David Lidsky's Blog, page 4715

Amazon Slaps Penguin Across the Beak Over E-Book Pricing

You know when you meet a cute kitten, all fluffy, innocent and sweet...and when you stroke it it sinks four sharp teeth into your thumb? The sheer surprise of that is about the same as what Amazon's just done to Penguin books over pricing.

The Wall Street Journal has the full story, but it simplifies down very nicely to just two words: E-book sales. As part of the ongoing (if slightly forgotten) scrap over who tells who what price to sell e-books at, Amazon has just started to sell a number...

Shanghai World Expo 2010

For this year's world's fair, which runs until October 31, Shanghai has
set up a high-tech welcoming committee: an army of 5-foot-tall androids
named Haibao ("treasure of the sea"). The 70 million visitors expected
in town for the fair can direct questions -- and quirky requests -- to
the robots, which will be at the city's two airports and at major
venues. Beyond offering event and travel info (via a touch screen),
Haibao can take photos, make LCD faces, and greet visitors in six
languages...

A Playground Space Built For "Breaking Things," at Stanford's d.school

This week, Linda Tischler has revealed the ins and outs of Stanford's new d.school building. We asked the students to provide some insight on their new digs as well.

We're part of the "No Teacher Left Behind" d.school class and we're using the playground space in the d.school lobby to sit and discuss our reading of Clay Christensen's book, Disrupting Class. The modular space is fun because it can accommodate different group sizes and configurations easily. When play and movement are...

The Art of the Email Auto-Responder Message (I'm Away From the Office Until...)

You're about to go on vacation, so you dutifully set up the classic "Out of the office, will reply to your message when I get back" email auto-responder. While that auto-reply gives you a socially acceptable pass to do nothing about most incoming email for awhile, it doesn't make the nagging feeling that you're missing the one or two really important items go away. So, while you're at a resort in some Carrbbean paradise, you have to surreptitiously check your email for any ticking...

Linkin Park, T-Pain, and Justin Bieber Usher Record Labels Into Apps Biz

It's a dark time for the music industry. And that's not just because of the Black Eyed Peas' latest album.

Global record sales dropped 7.2% last year, due largely to huge declines in some of the world's biggest markets--the U.S. (down 10.7%) and Japan (down 10.8%). Physical sales around the globe plummeted 12.7%, somewhat expectedly. And digital sales, which rose 9.2% in 2009, still aren't enough to stop the bleeding (many say even digital sales are starting to slow, or worse,

Infographic of the Day: Which Baseball Teams Have the Best Fans?

Red Sox fans, prepare to break something; Yankees fans, you can continue your smug gloating.

The school year's almost ended, and that means student projects. Here's an infographic by Russ
Maschmeyer created for an information-viz class at New York's School of Visual Arts, taught by the New York Times' superb graphics director, Steve Duenes.

Marschmeyer decided to chart how rabid the fans of various baseball teams are, and to do that, he created the "Die Hard Index," a number that combines...

RIM and Apple Power Smartphone Sales

The International Data Corporation has outed its newest analysis of the global cell phone market, and it shows the gadgets are selling well. In fact, smartphones in particular may help shoo the lingering post-recession clouds in the industry.

The headline data from IDC is that the global cell phone market grew 21.7% in the first quarter of 2010, reversing the market shrink that happened this time last year. It's a sign the economy is rebounding, as cell phones are something of a luxury good...

Users Hate Facebook's Privacy Settings, Facebook Yawns Tauntingly in Bed of Cash

Uh oh, it looks like as well as U.S. governmental types, Facebook's own user base is beginning to get angry about the site's recent thrusts to redefine individual Net privacy. Does Mark Zuckerberg actually express concern? Nope.

The subtlety in the current complaints comes from Facebook's recent change to Facebook Pages, the replacement for the old Community system. When Facebook rejigged this part of its social net, it redirected your "membership" of communities to what new Facebook Page it...

Transform iPad Into a Pluckable, 21st-Century Harp with Squiggle

A novel concept for new breed of musical instrument.

Given all the amazing musical-instrument apps on iPhone, it was only a matter of time until someone designed a truly novel instrument app for the iPad. Winner for the coolest among the crop of early entrants: Squiggle, an iPad app in development that allows you to draw lines across the screen, which then become strings that can be plucked like a futuristic harp. 

Created by Henry Chu of pill
& pillow, a Hong Kong design studio, you lay...

What Happens to Offshore Drilling After the Gulf Oil Spill?

"It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don't cause spills. They are technologically very advanced." That's not a joke--President Obama actually said that on April 2, soon after he announced a plan to expand offshore oil and gas exploration. What a difference a few weeks makes. In a nutshell: BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded,  approximately 210,000 gallons of oil are now seeping into the Gulf of Mexico daily,  animals, wetlands, fisheries, and local tourism...