David Lidsky's Blog, page 4860

Is the Bloom Box Energy Server the Future of Plug and Play Electricity?

After 8 years in stealth mode, Bloom Energy has finally revealed all about its Bloom Box fuel cell device (AKA the Bloom Energy Server). We already learned a lot from Sunday's 60 Minutes segment on the device, and our interview with eBay executive Amy Szoczlas Cole revealed even more. Here's what we learned from today's press conference at eBay headquarters.

The Bloom Energy fuel cell is essentially a flat piece of sand made from a process dubbed "Powder to Power." The cell can run on a...

Apple Survives Puberty: Explicit iTunes Apps on the Way

Aha! So this is what all that seemingly puritanical deletion of vaguely boob-related iPhone apps was really all about: Apple is on the verge of approving an "Explicit" category for apps in iTunes. It may cover e-books too.

There was much hand-wringing online about the way Apple just handled its purge of ever-so-slightly-adult-content apps on the App Store, and Phil Schiller even stepped in to weakly explain that Apple was getting complaints from women (meanwhile, leaving the Playboy app...

Happy Jobs-Creation Bill Senate Passing Day!

Earlier today new legislation designed to nudge employers into making new hires overwhelmingly passed a Senate vote and heads now to the House for final approval. The $15 billion bill is built around $13 billion that would go toward allowing businesses to skip paying a 6.2% Social Security payroll tax for new employees who've been out of work for 60 days or more.

The Congressional Budget Office--run, of course, by this hot-for-Washington fellow--has estimated that the new bill would result...

Militainment: Is Shooting People Virtually Changing Our Opinion of War?

Snatching the pixelated pin from a virtual hand-grenade and tossing it to frag a digital enemy may be thrilling for gamers, but isn't close to the real thing. But it is close enough for military involvement in gaming tech.

Over at Foreign Policy, there's a neat retrospective of "militainment"--entertainment or educational games with a military theme. It starts with America's Army, one of the most successful video games ever, which has been played by over nine million folk. But it was...

Futures Thinking: Writing Scenarios

So what do scenarios actually look like? Here are some real-world examples.

In Futures Thinking: The Basics, I offered up an overview of how to engage in a foresight exercise. In Futures Thinking: Asking the Question, I explored in more detail the process of setting up a futures exercise, and how to figure out what you're trying to figure out. In Futures Thinking: Scanning the World, I took a look at gathering useful data. In Futures Thinking: Mapping the Possibilities (Part 1), I gave a...

WANTED: Pointlessly Expensive Beru F1 Bike With Split Downtube, Electronics

Last year, we spotted an F1-engineered bicycle on display at the Science Museum in London and decided we liked it very much. Now it's available for everyone, not just the museum's night watchmen to skid about down the corridors on--and it looks like the Beru F1 engineers have fiddled with the design a little bit, making it look even more otherworldly than it was before.

A carbon monocoque frame renders it ultra-lightweight, (Flavio Briatore, move away from the bike now, please) and the...

Would You Live in an Abandoned Mental Hospital?

Timed perfectly with the release of Shutter Island, Kjellgren Kaminsky Architecture plans to turn one of Sweden's old, ugly mental hospitals into a sustainable apartment complex. Dubbed Parkour, it offers a sense of community to residents.

The architecture firm explains:

In Sweden today, people are dying of loneliness. As traditional social ties [are:] being eliminated, there is sometimes no substitute. We propose a housing with a new type of neighboring community that is based on voluntary p...

Paging Philip K. Dick: MIT Develops Minority-Report-Style Floating LED Screens

Thousands of hovering, helicopter-mounted LEDs can make display screens in midair.

Screens are everywhere. On our buildings. In our cars (and outside them). In our pockets. You know the drill.

But except for a few interesting projected interfaces, like Pranav Mistry's SixthSense technology, the screens have been frustratingly grounded. Forget flying cars--where are our flying screens?

That's Flyfire, a hovering, programmable swarm of mini-helicopter-mounted LEDs developed by MIT's SENSEable...

Infographic: ChatRoulette, "Nexting" by the Numbers

Ladies really do have all the luck, and the perverts are a sizable minority, according to Casey Neistat's video study of Chatroulette.

A month ago, we brought you an early look at ChatRoulette, and since then it's blown up, with coverage in New York, The New York Times, and even USA Today, of all places. But this is the first time we've seen anyone apply some science to the phenomenon.

The brave individual who took it upon himself to explain ChatRoulette in a single entertaining video is...

Hitachi's Research Elevator: 40MPH Straight Up

Buildings get taller, and people get used to driving in fast cars and airplanes with new technology--but everyone forgets about elevators. Except Hitachi, which is soon to open an elevator research facility that's the tallest ever.

The G1 Tower (pictured here) is currently under construction in Japan, and Hitachi's just announced it'll be completed in April. When finished, it'll rear some 700 feet above HitachinakaCity, making it the tallest such research facility ever made. That'll let...