David Lidsky's Blog, page 4814

Indie Band Holy F**k Debuts New Album on ChatRoulette, of All Places

Canadian instrumental indie rockers Holy Fuck (their music is better than their name, I promise you) have decided to take an odd route when debuting their new album, Latin: they're streaming it on noted perversion-delivery service ChatRoulette.

The followup to their excellent 2007 album LP, to be titled Latin, won't be released until May 11. But many bands allow streaming previews of albums to drum up interest and excitement for a new album, often on MySpace, NPR (or, in Holy Fuck's case...

Mobile Apps Sales to Hit $17.5 Billion by 2012

Put it down to the iPad effect if you like, but it's not the whole story. A study commissioned by independent app store Getjar predicts that the mobile apps market will be worth $17.5 billion in just two years, with downloads up from 7 billion last year to 50 billion by 2012. The rocketing figures won't just increase the Apple share price, however, as the study expects a whole host of new app stores to appear over the coming months, although not all of them will survive in the long haul.

In...

Indie Band Holy F**k Debuts New Album on ChatRoulette, of all Places

Canadian instrumental indie rockers Holy Fuck (their music is better than their name, I promise you) have decided to take an odd route when debuting their new album, Latin: they're streaming it on noted perversion-delivery service ChatRoulette.

The followup to their excellent 2007 album LP, to be titled Latin, won't be released until May 11. But many bands allow streaming previews of albums to drum up interest and excitement for a new album, often on MySpace, NPR (or, in Holy Fuck's case, CBC...

Starbucks Sponsors Coffee-Cup Redesign Contest

Betacup asks designers to invent a recyclable cup for your morning joe.

Coffee is the second most popular drink in the world, after tap water, which means that the empty cappuccino cup on your desk will have plenty of friends when it inevitably gets to the landfill--58 billion of them get tossed every year in North America. Toby Daniels founded Betacup in May, 2009, to find a solution, and he just announced a major step: Starbucks has agreed to sponsor Betacup's contest to redesign the coffee...

Garmin Connect Returns to Kansas, Leaves SF Team Home Alone, Unemployed

Last month, the Garmin Connect team, a 15-strong band of software engineers, product managers and the like, were asked by the firm to relocate from San Francisco to Kansas. And, since they weren't particularly chuffed by the idea of leaving the West Coast, they've created a website that is part resume, part presentation.

The GC Team website is snark-free, but straightforward, listing their achievements and abilities. However, there's some chatter about why this has come to pass. Some...

Frank Gehry Mellows Out with Wood-Paneled Theater Design

The notoriously metallic starchitect goes back to his roots with a cheap, plywood design for the Signature Theater Company. Don't worry -- it still looks wild.

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I don't know what it is with architects and theater design these days (please, God, don't tell me something about "building-as-performance"), but I like it. Add to the pile (Herzog and de Meuron at the Met, REX/OMA in Dallas, Jean Nouvel in Copenhagen) Frank Gehry's home for the Signature Theatre Company.

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The Signature was supposed to...

Internet Browsing and TV Watching: A Match Made in Distraction Heaven

Nielsen conducted a survey recently to find out who exactly is going online while watching major TV events like the Oscars or Super Bowl--and discovered what those people are doing online in the first place.

Simultaneous web surfers and TV watchers are getting more and more common: viewership for major TV events may change, but simultaneous web use is consistently going up. In 2009, 12.8% of Super Bowl viewers and 8.7% of Oscar viewers browsed the internet, but in 2010, that number shot up to...

Google Nexus One Launches on AT&T, Head to Head With iPhone

Google announced today that they'll be shipping a new version of the Nexus One smartphone that's compatible with AT&T, firmly putting it up against the intra-network iPhone. Google, Apple: fight!

Google's Nexus One is a landmark in the history of Android phones. It's the first to be branded as a Google phone, though it's actually made by HTC; it's the first to be sold directly to consumers from Google's site, rather than through a retailer; and it's the sexiest Android phone yet, the only one...

Microsoft Finally Catches Up to the Competition With Internet Explorer 9

Today at Microsoft's Mix conference in Las Vegas, the company showed off the next generation of their venerable (and oft-maligned) web browser, Internet Explorer 9. It's a huge step in the right direction, but it will literally leave some users behind.

What Microsoft showed off was just a demo, a developer's build, but already IE9 is faster and more responsive to web standards than its predecessor, IE8. Many of us don't use IE and indeed haven't used it in years, favoring Firefox, Chrome...

Most Innovative Companies - Health Care

Sponsored by

by Erica Westly (additional reporting by Ellen McGirt and Chuck Salter)

Image courtesy of Intuitive Surgical

1. GE

Its Healthymagination program is investing $6 billion over the next several years in mobile scanners, digital information, and other innovations in health care. Top 50 No. 19

2...