David Lidsky's Blog, page 4754

Shanghai Corporate Pavilion at World Expo Designed by, uh, Americans [Video]

When the World Expo in Shanghai opens on May 1, some of America's leading design talent will be center stage. And not just in the American Pavilion.

If you want to see what state-of-the-art interactive experience design looks like, you'll have to hike on over to the Dream Cube, which is the Chinese corporate pavilion. That's where New York-based ESI Design, in collaboration with Chinese architectural firm Atelier FCIZ Architects, will dazzle fair goers with a building that changes color...

For MoMA's New Exhibition "Talk to Me," They'd Like You to Talk to Them

If MoMA's acquision of that "@" had you, too, asking WTF? this bit of news may help you make sense of it. An upcoming design and architecture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art will be focused on design and communication, and a show without it would leave out everything from email to emoticons to Twitter.

The exhibition, entitled Talk to Me, will open next July, and will demonstrate how design enables all kinds of conversations, according to senior curator of architecture and design Paola...

Twitter Finally Reveals Its Money-Making Plan: Promoted Tweets

Aside from a few small deals with Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft to integrate Twitter updates into search results, Twitter has held off announcing any kind of real monetization plan. The founders have said that they want to follow Google's path: create a product everyone wants to use, and then figure out a way to make money from it after. Today, the New York Times revealed exactly how Twitter plans to do that--at least, how they plan to start doing it.

Twitter calls this first step Promoted...

"Star Wars Uncut:" 472 Groups of Amateur Auteurs Reenact a Feature Length Classic

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Casey Pugh, who has worked at Boxee and Vimeo, sliced the film Star Wars into 15-second segments and asked fans and filmmakers to reproduce the scenes in their own style. Hundreds of people responded, and the film, named Star Wars Uncut, has been re-edited back into a feature-length film. This week, the
first trailer has been released.

[vimeo 10821312:]

At least 472 groups of people signed up to reproduce these scenes (some
scenes have three...

Zappos' Best Customers Are Also the Ones Who Return the Most Orders

Some heartening news for retailers who have a high returns rate from their online customers: The more goods a customer returns, the better he or she could be for your business. That's what online shoe store Zappos has found. People who returned half of their orders made the company more money. The store, which was bought last year by Amazon, and touts its free shipping and returns policy, claims that clients who buy its more expensive footwear have a 50% return rate. But the higher profit...

Cisco Releases Porky New Flip SlideHD Camcorder

Ever since Cisco acquired the makers of the Flip video camera last year, it's been pushing out new versions of its pocket camcorders on a regular basis. The latest variation is the $279.99 Flip SlideHD, which has added a nifty three-inch wide touchscreen to its "shoot 'n' share" abilities that allows you to watch what you've just shot.

It's chunkier than its elder brothers, which is not so much of a good thing. Perhaps, like Apple's iPad, Cisco has crushed the stone tablet that says "Gadgets...

Inside Microsoft's Kin Phones: Not a Dumbphone, Not Yet a Smartphone

Microsoft's Kin 1 and Kin 2 phones aren't exactly dumbphones, but they're not exactly smartphones, either. They're being marketed as social networking phones for the teen set (you can tell by the way the PR people showing them off are wearing weird thumb-shirts), and they're actually a giant step forward for that category--but the line between the Kin and its more advanced older brother, Windows Phone 7, is sometimes blurry.

First, the specs (or at least what we know of them at the moment,

The Best and Worst of Government Web Design

The Internet is a wasteland of abandoned Web sites, and nowhere is this more true than the ghost town of .Gov homepages forgotten by bureaucrats. However, with the election of our first tech-savvy president--forever twittering, YouTube addressing, and Facebook updating--comes a bold new precedent for public sector Internet activity. Just this week the White House asked techies and scientists from across the Web what the United States' next great technological achievement should be.

Hell Freezes Over, Opera Mini Now Available in Apple's App Store

Apple has a long history of rejecting apps that replicate or compete with its own first-party apps, including the Safari browser, iPod music player, and Mail email apps. Yet, somehow, Opera's Mini app was approved for the app store yesterday--and now it's available for everyone.

Opera Mini has been around for about five years as the mobile version of Opera, a multiplatform PC browser. The desktop version is very well regarded, and some of its key features (including Speed Dial, in which the...

Twitter Finally Reveals Monetization Plan: Promoted Tweets

Aside from a few small deals with Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft to integrate Twitter updates into search results, Twitter has held off announcing any kind of real monetization plan. The founders have said that they want to follow Google's path: create a product everyone wants to use, and then figure out a way to make money from it after. Today, the New York Times revealed exactly how Twitter plans to do that--at least, how they plan to start doing it.

Twitter calls this first step Promoted...