David Lidsky's Blog, page 4787

eBay Trys to Snag Online Designer Clothes Market With Fashion Vault

Ebay is launching its Fashion Vault service today, officially, after running the system as a trial for several months. The store, as its name suggests, sells clothing at cheap prices, but not just any clothes, as FV offers real designer labels.

According to eBay's site, the vendors are "trusted sellers and designers you know and love," and they have items on sale for a limited window--somewhere between 48 to 72 hours. Initially this included names like Hugo Boss, DKNY, Cole Haan, Max Mara and...

Trader Joe's Takes On Sustainable Seafood

Chalk up another victory for Greenpeace's trademark tactic of shaming companies into submission. This time around, Trader Joe's has agreed to source all of its seafood from sustainable sources by 2012. The move comes after a long campaign by Greenpeace where the activist organization accused "Traitor Joe's" of sourcing a number of red list seafood products.

In Greenpeace's third edition of its Carting Away the Oceans seafood sustainability scorecard, released this past summer, Trader Joe's...

Bad Idea of the Week: Covering Up Landfill Stench With Deodorant Guns

We're all for alleviating the nasty stench of landfills, but this is just not the way to do it. The UK Guardian reports that Beijing is installing 100 high-pressure deodorant guns at the overflowing Asuwei dump site in the city.

The site could use some sort of fix. Beijing residents generate 18,000 tons of waste daily. That's so much trash that every single landfill and treatment site in the city will be full in only four years. The government has been toying with incinerating the trash, but...

Funk Bassist Bootsy Collins' Offers the Online Degree You Won't Get at DeVry

Is it us or are the historic halls of higher education getting a little ... funky? Oh, no, it's just Bootsy Collins' online university.

Music Ally points us to the announcement that the Rock 'N' Roll Hall-of-Famer, songwriter, and former bassist for James Brown and Parliament-Funkadelic (and Deee=Lite) wants to become the dean of online bass instruction. Sayeth the four-string instructor:

Because a groove is a terrible thing to waste, this sonic learning institution will be unlike...

Gowalla + Foursquare + Brightkite + Yelp + Google Maps=Checkin Mania

Location-based social networking just got itself a tidy little mash-up. Checkin Mania uses Gowalla, Foursquare, Brightkite, and Yelp and displays all the places that the networks' users have been checkin' out. There are diddy little icons to mark the maps, and you can click on the users' names as well as the places to find out what they think.

The steak in my local pub, the Duke of Wellington, rocks, apparently. As well as table six, because it's got a wonky leg.

Apple's iAd Could Bite a Chunk Out of Google's Mobile Ad Business

It's iPad week folks, so expect a deluge of excitement about tablet PCs, e-publishing, TV shows, and whatnot: Kicking us off is a juicy rumor that Apple's soon to launch a new "iAd" mobile advertising platform, ready to smack Google where it hurts.

This news comes from MediaPost, who've heard from the requisite insider sources that Apple is due to announce this new system on April 7--which is timed nicely to ride the rear flank of the huge wave of press that the iPad's launch will result in...

iPad Slays Tablet Competitors With Killer Apps

Over the weekend a huge number of leaked images gave away what some of the first tranche of iPad apps will look like. Guess what? Everything we guessed about how exciting iPad will be has just been proved true--this thing's apps will rock.

A few weeks back I wrote about one simple iPad app, and how it may indicate the Microsoft Courier-vanquishing powers of the iPad. The idea wasn't to upsell the prospects of the app concerned (PadNotes,) but to spark your imagination off with the sort of...

Apple Winning the Flash War: New York Times' Video Engine Goes iPad Compatible With HTML5

This is a powerful move for Steve Jobs in his battle over Flash on the iPhone and iPad: Brightcove, the online video provider, just announced it's tweaked its system to allow HTML5 video to replace Flash. That means The New York Times, folks.

Brightcove's Experience for HTML5 is the specific bit of code we're talking about, and Brightcove's just made it available to its 1,000-plus customers for free. The neatest aspect of this code as far as normal Netizens are concerned is that it allows for...

Google Goes Dead-Tree to Recruit the Digitally Illiterate

Oh, the irony. Google is to produce a leaflet in an attempt to push the remaining Luddites in Britain toward the Internet. As part of the Race Online 2012 campaign, headed up by Lastminute.com founder Martha Lane Fox, now the Government's online guru, the search engine is printing "The Simple Guide To The Internet." With ink. On paper.

One-sixth of the U.K.'s population of 60 million have never used the Internet, according to Government figures, and Lane Fox has been charged with changing...

Work Smart: Taming Your Voicemail in Two Easy Steps

In an email age where text is king, voicemail feels like a big waste of time. First, there are those insufferable voice prompts you have to sit through in order to get your messages or leave one. Then you're waiting for the person who left the message to get through the small talk and to their point, so you can jot down anything important with your free hand. Voicemail is a necessary evil for anyone with a cellphone. But there are two ways you can make leaving and receiving messages faster...