David Lidsky's Blog, page 4702

If Privacy Is the New Celebrity, Then Ashton Kutcher Needs a New Career

The Internet is turning lots of nobodies into celebrities. The trouble is, they get all the downside of being famous--people harass them online--and none of the upside, like getting a better table at a fancy restaurant. Founders Fund's Sean Parker discusses the value of privacy, celebrity as a commodity and Katalyst CEO Ashton Kutcher's need to find a new business in this clip from Fast Company's Innovation Uncensored conference on April 21 in New York City.

To see more video highlights from...

Layar Launches Augmented Reality Search Engine Layar Stream

Last month Dutch AR master Layar brought us in-app shopping, and now it's gone all Casey Kasem on us. Launching today, Layar Stream is an "augmented reality content discovery engine," which lets you find out which apps are being used the most by people in your vicinity. So, if you're by the seaside, Beachfinder is probably the most popular, while city visitors may find Coffeeshop Finder or Foursquare the most popular.

The service works by creating a list of the most popular AR content in a...

WorkerExpress, a Startup to Innovate Construction Labor, Launches at the d.school Beta Trade Show

Last week, we saw how the Stanford d.school's new building was designed for innovation. This week, how the school converted into a trade show to give students an opportunity to showcase--and sell--their ideas.

WorkerExpress is a funded startup that is revolutionizing the construction labor market. We were founded by Pablo Fuentes, a Stanford Business School student, and Joe Mellin, an alum of the product design program. We are taking the LaunchPad class which has helped us refine our...

How Google Wave Got Its Groove Back

Google Wave, the real-time collaboration Web application that debuted to oohs and ahhs from developers at last year's Google I/O conference, met with a whole lot of "what do I use this for?" from actual users of its invitation-only preview release. In preparation for this year's I/O, Wave's seen several updates that could rekindle interest in the fascinating but confusing tool. If you haven't looked at Wave recently, here's what's new.

Wave Task-specific Templates

Wave now answers the...

Microsoft's Deskerity Project Combines the Powers of Pen, Touch, Gesturing, Voice

Fast Company checks in at the Silicon Valley Tech Fair with video of Microsoft's answer to the iPad.

We have stylus-controlled tablets and touchscreen tablets, but what about tablet devices that use both? Microsoft's Manual Deskerity project combines the powers of the pen, touch, motion sensing, and voice input on a Microsoft Surface device to create a versatile system that has nearly limitless applications for designers, artists, and anyone else who values precision in their tablets.

The...

Dumbphone Statistics: Oh Right, Not Everyone Has a Smartphone

Smartphones are the most exciting category in consumer electronics today, without question. They're exploding in both ubiquity and functionality, and are clearly the next big stage for computing. So it's understandable that we'd forget sometimes that, well, they barely make a dent in the mobile phone market. The number one smartphone maker in the country, RIM (BlackBerry), barely hits 8%. Apple? Nowhere to be found.

Dumbphones, the somewhat uncharitable name given to any phone without...

Google Goggles App Translates the Real World, So You Can Remain Monolingual Forever

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Google Goggles is an Android app that's part augmented reality, part scanner. Use it to take a picture of a product in a store, a barcode, album art, or lots of other things, and it'll look it up and offer links to shopping sites, Wikipedia, and Google Search results. It's very cool, even if sometimes the total incompetence of my Droid's camera makes it tough for Goggles to know what I'm pointing at. But Google just added a huge new feature to Goggles--on the fly translation.

This is a...

Facebook to Add Location Features "as Early as This Month," MacDonalds to Be First Partner

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AdAge reports, as have so many others over the years, that Facebook is preparing to launch location-based services as soon as this month. The impetus for this expose? Mack-D's. McD's? Sir MacIntosh of Donald's? Mickey-D's? That's it. That last one there.

As early as this month, the social-networking site will give users the ability to post their location within a status update. McDonald's, through digital agency Tribal DDB, Chicago, is building an app with Facebook would allow users to check...

Enterprise Users Are People Too: Google Apps Expanded to Include Picasa, Blogger, Reader, and More

After using Google Apps, you wonder why any company (especially any small company) would use anything else. The power and endless storage of Gmail, the simultaneous editing capabilities of Google Docs, the integrated group scheduling of Google Calendar--these are amazing products, and work really well in a business setting. But those few products were pretty much where Google Apps stopped. You're paying for normally free Google services--shouldn't you have access to everything Google offers...

Life in 2020: Your Dating History on Display and Other Faintly Disturbing Predictions

Frog Design forecasts our wired future--beautiful or HAL-ish?

Imagine 10 years from now, you order a Bacon and
Cheese Whopper, only for a monitor to tell you precisely how many
grueling miles you'll have to run to burn it off. Or someone just
glances at your shoes and knows where you bought them. Or consider
this: You walk into a bar and your entire dating history is thrown up
on display. Would you run for the hills? (I sure as hell would.)

Welcome
to 2020 as envisioned by Frog Design, a...