David Lidsky's Blog, page 3301
March 27, 2014
Why Education Startup ClassDojo Is Entering The Messaging App Wars
What can the WhatsApp acquisition teach education startups searching for a route to disruption?
Messaging has proven to be an enormously valuable part of the consumer app ecosystem, justifying multibillion-dollar acquisitions. Now the message wars are bleeding over into the education space--and it could be exactly the disruption that sector needs.
Turn Any Speaker In Your House Wireless With Beep
Gracenote president Stephen White tells us why this simple device is the future of streaming music at home. And it's waaaaay cheaper than Sonos.
As the company that owns the largest database of audio recognition information and music metadata, Emeryville, California-based Gracenote powers the search and organization of nearly every consumer-facing digital music platform--iTunes, Amazon, Google, Spotify. It stands to reason that Gracenote president Stephen White monitors the streaming music business closely, but he's also an audiophile in his personal life--and his new favorite device is Beep.
Fixing This One Big Problem Helped Turn Around Struggling Furniture Retailer West Elm
When Jim Brett took over as West Elm's president in 2010, he noticed a big issue that he immediately wanted to fix: chocolate boxes.
Jim Brett was haunted by mud-colored squares. When he started as West Elm's president in 2010, he couldn't believe how a furniture store could have so many products designed with such little imagination. "I was like, 'Oh, my God, what's with the brown boxes?'" he says. "The whole brand was brown boxes made in China. There wasn't a curve in the store!" From couches to beds to dressers, much of the line consisted of low-slung angular block shapes covered in lifeless chocolate finishes. Even the West Elm logo was trapped inside a pair of overlapping squares. "It was all machine-made, all very clean and simple, and all very soulless," says Brett. "I wanted to bring personality and soul and handmade into the business."
What I Learned From A Week Of Waking Up Early
For years I've written about productive people who accomplish big things before breakfast, but I'm not a morning person myself. What happens when I take my own advice for a week?
You know the advice: If you want to get more done, try going to bed earlier and getting up earlier. You turn wasted evening TV time into productive morning hours. You can accomplish big things before most people eat breakfast.
How Funny Or Die Landed The President
CEO Dick Glover shares how Funny or Die's mantra, "Trust the Process," landed one of the site's biggest gets: the President of the United States.
When the website Funny or Die launched in 2007, the big news were the names behind it--its founders include Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, and Chris Henchy.
March 26, 2014
Turn Your TV Into An Interactive Scrapbook With Chrome Photowall
Google pushes developers to do cool stuff with its streaming-video TV gadget by doing cool stuff itself.
Google has released a new experimental project called Photowall that turns your TV into a sort of collaborative, interactive digital photo frame.
The Fast-Growing, Profitable Market For Kid "Influencer" Endorsements On Twitter, Instagram, Vine, YouTube, And Pinterest
Teenagers with big social followings are making thousands of dollars pushing brands. Here's how it works.
Who's getting the better deal here, the new age social media barons, or the brands paying them? And when a trusted viral voice is now in the pocket of a big company, what's in it for the audience?
Apple Says It's Looking Into Making Emoji More Diverse
"There needs to be more diversity in the emoji character set, and we have been working closely with the Unicode Consortium in an effort to update the standard."
For better or worse, emoji have fully infiltrated our digital parlance, rearing their goofy, mostly inexplicable reaction faces in everything from Beyonce tributes to the stitching on smoking slippers. They aren't easy to explain, but that's kind of the point; emoji are easy stand-ins when we're too lazy to search for the right words.
How I Narrowed Down The Location Of Malaysia Air Using "Monte Carlo" Data Models
Using geostationary satellite location and a basic knowledge of 777 specs, can we predict the likely locations of MH370?
While networks like CNN claim the search for the missing Malaysia Air flight have "gone low-tech," in fact behind the scenes the opposite happened.
Shipping Stuff Is A Hassle. Shyp Will Do It For You
A service that picks up items ready for shipping, packages them up, sends them using the cheapest or fastest option, and takes care of custom forms, officially launches in San Francisco.
As a former power seller on eBay, Kevin Gibbon sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of merchandize, but hated dealing with shipping. "The current way to ship things can be really time consuming, difficult--kind of a pain in the ass," he tells Fast Company. "I found most of my time was spent on shipping fulfillment."
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