David Lidsky's Blog, page 3419

October 28, 2013

How Much Is Your Yelp Review Worth?

A group of hard–working Yelp reviewers think they deserve minimum wage (at least!) for all the free labor they have put into judging local establishments, and have filed a class action lawsuit against the review site. Reading through their reviews, however, suggests their prose isn't worth much.

The theory goes: Free Yelp write–ups provide value to the company, ergo dedicated reviewers act as free labor, and that's illegal. The lawsuit compares the situation to a "21st century galley slave ship with pirates banging the drum to keep up the fast pace and to fill the pockets of their stockholders with treasure," an extreme analogy for what boils down to volunteer work.

Not much about the logic behind the lawsuit makes sense, and Yelp has dismissed it as "frivolous," per the company statement provided to Fast Company:

This is a textbook example of a frivolous lawsuit, it is unfortunate the court has to waste its time adjudicating it and we will seek to have it dismissed. The argument that voluntarily using a free service equates to an employment relationship is completely without merit, unsupported by law and contradicted by the dozens of websites like Yelp that consumers use to help one another

It's hard to disagree with Yelp. The site's members are volunteers. At one point the lawsuit argues that Yelp coerced these "employees" to write more because the site offers incentives for those who write more. The situation, as TechDirt's Mike Masnick points out, doesn't sound that much different than the lawsuit filed by the unpaid Huffington Post bloggers, who ultimately lost.

But let's set all of that very good reasoning aside and for a moment ask the question at the core of this: Are Yelp reviews worth anything? Certainly, in aggregate, they sustain the company's business. But, as single entities, it's unclear if they warrant minimum wage, if that.

Of the four people listed in the filing, two of them got "fired" from Yelp––to use the language of the suit––and their reviews no longer appear on the site. Yelp removed their accounts because they had violated their user policies. However, one of the plaintiffs Darren W. (aka Darren Walchesky), has written more than 1,200 reviews for the site. Here's one for the drugstore chain Walgreens:

Holy crud! Kay and I came here last night after dining at the new Atria's restaurant nearby in the Bill Green Shopping Center, and I couldn't believe the selection of toys, Halloween gear, housewares, and snacks. It was like a miniature Wal–Mart!

Unfortunately, like Wal–Mart, they've been hit with lawsuits involving racial discrimination, proprietary drugs, distributing oxycodone, selling tobacco, profiting from customer's private information, and overcharging Medicaid.

But they're open 24 hours.

And it's clean, well–stocked, and organized.

Whoop.


That's neither poetry nor intrepid reporting. This five–star one for a shop called Rubber Duck, however, attempts the poetry angle:

Rubber Ducky is the one.

The beacon of good tidings and then some.

Seemingly intangible and born of the sun.

On October 20th, its 3 week stand was done.

Its hype as enormous as its dimensions, I kept picturing a grizzled, discontented local loner in a trucker cap hiding on a hillside with a pellet gun, aiming for the giant mallard's head to end "all dat rubberneckin' 'n traffic 'n 'at."

Belgian vandals stabbed the floating sculpture, yet even those without an inner child couldn't destroy it. Like energy, Rubber Ducky is unkillable and merely reconstitutes itself elsewhere.

Florentijn Hofman, the Dutch sculptor who created the massive piece of art, did Andy Warhol proud.

As if it were a cryptid, Kay and I caught a brief glimpse of it prior to a Stage AE concert without having time to photograph it. Ominous yet gentle, geese surrounded it as if it were their savior and loving, devoted god.

Its mission is over in Pittsburgh. May the rest of the world know its joy.

Rubber Ducky is The One.

It made the mighty Allegheny so much fun.

By certain definitions, that qualifies as poetry. Parts of it have a rhyme scheme. But, it's a far cry from a New York Times restaurant review.

The quality of the review has little to do with the merits of the lawsuit. (The crux is that since these people don't have contracts with Yelp, they don't have to write anything, ever.) But, it shows that one single reviewer provides little value to either Yelp or the user. It's the aggregate of information that makes the service useful by creating a star ranking system. Sure, without all the reviewers, Yelp could not function. But lots of people review things for reasons other than getting paid. Until that changes, the site can do without the few volunteers that demand more, especially since they're far from professional critics.


       

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Published on October 28, 2013 12:45

From Berg, A DIY Kit That Connects Your Gadget To The Internet Of Things

Over the last two years, product and design consultancy Berg London has been bringing smiles to our lips with button–cute devices like the Little Printer and its Twitter–connected cuckoo clock, #Flock. Now, Berg wants to do more than just give us adorable, cloud–connected gadgets; it wants to empower us to create them ourselves.

