David Lidsky's Blog, page 4681

Infographic of the Day: Compound Interest Made Beautiful

A financial firm uses hundreds of lights to illustrate the appeal of stocks.

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Stocks outperform other investments over the long term and blah blah blah...zzzzzzzzzz. The inherent boredom of hearing another commercial about stocks presented a marketing dilemma to Australian financial-advisory firm BT. So instead of getting Sam Waterston to play a gray-haired Man You Can Trust, they tried to create a series of indelible infographics worthy of Times Square: [youtube OPPNqP6r2Z8:] [youtube...

Sustainability Faceoff: McDonald's vs. Starbucks

Comparing Starbucks and McDonald's may not seem to make sense at first, but the two chains actually have a lot in common--namely, they both promise quicky and easy food and beverages on the go, and both companies have recently ramped up sustainability efforts. In the new book The HIP Investor, author R. Paul Herman attempts to compare the two mega-chains. Below, we do the same.

Let's just be clear--the inherent unhealthiness of most McDonald's meals give the chain a major disadvantage, even...

The World's Oddest Album Covers, Spun by Our Design Experts

What exactly are these bizarre album covers trying to tell us? We tapped six of our expert design bloggers to lend their branding and identity insight.

Alex Payne, One of Twitter's First Employees, Deposits Himself at Banksimple

With what must be the best motto in the history of banking--"Don't Suck"--banksimple has announced its forthcoming arrival onto the online financial scene by luring a key member to its team. Alex Payne waved goodbye to his job as API lead at Twitter to become the bank's Chief Product & Technology Officer.

Online personal finance has proven to be a difficult business to master. Witness the fall of FiLife
last month. Mint.com has not seen a significant increase in unique visitors since it...

The Most Important Leadership Quality for CEOs? Creativity

For CEOs, creativity is now the most important leadership quality for success in business, outweighing even integrity and global thinking, according to a new

study by IBM. The study is the largest known sample of one-on-one CEO interviews, with over 1,500 corporate heads and public sector leaders across 60 nations

and 33 industries polled on what drives them in managing their companies in today's world.

Fast Company's annual list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business just took...

Google Buys VoIP Experts GIS to Outshine Apple, Skype's Video Conferencing

Google's just plopped some $68 million dollars on the table to buy up Global IP Solutions, a company that sells voice and video IP conferencing gear. Is this a sign Google's revving up Voice or even its TV products to rival Skype and Apple?

Google's been a customer of GIS for some time, along with other huge tech players like Samsung, Nortel, AOL, and Yahoo (the technology powers the systems running Yahoo Messenger). GIS also recently revealed it's working on tech to make life easier for...

Real-Time Feeds Coming to a Web Site Near You, Courtesy of Google

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Google's Feed API lets Web site owners easily pop different types of data onto one page, by simply adding a few lines of JavaScript code. It's pretty great, really; you can add a Twitter feed, blog, news updates, or all kinds of other feeds to a Web page really easily. It currently works like the rest of the Internet is indexed: Google (or whoever) essentially looks to see if the feed in question has any updates, then makes that change on their side. Once that's done, the next time a visitor...

Work Smart: Defrag Your Calendar by Batching Tasks

Every employee has certain obligations throughout the workweek on top of their core job: like attending meetings, taking phone calls, replying to email, and filling out paperwork. It's natural to want to tackle these things as they come up. But your core job requires solid blocks of time, when you can dive in, get creative, and think things through without interruptions.

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When you've got a 10 a.m. meeting, a 1 p.m. lunch, and a 3:30 phone conference, your core...

Foxconn Calls in Counsellors, But its Suicide Rate May Be Normal

Foxconn, the Chinese high-tech manufacturer and Apple partner, has been so shaken by a cluster of recent suicide attempts that it's hiring in mental health staff to aid its employees. There's even a Buddhist monk on staff. 

We know of six suicides so far at Foxconn in 2010, though it's possible there were more attempts that went unreported, given the highly sensitive nature of news like this for a company with a high profile client such as Apple. The bad news seems to have started back in...

Spotify Slashes Subscription Costs as MOG Prepares to Launch Outside U.S.

Spotify, purveyors of music streaming to discerning Europeans, has just slashed its subscription prices by 50%. It's introducing a couple of new tariffs: Spotify Unlimited, at half the cost of Spotify Premium, giving users ad-free music from their desktops, and Spotify Open, a free, ad-supported service. So, is the Swedish company gearing up for its Q3 launch in the U.S., or has it realized that a big shark (goes by the name of iTunes, currently digesting a fish called Lala) is circling the...