David Lidsky's Blog, page 4844

Calling All Oil Sheiks: Here's the $160 Million Floating Island of Your Dreams

With its 114-foot "beach," Wally's solar-powered megayacht is the billionaires' version of South Padre Island -- just in time for Spring Break!

Wally--a company that makes stunning modern yachts--and the French fashion house Hermes have teamed up to design a new boat: The appropriately named WHY, a full-blown solar-powered island.

Just unveiled at the Abu Dhabi Yacht Show (of course), the WHY ist 190 feet long and a whopping 125 feet wide--making it a dream for any billionaire who can't find...

Augmented (Fashion) Reality

Earthquakes, global warming, patent lawsuits... it's all a bit much, sometimes. Even a sober-minded "moral guide to the future" needs a break. So today, we talk about fashion.

Fashion may sound like an odd subject for a futurist to think about, but it's often an indicator of broader cultural trends around sexuality, material technology, gender roles, and money. Moreover, it is in many ways the polar opposite of the kinds of long, slow trends that I tend to think about, which makes it...

How Will We Learn to Use the Multi-Touch Interfaces of the Future?

A new system of icons for explaining multi-touch interfaces makes you wonder: Is there a better solution around the corner?

Learning the iPhone is pretty simple, because there aren't that many gestures that the iPhone actually recognizes--pinch and zoom, drag and scroll, tap and select. But you can bet that the multi-touch interfaces of the coming years will be far more complex, involving an entirely new grammar of movement. And presents a formidable challenge for any graphic designer...

E.U. Legislator's Data Privacy Concerns Could Kill E.U. Street View

You may have digital chills when pondering how much data Google collects about you, but the legislators in the E.U. are having serious spine-quakes, and are trying to regulate. An unexpected side-effect may be the death of E.U. Street View.

This tussle has been in the news recently, spurred by some maneuvers in the E.U.'s government about how long Google is permitted to store data about European citizens. The Euro types have particularly focused on Google Street View, and the 12-month...

Mobile Boarding Pass Use Up Twelve-fold

There's got to be a graph somewhere for the projected figures for mobile boarding pass usage--and boy, is that red line going to be a steep, north face of the Eiger-esque uphill trek. Trinity Mobile has just announced a 1,200% increase in the use of mobile boarding passes by airline passengers in the past year. While 2008 saw just 50,000 travelers take advantage of the technology, which works by using a scanner to read the QR code directly off the display of your smartphone, in 2009, that...

The Real Strength of Google Buzz? It's a Giant Collaborative Sandbox

Three weeks ago, Bradley Horowitz, Google's VP of Product Marketing, made it clear that Google is open to providing access to Buzz as a separate product as well as keeping it integrated with Gmail. It's a shame Google failed royally at locking down privacy concerns prior to getting this product launched. Now they have to make product development decisions that react to bad PR rather than working to deliver an integrated Buzz to strengthen their overall social Web position. And no bones...

Want to Know When the Israeli Army Will Knock Down Your Door? Check Facebook

You know when your boss has a quiet word with you about using Facebook on company time? That's nothing compared to the hell an Israeli soldier is now in: He Facebooked details of an upcoming IDF raid. And forced its cancellation.

"On Wednesday we clean up Qatanah, and on Thursday, god willing we come home" is part of the offending text posted by the un-named soldier on his Facebook status update. He also revealed the particular Israeli Defense Force unit that would be heading into this...

A Cheat Sheet for Building Great Neighborhoods

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In municipalities across the country, parking lots are getting reincarnated as everything from outdoor food markets to condos. But those are individual projects. In Long Island--itself a region so caked with traffic that people refer to its central highway, the Long Island Expressway, as one long parking lot--an ambitious plan to convince developers to infill thousands of acres of parking lots with stores and even homes is underway.

The Long Island Index (LII),
an advisory group that...

Voodoo Doughnut: Getting Noticed in a Crowded Market

If you're curious, check out Voodoo Doughnut and Zipcar--both businesses have managed to stand out brilliantly in crowded, mature marketplaces. My favorite book on the topic of standing out is Seth Godin's Purple Cow--it's a must-read. (Until Amazon delivers it, read the excerpt.) If you're concerned about standing out personally (as in a job interview or college essay) rather than organizationally, check out a podcast I recorded about "Making You Stick." (I know, the title is unfortunate....

Does Marketing Your Business on Facebook Increase your Slice of the Cake?

So, you've got your own business and you wonder whether promoting it on social media is worth its while, or just a waste of time. Utpal M. Dholakia, associate professor of marketing at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business is probably the best-placed person to answer that question. He set up a Facebook page for Dessert Gallery, a popular café in Houston, and found customers way more eager to respond when social media became part of a marketing campaign.

Before creating...