"From our experience making the Little Printer, we realized that hardware projects can be prone to failure in a way that software isn't," says Berg's director of consulting, Mark Cridge. The internet of Things might very well be the future––Cridge is quick to note that over 30% of design and technology Kickstarter projects to receive funding over half a million dollars are connected devices––but making hardware that talks to the cloud is still far from easy. Today, Berg London announced its solution to the problem: Berg Cloud, an initiative to make the tech and software incubated with the Little Printer available to everyone.

Berg Cloud is a three–part kit for developers, prototypers, and muckers–about alike that makes connecting your custom hardware to the cloud a cinch. The first part is the Berg Cloud Devshield, which plugs into Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and mbed single–board microcontrollers, assigning a unique device key to the type of device you've made and what it does. The Devshield then communicates with the Berg Cloud Bridge, a device that plugs into your router via Ethernet and sets up a secure, low–bandwidth network between your Berg–powered hardware and the Berg Cloud itself.

As for the Berg Cloud, it's the decentralized brain that brings your hardware to life. Through it, you can snatch all sorts of APIs that can be used in coordination with your hardware to give it access to Twitter, email, weather, or more. In addition, it allows you to manage multiple devices remotely, while also providing analytic, inspection, and debugging tools.

If you're wondering what you can do with a Berg Cloud Devkit, look no further than #Flock, Berg London's tweeting cuckoo clock. A proof of concept for what would become the Berg Cloud Devkit, the clock brought a different animatronic bird to life every time you got a Twitter reply, a new follower, or a retweet.

But Berg Cloud can do far more than just tweet. Cridge tells us that it's been designed to allow you to bring any device to life that you might want to connect to the cloud or be managed from afar. You could use Berg Cloud to create an alarm clock that rings only when Game of Thrones is on, a recipe box that automatically fills itself with the latest recipes on Serious Eats, a radio that tailors Spotify tracks according to the type of weather outside, or more.

The Berg Cloud Devkit will be available starting October 31 from Bergcloud.com. Each Berg Cloud Devkit costs $129 and comes with one Berg Cloud Bridge and two Devshields. Additional Devshields will be available for $32. Sounds like a hardware prototyper's dream.


       

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Published on October 28, 2013 12:30

Lou Reed On How To Be As Creative, Dynamic, And Difficult As Lou Reed

In the late 1960's––at the peak of our hottest hippie moment––a leather–clad Lou Reed and his Velvet Underground band mates pounded out songs about heroin and sadomasochism that ranged from ear–splitting sonic distortions to strangely beautiful ballads. Producer and musician Brian Eno famously said that despite the meager initial sales of the first Velvet Underground record, "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!" Reed, both with the Velvet Underground and in his career as a solo artist waged a war on the conventions of the music he loved, rock n' roll––paving the way for glam rock, punk rock, and noise bands.

All I did was sit there and observe these incredibly talented and creative people who were continually making art and it was impossible not to be affected by that.

Like many performers Reed was circumspect about the materials and methods of his art. But actually, in Reed's case that would be a gross understatement. Reed notoriously made a game of verbally assassinating reporters who dared to ask him questions. His weapons were the death stare, the non–answer, the lethal insult, and the mid–question walk–off. Yet, if you comb through Reed's four–plus decades of interviews you may uncover some revelatory gems on being the artist Lou Reed, on fearless creativity, and on not giving a... fig.

Keep it simple.

For all of Reed's literary aspirations and sonic experimenting, he thought of his art in very simple terms. "The Velvet songs were all two, three chords songs," he once said. "My albums are all two, three chord songs. It's all right there. Maybe that's why people like it, because it's so simple."


       







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Published on October 28, 2013 11:40

Infographic: Which Baseball Team Is Worth The Most?

Depending upon who you are, you might characterize the World Series as one of a number of things. If you're not that into baseball, you might see it as a showdown between two teams of club–wielding barbarians. If you're a superfan like my girlfriend, you might earnestly characterize it as the Go of organized sports. But if you're a businessman, you'll see only money.

For good reason. As these interactive data visualizations put together by Bloomberg make clear, even a single baseball franchise is a multibillion–dollar–a–year business. In fact, the average value of a Major League Baseball team these days is $1 billion.

It wasn't always this way. In fact, just a year ago, the average estimated going price for a Major League Baseball team was less than $650 million. That all changed when Guggenheim Baseball Management bought the Los Angeles Dodgers for $2.15 billion in 2012, a price that Bloomberg characterizes as 54% more than prevailing estimates and 25% more than other bids for the team. If one team was worth so much more than Street estimates, Bloomberg thought, perhaps baseball as a whole is undervalued. The new service assigned itself the task of recalculating the value of every baseball team––from the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, all the way to the Kansas City Royals and the Tampa Bay Rays––and adjusting teams' values accordingly.

