David Lidsky's Blog, page 3000
April 23, 2015
The Operator App Wants To Make Online Shopping Less Like Online Shopping
From Uber cofounder Garrett Camp and former Zynga exec Robin Chan, the new Operator app matches online shoppers with sales reps.
The Internet has changed how we shop: We have more options, more information about those options, and we never have to interact with another human in order to complete a transaction. But while shopping online may be less physically demanding than going store-to-store, the overwhelming number of choices online can make it a mentally exhausting experience. The Operator app wants to fix that, bringing customer-sales reps to the online marketplace, according to TechCrunch. The creators of Operator are betting that many online shoppers will choose old-fashioned customer service over reading customer reviews.
Watch Grown-Ups Don Armor And Reenact Life In The Middle Ages
The Society for Creative Anachronism is comprised of 60,000 people who like to dress up and battle.
The Society for Creative Anachronism is an organization comprised of 60,000 adults who want to experience Medieval times, in their own idealized way. As Euan Forrester, who has a photo series documenting SCA's festivities, told Slate, "It's about recreating the experience of living in the Middle Ages, specifically the fun parts of it, and taking out the bad parts.
With A New Update, Curious's Lifelong Learning Service Is Looking More Like TV
The startup's new idea sounds familiar: programming shown at scheduled times on channels covering a variety of topics.
When I first met with entrepreneur Justin Kitch in 2013 to chat about his then-new online education company, Curious, we spent a lot of time talking about YouTube. Google's video service offers instructional video in quantities so vast that no human could ever watch all of it. But the quality is erratic, there are no teaching-specific features, and the discourse in YouTube comments typically ranges from inane to offensive. Even the good stuff—and there's plenty of it in there—can be tough to find.
This 6-Week Workshop Helps Women Build Confidence And Negotiating Skills At Work
You've been hearing endlessly about how women aren't equal at the office. Now go do something about it.
If you're female, you've probably heard all of the grim facts about how gender affects your career: You're less likely to ask for a raise (and may miss out on $500,000 before you retire), the pay gap between genders has barely budged in a decade, and you're less likely to land a leadership role at work.
Revisit NYC's Golden Era Of Hip Hop Radio In This New Red Bull Doc
"Revolutions On Air" celebrates the innovators of 1980s mix show culture.
If the 21st Century was all we had to go on, hip hop culture would simply be called pop culture, considering its influence on music, art, film, and fashion. Even the President listens to Kanye. But not all that long ago, it was still culture of the counter kind.
Masterful Italian Design Now Available To The Masses
The MoMA Design Store is selling tabletop objects from Italy's design greats for between $10 and $100 each.
If you've ever wanted your apartment to look like the set of a Fellini film, the MoMA Design Store has you covered. On May 1, the Design Store is launching a collection of 32 fun and feisty tabletop pieces by some of Italy's design greats, encompassing everything from reissued design masterpieces to more contemporary works by the current torchbearers of the Italian design world.
Magical Fabric Could Let You Change Clothes Instantly
What would you do with this magic fabric that can change shape at will?
You can knot a scarf a dozen different ways. But for the most part, once you sew a textile into a piece of apparel, or upholster it around a piece of furniture, you can't change the style much.
Microsoft Invents A Better Way To Sense Hand Gestures
Handpose promises the holy grail of motion detection: fast, accurate hand recognition.
Imagine strapping on a virtual reality headset, then using your hands to pick up a sword and swing it around your head. Imagine a hazard team able to defuse a complicated bomb from a mile away, just by controlling a robot's hand as effortlessly as your own. Imagine painting a picture on your computer just by waving a brush in front of your screen. Or, if you prefer, imagine using a computer like in Minority Report, whisking away pages and files just by grabbing them with your hands.
Motion-sensing technology could give rise to a whole new class of user interface.
New York City Makes Income Equality The Center Of Its Green Goals
Can the city's progressive mayor successfully merge his ambitious equity and environmental ambitions? Or will he be caught up in the details?
Picture a New York City with 800,000 fewer residents living in poverty, 25% fewer premature deaths, and broadband Internet access for everyone. These are all laudable, progressive goals that are unprecedented. But they aren't the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a citywide environmental sustainability plan released on Earth Day.
5 Ways To Get Over Your Perfectionism
Being perfect isn't always a good thing, your impossibly high standards might be holding you back.
Perfectionism may seem at best like a boon to your career and at worst like a slightly annoying personality quirk, but for some people it can be a much more serious problem. These people routinely evaluate their self-worth by whether or not they're meeting levels of perfection that simply aren't attainable. Recent research has shown that, in extreme cases, perfectionism can be a factor in everything from workaholism to an increased risk of suicide.
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