David Lidsky's Blog, page 4811

Apple Patents: Your Next iPhone Doubles as a Walkie Talkie

Apple's putting up iPhone patents at an incredible rate: Two new applications, one for a walkie-talkie-like accessibility feature and another for a spontaneous wireless social network are very sophisticated. Is iPhone 4 going to be super-awesome?

The first patent has just been uncovered by Apple Insider, and it dates from November. It's concerned with the back-end data servers that cell-phone-network providers use to route SMS text messages to and from their user's phones. Apple's patent...

Yves Behar's Watch for Issey Miyake Makes Time Disappear

With its single hand, and pristine face, the Vue watch by Yves Behar for Issey Miyake makes an existential statement about the fleeting nature of time. "You have to look quickly," Behar told us in an early look. "You only see one number at a time. It's a view into the past and future."

Users see only the current hour, while the preceding one and the upcoming one fade in and out. Tempus fugit indeed!

If you're racing for the 5:13 train, its imprecision is likely to be a little challenging...

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Infographics

How prevalent is our cultural obsession with data? Our children are now crawling with it, according to a new commercial by IBM.

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"Data Baby" is a gorgeous spot, to be sure, directed with typical finesse by Fast Company favorites Motion Theory. And it's not the only commercial to alert us to the fact that everything around us is a series of numbers and patterns to be combed, categorized and visualized--this piece is part of a larger series by IBM, claiming that our...

What Do Michael Dukakis, British Knights, and Hoboken Have in Common?

According to a new Web site, Gowalla is the Crystal Pepsi (or Betamax...or Hydrox Cookies) of the location-based social media applications, which include the more-hyped foursquare. The check-in rivals clashed yet again at this year's SXSW. This site was created by Attention Media, a social
marketing agency, who understand that if you really feel strongly about something, the only way to truly express it is to create a single-serving Web site--in fact, they even have a post on their blog...

Smart IBM Software Could Rescue You From Dumb Call Center Hell

IBM has developed new software that uses advanced analytics in an attempt to improve customer satisfaction with call centers. RAMP, or Realtime Analytics Matching Platform, brings two sets of data--that of the caller and that of the customer service representative--and, once it has identified what the client is phoning about, hooks them up with the right person for the job.

The key to all of this is the "matching engine" developed by the firm's Global Business Services consultants. The...

Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes Is Back in the Startup Business With Jumo.com

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Chris Hughes, the Facebook co-founder, and the engine behind the MyBarackObama community organization site, is back in the start-up business.

His new enterprise is called Jumo, (jumo.com) which soft launches today. Jumo--a Yoruba word meaning "together in concert"--is a non-profit that aims to help people find ways to help the world. "We'll be matching people based on their skills and interests with organizations around the world that need their input," Hughes tells Fast Company. "It's a...

Infographic of the Day: The Best-Designed NCAA Tourney Bracket on the Web

Among the hundreds out there, the winner is.... (Hurry up and do yours now!)

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...NBC, baby!!! That's right. After scouring the web for the slickest bracket-designs out there, we choose NBC for best designed. Why? Because it's a bonafide infographic--basically a cheat-sheet that allows anyone with only a passing interest in college basketball to sound smart after about five minutes of studying.

As you can see, instead of just blanks, there's also lots of data: First, percentages telling you how...

Meet Cody: Your Future Non-Terrifying Health-Care Helper Robot

The other day we covered two home-care/health-care robots that may arrive soonish, though we noted their utility was slightly limited by a lack of hands. Well, Georgia Tech has stepped in with a vision of this sort of bot's future: With arms.

Georgia Tech is actually working on the cutting edge of these non-android domestic or health-care machines as part of its Healthcare Robotics effort, and this particular device, dubbed Cody, would seem to be a genuine glimpse of the near future. Like...

Uniqlo Looks to the Rouble as It Opens First Shop in Moscow

Uniqlo, part of Fast Retailing (#41 on our Most Innovative Companies list), is heading for Russia. The Japanese company that boasts Jil Sander alongside great jeans and cheap cashmere is to open up another store to go with the 918 it already has worldwide, in the Atrium shopping center, in Moscow. The brand will have 1,200 square meters at its disposal when the space opens, on April 2.

Earlier this month, the firm switched its recycling campaign, which allows Japanese consumers to recycle...

Nestle Eases Up on Rainforest Destruction

We recently gave kudos to Nestle U.K. for a plan to source the chocolate in Kit Kat bars from fair-trade suppliers. That wasn't enough for Greenpeace U.K., which attacked the candy maker this week for sourcing palm oil from Sinar Mas--a company responsible for massive rainforest destruction in Indonesia. In typical fashion, Greenpeace heckled Nestle headquarters with posters leaflets, and orangutans hanging off the side of the building. And guess what? Nestle actually took action.

The...