David Lidsky's Blog, page 4749

The Johnny Cash Project: A "Living Portrait"

Infographics guru Aaron Koblin is crowdsourcing a music video for the country legend.

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Infographics wizard Aaron Koblin has pulled the sheet off of his latest project: a crowdsourced music video for the Johnny Cash song, "Ain't No Grave"--the title track off the last album that Cash recorded before his death.

Anyone can contribute at the Web site. The project basically asks participants to redraw every single frame of archival footage of Johnny Cash--thus building up a personalized, living...

Milan 2010: Kartell Collaborates With Design All-Stars

Designs by Tokujin Yoshioka, Front, and Philippe Starck.

Fresh from the Milan Furniture Fair, Kartell, the Italian design firm specializing in high-end plastics, has send FastCompany.com its new designs for 2010.

This year, the firm has tapped Tokujin Yoshioka as its main event. The Japanese master of minimalism created Kartell's display booth (pictured above)--festooning the space with a lattice of plastic "snowflakes":

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But in terms of things you can actually buy, Yoshioka also created the...

Chirp Update: Twitter Gut Checks Foursquare With "Points of Interest," Announces "Places," Introduces Will.i.am

UPDATE 3: Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas just came to the stage. "The Internet has been around for a while, but it has yet to produce the next Michael Jackson," says Will.i.am. Um, have you heard of Justin Bieber?

UPDATE 2: Ryan Sarver, director of platform, has now taken the stage to talk about--you guessed it-- Twitter's platform,
and
says that there are over 100,000 registered applications on
Twitter's platform. He says what Twitter is focused on now is the
"concept of location,...

Moon Men to Obama: Your NASA Plans Suck Space Void

Not everyone's pleased with NASA's future, as defined by the Obama-led new fiscal plans for the space agency...and three particularly significant chaps would just assume tell him to shove it up Uranus. They're names are Armstrong, Lovell, and Cernan. Ring any bells?

Yup, that'll be Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and Eugene Cernan. In order they're the first man on the Moon in 1969, the first American to fly to space four times (twice to the Moon) and the last man to leave the Moon, in 1972. They...

Virgin Media Celebrates 10th Anniversary of U.K. Broadband With Friggin Lasers [UPDATED]

The installation, "Speed of Light," was created by Fast Company favorite United Visual Artists.

UPDATE: A video of the show is finally up; check it out:

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This year, apparently, is the 10th anniversary of broadband in the U.K., and Virgin Media is celebrating in high style, with a sprawling laser-light installation, on view in London through April 19.

"Speed of Light" is the brain child of United Visual Artists, whose work we've featured regularly. This time, however, with...

Milan 2010: Kartell Collaborates with Design All-Stars

Designs by Tokujin Yoshioka, Front, and Philippe Starck.

Fresh from the Milan Furniture Fair, Kartell, the Italian design firm specializing in highend plastics, has send FastCompany.com its new designs for 2010.

This year, the firm has tapped Tokujin Yoshioka as its main event. The Japanese master of minimalism created Kartell's display booth (pictured above)--festooning the space with a lattice of plastic "snowflakes":

[image error]

But in terms of things you can actually buy, Yoshioka also created the...

Wanted: The Most Minimal Chair in the World

Vitra unveils a strange new invention, comprised simply of a nylon strap.

The German furniture-firm Vitra is usually known for high-end stuff you'd pass down through the generations. But they've gone into a completely different--and strange--direction with Chairless, a "seating device for the modern nomad." Designed by Alejandro Aravena, it's simply a strap that you put around your knees and back. So that you can lean back, with maximum discomfort. Apparently, Aravena was inspired by a...

Intel Reveals Atom CPU's Future: Powering Just About Everything

Intel just revealed its long term plans for the Atom range of mini-sized power-efficient CPUs: Partnering with other silicon to make a complete system-on-a-chip for smart embedded computing. That means the power of an Atom will enable complex tasks that probably wouldn't have been possible before in applications such as car infotainment systems, Net-connected refridgerators--essentially every sort of
"low grade" device that has a dab of computing power added to it.

The company's press...

Save the Hollywood Sign or Turn It Into a Hotel?

Remember a few months back when Los Angeles mounted a bizarre campaign to protect the land behind the Hollywood sign by temporarily draping the letters with messages like SALLYWOOD, SAVE THE POOD and eventually SAVE THE PEAK? Danish architect Christian Bay-Jorgensen thinks we should embrace development, and he's designed a hotel that will wrap around the iconic letters to prove it.

His concept to turn the sign into a hotel would require building new letters (perhaps the old ones could travel...

Infographic of the Day: The Entrepreneur's State of Mind in 2010

A survey of self-described entrepreneurs, and their outlook for 2010.

Recently, the blog Grasshopper conducted a survey, "The Entrepreneur State of Mind," and the results have now been summarized in an infographic by Jason Lankow of Column Five Media.

The picture it paints adds some demographics to a fairly amorphous set of people. As you'd expect, entrepreneurs are largely youngish, broke, hungry--and probably far more optimistic than your average bear. The weirdest thing was that 70% are...