David Lidsky's Blog, page 3426
October 18, 2013
Infographic: See Which Luxury Brands Jay Z Shouted Out the Most Per Album
Listening to Jay Z's latest album is like hearing a very bass–heavy, syllabically symmetric recitation of the Neiman Marcus Christmas book. It's a fleeting glimpse at a level of opulence far beyond what most people dare to imagine for themselves. It's also the culmination of some long–simmering aspirations. Jay Z has shown love to luxury brands since before they were in reach, as demonstrated by the many career–spanning Lexus and Gucci references. Anyone without time to listen to all 13 of Jay Z's albums, however, can take the word of a new infographic that charts the frequency of these gold–plated plugs, album by album.
[image error]Created by the team at Vanity Fair, this infographic collects the 15 most–mentioned brands in Jay Z's discography. By scouring through the lyric–parsing site Rap Genius, Vanity Fair found that Jay Z's overall most–beloved brand is apparently Mercedes Benz, although several other car manufacturers also made the cut. The other big product vertical Jay Z is into is fashion, with Gucci taking the top spot, alongside a recent favorite designer, Tom Ford.
The infographic also clearly shows Jay Z's gradual disenchantment with Cristal, which he deemed racist in 2006, due to some woefully misguided statements from Frederic Rouzaud, managing director of the company that produces the high–grade champagne. What we don't see here, however, is how, as Jay Z's wealth increased, so did the relative obscurity of his luxury leanings. Now, he is just as likely to mention Hublot and MCM as he is Rolex and Lexus. The latest album has a song entirely about the fact that Jay Z owns a Picasso, though, and anyone at the level to afford that name brand clearly should know a few things the rest of us do not.
How Popcorn Took Over Movie Theaters
Try to imagine going to a movie theater that only sold pretzels. Or potato chips. Or Cheetos. It's downright inconceivable today, but during the rise of movie theaters in the early 20th century, popcorn was far from a standard snack. In fact, the noisy, crumbly kernels were a particularly bad fit for luxurious silent movie theaters.
As Smithsonian tells the story, popcorn became massively popular starting in 1885 when the first steam–powered popcorn maker allowed the snack to hit the streets. From Food & Think:
The mobile nature of the machine made it the perfect production machine for serving patrons attending outdoor sporting events, or circuses and fairs. Not only was popcorn mobile, but it could be mass–produced without a kitchen, an advantage that another crunchy snack–the potato chip–lacked (the earliest potato chips were made in small batches in kitchens, not ideal for mass snack appeal). Another reason for its dominance over other snacks was its appealing aroma when popped, something that street vendors used to their advantage when selling popcorn. Still, movie theaters wouldn't allow the popular street snack into their auditoriums… [image error]
If You Want Your Next Trip To Be Frightful, Booking.com Has Some Hotels For You
The Queen Anne Hotel in San Francisco has the dubious honor of star billing in the latest TV ad for Booking.com––part of a new campaign in which the online accommodation bookings site promotes its 350,000+ properties by highlighting seven of America's most haunted.
The campaign, created for the U.S. market by Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam, is all about showing Booking.com's commitment to offering customers just what they want––even if that's a haunted hotel, the company's chief marketing office Paul Hennessy explains.
So the TV ad, directed by the agency's executive creative director Mark Bernath and produced by Concrete Films, uses every scary movie trailer technique in the book to show the experience of one visitor staying in 410––the suite where the ghost of Miss Mary Lake, headmistress of the girls school that previously occupied the hotel's site, has been seen and sometimes (allegedly) attempts to tuck travelers into bed.
Lenovo Confirms Its First Android–Based Laptop
Its rivals HP and Acer might be going all out with Chromebooks, but Lenovo, the world's top PC vendor, has officially announced the IdeaPad A10, its first laptop that ships with Android 4.2.
[image error]The A10 will come with a 10.1–inch HD display, a 1.6 GHz quad–core Cortex A9 processor, 2 GB RAM, 32 GB of on–board storage, a 0.3 megapixel webcam, and an estimated nine hours of battery life.
Lenovo has also customized the Android interface to include an app launcher, a status bar with handy Wi–Fi, battery and clock notifications, and a task bar, according to a manual on Lenovo's website. And while you can't "undock" the display from the keyboard like the Asus Transformer Prime, you can flip the screen around into a "stand mode."
Inside GitHub's Super–Lean Management Strategy––And How It Drives Innovation
Imagine you could run a company on autopilot: no tier of "managers," just people creating value by doing what they love and letting the rest fall into place. How much money would you save by eliminating all that bureaucracy? How much faster could you move? How much conflict could you erase? How much bigger could you grow? How much more creative would the culture be?
There is at least one company that has been experimenting to get closer to the ideal: GitHub.
If you're not familiar with GitHub, ask a programmer. GitHub is a collaboration platform for software developers, used by 3 million people and quickly getting adopted by businesses. BusinessWeek called GitHub CEO Tom Preston–Warner "Grand Poobah of the software universe" back in June, not long after the company raised $100M to go after enterprise software development, mostly from from Andreessen–Horowitz.
