David Lidsky's Blog, page 4820

Eye Candy: The Spellbinding Light Projections of Kit Webster

Webster turns into pixels into dazzling 3-D environments.

We've previously covered some amazing media facades, light projections on buildings, and some amazing interactive light shows. The artist Kit Webster has a similar MO: He usually uses LCD projectors in his pieces, but he works on a smaller scale. That allows him to create some pretty luscious illusions.

Enigmatica, Webster's most recent work, was presented this month in Port Melbourne Australia. Starting with a series of square frames...

Infographic of the Day: Comparing the 100 Largest Sites on the Internet

What types of sites get the most traffic?

If you took a guess at what sites get all the traffic online, you'd might guess that Google searches and social networking suck all our time online, and the rest goes to shopping. Actually, no.

To get a rough estimate of how the Internet is actually being used, the BBC charted the top 100 sites by unique users in January 2010, encompassing the UK, France, Germany,
Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil, US, and Australia.

There's also a couple...

Five Ways For Twitter's Advertising to Not Suck

Twitter is apparently due to bring an end to years of speculation about its money-earning plans by announcing an advertising platform today. Here's our guess, before the news presumably hits this afternoon, on how Twitter Ads should work. 

Twitter Ads Must Not Intrude

One of the joys of using Twitter compared to other social networking/life-casting services (and here I'm really imagining the ocular-assault of a typical MySpace page) is its absolute simplicity. This starts with the short length...

10 Workspaces That Inspire Creativity

The workspaces designed by Shubin Donaldson Architects need to be every bit as innovative as the creative companies that use them. Here are 10 offices from their new book that set the stage for groundbreaking work by advertising, graphics, post-production and special effects firms.

Almost Genius: Spokeless Bike Wheels

A wave of spokeless bike designs (more renderings than reality) prompts one question: why?

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Come on, guys: what did spokes ever do to you? It seems like every new bicycle prototype spinning around the blogosphere has one thing in common. Or rather, lacks it: spokes. For some reason, designers hate the things, coming up with one heavily stylized way after another to do away with hubs and spokes. Some mechanical engineers from Yale even caused a stir last month by actually building one.

But why...

New Appointments at Google, Apple, Show Depth of Enmity Between the Two

Tim Bray, legendary software developer and programmer, is off to Google. He announced his decision this morning, three weeks on from his resignation from Sun Microsystems, which came with a searing critique of Apple. Meanwhile, a key player on the Mountain View campus, RJ Pittman, worked his final day last week and is off to Cupertino. Confused? So are we--but mostly over how Apple and Google, former BFFs, have fallen out.

Bray, who was developer of Web Technologies at Sun, covered the...

Analysis: When Working Day's Done, iPhones, and Soon iPads, Light Up

Analysis of iPhone user trends show the devices get most play at evening time and also on the weekends, when they generate 7% more traffic than weekdays. Besides being useful for PR purposes, this shows business iPhone use still lags.

The data comes from a study by Localytics, who have been looking at app use on Apple's smartphone, and their figures are pretty clear: During the weekday iPhone users tend not to mess around with apps until much later in the day, but on the weekends app usage...

Why You Should Start a Company in... Philadelphia

It used to be, if you were serious about starting a tech company, you went to Silicon Valley. But emerging entrepreneurial hubs around the country are giving startup aspirants options. In this series, we talk to leading figures in those communities about what makes them tick. Here, part nine in our series.

When you look around the country, you see that second-generation entrepreneurs play a big role in thriving communities. They serve as mentors, cheerleaders and early capital sources...

Waiting for the Paris Metro? You Might Be in an Ikea Ad

Ikea takes over Paris subway stations with life-sized living rooms.

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Ride the Metro this week in Paris and you might get off the train to an odd sight: No, it's not the ol' dorm-room-recreated-on-the-lawn college prank, it's an ad. Ikea set up their furniture collections in a few busy stations (St. Lazare, Champs Elysées Clémenceau, Concorde, and Opéra), supplementing those rock-hard, gum-stained waiting benches with comfy and pristine (for now) Ektorp and Kalstad couches and Brasa floor...

China to Google's Partners: Prepare Back-Up Plans

The Chinese government is quickly stepping up its pressure on Google, and it's now extending the threats to Google partners, warning them that they have to stick to censorship rules even if google doesn't. They also need a backup plan for when Google gets the boot.

Late last week it seemed that the controversial affair was shifting into a higher gear as a Chinese minister reiterated the stubborn stance of the government using some of the strongest language used yet. But then, things got more...