David Lidsky's Blog, page 4612

From In-N-Out to Burgerville: A Historic Drive-Thru Timeline

We spend $110 billion in the drive-thru lanes of fast-food joints each year, but burgers and shakes aren't alone in getting the grab-and-go treatment. A brief history of our resistance to getting out of the car.

1948 - In-N-Out Burger opens in Baldwin Park, California. The fast-food drive-thru is born.

 

 

1953 - Roller-skating carhops become a signature at the first Sonic drive-in.

 

 

1953 - The First Christian Church of Daytona Beach converts a drive-in theater into the first drive-in...

James Franco's "General Hospital" Character Heads to MOCA; Jeffrey Deitch Co-Stars

So...does this count as Jeffrey Deitch's first spectacle as director of MOCA? The flashy gallerist took the reins at the Los Angeles museum on June 1 and today, MOCA announces the performance piece SOAP at MOCA, which will bring actor James Franco and the plotline of General Hospital within the museum walls. We'd think the whole thing was bug-eyed bonkers if we didn't know Deitch better:  Our experts who contributed free advice for Deitch's new role predicted this whole thing would happen a...

PG&E's $100 Million Fund Could Help Bring Solar Power to Your House

Solar panels seem like a great idea in theory, but they're too expensive for homeowners who don't have thousands of dollars to burn. The problem has generated a cottage industry of companies--including SunRun, Sungevity, and SolarCity--that lease solar systems to budget-minded customers. Now PG&E is giving solar leasing a big push with a $100 million tax equity project financing
agreement for over 3,500 SunRun home installations in California, Arizona, Colorado, Massachusetts and New...

Wiring a Smart City in the Desert

Is Dubai the world's smartest city? Maybe not in the sense that it mortgaged long-term infrastructure with $100 billion in very short-term debt, but "smart" in a way IBM, Cisco and other tech heavyweights would be envious of. One advantage of building a city from scratch is that each of Dubai's 60,000 modern buildings is equipped with the state-of-the-art in lighting, HVAC, and security systems--all of which can be wired to the Internet.

Last week at the Realcomm 2010 conference in Las...

Voices From E3: Gaming Luminaries on Games as Art and Roger Ebert

Back in April, film critic Roger Ebert stirred up a tempest in a teacup with his comment that gaming can never be art. Last week at E3, the game industry's annual mega-convention, I asked the gaming execs and creators I interviewed their thoughts on Ebert's opinion and if they could give him one game to change his mind, what would that be. Their thoughts below.

Laurent Detoc, North America president, Ubisoft:

Even Hideo Kojima [creator of the critically-acclaimed series Metal Gear Solid...

Infographic: Mowing the Lawn Becomes Art

Jeremy Wood is doing something only the most enthusiastic suburbanites ever thought possible: He is elevating lawn-mowing to a work of art.

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Jeremy Wood is doing something only the most enthusiastic suburbanites
ever thought possible: He is elevating lawn-mowing to a work of art.

Variously over the past nine years, the artist has tooled around on a
motorized lawnmower, tracking his rides on GPS as he dutifully clips
the grass at his mom's place in Oxfordshire, England. (What a good
son!) The...

How to Create a "Godly" Game Opening

How do you create the opening credits for a beloved game franchise, telling a story in a unique way, but keeping the feel of the franchise? Below I recount how we at Imaginary Forces worked on God of War III. The game's director Stig Asmussen and the team at Sony Computer Entertainment really pushed us to create an aesthetic that would complement the highly-rendered world that makes up most of the game. More below.

B330-Rx Golf Ball Designed for Average Players

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Photograph by Randy Harris

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Photograph by Randy Harris

Bridgestone Golf designs a ball for the rest of us.

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You are not Phil Mickelson. So why are you playing his golf ball and expecting the same results? "You don't use racing slick tires on your Honda Accord," notes Brandon Sowell, director of marketing for Bridgestone Golf. With that in mind, Bridgestone has bucked the industry norm of simply selling weekend duffers the balls their favorite pros use. Instead, it has created the B330-Rx ($43 for...

Rob Forbes Plugs "Evolutionary" Public D 3-Speed Bicycle

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Photograph by Dan Saelinger

If you had asked Rob Forbes a few years ago to recommend a good city bike, he would have said, "Get a used bike from the 1960s." Today, Forbes, who founded furniture retailer Design Within Reach and now heads the design shop Studio Forbes, would reply: Buy mine.

Forbes's Public D is less revolutionary than evolutionary. U.S. bicycles are mostly based on racing and mountain bikes. But Forbes drew on Britain's 19th-century "double diamond," the ancestor of the...

Why 3-D Is Better When It's in the Palm of Your Hand

We tend to think of 3-D as being a large display affair--movie screens, or more recently, widescreen televisions. But last week Nintendo revealed the 3DS at E3. This next-generation handheld gaming device will feature a 3.53" 3-D display that does not require the use of viewing glasses.

At first glance, handheld devices might seem inferior for displaying 3-D visuals compared their large-screen counterparts. But there are limitations to large, fixed displays that don't constrain handhelds. In...