October 17, 2013
5 Ways To Create A Culture Of Sustainability In Any Company
There is no simple way to identify a leading company in sustainability. Given the proliferation of ratings, rankings, blogs, and indices, there is no shortage of opinions, and often these are in direct conflict with one another. The methodologies used to calculate performance are often very opaque, or nonexistent. Even highly reputable organizations, based on a good core of data, often produce wildly divergent results from one another. And once the pundits get a hold of any ranking, they usually tear it to pieces, bringing their own criteria, opinions and biases to bear and further muddying the waters. While the debates are often fierce, no one can really agree on what sustainability itself really means.
This is good news for the majority of companies that are still trying to get their footing on sustainability performance. If even the experts can't agree, why worry about trying to please them––or anyone? The muddied waters give companies room to chart the course forward themselves. So instead of looking for outside verification that they're on the track, companies should inward to their people.
Culture is intangible, and when something is hard to define, it's hard to address, improve, or measure.
It all starts with the culture of the company. After all, when people aren't really on board, it's tough to get anywhere. If one of your company's goals is to make genuine progress, then you must think about sustainability in terms of the people who make up your employee base.
Culture is a tricky subject. It's intangible, and when something is hard to define, it's hard to address, improve, or measure. Accordingly, here are a few simple tips. Certainly this is not an exhaustive list, but these techniques will help any company––regardless of where they are––to go further.
Awesome, Imaginary Cities Carved Out Of Wood
A city skyline can be a hopeful, inspiring testament to man's life on Earth. Would these staggered vistas be so evocative of creativity, innovation, and new beginnings if their stalagmites of steel and glass were replaced with towers of wood? James McNabb is an artist who explores the skylines of imaginary cities that live solely in his imagination, carving buildings and towers individually by hand until they become extraordinarily detailed microcosms of metropolis.
Hailing from Philadelphia, McNabb has been drawn to the architecture of cities ever since he was a child. "I grew up listening to music and watching movies that depicted the city as the place where people go to be whoever they want to be and do whatever they want to do in pursuit of fame, fortune, and freedom," McNabb tells Co.Design. To McNabb, a city's towering height is a beacon of promise.
[image error]A trained furniture designer and maker, McNabb carves each of the buildings in his sculptures individually, working as rapidly as possible in a process that aims to recreate the fast–paced hustle and bustle of the urban environment. He uses a bandsaw for his work, taking pleasure from the way the marks of the saw blade mimic the textures and patterns you would find in a real city environment.
Find Out Just How Wes Anderson–y the Trailer For His Next Film Is (Hint: Very)
Last time Wes Anderson premiered the trailer for a new film, we catalogued the many ways in which That's So Anderson. Now that the preview for his new film has arrived, Co.Create is delighted to announce the winningly whimsical director is still up to his reliably entertaining tricks.
The Best Exotic Marigold Grand Budapest Hotel stars Ralph Fiennes––in a role that Johnny Depp was reportedly set to star in before dropping out––as Gustave H, an eccentric concierge at a fancy European hotel in the 1920s. After the death (murder?) of an elderly female patron leaves Gustave inheriting a valuable painting, the concierge finds himself under suspicion. With the aid of his trusty "lobby boy," Fiennes's character is soon caught up in some evasive antics.
[image error]So, yes, there is a plot. More importantly, however, the trailer also reveals that Hotel will definitely hit many of Anderson's signature notes, including:
Plastic Party Cups With Looks And Class
If your party isn't happening on a college campus, then your guests deserve better than red plastic Solo cups. And barring some clever additions to the reusable drinkware market––like Govino's stemless glasses that come with a special nook for your thumb––anything that won't break likely won't have much personality either.
Cue Kinto, the Japanese line of housewares that excels at turning otherwise boring kitchen gadgets into cabinet eye candy. Their latest is Festa, a line of plastic party glasses with multi–hued removable stems, designed with the sophistication to compete with substantial glassware.
[image error]"The product development team thought that the lighter and stronger tableware would be interesting and useful for party scenes," says Kinto designer Sayaka Nishinami of creating an alternative to ceramic and glass pieces. Kinto strives to produce environmentally conscious products (their beautiful rendition on tea strainers should be encouragement enough to ditch tea bags for loose leaf teas), so Festa's wine and champagne glasses are dishwasher safe, and pretty enough to use at the party and on the camping trip. And when all the tonic is tapped, just pop off the stem and take a shot.
The Internet's Next Frontier Is The Deep Sea
The Internet spans the world––but only the world according to landlubbers.
Researchers at the University of Buffalo in New York are testing schemes for a "deep sea Internet" that could have wide–ranging applications from environmental monitoring and tsunami warnings to oil extraction and government surveillance operations.
"A submerged wireless network will give us an unprecedented ability to collect and analyze data from our oceans in real time," said Tommaso Melodia, UB associate professor of electrical engineering and the project's lead researcher, in a news release.
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