David Lidsky's Blog, page 217

5 tips for mastering virtual communication

We have all become virtual communicators, and with this comes a new set of rules for interpersonal success.

Andrew Brodsky is a management professor at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also CEO of Ping Group and has received numerous awards, including being chosen by Poets & Quants as one of the Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professors of 2023.

Pokémon cards spiked 20% in value over the past few months. Here’s why

The Pokémon card boom is getting bigger, with overall value of cards rising recently—and some individual cards increasing by as much as 150%.

It might sound a little silly that there’s an entire subgenre of influencers who offer investment advice around Pokémon trading cards. Probably because it is a little silly. The idea of some YouTube Jim Cramer breathlessly warning viewers that “Surging Sparks is setting a fire under collectors and investors” is the stuff Saturday Night Live sketches are made of.

Housing market map: Zillow just revised its 2025 home price forecast

Zillow projects that U.S. home prices will rise 1.1% between January 2025 and January 2026.

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.

Did you get a 1099-K? New IRS rules will impact millions of gig workers and freelancers

The proliferation of third-party payment apps combined with a lower income threshold set by the IRS means you may receive a 1099-K this year. Here’s how it may affect your 2024 tax return.

Somewhere between 25% and 35% of working Americans are gig workers–either as a supplement to their primary income or as their full-time job. And for many gig economy workers, cash apps and marketplaces offer a simple and convenient way to receive payments. Enter the IRS form 1099-K.

National Margarita Day 2025: Shake up your happy hour with these drink deals and a little bit of cocktail history

Salt and lime can solve many of life’s problems.

While Valentine’s Day and football get the majority of publicity during February, there’s more to this month than love and sports.

The next wave of AI is here: Autonomous AI agents are amazing—and scary

A chief data officer explains why you need to pay attention to the rise of autonomous AI agents.

The relentless hype around AI makes it difficult to separate the signal from the noise. So it’s understandable if you’ve tuned out recent talk about autonomous AI agents. A word of advice: Don’t. The significance of agentic AI may actually exceed the hype.  

This slick new service puts ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Wikipedia on the map

Take Google Maps, add a dash of ChatGPT, a pinch of Perplexity, and a hint of Wikipedia—and PamPam is what you get.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to think about my favorite tech tools as being split into two separate saucepans: the “classic” apps we’ve known and relied on for ages and then the newer “AI” apps that have shown up over the past several months to serve some super-specific purpose.

‘I’m a big believer in reading a room’: Kate Aronowitz of Google Ventures on balancing business and creativity

The portfolio operations lead has a love-hate relationship with being labeled ‘a creative.’ Creativity for her is as much about solving problems as it is building things from scratch.

Kate Aronowitz tells me she first set out in graphic design because it felt like a discipline that helped her bring order to things. Many years later, she has a love-hate relationship with being labeled “a creative” because the creative process, as she sees it, is not just about art and design—it’s as much about solving problems as it is building things from scratch. She also believes everyone can be creative under the right circumstances. 

Apple’s hidden white noise feature may be just the productivity boost you need

I use Background Sounds to improve my focus. Here’s how you can use it, too.

As I write this, the most pleasing sound is washing over me—gentle waves ebbing and flowing onto the shore. Sadly, I’m not actually on some magnificent tropical beach. Instead, the sounds of the sea are being generated by my Mac.

How presidential libraries mirror the legacy-building of emperors

Presidential libraries in the United States today follow the same principle: They become monuments to the former presidents, while giving back to their local communities.

Here in Atlanta, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum has been part of my daily life for years. Parks and trails surrounding the center connect my neighborhood to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park downtown and everything in between.