The result? These pretty data visualizations, which are a fantastic and intuitive way of breaking down how much a team is worth by league, division, or number of wins, and comparing it to other teams. For the most part, and as you'd expect, the teams with the biggest brand presence tend to have the most valuable clubs. The Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, Mets, and Cubs are all in the top five.

Intriguingly, though, there's not much of a correlation between number of wins and market value. The Cardinals, for example, might be in the World Series, but they are worth a mere $805 million. That's almost identical to the value of the team with the least number of wins in Major League Baseball, the Houston Astros. And compared to the $2 billion value of their World Series nemesis, the Boston Red Sox, the competition isn't even close.

Likewise, the most valuable teams tend to all be clustered in the same geographic areas. The National League and American League East have most of the highest–earning teams, followed distantly by the National League West and American League West, and the abysmal National League and American League Central.

As orchestrated by Jeremy Diamond and David Ingold, of Bloomberg's data visualizations team, these infographics make it abundantly clear that the World Series isn't just about swinging for balls. It's about swinging for bucks. You can check it out for yourself here.


       

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Published on October 28, 2013 11:30

Jean Paul Gaultier Takes New York

In a recent talk with Vanity Fair, iconoclastic designer Jean Paul Gaultier described being punished in class at age nine for drawing girls in fishnets and feathers from the Folies Bergère. At 61, he's still drawing girls in fishnets and feathers (and ace bandages, and fish scales, and leather harness bras), only now it's to great acclaim.

Finally making its first and only East Coast appearance, The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk opened this weekend at the Brooklyn Museum. The critically lauded touring exhibition has already been seen by half a million people around the world, and it's about time impatient New Yorkers get their turn. Among the 150 couture and ready–to–wear pieces on view are some new additions, including Beth Ditto's corset, Beyonce's glittery jumpsuit, and a dress modeled by the androgynous Andrej Pejic.

It's the rare designer who gets to see his work exhibited in a museum while he's still alive, and the very much alive Gaultier told Vanity Fair he never thought such a day would come. "It's very flattering. . . . It's incredible that I am still alive; normally, it's when you are dead that you have something like that, no? . . . But, but, but, but, when I saw the team in Montreal that came and asked me, I thought, Maybe we'll do something, but I want it not to be a funeral. I want it to be an experience, a new adventure." It's clear the show is not a swan song. Most recently, Gaultier designed an updated pointy leather bra harness for Madonna's MDNA tour.

The exhibit includes an abundance of iconic costumes from movies and MTV, including the ace–bandage getup that an alien Milla Jovovich wore while teetering on a windowsill in The Fifth Element and the cone bra that inspired shock and awe during Madonna's 1990 Blond Ambition tour.

Perhaps more than any other high–end designer, Gaultier picked up on the sartorial trends of the punk scene in the '70s and '80s and turned counterculture into haute couture. (So haute that "Punk" was the theme of this year's Met Gala. Vogue's Grace Coddington lamented that there were no "real punks, real street punks" at the Gala, but reasoned, "I doubt they were invited.") Now posing in Brooklyn, mohawked mannequins stand before a wall of graffiti. They're clad in punk–plaid kilts, combat boots, a skull–studded sweater and a furry orange boa. In Gaultier's mermaid collection, glittering, pointy–breasted mannequins swim through gold lamé in fish–scale gowns.

Stefan Sednaoui directed a trippy black–and–white video of the designer discussing the exhibition––his voice gets chopped and screwed and auto–tuned as his body melts and morphs into fashion models dressed in his many cutting–edge creations.

Even the museum gift shop has some gems. For sale are prints of Gaultier's Madonna sketches, sailor hats, and berets, and punk–couture teddy bears in kilts, stripes, and chains (for $150––not very punk, after all).

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk is on view at the Brooklyn Museum through February 23.


       

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Published on October 28, 2013 10:30

The "Lego Moment": One Company's Simple Solution To A $600,000 Problem

It was a "Lego Moment"––when a data recovery firm's $600,000 data recovery contract was on the line, Lego blocks saved the day.

Minnesota–based Kroll Ontrack, which specializes in recovering data, needed to hand–clean 5,200 damaged tapes for a $600,000 job. The problem? The company didn't have enough staff to hand–clean the equipment, and there were no tools available that could automate the task. Kroll's team was stumped, until one engineer, Thomas Hanselmann, went home to play with his son.

