David Lidsky's Blog, page 4597

Almost Genius: Designers on How Kurt Cobain Should Be Immortalized

Courtney Love couldn't have come up with anything weirder.

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Those of us in the throes of teen angst when Kurt Cobain shot himself in 1994 remember his death as The Defining Moment of the Era.
It was The Day We Lost Our Innocence. Kurt Cobain: our flannel Kennedy.

It was probably inevitable, then, that a few art-minded representatives of this shattered generation would concoct something
like the "retroactive urn for Kurt Cobain." It's both an urn and a
cultural memento, the sort of thing in...

Interactive Movie Trailer for German Horror Channel Wins Big at Cannes Lions

There is a dark, yet wildly creative, force at work in German horror channel 13th Street. Owned by NBC Universal, it's just scooped one of the top prizes at the Cannes Lions, for their interactive movie, Last Call, billed as the first interactive horror movie in the world.

First came the flyer. Participants filled out their details, including their phone numbers, on a card which was enterted into a speed-dial database. Then, during the showing of the movie, the database would select one cell...

Everyday Objects Stash Money, Secrets, Drugs, IDs

Looking to hide your drugs or money? Yiting Cheng might have something for you.

Yiting Cheng just finished up a master's degree in design, but she could already teach James Bond a thing or two about stashing valuables.

For her thesis project, Cheng designed a series of 8 objects that ingeniously store secrets--from passwords to money to drugs to ID's. And you can see all of them in this nicely shot video (our favorite is the secrete drawer, hidden in the edge of a table, which is only...

Evernote CEO Phil Libin's 3 Steps to "Freemium" Success

The "freemium" business model really can work. Look no further than Evernote.

When Phil Libin set out to develop the Next Big App, he put forth one cardinal rule: "I didn't want a clever business model." Come again?

"Data analysis, referrals, advertising -- it was all kind of sleazy," says Evernote CEO Libin. "I wanted a clever product. I wanted that product to reach hundreds of millions of people. And I wanted 99% of them to be using it for free."

The "freemium" model -- giving...

WANTED: Belkin Conserve Valet Charging Station

For the tech-obsessed (and, increasingly, normal people), bedside tables, desks, and coffee tables are a hazardous jungle of electronic detritus. Smartphones, media players, game controllers, remote controls, portable gaming consoles, digital cameras, e-book readers, and more, plus cables, result in giant power strips and unattractive clutter.

Belkin's new Conserve Valet charging station provides a nice solution to that problem, at least for those gadgets that can be powered by USB (which...

Dell Lawsuit Highlights Broken PCs, Dirty Business Dealings

Lawsuits are looming over Dell that finally, publicly confirm something that many users have known for a long time--its machines are technically flawed. Did Dell's business rest on screwing over the user, in return for quick and dirty profits?

The ongoing three-year lawsuit against Dell that seems to be the most damning yet has just taken a fascinating twist: Documents have been unsealed (and shown to New York Times reporters) that confirm Dell was knew that thousands of PCs it sold over an...

iFive: Hayward Gone From BP?, Spies R U.S., FIFA Opens Tech Debate, Porn Industry to Drop Flash, Electronic Daisy Carnival a Hit

While you were sleeping, innovation was using a Mac laptop to send classified information to its paymasters halfway across the world and then snapping glowsticks to go raving all night long.

1. BP is discussing a backup strategy for the Deepwater Horizon disaster that involves pumping the oil to an existing platform, should the current containment strategy fail. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has been examining just how seismic a BP collapse would be on Wall Street, but the banks have...

"Google Me" Social Network Rumors Fueled: It's Real, Heavily Staffed

Those rumors about Google's Facebook-rivaling social network just got a whole lot more interesting. A former Facebook exec has been quizzing contacts inside Google and discovered that it's all real, with large numbers of Google staff busy on task.

The leak comes from Adam D'Angelo, cofounder of Quora (a cloud-sourced community question-answer forum), and it's interesting as he was formerly chief technology officer at Facebook. Given the size and complexity of Facebook's operations, this was...

Test Drive: Working Remotely With Anybots Telepresence Robot

Telepresence robots aren't much more than Skype bots on wheels, right? That's what we thought before taking part in a scavenger hunt this week using the Anybots QB telepresence robot--an attractive bot set to go on sale this fall for $15,000. The challenge was simple enough: from the comfort of our laptops, a group of us were asked to complete a series of tasks around the Anybots office in Mountain View, California using QB robots as our proxies.

Before the challenge even got underway, we...

iFive: Hayward Gone From BP?, Spies R U.S., FIFA Opens Tech Debate, Porn Industry to drop Flash, Electronic Daisy Festival a Hit

While you were sleeping, innovation was using a Mac laptop to send classified information to its paymasters halfway across the world and then snapping glowsticks to go raving all night long.

1. BP is discussing a back-up strategy for the Deepwater Horizon disaster that involves pumping the oil to an existing platform, should the current containment strategy fail. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has been examining just how seismic a BP collapse would be on Wall Street, but the banks have...