David Lidsky's Blog, page 4821

Now Your Intimate Birthday Party Can Go Viral!

Due to be launched this week on Facebook, Mashup Arts lets you create your own birthday cards (or any other date you want to mark) using videos, photos and music. While not the most sophisticated of apps--its typefaces leave a lot to be desired--you can see Mashup becoming seriously popular in a very short time. And here's why.

It's the kind of app that you'll use to create the invitation for a party whose details that you put up on your Facebook page. You think that only your friends will be...

Ad Dollars Go Digital

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Remember that time you were all like, "Sure the Internet's cool, but no one's making money?" Psyche!

Spending for online advertising (up 18%) will outpace print ad spending for the first time ever, Outsell Inc. reports. While movies, TV, and radio spending dropped almost four percent, search engine pages were the biggest winners here, with a 39% increase in ad revenue. Google, in other words, is hiring.

Infographic: Rob Vargas

Plastic Logic Que Gets Delayed at Worst Possible Time

Just as Apple puts up some impressive pre-order numbers for its iPad, Plastic Logic comes forth with some unfortunate news about its own Que: the slick-looking ebook reader is being delayed until summer.

The Que is an interesting reader, with its focus on business--in the greyscale world (heyo!) of ebook readers, features like Microsoft Outlook support, full integration with BlackBerry, and the ability to edit Word and PDF documents are impressive and unusual. But in the wake of the iPad...

iPad Sales: 120,000 Estimated Sold in First Day of Pre-Order

After the iPad officially opened to pre-order on Friday, CNN took a sample of iPad and other Apple product purchasers to try to get a glimpse at how exactly the fabled tablet is doing in sales. The conclusion? Damn well--but that's not the whole story.

Based on a sampling, CNN estimates the total product sales at Apple's online store to be about 125,000 on Friday. Once you subtract the average sales of 16,500 and multiply by the average number of iPads bought (1.1), you come up with just shy...

Netflix Ditches Beat-Our-Recommendation-System Contest Due to Privacy Questions

Netflix's grassroots competition to best its recommendation algorithm was a bit popularity booster for the company--but thanks to concerns over privacy (backed up by one troubling example), the company has decided to kill the contest.

Netflix's recommendation engine can be a little wonky. (I know the film Big Fan is about football, and stars comedian Patton Oswalt, but it's also a painful drama written and directed by the guy who wrote The Wrestler, and it's an exceptionally bleak and dark...

Behind the Music: Devendra Banhart's Visual Art Takes Center Stage

The Us Weekly readers who know freak-folk musician Devendra Banhart as the hippie-haired beardo on the arm of Natalie Portman probably won't recognize him now. The Portman thing ended a while ago, for one. Plus he's wearing glasses these days, prescribed to him when he started getting headaches from poring over his miniscule drawings for a recent art exhibition, he explains in a call from his home in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. Also, he'll begin a tour next week to support...

Do Sharks Need Protection From Us?

Used in everything from soup to nutritional supplements and skincare products, sharks are a multi-billion dollar, global, mostly unregulated industry. Now conservationists want to declare eight species endangered.

With a powerful torpedo-shaped body almost the size of a bus, the ability to sniff out one drop of blood in 25 gallons of water--or up to three miles away--and fearsome toothy jaws, it's no wonder the very thought of sharks can send shivers up the spine. (Cue the theme music from...

Only 10 Tickets Left to Innovation Uncensored!

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No joke: this is your last chance to get a ticket to attend Fast Company's Innovation Uncensored conference on April 21.

Who will be there? Along with the editors and writers from this magazine (which is being honored as a finalist for ASME's Magazine of the Year), you'll get direct access to people from the inspired companies that you read
about in Fast Company and FastCompany.com every day. Here's the lineup:

Mark Parker, CEO, NIKESusan M. Lyne, CEO, GILT GROUPESean Maloney EVP/GM, INTEL ...

You Saw the Exhibition, Now Buy the Art

The Guggenheim is auctioning off the works displayed in its recent exhibition, Contemplating the Void.

Recently, we brought you a slideshow preview of a lovely exhibition at the Guggenheim, Contemplating the Void, which runs through April 28. In it, the Guggenheim invited 200 artists and designers to imagine radical installations for the interior of the museum--fantastical ideas for turning the famous central atrium into something entirely new.

Well, if you liked a piece from the show, you...

WANTED: The JakPak, a Jacket That Converts Into a Tent

Finally! Our wildest dreams for hobo-tech can now be had for $250.

As a regular reader of FastCompany.com, you know that we keep sharp about developments in hobotech: From hobo-conventions for techies to rolling hobo shelters. So it's with great excitement that we bring you the JakPak, a jacket that converts into a tent.

Previously, we'd only seen student concepts of this sort of idea. But the JakPak--pardon the egregious, vaguely pornographic name--will be available for $250 this spring.

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