According to the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal's Katharine Grayson, Hanselmann was building a Lego bulldozer with his son, and realized that the Lego kit included a motor that propels the bulldozer forward. In a spark of inspiration, Hanselmann realized the kit could be reconfigured into an automatic tape cleaner. The improvised Lego tape cleaner worked––and Kroll earned more than $600,000 in sales. The Lego machine is still in operation and additional copies were made in Kroll's European offices.

The lesson? A Lego moment is "having a complex problem and finding a simple yet elegant solution," says Kroll Ontrack CEO Dean Hager.


       







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Published on October 28, 2013 09:59

7 Architects On How To Design For Disaster

A year after Hurricane Sandy struck the United States, destroying houses and public infrastructure along the Eastern Seaboard, we reached out to several architects and posed two questions: What did you learn from Sandy? And how can architects prepare for the next storm? Their responses, edited and condensed, are below.––Eds

One of the obvious things architects can do is design their buildings that are within the flood zones to withstand the flood. We're doing a project for Duke University, which is in flood areas, on the coast. We placed the building almost 30 feet above sea level, and the whole building is designed to withstand winds of 140 mph. Buildings on the coast need a lot of structural resistance to the wind itself. And of course, water is a big issue. We placed the science building at Duke very high above sea level and are allowing the first–floor spaces to get destroyed––the first floor is programmed such that it wouldn't be a disaster if it got wiped out.––As told to Carey Dunne

In the 25 years since, our practice advocates a multidisciplinary approach to shaping sites and engaging infrastructures. At our newly completed park at Hunter's Point South, 88% of the shoreline is now soft, which means that it is designed to absorb a severe influx of water. The roof of the park pavilion is designed and constructed to resist hurricane–force winds. This park now represents a first line of defense for the surrounding community, which sat four feet underwater a year ago during Hurricane Sandy.

Infrastructure is often incorrectly perceived as hard and inflexible. These same considerations apply for landlocked sites as well. At the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, our rain gardens and 10,000–square–foot green roof are able to absorb a substantial amount of water without damaging the new structure or this historic site. In this way, we can rely on soft infrastructure that acts as a giant sponge to collect and gradually release large quantities of water over time, instead of all at once. It is our belief that it is now time to design alternate strategies that support resilient and pliable sites capable of absorbing cycles of extreme, unpredictable events.––As told to Suzanne LaBarre

It is important to look at small–scale solutions and legislative guidelines to help prevent loss of life and property. The grand and sometimes epic conceptual thinking is useful, but it should be balanced with immediacy. Simple flood protection can easily be implemented in building construction to ensure their contents are protected better. Beyond this, we must focus on landscape design that augments the natural needs of shorelines and basins where flooding may occur. Educating people who live in flood–prone zones should be more extensive than simply posting evacuation plans. In some places, there are credits given to those who design and inhabit shoreline conditions responsibly, measured by their inclusion of environmentally sensitive planning. ––As told to Belinda Lanks

Architects need to learn about those soft systems, and landscape architects who do know about them need to develop a richer language and more varieties of nature–based systems. Architects pay little attention to sources of energy, and to where they are placed. Both are issues that have moved to the head of the list and cannot be treated as something the mechanical engineers alone will place in the buildings architects design.––As told to Sammy Medina

One of the most basic things architects can do is look at the levels of buildings and start building more resilient structures, asking questions about various scenarios. What's going to happen when it floods? What about when the power goes out? Can you open the windows? Is there a place to plug in? And we need to look at the specific effects of Sandy on every type of residential building, so that our rebuilding efforts are not just based on theory but on actual data.––As told to Carey Dunne

As landscape architects, we are trained to think about larger systems and networks that go beyond project boundaries. This is especially important when considering how to make a project resilient. In addition to raising key infrastructure and utilities and developing hard systems (floodwalls, revetments, levees, and bulkheads), there are a number of soft systems (wetlands, beaches, dunes, and parklands) that can be integrated into projects to help absorb storm and flood events while also enriching biodiversity and open–space amenities. Edges between land and water are where these resilient systems need to be developed, avoiding singular "walls" where possible and seeking instead to thicken thresholds, margins, and intertidal zones.––As told to Suzanne LaBarre

[Belinda Lanks, Carey Dunne, and Sammy Medina contributed reporting]


       







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Published on October 28, 2013 08:30

Can This Barbershop Become The Warby Parker Of Shaving?

Jeff Raider, cofounder of Warby Parker, understands the importance of branding to successfully selling affordable eyeglasses to the masses, first online, then as a brick–and–mortar retail chain. So perhaps it's no surprise that he's applying the same level of detail to his second company, a shaving business called Harry's, whose first storefront, the Corner Shop, was built around two reclaimed, 1920s–era barbershop chairs, complete with vintage leather strops and all. Raider and his cofounder, Andy Katz–Mayfield, looked for months before finally lucking out and finding the restored pieces in West Hempstead, New York. Only then could construction begin in New York's Soho neighborhood.

