David Lidsky's Blog, page 4832

IBM Researchers Develop Highly Recyclable, Biodegradable Plastic

A mind-boggling 13 billion plastic
bottles are tossed in the trash or recycled each year. And while most plastics are recyclable, the resulting materials are limited to "second generation reuse" only--so anything made out of recycled plastics has to be thrown on the landfill pile at the end of it's life. But now researchers from IBM and Stanford say they have solved the problem by developing plastics that can be continuously recycled.

The discovery, published in the American Chemical...

Is Streaming Music Service KKBox the Chinese Spotify?

Media companies worldwide are struggling with ad sales and budgets, desperately trying new business models like online pay walls to scrape by. But what if they moved into selling something other than journalism -- like, say, music?

Enter China's KKBox, which takes the unique approach of working as a streaming music service that happens to give away music journalism as a bonus. It sort of flips the Spotify model on its head, too. The music streaming isn't free. Users pay about $4.50 a month to...

Will Cisco's New Backend Net Hardware Help AT&T's iPhone Service Suck Less?

Cisco Systems just revealed its new CRS 3 datacenter-level broadband router. Constrain your whoops of joy, Net infrastructure geeks. But the rest of us probably should pay attention: It may transform AT&T's mobile broadband.

Cisco's hardware--the mysterious lumps of metal, plastic, and silicon standing in racks inside datacenters and telecommunications management facilities--is absolutely key to enabling much of the way current Internet signals get routed around the World. This is a...

If the Customer Is Truly King, Then Sonoma Partners Is One Smitten Queen

Any time a head of a company uses the word "upswing" in detailing his business' recent success, there is a bit of a compulsion around these parts to comment on the company. Please excuse a little cheerleading. But it is especially important to draw attention to an Upswing-ing outfit that saw its revenues swing up by ... 44% last year!

So how did Chicago-based Sonoma Partners do it? The firm works exclusively with Microsoft Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship Management software, thus...

Mapping Toronto's Sound Ecology: From Architecture to Santa Claus

While the City of Toronto unveils a material-culture scrapbook of 176 years of history, designers Greg J. Smith and Max Ritts map what Toronto sounds like today.

Toronto just celebrated its 176th birthday by cleaning out its closet. The city gathered up 100 of the 150,000+ objects in its historical collection and put them online in an awesome, interactive, object-based scrapbook of Toronto's past called the Toronto Museum Project, designed by Ecentricarts with York University's Augmented...

Toyota: Car Problems Caused by Mats, Not Electronic Bugs

Toyota has faced some seriously bad press about its recall of millions of vehicles due to "sudden acceleration" flaws. It's now pushing back, intimating that its electronics is not at fault. It'll be a tough battle, but an important one for future electric vehicles.

Toyota's forced recall of some eight million vehicles included 2.3 million cars and trucks for issues that may cause the throttle to stick open, with potentially disastrous runaway-car results. Accusations have been leveled at...

Aviation Emissions: Understanding the Carbon Offset Market

One of the ways individuals can reduce the impact of aviation emissions is to buy carbon offsets every time they fly. Around $25 can offset the amount of carbon released per passenger during a London to NY roundtrip. But most people don't know how carbon offsets work or how to purchase them.

Transcript:

Brad Pitt: One of the ways
individuals can reduce the impact of aviation emissions is to buy
carbon offsets every time they fly. Around $25 can offset the amount of
carbon released per...

Should You Be Afraid of Airport Body Scans? Or Just the TSA?

We've talked a lot about full-body security scans in airports, as it's powerful and challenging tech. But should travelers worry about them--or is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) what they should be more concerned about?

Over two dozen complaints filed with the TSA over the
last year suggest that it's failing to do this job as well as it really
should. Over 51 pages of these documents have just been requested by
the Electronic Privacy Information Center
under the Freedom...

37Signals' 13 Simple Rules for Success in Business

"Rework," the new book by the founders of 37Signals, is rethinking the traditional business plan. Here are some key points to turn your idea into a successful business.

James Cameron Is a Tool ... for Eco-Warriors and Their Publicists!

He may have been defeated by his ex-wife at the Oscars on Sunday, but it looks like James Cameron is on track to win the world popularity contest. A tribe from the Indian subcontinent has appealed to the "powerful thought leader" and film director to help them save their sacred mountain from a mining company. "Avatar is real," states the press release, exhorting Cameron by name, who claimed last year that his movie was the perfect recruiting tool for eco terrorists.

But perhaps the weirdest...