David Lidsky's Blog, page 4840

Today in Most Innovative Companies

Daily news of note from our Most Innovative Companies, including Hulu, Warner Music Group, Google, and Microsoft

Hulu: Ever see those NFL commercials with the deep-voice growling, "If you want the NFL, go to the NFL"? Can't you hear just hear the true message underneath begging, "If you want the NFL, please stop going to ESPN." Well it looks like the NFL is expanding its operations online by adding a ton of content to Hulu, from team highlights to superbowl classics. Will this be enough to...

Work Smart: Avoid Office Distractions With Time Blocking

The most important decision you'll make today is about what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

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In an interruption-driven culture, it's too easy to let everyone else decide where your attention goes and how to spend your next 10 minutes. If you jump every time your phone rings, a new email arrives, your Blackberry buzzes, or someone stops by your desk, you're undermining your most important work and costing your company money. A recent study shows that...

Futuristic New York and Sustainable Sao Paulo Projects Win Zumtobel Prize

How can we examine ways that the built environment impacts both sustainability and humanity? The Austrian-based Zumtobel Group created an award that focuses on those contributions in architecture and engineering that can improve quality of life. The Zumtobel Group Awards were announced today with a dozen bright ideas including the two winners: A creative work environment that's completed in Sao Paulo, and a visionary research proposal for a "self-sufficient" New York City.

In the built...

ChatRoulette Sparks "Next" Proxy War Between the U.S. and Russia

Andrey Ternovskiy, the 17-year-old creator of Chat Roulette, is now embroiled in a bidding war that pits the U.S. and Russia against each other over where the company will end up. Could it blow up like Facebook? Or fizzle like MySpace?

Andrey Ternovskiy, creator of Chat Roulette, just might be sitting on the hottest Internet property since Facebook was founded five years ago. But he's not American. He's Russian. And that's putting him smack in the middle of some powerful forces. On the one...

Adventures in Virality: Jay-Z Spoof "Entrepreneur State of Mind" Namechecks Notable Blogs, Us

Where's Weird Al when you need him? The curly locked spoofmeister could have hit Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind" out of the park, but instead, we're being treated to "The New Dork: Entrepreneur State of Mind."

It's a blatant bid at a viral video from Pantless Knights, the makers of the popular "Mac or PC" rap. A dreadlock bedecked singer in skinny jeans smooshes together a maelstrom of tech and entrepreneurship buzzwords with notable names and spits hot gems like this one...

Latte for Work? Cappuccino-Powered Car Puts You in the Espresso Lane

Forget the electric vehicle revolution--this car is juiced up by the same stuff that powers you in the morning. The "Carpuccino" car was built by a team from the BBC science show Bang Goes The Theory to prove the viability of cars powered by fuels other than conventional gasoline and diesel. The car, built from a converted 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco, was used by the show because it looks like the DeLorean from Back to the Future.

The idea of making biofuel from waste coffee grounds is a

iPhone Players: Prepare to Frag PC and Console Gamers

The Apple-vs.-PC war is about to get literal. Bigpoint and Unity Technologies are demonstrating at the Game Developers Conference a new version of the Unity browser-based software, which will now allow iPhone gamers to play against PC players.

The companies presented today a racing game demo, named "Uniter," demonstrating the technology. "This is our vision of the gaming industry in the future, independent of the platforms. Just imagine your friends are sitting around in the office or the...

Waterpebble Stops You From Taking Ultra-Long Showers

Even the most devoted environmentalist will likely confess to taking long, hot showers on occasion. One possible reason (besides the comfort factor) is that, unlike with electrical outlets, there are few products to help users gauge the amount of water being poured out of a showerhead. That's where the Waterpebble comes in.

The device is placed at the bottom of the shower, where it keeps track of all the water being poured down the drain. If users take ultra-long showers, the Waterpebble's...

BP: The Most Sustainable Big Oil Company?

Big Oil companies are inherently unsustainable. Petroleum is a limited and polluting resource, so any company that makes its money slinging gasoline probably shouldn't make it to the top of a list of green companies. Nevertheless, Two Tomorrows has attempted to rank the ten biggest fossil fuel companies in corporate responsibility using five categories: Strategy, Innovation and Leadership, Governance, Engagement, and Value Chain.

The results:

Rank
Company
Tomorrow's Value score


1
...

Google Really Wants to Monitor Where You Are: May Link Buzz and Latitude

Google's Buzz has hit the tech headlines in good and bad ways, but it's totally swamped other Google offerings like Latitude. Google's not forgotten it of course, and has revealed it may well intertwine Buzz with Latitude. LBS social networking FTW?

Google's mobile Buzz implementation has a location-based system built right in, which grabs your geocoordinates from the smartphone's AGPS system, whizzes it off to Google's cloud, and then drives location-sensitive data back to the app in the...