David Lidsky's Blog, page 3099
December 15, 2014
How We Trick Our Brains Into Feeling Productive
According to experts, not all procrastination distractions are created equal.
I'd been working from home last week when I found myself furiously scrubbing the grout between the kitchen tiles in the middle of the day.
How The Birth Of My Son Made Me A Better Entrepreneur
A startup founder and new dad reflects on a year of milestones, for himself, his family, and his company.
While I usually advise anyone that you should never launch two products at the same time, I did exactly that this year: The birth of my little boy, Nelson, preceded the launch of my fourth startup by only a few weeks.
December 12, 2014
You Can Now Own Stephen Colbert's Desk
Stephen Colbert is auctioning off iconic pieces of his show's set for charity.
I know what you're thinking: "I want to live out my talk show host roleplaying fantasies in the privacy of my own home. And I also want to support good causes like helping military veterans and public schools." But who has time for both? Well, this may be your big chance.
We Have Officially Hit Peak "All About That Bass" Parody
Here's every off-key, cringe-inducing Meghan Trainor knock-off worth groaning over. Are we done now?
People of the Internet, listen very closely to what I'm about to say: STOP with the "All About That Bass" parodies.
This Massive Chart Shows The War In Afghanistan As A Numbing Litany Of Death And Destruction
Follow each attack, explosion, and death in this massive visualization that captures the unprecedented scale of the leaked data.
The military's secret Afghan War Diaries, released by Wikileaks in 2010, details a staggering 463,000 incidents that happened in Afghanistan between 2004 and 2009, from the mundane to the tragic. "Current Casualty list: 6x KIA (1x male, 4 female, one baby) 3x WIA (all female, one of which was 9 months pregnant)," reads one entry; KIA stands for killed in action, for wounded in action.
This App Detects When Your Friends Are Nearby And Automatically Silences Your Phone
Because you know you don't have the self-control.
You probably now spend more time with your smartphone than your significant other. And even when both are in the same room, phones are hard to ignore. Thirty percent of us admit that we don't have the willpower to avoid checking our phone during dinner with others. A new app does the work for you: When you're at home, on a date, or with a friend, your phone will automatically silence itself.
Danny Lyon's Unseen Photos Of NYC Subway Riders In The '60s
Legendary photographer Danny Lyon's photographs of commuters in the '60s are on view for the first time at a Brooklyn subway station.
In 1966, photographer Danny Lyon returned to his hometown of New York City after spending years documenting the Civil Rights Movement in the South and motorcycle gangs in Chicago. Once back in the city, Lyon took his mother's advice: "If you're bored, just talk to someone on the subway." Using a Rolleiflex camera and Kodak color transparency film, he started taking photographs of New York's commuters and its dingy, fluorescent-lit train stations.
Is Endaga's Telco-In-A-Box The Cell Phone Solution For The Next Billion?
The company brings communication to far-away villages, and also provides the locals a built-in business opportunity. Too bad it's illegal.
The UN's International Telecommunication Union estimates that while mobile subscriptions have grown to 7 billion globally, developed countries take a far larger share, with only 69 out of every 100 Africans subscribing to mobile services, leaving roughly 340 million Africans without mobile access. Though Asia and Pacifica has a higher 89-per-100 subscription rate, that still means that 440 million people from that region are without cell access—leading to nearly a billion people without cell access worldwide. And a lot of these people—isolated on islands, in deep jungles, or cut off by mountains—aren't going to get coverage anytime soon. It's too expensive for telecommunications companies to build the grid out to them.
The "Dark Side Of The Moon" Cover Designer On The Making Of Iconic Rock Album Art
Aubrey Powell of legendary design collective Hipgnosis dishes on the making of classic album covers, from "Houses of the Holy" to "Melt."
From 1972 to 1986, London-based photography and design studio Hipgnosis—made up of Aubrey "Po" Powell, Storm Thorgerson, and Peter Christopherson—created some of the most recognizable album covers in rock music history. Their rainbow-through-a-prism graphic for Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon" became a logo of sorts for prog-heads, plastered on the T-shirts of Syd Barrett-worshipping teenagers to this day. From the gold-toned collage of children clamoring over the Giant's Causeway on Led Zeppelin's "Houses of the Holy" to Peter Gabriel's creepily disintegrating face on "Melt," Hipgnosis's hallucinatory imagery was the visual equivalent of these bands' maximalist riffs and psychedelic explorations.
Inside The Uplifting, Entertaining World Of The Whistle, YouTube's Biggest Sports Network
With over 1 billion views, the year-old network for "young millennials" is changing the business—and the tenor—of sports programming.
A high school senior is profiled for her perseverance as a soccer player, musician, and volunteer; two dudes compete in an increasingly difficult dart-throwing competition; NASCAR stars admit to peeing in their race cars. These are among the most recent short-form videos posted to The Whistle Sports Network, a content hub for young people that passed 1 billion views just eight months after launching on January 1, 2014. Whistle Sports' 9.3 million subscribers makes it the largest sports destination on YouTube, followed by the NBA's channel at just under 6 million.
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