David Lidsky's Blog, page 4848

918 Spyder Revealed as the First Porsche Plug-in Hybrid

Automakers are revealing plans for plug-in hybrids left and right, so it was only a matter of time before Porsche jumped on board. The 918 Spyder Hybrid concept car, revealed this week at the Geneva Auto Show, supposedly goes 0 to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds, gets 78 miles per gallon, and can go 16 miles on pure electric charge. The car weighs a relatively light 3,285 lbs (including batteries) thanks to carbon-reinforced plastic body panels and an aluminum and magnesium chassis.

Auto buffs...

Apple Sues HTC for Infringing on 20 iPhone Patents

Whoa, Apple just sued HTC for infringing on 20 patents "related to the iPhone's user interface, underlying architecture and hardware." The guns are out.

Steve Jobs' biting take on the lawsuit:

"We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."

Sound familiar? Of course it does, because

Would You Live in These Abandoned Mental Hospitals? (The Views Are Insane!)

Would you live in an abandoned mental hospital? Some people already are--albeit in buildings transformed from creepy relics of the past into modern housing developments.

Apple Names New Security Chief as Flash Named Chief Nuisance for Internet Security

Former Mozilla security chief Window Snyder has come on board as Senior Security Product Manager at Apple. Snyder, who left Mozilla in December 2008 after firming up the Firefox browser, started at Cupertino yesterday, although it is not clear whether she is working on the Macintosh browser, Safari, or something new. She spent 2009 working as a consultant, and joins Apple just as its technology chief of MobileMe, Pablo Calamera, departs for New York, where he'll be top tech dog at music...

WANTED: Reebok ZigTech Sneakers

Reebok's ZigTech sneakers, like any new sneaker design/tech, are accompanied by a glowing press release that's chock full of questionable locker-room science and athlete endorsements. I know that. I understand it. I know that these are just sneakers, that they're not going to improve my endurance (which, in my case, could consist of "the absense of embarrassment"). I know that my year-old pair of cheap New Balance sneakers are in perfectly fine condition, thanks to my structured regiment of...

Analyst: Chatty Facebookers Prefer Broadcast News, Staid Googlers Prefer Print

More good news for Ron Burgundy. Analysis of onwards Web site visits from Facebook and Google to news services reveals Facebookers prefer broadcast media sources, while Google sends people to print media. But why?

The data's coming from analyst Heather Hopkins over at Hitwise Intelligence, and she's been trawling though the list of media sites of all different stripes that get sent traffic from Google news and Facebook news services. The first thing to note, which may be a surprise for...

What to Expect From Hulu's First Original Series, "If I Can Dream"

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Fans of Big Brother, Jersey Shore--and, I guess, Survivor, if the apocryphal tales about making it in Hollywood are to be believed--have got another reason to hump their sofa legs for the next couple of months. Tonight sees the debut of If I Can Dream, the new show from Simon Fuller, on the streaming video site Hulu. (This is the showbiz svengali called Simon who isn't the other showbiz svengali called Simon, although his hair is similar and they have both worked together on American Idol...

Eye Candy: OK Go's Insane Rube Goldberg Machine

 

You'll just have to watch the new OK Go to appreciate its geeky awesomeness. But a little bit of background: The video, directed by James Frost, began with a sketch dreamed up the band. Then, they put it to Mindshare/Synnlabs, a collective of engineers and geeks that consults on ambitious art projects, to pull it off:

 

Of course, the OK Go video isn't the first mindblowing machine of this sort. Most famously, there was this commercial for Honda, by Wieden & Kennedy...

Infographic of the Day: Which Burger Chains Dominate the U.S. Landscape?

McDonald's isn't quite as ubiquitous as it seems--and that tells you something about the power of its brand.

America is littered with fast food restaurants. But which ones dominate in each region? You might be surprised.

WeatherSealed analyzed location data for eight of the country's major burger chains, and mapped the results--with a twist:

Each individual restaurant location has equal power.  The entity that controls each point casts the most aggregate burger force upon it, as calculated b...

Twitter Wants to Know Where You're @ With Improved Geo-Location and Privacy Features

Twitter's revealed that it will be tweaking its code to improve its geo-Tweeting system, making it much wordier and less numerical. They say it's for privacy-conscious users, but is it also the first step toward hyperlocal Tweet streams?

When Twitter's geo-located Tweets were revealed a while back, I noted it could turn into a killer feature for the life-casting social network. But since then, not much fuss has been made of the system and if you browse through your Twitter follower list...