David Lidsky's Blog, page 2984
May 21, 2015
How Google Designed An E-Book Font For Any Screen
Say hello to Literata, Google's font designed exclusively for longer reads.
In January of 2014, a Pew study showed that nearly a third of American adults had read an e-book in the last year, and 50% of adults owned some kind of tablet or e-reading device. Many of these readers are using the wide variety of Android devices on the market, which can present a problem for those trying to create a standardized experience for e-book readers. Google faced this challenge while designing their new font, Literata, which will replace Droid Serif on Google Play Books.
Playboy Launches A Safe-For-Work App
Playboy's app strategy: Less nudity, more articles.
For Playboy, the latest mobile app effort really is about the articles. The iconic media brand, which is in the middle of a digital-era makeover, launched a safe-for-work app this week aimed at a general audience. These days, Playboy is banking on a very 21st-century business strategy: readers sharing their content on social media.
4 Ways Elevators Will Get Totally Insane In 2016
The company behind 1 WTC's super-fast elevators tells us about the Star Trek elevators that will be coming as soon as next year.
On May 29, the One World Trade Center Observatory in New York will open up to the public. To get passengers to the 94th floor as quickly as possible, 71 elevators designed by the German conglomerate ThyssenKrup will ascend 1 WTC at a rate of 2,000 feet per minute, or more than three floors per second. That will make 1 WTC's elevators the fastest in the Western hemisphere.
Escape From Distractions In The Analog Office Of The Future
What if your office were a retreat from your life, instead of another hassle in it?
Buzzing. Beeping. Text messages. Facetimes. Facebook likes. We're so inundated with technology meant to improve our lives that it's actually distracting from what we care about most.
May 19, 2015
Today in Tabs: Cause Baby Now We Got Tab Blood
Several POTUS Are Typing:
ME: what is this, tastes like hot bean water BARISTA: coffee ME: [3 minute spit-take] BARISTA: ME: [jazz hands] it's me david blaines
Major Tech Companies, But Not Amazon, Sign Letter To Obama Against Security Backdoors
Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo are on board. Where's Amazon in all this?
Many Internet heavy hitters, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, along with privacy advocacy companies and security experts, are sending an open letter to President Obama asking him to kill any government action that would require tech companies to build backdoor access into their products' data. But there's one big tech firm that is missing from the list of signers: Amazon.
Fountain Expands Its Chat-With-An-Expert Marketplace To Web
Expanding past iOS to browser (and soon to Android), Fountain matches your question to an expert for a fraction of the cost of a home call.
How-to videos are some of the most popular searches on YouTube, but there's a vast gulf between watching a tutorial and getting hands-on, in-person guidance. That is the gap Fountain set out to bridge when it launched at the beginning of March: It offers expert advice over video chat, via an iOS app. Today, Fountain is expanding its service to a web app (with an Android app coming soon) and opening up expert profile pages, where users can engage experts directly.
How 3-D Mapping Software Could Help Save Coral Reefs
Marine scientists are finally graduating from tape measures into the world of 3-D modeling.
Covering just .1% of the ocean floor and supporting an astonishing 25% of all marine life, coral reefs are crucial to maintaining Earth's biodiversity. Climate change and pollution threaten many coral reefs, but scientists aren't always sure exactly how—and to what extent. Blame antiquated modeling techniques. "We're going in and using a tape measure or a piece of chain to measure," says Sly Lee, a marine scientist who founded the science communication nonprofit the Hydrous, along with Luke Walker and Yasmeen Smalley. "We are talking about sending people to Mars, but [for this] we're still using a tape measure?"
Mapping The Most Dangerous Places To Walk In New York
The lower the speed limit, the smaller the chance for a collision.
The evening rush hour is the most dangerous time of day to walk in New York City. Baby boomers get hit by cars more often than millennials. Brooklyn sees the most pedestrian accidents of the five boroughs.
A Stunning New Journal By One Of The World's Top Data Viz Studios
OCR Journal #001 will print just 500 copies, each with a unique visualization on the cover.
The Office for Creative Research (OCR) is what Noa Younse calls "a tiny, artificially lit, heat-challenged Chinatown shoebox of a space." But in that office, designers are generating some of the most exciting data art and visualization today—from a sculpture that quotes Shakespeare to software that analyzes digital spies.
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