David Lidsky's Blog, page 4699

Work Smart: Unconventional Cures for Meeting-itis

When you're on your deathbed, you're never going to say you wish you'd attended more meetings. But at work, meetings are a necessary evil. Sometimes the only way to make a decision or convey information is to get people together to talk. But too many organizations suffer from meeting-itis: poorly-run and inefficient meetings that go on too long, happen too often and include more attendees than need to be there. When you calculate the true cost in person hours, you quickly see how meetings...

Amnesty International Turns to Social Media to Fund Anti-Shell Ad Campaign

Social media users are to be given the chance to raise money for a hard-hitting Amnesty International campaign against Shell. The U.K. branch of the 50-year-old organization announced over the weekend that it is to use its Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace accounts to bring in cash to run a full-page newspaper ad next Tuesday, May 18, the day of Shell's AGM.

The NGO's Naomi McAuliffe, said: "Amnesty is a campagning organization, and advertising is a great way of exerting influence. Of course it...

Starchitecture Helps Heal Cancer Patients

Hospitals are some of the worst buildings around. But plenty of research shows that physical surroundings can improve health. Which is what makes the Maggie's Centre initiative so brilliant.

Hospitals are some of the worst buildings around--the sterile rooms, the dearth of daylight, the miles and miles of beige. But research shows that physical surroundings have everything to do with staying and getting healthy. Which is what makes the Maggie's Centre Initiative so intriguing.

Maggie's are a a

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...

VIRAT, MITRE's Military Streaming Video, Is Even Better Than Hulu

DARPA called up MITRE, perhaps the most mysterious of our 50 Most Innovative Companies, to help vet possible contractors for VIRAT, the Video and Image Retrieval for Analysis Tool. Says a senior official at MITRE, "VIRAT is about getting critical video content to the right analyst at the right time."

VIRAT is seeking to embed video and photo hardware into unmanned planes like the MQ-9 Reaper. Planes like the Reaper are remotely controlled, so there needs to be a pretty high-speed and...

Obama on "iPods, iPads, Xboxes, and PlayStations": "Information Becomes a Diversion"

President Obama gave a commencement at Virginia's Hampton University over the weekend, and used part of his speech to criticize, as he's been doing publicly since his fantastic smack-down of Republican House members, the torrent of incomplete information or downright incorrect information that flows so easily in the modern 24-hour news cycle. He added in what seems at first to be a little dig at gadgetry--but really, he's not criticizing the hardware or software so much as the...

This Is Twitter, There Are Rules: How AFP Stole a Photographer's Work, Then Sued Him

The Russian Photos Blog has a really fantastic timeline of Agence-France Presse's interactions with one Daniel Morel, a photographer whose shots of Haiti immediately post-earthquake became the de rigeur illustrations of the trauma there. For the full, nearly minute-by-minute timeline, read the original post. I'll lay it out quickly so we can get to the discussion of Twitter as a news outlet.

Morel, a photographer formerly employed by the Associated Press, was in Port-au-Prince when the...

It's Official: Apple Has Become the Man

When the subject of cool, innovative brands comes up, it's a dead cert Apple gets a mention in the first five minutes. It's iconic, makes beautiful products, and has a wow factor that most tech companies would give their eye teeth for. In short, it sets a benchmark. Granted, it's been slated a bit recently for its draconian measures after one of its employees lost something in a bar, but it is almost solely responsible for tech becoming a sexy, must-have item. Each week, a new report shows...

From "Awww" to Awesome: "Babies" Doc Funds Incubators to Save 15M Infants

What film debuting today is like the BBC's Planet Earth but with oodles
more cuteness? One hint: It's not Iron Man 2. The awwwwww-inducing film would be Babies, a new documentary from Focus Features that follows four children around the world from their births to their first steps. For 18 months a team of French filmmakers headed by director Thomas Balmès traveled between the four little costars: Ponijao, who lives with eight siblings in a village in Namibia; Mari, an only child in...

Fishermen Score Restraining Order Against BP

Commercial fishermen may lose their livelihoods to the Gulf oil spill, but it's the little things that count, right? The United Commercial Fisherman's Association (UCFA) scored a temporary restraining order against BP this week, requiring the company to claim responsibility for hazardous chemical exposure oversight for fishermen involved in the oil spill cleanup effort.

The UCFA explains:

In order to protect their homes and livelihood, commercial fishermen in Louisiana and other Gulf States ...