David Lidsky's Blog, page 2929
July 31, 2015
A Space-Saving Bed That Lowers From The Ceiling
The Murphy bed gets an upgrade.
In apartments where the square footage is measly but the ceilings are tall, maximizing vertical space is key. Streamlined shelves, attic storage and hanging bike hooks all save space by employing the same basic concept: when living space seems limited, look up.
Nendo's New Modular Chair Lets You Switch Up Your Home Decor On A Whim
With the Twig, you could have a different chair for every day of the week.
Dropping a small fortune on a set of shiny new chairs is a great way to add some style to your home, but if you find yourself on the wrong side of a trend a few years later, repeating the process can be costly. But what if completely transforming the look of those chairs was as simple as adding a new part here or there?
Twitter Seeks To Attract More Users With New Homepage
The social network becomes a tad more user-friendly.
Twitter revealed marginal user growth—the least it has shown since going public—during its second-quarter earnings call earlier this week. The social network brings in just 304 million active users per month, a number that pales in comparison to Facebook's nearly 1.5 billion monthly users. Twitter has long struggled to market itself successfully, due in part to the fact that new users have to follow the right accounts and use the site regularly to get a grasp on it.
Inside Spotify's Plan To Take On Apple Music
We keep hearing things like "human-curated" and "machine listening," but what does it actually mean for you?
Brian Whitman landed at Spotify just in time. The MIT Media Lab alum and machine listening expert joined the product team at Spotify early last year when the streaming giant dropped a reported $100 million to acquire The Echo Nest, the music data company he cofounded a decade ago. Since his time at MIT, Whitman, along with cofounder and fellow PhD Tristan Jehan, has focused obsessively on the intersection of big data, artificial intelligence, and music, using that sweet spot to try and redefine music discovery in the age when songs flow freely like water and new artists pop up by the hour. Today, he's sitting across from me in a conference room in Spotify's New York headquarters showing me what his team has been building for the last few months.
Take The Fast Company News Quiz
What happened this week? Here's our quiz for July 31, 2015.
Did you follow the news this week? Research says that one of the best ways to solidify new information is to be tested on it. Here's a chance to bolster your knowledge of current events—and earn a special emoji badge. 
What Happens To A Workplace When All The Salaries Are Public?
Getting lucky in a salary negotiation has little to do with being good at your job.
Do you know what your boss earns? Do you wonder what's going on with that guy in HR who always arrives late, but also gets a new car every six months?
This Sensor Will Tell You How Busy The Gym Is Before You Even Leave The House
Density is a simple new IoT sensor that broadcasts how busy public places around town are at any given time.
No one likes a bar that's too crowded, or for that matter, one that's too dead. But what if you could pull out your smartphone and see just how jumping your favorite hot spot was before you made your way there? That's the idea behind Density, a simple little sensor that measures the real-time population of bars, gyms, clubs, cafés, and shops, and then broadcasts them over the internet.
New York Activist Group Calls For Apple To Ditch The Gun Emoji
It's a brilliant marketing stunt, and also a tease of how complicated freedom of expression can be when corporations get involved.
New Yorkers Against Gun Violence (NYAGV), a nonprofit whose mission is pretty much in the name, has aimed the barrel of its latest campaign right at Apple. It's called #DisarmTheiPhone, and it's asking activists across social media to "help convince Apple to remove the gun emoji and take a stand for stricter gun accessibility in America."
Is Space About To Experience A Design Renaissance?
Will SpaceX and Virgin Galactic push the boundaries of space exploration? Two aerospace experts weigh in.
Getting human beings off the planet is the hardest design challenge mankind has ever undertaken. Yet it's also a solved problem: we've been sending people into space since 1961.
How A Design Team Co-Opted Hacker Tactics To Fight Cybercrime
Cybercrime rings collaborate. Security analysts don't. So IBM built a social platform to track and share information about global threats.
What happens when you throw visually driven designer types into a room full of cybersecurity wonks?
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