David Lidsky's Blog, page 4806

Steve Fossett's Round-the-World Record Smashed by 29-Year-Old Jet

Three Swiss pilots have broken the round-the-world flight record, smashing Steve Fossett's four-year-record by almost ten hours, reports . The flight touched down yesterday in Geneva, 57 hours and 54 minutes after taking off, and the 23,000-mile journey included ten pit stops of 15 to 20 minutes, and 57 hours and 54 minutes. Chief pilot Riccardo Mortara, claimed, however, that the trip could have taken five hours less, had it not been for an angry volcano.

The plane, a Rockwell...

Work Smart: Do Your Worst Task First (Or, Eat a Live Frog Every Morning)

The best work habit you can ever get into is very simple: Do your worst task first thing in the morning. Every given day, you've got one major to-do that's highest priority. But when you've got the whole day stretching out ahead of you, it's easy to put it off until after you get your coffee, check our email, or go to that meeting. But just like breakfast is the most important meal of the day, the first thing you accomplish at work sets the tone for the rest of the day.

[twistage...

Best Source for Tiger Bone Wine, Biggest Threat to Endangered Animals: The Internet

I'm surprised it never occurred to me before, but animal rights groups are taking it upon themselves to make it known that there need to be tougher and more vigilant laws regarding the sale and trade of protected and endangered species over the Internet. The legal route in one case has just been thwarted, but with enough publicity maybe something can be done.

Endangered plants and animals, and products made therefrom, have historically been a small trade, tricky as it is to find both buyers...

10 Riskiest American Cities for Cybercrime, 5 Reasons Norton's Study is Flawed

Norton teamed up with Sperling, the firm responsible for those "world's most liveable cities" lists, to synthesize a whole bunch of data gathered from Norton users and in turn rank the "riskiest" cities for cybercrime. The rubrics used included the number of cyber attacks, wireless hotspots, use of online sites for banking and purchases, potential malware infections, and some specifics about internet usage and hardware preferences.

There are problematic caveats to this list; its sampling and...

Sprint Ad Uses the iPhone to Show Off Its 4G Network (Yes, That iPhone)

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Sprint's Overdrive portable Wi-Fi hotspot is similar to Verizon's MiFI: it's equipped with a wireless antenna like a phone, but instead of merely using it, it exports it as a Wi-Fi network that any device with a Wi-Fi antenna can use. The MiFi is great, but it's still just a 3G network--Sprint's Overdrive uses Sprint's fledgling 4G network, which is several times faster and in daily use often approaches the speed of a home broadband network.

So the Overdrive is compatible with any Wi-Fi...

The Future of Health Care Is Social

Health care is a personal issue that has become wholly public--as the national debate over reforming our system makes painfully clear. But what's often lost in the gun-toting Town Hall debates about the issue is a clear vision about how medicine could work in the future. In this feature article, frog design uses its people-centered design discipline to show how elegant health and life science technology solutions will one day become a natural part of our behavior and lifestyle. What you see...

Nation's Jews Abandon Facebook and Twitter, One Day Per Week, Starting...Now

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It hasn't officially been rebranded, of course; God is notoriously conservative about updating that Bible of His. But, as reported by the New York Times, Reboot, a nonprofit Jewish think tank, has come up with a new version of Shabbat that is not only restive but sort of cheekily appropriate. And if you notice a lack of Jews on the internet, starting about now, you'll know why.

Shabbat, observed sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, usually involves traditional Jewish meals (including bread...

3-D Printed Shoes: Quite the Feet

You can make anything from 3-D printing, from impossibly complex lamps to chain-mail bags to entire buildings. So it's actually kind of surprising that 3-D printed shoes aren't more common. Maybe someday soon: For her master's thesis at
ArtEZ in Arnhem, The Netherlands, Pauline Van Dongen created a line of high heels, dubbed Metamorphosis.

The pieces were exhibited recently in a show in Amsterdam called "The Future of Fashion," curated by Freedom of Creation, a Dutch outfit that...

Most Innovative Companies - Sports

Sponsored by

by Chuck Salter

Photo by Christy Radecic

1. ESPN

The most powerful brand in sports media continues to expand and experiment aggressively. Last year, it acquired the rights to air English Premier League games, its first stab at a major market in Europe, home to several hundred million soccer fans; opened the...

Slam Dunk: The Financial Impact of March Madness

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We're guessing we don't need to do much to get you hyped for the NCAA tournament. But here's a little data throw out in obsessive sports talk. Because, while the NFL playoffs, culminating with the Super Bowl, are overall the biggest moneymakers on the American sporting scene, the hoops tourney is a none-too-distant second. And unlike the Super Bowl, which creates a windfall for a single city and a handful of prominent players, the college games spread the wealth all over the country. To...