David Lidsky's Blog, page 3292
April 7, 2014
How Do I Stop People From Interrupting at Meetings?
Meetings are the bane of office worker life, but they are even more painful when you can't finish your thought because people keep interrupting. Short of screaming "shut up!" What can you do to prevent this kind of rudeness? Our experts tackle this tricky topic.
"I can't wait for this meeting!" said no one ever.
5 Ways To Hack Your Weekly Schedule To Get More Done
If your to-do list never seems to get done and you feel behind by Monday afternoon, it's probably time revamp your weekly schedule. Here's a weekly check-in plan that actually works.
Many productivity experts advise doing a weekly reviewing and planning session.
April 6, 2014
From "Freaks and Geeks" To HBO's "Silicon Valley": How Martin Starr Became A Geek God
Judd Apatow's beloved show about nerds got canceled too soon. Fourteen years later, a Freaks and Geeks actor triumphantly returns to dorkdom. Here's how he did it--and what that says about tech culture today.
It's official: The geeks have inherited the tube. From TV's top-rated sitcom The Big Bang Theory to TBS's game show King of the Nerds, former outcasts are now totally au courant. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the rise of Martin Starr. Once the geekiest of the geeks on Judd Apatow's short-lived but much-loved 1999-2000 NBC dramedy Freaks and Geeks, he's now starring in the highly-buzzed-about new HBO comedy (debuting Sunday, April 6 at 10:30 p.m. ET). As Gilfoyle, Starr is now "the coolest guy in the house," as he puts it, in this look at up-and-coming tech-heads created by Office Space mastermind Mike Judge.
April 4, 2014
Delightfully Simple Animation Shows Kids Why Design Matters
A new Dublin-based initiative called MakeShapeChange aims to get young people interested in design--but this charming animation and engaging site appeals to all ages.
How do you get young people thinking about design? Such a task requires first explaining what design is, exactly, which can be tricky even for adults to grasp. The meaning of design is made delightfully simple in "Shape," a wordless six-minute animation designed and directed by Johnny Kelly for Pivot Dublin, a Dublin City Council initiative that applies design thinking to city planning.
This Is What It's Like To Watch A Holographic Musician
Janelle Monae appeared on stage as a beam of light, performing with the real-life M.I.A. in New York. Are holographic performers the future?
It's not that easy to completely surprise concertgoers with a hologram anymore. Tupac's holographic performance back in 2012--that was out of nowhere. Last night I saw an otherworldly image of Janelle Monae beam down, Star Trek-style, to perform on stage beside the real-life M.I.A.--and all of us in the audience knew exactly where holographic Monae came from: a 25-by-13-foot pane of what looked like glass sloped across the stage. At one point, M.I.A. joked that it was like performing behind a condom.
Watch Pixar's New Animation System Make Monsters In Real Time
In this rare demo of Pixar's proprietary animation system Presto, the studio reveals how its animators control character features like the 900,000 hairs on Sullivan's big furry body.
At last week's GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, Pixar's keynote address included a rare demo of the studio's proprietary animation program, called Presto. Pixar developed the system for the 2012 film Brave, and it has been used for all films in production since, including last year's Monsters University.
Dominique Ansel's Cronut Bakery Shut Down Due to Mouse Problem
"We were asked to re-cement the entire basement, which won't allow us to work," says the bakery.
The good news: Finally, after nearly a year, there is no Cronut line! The bad news: It's because Dominique Ansel's bakery was shut down by the Department of Health for an apparent rodent problem on Friday afternoon. (I wonder what they're going to do with all those extra Cronuts?)
FTC Subpoena Revelations, Thousands Of Complaints Send Yelp's Stock Price Tumbling
The Federal Trade Commission has exposed thousands of consumer complaints they've received about the company.
Yelp is facing one of its biggest challenges yet: The Federal Trade Commission says thousands of business owners have filed complaints against Yelp (PDF) between 2008 and 2014--and the company's stock dipped 12% a few hours later. In total, consumers made 2,045 complaints against Yelp to the federal government. The disclosure was made in response to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal into whether Yelp gives preferential treatment to companies who advertise on the service. The FCC disclosed that Yelp receives six federal subpoenas monthly, some of which request the names of anonymous users. It's bad news for the massive review database company--and great news for competitors like Foursquare, Facebook, and even Google's review efforts.
Watch Honey Maid's Amazing Response To Homophobic Backlash
Honey Maid's recent "This Is Wholesome" commercial celebrated loving families, including gay and interracial couples, and the homophobic backlash was swift. The brand's beautiful and creative response will make the haters ashamed of themselves.
Honey Maid isn't the first company to get angry, homophobic responses to an ad that depicted so-called "nontraditional" families. But it certainly distinguished itself with the creative and lovely rejoinder it put together for the bunch of horrible, hateful people who called its "This Is Wholesome" ad "disgusting" because it depicted gay and interracial couples.
Meet The Entrepreneurs Behind Nigeria's Startup Revolution
A new generation of tech-savvy youth are trying to remake Nigeria's economy.
Nigerians get sick of the standard narratives about their country. While there's truth to stories about Internet scams, corruption, and terrorist threats, they don't fill in the whole picture, and it's common for Nigerians to express weariness as they're forced once again to correct the record.
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