David Lidsky's Blog, page 4698

Coke's Freestyle Machines Ready to Rock Tongues With 104 Flavors

Coca-Cola is about to light the rocket beneath a project that may, with luck, slightly reinvent the brand for the 21st Century: It's ready to take its amazing Freestyle drinks makers mainstream, with 104 user-controlled flavors. 

We've mentioned the Coke Freestyle device several times before--it's hard not to as it's so innovative, and involves cooperation from some seriously big names in design (Pininfarina and Dean Kamen to name but two.) The device is essentially a ground-up reinvention of...

Almost Genius: Teague's Radioball Lets You Rock and Roll from Station to Station

Touchscreens are boring to play with, but clever haptic interfaces like this one can restore some magic to out gadget interactions.

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The brilliant interaction designers at Teague have unveiled their newest experiment: The Radio Ball, a geodesic sphere that offers a new way of exploring radio channels. [vimeo 11368501:]

Designed by Benoit Collette and Adam Kumpf, the Radio Ball attempts to add some haptic novelty to the process of finding a radio station. Each facet of the ball corresponds to a...

Coke's Freestyle Machines Ready to Rock Tongues with 104 Flavors

Coca-cola is about to light the rocket beneath a project that may, with luck, slightly reinvent the brand for the 21st Century: It's ready to take its amazing Freestyle drinks makers mainstream, with 104 user-controlled flavors. 

We've mentioned the Coke Freestyle device several times before--it's hard not to as it's so innovative, and involves cooperation from some seriously big names in design (Pininfarina and Dean Kamen to name but two.) The device is essentially a ground-up reinvention of...

Less Bad Does Not Equal Good: Seventh Generation CEO Jeffrey Hollender

Suddenly it's very clear why going public wasn't the best idea for outspoken CEO Jeffrey Hollender.

"I don't think the consumer should always decide," Hollender said at Fast Company's Innovation Uncensored event April 21 in New York City. "I also think that we as a society have confused 'less bad' with 'good.' As much as I like Seventh Generation products, and I think they're great, they are less bad. All of our products create CO2 emissions. They create garbage, They use natural resources...

The Latest Sartorial Branding Crisis for U.S. Men's Soccer

Once again, our U.S. National uniforms tell the entire world: "We really don't care about soccer."

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U.S. men's soccer will debut a fresh jersey at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in
South Africa this summer. That'll make it, oh, the zillionth redesign
in 50-plus years.

Such is the fate of the American kit, one of
the crappiest branding efforts in sports history. Whereas other teams
wear uniforms as identifiable (and as sacrosanct) as national flags,
the U.S. Men's National Team is in perpetual...

Free Beer Not as Good as It Sounds--Unless You're Pregnant

Kirin's Free beer (as opposed to free beer: that would obviously bankrupt the company PDQ) is a non-alcoholic lager with an interesting marketing campaign attached. Launched last month, the TV spot is filled with young, expectant mothers hanging out in a playground and drinking cans of the amber nectar. The ad was spotted last month by Lisa Katayama, who writes the TokyoMango blog, and she posted the video for all to see.

Said vid, however, has been pulled from YouTube by Kirin (second...

WiGig Wireless Alliance Targets the Dusty Rat's Nest of Cables Behind Your TV

Today the specifications have been finalized on yet another bit of future-facing wireless tech: WiGig. As its name suggests it's all about gigabit speeds over the airwaves, and you'll care about it 'cause it may make HDMI cabling obsolete.

This new tech has been brewing for several years, its complexity and the need to deconflict it with other wireless radio systems responsible for some of this long build-up, but the Wireless Gigabit Alliance has finally dotted the last i and crossed the...

Reuters Dips Its Toe Into On-Demand Video News Services

Reuters is about to release its Insider service to its subscribers this week, ready to deliver on-demand video content from the news organization and its media partners. It's a gentle, but potent, tweak to position Reuters for 21st Century news-breaking.

Insider has been in the works for two years, ever since Reuters took a strategic decision to try to incorporate more video technology into its news reporting. The new service is customizable, and will incorporate 3,000 new clips per week from...

Infographic of the Day: Privacy on Facebook is Vanishing

Privacy has become an "opt-in" feature on Facebook--and that has massively changed the service.

Facebook privacy setttings are eroding. But the scope and speed of that transformation has happened fairly quietly--maybe because we've never before had an infographic that lays all the changes out.

The chart was a personal project created by Matt McKeon, who by day is a researcher at IBM's Visual Communication Lab (where Fernanda Viegas used to work).

It's concentric rings show the groups who can...

Are Facebook and FarmVille Developer Zynga in a Standoff?

 Zynga, makers of feed-cluttering, endless-status-update-generating agribusiness simulator FarmVille, is one of the biggest and most prominent Facebook developers. But that doesn't mean they get along. Their relationship as of late has been described as "intense" and brittle, and it seems to stem from Facebook's recent move into unified credits.

The credit system, in which all in-game purchases must be conducted in FaceBucks (patent pending on that winner of a pun, Zuckerberg) instead of real...