David Lidsky's Blog, page 3316
March 6, 2014
This Coding School Is Offering Scholarships To Women Who Want To Be Developers
"The world will be considerably worse off without adequate female representation."
To encourage more women to become developers, coding school Dev Bootcamp will offer $2,500 scholarship to 10 women from the organization Girl Develop It.
Yahoo Buys Vizify Just To Shut It Down
They'll refund users' money, but the company will cease to exist very soon.
Vizify is--or should we say, was--a company that collected all of your social information in one place. And now that one place is gone, since the company has been acquired by Yahoo for an undisclosed sum, and will be shut down soon.
This Apple Partner Gave Us A Brief Peek At The New CarPlay Framework
Cupertino has given four companies early access to their newest addition to the iOS SDK. We spoke with one of them.
When Apple previewed CarPlay earlier this week it set gearheads' pulses racing. It also made some developers green with envy. That's because Apple chose to only bless four third-party developers with access to CarPlay ahead of its launch. I spoke to one of them to see what it's all about.
If This Toaster Doesn't Like You, It Will Leave You For Someone Else
A truly smart home would have appliances with a personality. And they might not be personalities we like.
What if your toaster didn't like you and decided to move on? As companies start to add more personality to the smart objects we live with, one interaction designer is considering how a product's own programmed desires could shape us, rather than the other way around.
This Mobile Network In A Backpack Lets You Make A Call In A Disaster
You don't need a huge cell phone tower to send a message when cell phone service goes down with this new gear from the Vodafone Foundation.
In a disaster, cell phone networks can be one of the first things to go, leaving survivors unable to text for help or call to check on friends and family. Last fall, when Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines with 145-mile-per-hour winds that took out electricity and cell phone towers, it took weeks to restore service in some areas. But cell phone networks don't have to be confined to giant towers: The latest mobile network, from Vodafone Foundation, can fit in a backpack.
Sorry Banks, Millennials Hate You
A three-year study finds that millennials are looking for ways to live a bank-free existence in the future.
When Scratch polled 10,000 millennials to find out which industry was most prime for disruption, the results were clear: Not only did banks make up four of their top 10 most hated brands, but millennials increasingly viewed these financial institutions as irrelevant.
Can Silicon Valley Be Saved?
Tech workers don't want to live near companies' suburban headquarters. San Francisco can't accommodate everyone. Could densifying Silicon Valley suburbs be the answer?
Just before Christmas, protesters took to the streets of San Francisco and Oakland to block Google's double-decker shuttle buses. During one incident, a union organizer impersonating a Google employee berated a protester, "Why don't you go to a city where you can afford it? This is a city for the right people who can afford it. You can't afford it? You can leave. I'm sorry, get a better job." The exchange, while staged, sounded plausible enough. Only a few weeks later, protesters slashed the tires and broke a window on another Google bus.
March 5, 2014
Getty's Free Embed Tool Lets You Post Photos Wherever You Want
The image-licensing service takes a big leap into the murky free-for-all of image copyright.
Copyright on the Internet is a mess. Thanks to the social web, photographs and images fly across Tumblr and Imgur with startling velocity, putting quite a bit of distance between the original content creator and where you might actually see the image.
SAT Test To Get Major Overhaul, Reduce "Unproductive Anxiety" In 2016
Even the College Board president admits the SATs are "disconnected from the work of our high schools."
Speaking with the New York Times, David Coleman, president of the College Board, had some sharp criticisms for the $51 test his organization administers: He admits that the SATs have "become disconnected from the work of our high schools," filling college-bound 11th graders with "unproductive anxiety."
How To Be Just Foolish Enough To Make An Education Startup Work
Launching an education startup may seem like a fool's errand. Luckily, Treehouse founder Ryan Carson was just naive enough to make it work.
Trying to make education affordable seems impossible. In fact, you could argue that any kind of education startup seems nearly impossible: Technology's short-term expectations aren't typically conducive to the long-term quality education requires.
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