David Lidsky's Blog, page 3022
March 26, 2015
Watch This Chinese Megacity Rise Around The Chinese Farmers Who Used To Live There
The city is eating the countryside. People who have farmed all their lives don't know what to do except keep working amid the construction.
Five years ago, the drive from the airport to downtown Chongqing—a city deep in the heart of China—passed fields of farmland. Now, it's possible to drive half an hour seeing nothing but high-rises.
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Watch The Evolution Of The Disney Logo
The 30-year-old logo has had countless iterations over the years, nearly all of them wonderful and whimsical.
Sleeping Beauty's castle, tiered like a wedding cake, illuminated with the long, parabolic arc of a fairy streaking across the sky. That has been the logo for Walt Disney Pictures since 1985, and although it's not nearly as old as some other studio logos, it is universally beloved by children and adults alike all over the world.
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March 25, 2015
Creepy Or Brilliant? This Dating App Is Like Tinder... For Strangers You See In Public
Happn is a fast-growing European mobile dating startup, launching in its second U.S. market today.
You're waiting in line at the deli when your phone buzzes. The new dating app you downloaded has arisen from slumber to alert you that somebody thinks you're cute. They want to chat. But it's not your pouty-faced avatar that caught their attention—it was the way you smiled at them in the snack aisle earlier.
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"The X-Files" Is Back! Now, What Mysteries Should Mulder And Scully Solve?
The truth is out there…but what will it be?
"What would your response be if it was announced next week that we were going to go ahead and do eight... twelve?...episodes of the The X-Files again?" posited Gillian Murphy in a podcast interview with Nerdist back in January. Host Chris Hardwick's answer, and subsequently the entire Internet's answer: "I'd watch the shit out of it!"
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What Today's SCOTUS Ruling Means For Pregnant Employees
A former UPS driver's claims of discrimination put her at the center of a social media campaign; today the top court ruled in her favor.
Hopeful news for working families today: In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court threw out a lower court ruling which blocked a woman's discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, reviving the case.
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Facebook Beefs Up Its Messenger App
Facebook wants to fill its Messenger app with other companies' apps and consumer interactions.
Facebook wants to turn its Messenger app into more than just a messaging app. At its F8 conference in San Francisco Wednesday, the company announced details on its much-rumored plans to integrate Messenger with purchases made on other sites, and to allow third-party developers to build apps that work within it.
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How Ayasdi Made $55 Million From Big Data
The days of the massive funding round for big data platforms aren't over just yet.
If we needed any more evidence that big data is big business, a Stanford University spin-off specializing in data analysis for finance, government agencies, and health care just snagged a $55 million funding round. Ayasdi (which was previously named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies Of 2015) will use the money, which came in a Series C round led by Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers, for software upgrades, sales, and marketing.
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Facebook Follows Netflix's Lead With Post-Play Videos
The social network, eager to get more out of its booming video player, is testing out a feature that makes it easy to binge.
This week, The New York Times reported that Facebook is in talks to host content from BuzzFeed, National Geographic, and the Times within the blue confines of its own site, sharing ad revenue with publishers—a plan that many people in media have long suspected was in the works. Facebook's goal, of course, is to keep its more than a billion users from leaving Facebook and its network of highly targeted ads.
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After Spurning Spotify, Taylor Swift Will Stream Albums On Jay Z's Tidal
Jay Z acquired the Swedish music streaming service Tidal earlier this month, and he has already wooed one of music's biggest names.
Ah, to be a lover rejected by Taylor Swift—or, as the case may be, to be a music streaming service publicly scorned by the pop star. After pulling all her albums from Spotify late last year, Swift has repeatedly criticized the company for offering a free tier that she says is unfair to artists. Now she is throwing her weight behind another, much smaller streaming service. Her albums will soon be available on Swedish streaming company Tidal, whose parent company Aspiro was recently snatched up by Jay Z for $56 million.
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Leap Motion's Hand-Tracking Technology Provides 3-D Input For 3-D Virtual Worlds
The sophisticated motion-control system will be built into an optional faceplate for OSVR's open-source VR platform.
In 2013, I reviewed Leap Motion's controller—a steak-fry-sized $80 USB gizmo that let you control PC games, reading and creativity apps, and other software by waving your hands as if you were Tom Cruise in Minority Report. It was neat. But it was also obvious that the technology would fail or flourish based on whether third-party developers came up with uses for it that had wide appeal.
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