David Lidsky's Blog, page 3050
February 19, 2015
Can Ello Finally Explain Its Existence?
The mysterious, once-buzzworthy social network just hired its first chief marketing officer.
Ello isn't trying to take on Facebook. At least, that's what the social startup has been insisting since its media-fueled five minutes of Silicon Valley fame last year. (Fast Company wrote a few articles at the time.) So what is Ello? A place for artists? A political statement? It's hard to tell.
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Science Confirms That Being Unemployed Actually Changes Your Personality
A new study describes one way that unemployment makes you less employable.
The unemployment rate has fallen since 2013, but the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there are still some 2.8 million Americans who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more. Those job hunters may not be surprised by the results of a new study that found being unemployed for a year or longer sours your personality to make you a less appealing—and less employable—candidate.
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Government Is "More Data-Driven Than Most Companies," Says America's First Chief Data Scientist
LinkedIn's former chief data scientist DJ Patil aims to wrangle the government's data in the service of "precision medicine."
Python and R wonks take note: The United States now has a chief data scientist. DJ Patil was recruited by President Obama personally and just appointed to the newly created position, where the ex-LinkedIn chief scientist will work in a supervisory role for a broad analytics effort across the federal government. His duties will include shaping policies and practices across agencies, building data science partnerships with the private sector, and helping agencies recruit talent. The White House says Patil will also work in a more hands-on role at the National Institutes of Health's Precision Medicine Initiative, which is working on better ways to create genomics-based therapies for individual patients.
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Bravo: Mark Zuckerberg's Book Club Goes To Bat For Vaccination
For his next reading challenge pick, Zuckerberg announced a much-lauded pro-vaccination book.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has come out swinging in support of vaccination—and he wants his book club members to read all about it. Undaunted by the lukewarm reception to his first few picks, Zuckerberg is continuing with his public new year's resolution to read a new book every two weeks with a fourth choice, On Immunity: An Inoculation, by essayist Eula Biss.
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McDonald's Social Media Team Will Answer Literally Any Question Except One
It's almost like there is one issue they don't want to confront. And, amazingly, what they're hiding isn't even about the quality of the food.
McDonald's recently conducted an interesting experiment in pseudo-transparency. It invited consumers to ask questions about its food, some—like "Pink slime: What's up with that?" and "What's in a Chicken McNugget?"—with the potential for horrifying results. But a slick ad campaign, with answers in the form of behind-the-scenes videos starring a former Mythbusters host, is by definition never going to result in an expose. Nor is it going to convert anyone who is not wont to eat at the chain to start.
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The Huge Web Security Loophole That Most People Don't Know About, And How It's Being Fixed
Can we trust the organizations in charge of ensuring that encrypted web traffic is trustworthy?
Hundreds of companies and other entities around the globe, some associated with national governments, occupy a place of power on the Internet that you likely don't even know exists. Certificate authorities (CAs) sit at the apex of the root of trust that allows the secure web, email, and other connections that underlie commerce, government, online communities, and everything else to function without effective interception by outside parties.
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How Slack Uses Slack
CEO Stewart Butterfield on how his company uses its own product to be more productive—and how you can, too.
Last week, enterprise messaging service Slack announced that 500,000 people use the service every day. The company, which first offered its product in beta-test form in August 2013 and officially launched a year ago, has been growing at such a head-snapping pace that most of those half-million users are newbies, relatively speaking: Roughly 75% of them have come aboard in the past six months.
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IFTTT'S New "Do" Apps Turn Your Smartphone Into A Do-Anything Remote Control
The clever automation service spins out a trio of tools that can do tricks with everything from your email to your lightbulbs.
IFTTT—which stands for "If this, then that"—is a uniquely clever tool for automating an array of third-party apps, services, and Internet-connected gizmos. With IFTTT, you can automatically send an email to your parents alerting them of each new Instagram photo you post. Or add every new event in your Facebook groups to your Google Calendar. Or send a text message to your neighbor if your Nest Protect smoke detector goes off. And if nobody's created a recipe for the task you want to accomplish, you can construct your own in a few steps.
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How, and Why, Y Combinator Got Serious About Diversity
This weekend YC hosts its second annual Female Founders Conference, the women-in-tech showcase. It's a worthy cause. And good business.
This Saturday, 800 startup types will gather in San Francisco to watch inspirational and biographical speeches by some of the brightest stars in Silicon Valley. Among the speakers are Adora Cheung of the cleaners-on-demand startup Homejoy, Kimberly Bryant of the Google-backed nonprofit Black Girls Code, and Danielle Morrill of upstart research firm Mattermark.
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A Simple Web App That Makes Designing Your Own Font A Cinch
Think you've got what it takes to design the next Helvetica? Prove it with this app.
Designing a typeface is an equal mixture of art and science. But what if you take the art out of the equation, and just leave the (computer) science? Metaflop is a new online playground for font creation that lets you create your own custom fonts just by playing with a few sliders.
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