work in 2025

Clive Wilkinson's new headquarters for an Australian bank represents the cutting edge of the "mobile office."