David Lidsky's Blog, page 3047
February 24, 2015
Why Chegg Is Abandoning A Business Worth Over $200 Million A Year
The country's leading textbook rental provider is pulling a Netflix and shifting to digital.
Print textbook rentals to college students generated more than $213 million in revenues for Chegg last year—but CEO Dan Rosensweig would like for that number to be closer to zero.
This Selfie In Space Is Now For Sale
Along with some 650 other vintage photos of early NASA space travel, Buzz Aldrin's 48-year-old snap hits the auction block this week.
Whatever selfie you plan on taking, just stop: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin had you beat 48 years ago.
What Tinder Did For Dating, Tableau Wants To Do For Spreadsheets
One of Pixar's founding employees and the ex-CTO of Lucasfilm have a new mission: Reinventing data analysis for the masses.
You may not have heard of Tableau, the Seattle-based software firm that helps Fortune 500 companies make sense of their massive spreadsheets. You may not even care about spreadsheets. But Dave Story, who left his job as the CTO of Lucasfilm to become Tableau's vice president for mobile growth, is hoping to change that.
The Most Exciting Thing About Pebble's New Smartwatch Isn't The Color Screen
In a category that is still seeking a definitive approach to software, the Pebble Time's timeline is a clever new twist.
Smartwatch pioneer Pebble—which did as much as anybody to create the category with its original Kickstarter-funded model back in 2012—is announcing a model with a color screen. That doesn't come as a huge shock. For one thing, 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman, who spends most of his time disclosing Apple news before Apple does, had the scoop on Friday.
Turn Your Old iPhone Into A New, Braun-Inspired Radio
In a new body, a used-up iPhone becomes a brand-new radio.
Your old iPhone might not run the latest apps or hold a charge all day, but it's still an amazing little machine, capable of upgrading almost any appliance in your home, if only there was a way to make that happen.
Announcing Fast Company's New Mobile App
We've partnered with Adobe to come up with a dynamic reading experience for iPhone and iPad.
Let's start with a spoiler alert: The next issue of Fast Company's print magazine will feature a dramatic reinterpretation of Steve Jobs. Anchored by excerpts from a terrific new book, Becoming Steve Jobs, the issue will explain how step-by-step iterative development has been critical to Apple's success, challenging the prevailing narrative on Apple's visionary breakthroughs. As Apple design chief Jony Ive told coauthors Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, "I've always thought that there are a number of things that you have achieved at the end of a project. There's the object, the actual product itself. And then there's all that you learned [in creating that product]. What you learned is as tangible as the product but much more valuable, because that is your future."
At Fast Company we've adopted a similar perspective in terms of our own products. As the editor-in-chief, I am repeatedly asked to predict what the future of media will be like. The truth is, I have no idea. But one thing is certain: Media will look far different than it does today. We need to continually iterate on our content, in both form and substance, if we want to remain relevant and useful to our readers.
Which is why, when we were approached by Adobe a year ago about collaborating on a new format for magazine apps, we embraced the opportunity. The process has helped us hone our understanding of mobile usage practices and mobile design tools. And this week, we've released the first fruit from that learning on the App Store. This new Fast Company app integrates our monthly magazine content with real-time feeds from our web properties—fastcompany.com, fastcodesign.com, fastcocreate.com, and fastcoexist.com—plus adds a new editorial layer: an "our picks" channel, selected by the editors.
Our motivation for this new app is simple: While we're proud of our existing (and still ongoing) iPad app for the monthly magazine, the readership remains small compared with the volume of users who access our content on the web and via their phones. Why not offer those users a unified app-based experience that lives on both iPad and iPhone? The new app does not sit within Apple's Newsstand, so the content can be a click or two closer for users. And the app and all its content is being offered free to consumers at launch.
In our beta testing—to a universe of 700 volunteers—the feedback on the experience and the content was strongly positive. As the app is opened up to wider users, we'll learn more. We believe this app provides a step forward for our users, a better experience for iPhone and iPad users than they can get elsewhere. We also know that this is just the beginning, that the relationship between apps and mobile sites is still evolving, that we need to provide better tools for those on Android and other non-iOs devices, that even our fresh-from-the-gate app needs additional features that aren't feasible on Adobe's platform yet, but will be in the months ahead.
I encourage you to try out the new app, and to share your feedback and experiences with us. We'd like to hear from all sides. As consumers, our interactions with and expectations of content are in constant flux. That's what makes working in this business so dynamic—and hopefully what makes reading about the companies and people we cover so engaging. In the end, we know that no tool or device will make up for subpar content. But we also know that even the best content can be overlooked or missed if it isn't presented in a user-friendly, convenient format.
I would be remiss if I didn't specifically thank the design and dev teams at Fast Company, who put so much into experimenting on this project, as well as those who will be involved in the day-to-day execution and iterations that will bring the app to life. And of course a thank-you to our partners at Adobe, who are committed to creating a next-generation tool for publishers that enables all of our best content to connect to audiences in a simple, cost-effective and modern way.
The Big Apple's Biotech Dreams Are Stuck In The Petri Dish
New York has the country's biggest biotech brains, but as a hub for biotech startups, it still can't compete with Boston or the Bay Area.
There's a hushed quiet in the waiting room at a midtown Manhattan fertilization clinic called Reproductive Medical Associates as a dozen women flip through magazines, the glossies a welcome distraction from their scheduled treatments and consultations. But just down the hall, in a window-rimmed corner office with views of Central Park, conversation ping-pongs back and forth as Piraye Yurttas Beim, a scientist and entrepreneur, updates the clinic's co-director on her startup's progress.
How Can Women Entrepreneurs Tackle Gender Bias And Get VC Funding?
Patricia Nakache, one of the few female VCs in Silicon Valley, has some surprising solutions to eliminate gender bias for startups.
Patricia Nakache is a rarity in Silicon Valley.
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The Secrets Of Women Running Billion-Dollar Companies
Billion-dollar startups are so rare they're called unicorns. Those led by a woman? Even rarer. Here, three share what they've learned.
When you're running a billion-dollar tech company, there isn't a lot of time to stop running, step back, and take in all that you've built.
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February 23, 2015
And The Awards For The Most Illegally Downloaded Oscar Movies Go To...
The Oscars help boost piracy of nominee films, according to new research that also details where around the world films were downloaded.
American Sniper may only have squeaked by with an award for best sound editing at last night's Academy Awards, but the controversial war flick took home another, far less prestigious superlative: It was the most pirated Oscar nominee of the season.
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