David Lidsky's Blog, page 4783

Today in Most Innovative Companies

News of note from our Most Innovative Companies, including Facebook, Netflix, Apple, Twitter, and Google.

Facebook: More than 80 million Facebook users are obsessed with Farmville, and one of the more devoted players is Bulgaria's Plovidv City Council member, Dimitar Kerin. During council meetings, Kerin would take advantage of the city hall's laptops and wireless connection to tend to his farm. This caught the attention of the council chair, who many times scolded Kerin's virtual farming...

London, We Have a Problem: U.K. Space Logo Proves Graphic Design Is Rocket Science

Three...Two...One...Liftoff!

Well, from a graphic design standpoint, not exactly.

Last week Great Britain announced the formation of a new space agency. At the event Science and Innovation Minister, Lord Drayson, said: "The action we're taking today shows that we're really serious about space. The U.K. Space Agency will give the sector the muscle it needs to fulfill its ambition." Britain's space industry can grow to £40bn a year and create 100,000 jobs in 20 years." This all sounds exciting...

Brilliant Idea: Kindle Can Do for Books What Last.fm Did for Music

Digital reading platforms can collect previously unheralded data about how we read books--and that could change the way we buy them.

Zoinks, this is clever. Paul Lamere, an app developer in the online music industry and a blogger about the same, points out that one often overlooked feature of Amazon's Kindle might change the way we buy books by gathering some smart metrics.

Lamere specifically points to Whispersync, a feature that keeps track of where you are in a book and syncs that data...

Online Sex Shop Pulls Back Veil on Muslim Sexuality

Marketing an online sex shop for Muslims can't be the easiest of jobs--or can it? Just ask Abdelaziz Aouragh, a 29-year-old Dutchman, whose Web site, elasira.net supposedly opened for business earlier this month. Although there's a limit to what he can sell on the site--nothing that needs batteries, for example--condoms, lube, and pills are all freely available. At least, they would be if the site weren't down.

[We briefly interrupt this saucy post to acknowledge the proximity of April Fools...

Scion Targets Younger Buyers With "Project Runway for Cars" Web Series

You know what they say in autos: One day you're in, and the next day, you're...winning a Scion? That's the idea behind Scion's Reinvent The Wheels, a new Web video series being billed as "Project Runway for cars." The six-part saga, which premiered last night (just days before the New York Auto Show), follows 3 "creative thinkers" as they pimp a series of rides in an effort to win a Scion, a $30,000 cash prize, and "a one-of-a-kind opportunity to help them achieve their career goals by...

Today in Most Innovative Companies

News of note from our Most Innovative Companies, including Facebook, Netflix, Apple, Twitter, and Google.

Facebook: More than 80 million Facebook users are obsessed with Farmville, and one the more devoted players is Bulgaria's Plovidv City Council member, Dimitar Kerin. During council meetings, Kerin would take advantage of city hall's laptops and great wireless connection to tend to his farm. This caught the attention of the council chair, who many times scolded Kerin's virtual farming...

Greenpeace: Cloud Computing Greenhouse Gas Emissions to Triple

As cloud computing-fueled devices like the iPad grow in popularity, so will associated greenhouse gas emissions, according to Greenpeace's "Make IT Green" report. The report, which dubs 2010 the Year of the Cloud, offers up a disturbing statistic: Cloud computing greenhouse gas emissions will triple by 2020.

The increase in emissions makes sense. As we increasingly rely on the cloud to store our movies, music, and documents, cloud providers will continue to build more data centers--many of...

iPod Creator Leaving Apple for Greentech Startups

Is greentech hotter than Apple? Tony Fadell, the so-called godfather of the iPod, stepped down from his role as special adviser to Steve Jobs this week to focus on work with consumer greentech companies. The reason, Fadell, told The New York Times, is that he wants to tell his kids and grandkids stories "beyond my iPod and iPhone ones."

This week marks Fadell's official exit from Apple, but the executive actually stepped down from his position as senior vice president of the iPod division in...

What's the Square Root of Sustainability? This Coke Bottle

It's pretty ballsy to redesign one of the planet's most iconic shapes and completely blow it out of the water. Last we checked, Coke's bottles were some of the most recognizable objects on earth, and so powerful when it came to branding that in 2008, Coke transformed the capsule-like two-liter bottle into the same sexy curves. But dare we say design student Andrew Kim has created a concept that's equally powerful, all in the name of sustainability.

Kim has taken inspiration from companies...

Sign of Humanitarian Relief That Anyone Can Understand

More than two months later, we still haven't forgotten the images of Haiti being reduced to rubble in the worst catastrophe in its 200-year-old history. But with the devastation in Haiti--and in the aftermath of Chile's worst earthquake in over 40 years--we have also witnessed unprecedented support from private and governmental agencies, religious groups of all denominations, and international relief organizations from around the world. In the United States alone, the American Red Cross...