David Lidsky's Blog, page 3346

January 31, 2014

Is BlackBerry Actually Going To Turn It Around?

We talk to CEO John Chen about the changes he's made, which appear to be uncharacteristically (for BlackBerry) wise. What does 2014 hold?

This story could easily have been about the breakup and buyout of BlackBerry. Having hung up a "for sale" sign, lost its CEO Thorsten Heins, failed on plans to go private, and announced a quarterly loss of $4 billion--all within less than six months--guessing that BlackBerry wouldn't make it into 2014 wasn't much of a stretch. In early December, BusinessWeek even published an oral history called "The Rise and Fall of BlackBerry" at a time when BlackBerry employees were still turning up to work.

Read Full Story


       

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on January 31, 2014 08:27

A Toy Kit For Little Architects And Engineers

The Strawbees kit lets kids use low-tech, inexpensive modular parts to turn plastic straws and cardboard into forts and toy robots.

Strawbees, a simple building tool for kids, has been years in the making. It started when founder Erik Thorstensson was growing up in Sweden, and he realized how expensive traditional toys were after his mother told him to make another Transformer himself, rather than buy him brand new one. Later in life, Thorstensson traveled to India for a community service project, where the kids he worked with took to playing with the volunteers' clothespins as if they were toy construction modules.

Read Full Story


       

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on January 31, 2014 08:15

The Nest Team Will Reportedly Lead Google's Hardware Division

That $3.2 billion acquisition apparently landed Google 100 former Apple engineers and designers.

It's still early, but it's beginning to look like Google's $3.2 billion thermostat pickup could be the smartest investment of the year. TechCrunch has learned that the Nest team is going to become Google's core hardware group; Nest's consortium of engineers consists of 100 former Apple employees, including Tony Fadell, the father of the iPod, who knows a thing or two about designing elegant products with mass market appeal.

Read Full Story


       







 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on January 31, 2014 08:14

January 30, 2014

Zynga's Earnings: No Profit, Layoffs, And A $527 Million Acquisition Of NaturalMotion

Maker of crowd pleasers such as Clumsy Ninja and CSR Racing, NaturalMotion represents a new wave of gaming using artificial intelligence and 3-D animation.

Zynga couldn't wait to get the news out. The social gaming company had originally scheduled Feb. 6 to announce its quarterly earnings, but decided at the last minute to move its call to Thursday after markets closed to coincide with news of its $527 million acquisition of Oxford-based mobile gaming company NaturalMotion.

Read Full Story


       







 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on January 30, 2014 15:17

Eterni.me Wants To Let You Skype Your Family After You're Dead

Its creators pitch it as a way to "simply become immortal." Could they be on to something?

Death's icy grip comes for all of us. But what if, theoretically speaking, there were a way to digitally approximate your consciousness and represent it on a screen?

Read Full Story


       







 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on January 30, 2014 14:09

With Paper, Facebook Stops Trying To Be Everything For Everyone

Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow Facebookers hope to Paper over the problems of its primary app with a new, content-sharing, stand-alone app. Will Paper perform like Facebook Messenger or like Poke?

This is no Paper tiger. Whether Facebook's new stand-alone take on a news feed app flops or takes off, it's a signal of a much bigger change in the world's largest social network. And it's a swipe-able signal that the company has accepted a reality of the mobile world: The diverse needs of its 945 million monthly users cannot fit inside one app.

Read Full Story


       







 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on January 30, 2014 11:08

Now You Can Play Games On Google Glass

But you'll look awfully strange doing so.

Two days after Google showed off a redesigned Glass for prescription glasses, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company has released five mini games for its heads-up display.

Read Full Story


       







 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on January 30, 2014 10:52

Subway Maps Designed To Reflect A City's Soul

Revised subway maps for New York, Paris, London, and Tokyo reveal more about a city than just the best way to get from point A to point B.

There's a delicate art and sweet science to making a great subway map. The maps need to be geographically relatable, yet quick to visually process. Local charm, however, is not usually a design consideration.

Read Full Story


       

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on January 30, 2014 09:00

Forgotify Streams Only Spotify Songs That Have Never Been Played

About one in five songs have never been played on Spotify.

Of Spotify's 20 million songs, about one in five, or 4 million, have never been played. Forgotify is changing that one title at a time, streaming only unplayed Spotify songs on its website.

Read Full Story


       







 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on January 30, 2014 08:36

No More Mr. Nice Guy: This Raunchy Web Series Puts Canadians In A Whole New (Hilarious) Light

If Just Passing Through isn't the best thing to come out of Prince Edward Island since Anne of Green Gables, it's definitely the funniest.

At 2,185 square miles and 140,000 people, Prince Edward Island is Canada's smallest province. And its place in Canadian pop culture isn't much bigger. Among its East Coast brethren, Islanders are often overlooked, especially in favor of the more colorful Newfoundlanders. The Island's big claim to fame is Anne of Green Gables, a world-renowned book by Lucy Maud Montgomery first published in 1908. Since then? Not so much.

Read Full Story


       

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on January 30, 2014 08:16

David Lidsky's Blog

David Lidsky
David Lidsky isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but they do have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from their feed.
Follow David Lidsky's blog with rss.