If that seems cart–before–the–horse, consider that Harry's, like its sibling company Warby Parker, launched as an e–commerce–only brand intent on disrupting the shaving industry's inflated prices and cheap–drugstore identity. "Our website is our flagship store," Raider tells Co.Design. Its offline outpost supports the online store by supplying more textured experiences. "It's about the art of barbering," Raider says. "We give you the best quality product, but then we leave you hanging in front of the mirror." Coming into the the Corner Store––even just as an occasional treat––can be "a great way to be better and better at shaving." The big idea, according to Raider, is to own the experience from start to finish.

The Corner Shop mirrors the Harry's flagship store (i.e., the website) in every possible way: The white and navy color scheme of its elegantly restrained packaging is found on the reupholstered chairs and mirrored in the tile floor. New York–based Partners & Spade and Brookyn–based Fort Standard designed and built the store's interiors (both are responsible for designing the Warby Parker flagship store as well), and the final product is what Raider calls a "modern neighborhood barber" that falls somewhere between the standard barbershop and the steampunk Tommy Guns shops in New York.

Beyond the haircuts and the shaves, The Corner Shop is a mini–emporium for locally designed goods like Sleepy Jones pajamas, Public Supply notebooks, and Fort Standard bottle openers. Besides playing a part in a growing symbiotic network for small New York businesses (Sleepy Jones carries Harry's at its store; Fort Standard built Harry's cabinets), Harry's is dedicated to curating a lifestyle filled with brands that feel more thoughtful than a Gillette razor locked behind a plastic partition. "We can be a credible source for guys on grooming," Raider says. "When we saw the Trusco toolbox, we said, 'Our guy should have that toolbox!' " Or with Sleepy Jones, "it's the idea of an amazing morning where you get up and shave."

The Corner Store opens on Tuesday at 64 MacDougal Street in New York City.


       

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Published on October 28, 2013 07:30

7 Inspiring Videos Of Saudi Arabian Women Defying The Country's Ban On Female Drivers

On Saturday, Saudi Arabian women took to the streets behind a steering wheel in protest of the country's longstanding female driving ban. After the organizers started tweeting videos of women driving through handle @Oct26driving, the campaign website was hacked and remains broken today.

But that doesn't mean attention to the cause has withered. Over the weekend, Arab–American comedian and a cappella singer Hisham Fageeh of Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" in support of the movement, swapping out lyrics like "Oba, observing the hypocrites" to "Ova–ovaries all safe and well." Fageeh's song, which went viral, unfortunately lampooned a real statement recently made by a Saudi cleric who told his followers that the geography of a woman's ovaries makes driving unhealthy. (This phenomenon also explains family size in Western countries, he added.)

Saudi women, however, continue to prove that they can both drive and have a reproductive system that differs from a man's. Below are just a handful of examples of Saudis driving while female that have surfaced online in recent days––and one from two years ago, for which the driver, activist Manal al–Sharif, was arrested.

This woman chose Bon Jovi as her driving soundtrack.

This Saudi woman went straight to the drive–through.

This son participated in the campaign by teaching his mom how to drive.

Here, a little kid is getting a kick out of his mom behind the wheel.

This woman's passenger took some nice footage of Riyadh.

Check it out! Women can drive at night, too.

And listen to Manal al–Sharif explain (while driving) why the driving ban limits Saudi women's freedom and autonomy.


       

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Published on October 28, 2013 07:25

See New Versions Of All 50 State Flags

Unless you've been made to go to city courthouses all across the country, there is a fair chance that you're not familiar with that many state flags. Anyone who is, though, would no doubt notice the wildly divergent styles, colors and components of all the flags. Unfortunately, the discord among these flags is currently being echoed by rancor amongst the representatives of their states, as evidenced by the recent shutdown. One man is hoping to bring the states together, though, flags first.

Ed Mitchell is a designer who recently decided to blend together his patriotism with his sense of aesthetic with a massive undertaking––a major overhaul of all 50 state flags. It was no simple beautification project, though. These new versions finally look unified, and by making them that way, the designer is setting a subtle example for congress.

[image error]New York State Redesign

While some flags, many of which originated near the 19th century, don't look terribly different than they did before, Mitchell took a scorched earth approach to others and completely did away with much of the originals. For instance, some Southern states used to have elements of the Confederacy worked into their design, despite the fact that all these years later some see them as symbols of hate.

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Published on October 28, 2013 07:11

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