David Lidsky's Blog, page 4581

Popularity, Ego and Influence - What Is The Influence Project?

In roughly 24 hours, nearly 6,000 people have registered to participate in an experiment we started called The Influence Project. It's been written about by TechCrunch, The Huffington Post, The New York Times and a score of personal blogs. While it hasn't taken off the way as quickly as the David After Dentist or Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Rainbow videos, it's off to a good enough start to bust our servers (briefly). But like anything that gains traction on the web, the reactions have been...

YouTube Redesigns Mobile Site: Touch Friendliness and Google-Controlled Ads

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YouTube gets around 100 million visitors per day via mobile, which impressively enough is about the same number of visitors the full-fledged desktop site was getting when YouTube was acquired by Google back in 2006. But most of those 100 million visitors are using the YouTube iPhone app, rather than YouTube's own mobile site.

That's a problem for Google--on their own site, they can completely control the experience, including ad revenue, while they have to compete with

Wanted: A Desk That Grows With the Kids

One of the many headaches brought on by having a kid is the sudden profusion of stuff. The little ones grow out of everything, from their toys to their clothes to their furniture. That's hardly great for the environment, let alone the mental state of any parent that hates clutter and waste.

Which is what makes the Caspar children's table, by Austrian furniture-maker Perludi, brilliant. Using a dead-simple design the table grows with the kids.



Lengthening the legs is simply a matter of...

Boy Scouts Updating With New Merit Badges, Including Invention

The Boy Scouts of America do good, we all know that. And now they do invention. The 100-year-old organization--it celebrated its centenary on Feb 8 of this year--has teamed up with MIT's Lemelson program, founded by the father of modern invention in America, Jerome H. Lemelson, to provide a new merit badge: that of invention. Sounds like a subtle rebrand to me--and if rebranding is good enough for the BSA's sisters, then it's good enough for them.

As well as providing the chance for scouts to...

Fossil Fuel Industry Hangs BP Out to Dry

BP is nothing like the rest of the fossil fuel industry. At least, that's what other oil companies would like us to believe. The American Energy Alliance (AEA) came out swinging this week against BP with Save U.S. Energy Jobs, an initiative that aims to preserve the offshore oil and gas industry by emphasizing just how much the Gulf oil disaster is the direct result of shoddy oversight from BP.

The AEA, a conservative nonprofit associated with the oil company-sponsored Institute
for Energy...

Science Bloggers Outraged by PepsiCo Sponsored Nutrition Blog

Corporations sponsor blog posts all the time. It's a reality of the world of online journalism--corporations can provide the big bucks necessary to keep the figurative lights on. Why, then, is the scientific community so riled up about Food Frontiers, a new PepsiCo-sponsored blog on the ScienceBlogs network?

The blog, launched this week, will purportedly offer insight on science, nutrition and health policy--with  information on PepsiCo's "nutritious" products sprinkled in. But ScienceBlogs...

Could Biomimicry Build a Better Company Than Your Boss?

In the final chapter of our Biomimicry Challenge, we ask the clients if they think nature can help solve their business problems.

Brazil Uses "Homeless World Cup" to Build Local Community

The most exciting soccer game of the year will not be the Netherlands v. Germany (or the Netherlands v. Spain, but c'mon, Spain doesn't stand a chance), it'll be lost-my-job in the U.S. v. toothless in Scotland. We speak, of course, of the Homeless World Cup.

Yes, there's a Homeless World Cup, and it has all the trappings of its moneyed big brother, except instead of rhetoric about soccer as the torchbearer of world peace, we're told about "the power of football to unite people living on...

What's More Important, Innovation or Growth?

Robert Brunner, creative director of design firm Ammunition, answers this week's 30 Second MBA question.

Can 3G Nintendo DS and Sony PSP Compete With Smartphones?

While your Nintendo DS or Sony PSP may be pretty clever at wireless connection over Wi-fi, when you wander out of antenna range you're doomed. To combat this problem, these two companies are creating new technology to boost Wi-fi reach. But is that enough to stay competitive?

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, NTT DoCoMo--Japan's cell phone network with the most subscribers--is in discussions with manufacturers of handheld games consoles to bring 3G data network capabilities to the next...