Can New York City be a major-league player in tech without a high profile IPO? City advocates think so, and point to the city’s “dash tech” and recent success versus other hubs Read more »
It’s a phone booth like you’ve never seen before. New York City is today launching hundreds of public smart screens to replace existing pay phones. The new platforms can do everything from provide directions to offer coupons to coordinate a disaster. Read more »
As large parts of New York City remain in a power blackout, local bars and stores are offering up their generators to help people stay connected. Here are some scenes. Read more »
A New York man who used Twitter to send fake news reports during Hurricane Sandy is one of the city’s biggest jerks. But should he also face criminal charges? Read more »
Uber’s attempt to expand its on-demand town car service in New York to the realm of taxis could have reached a roadblock, with The Verge reporting that the company is scaling back the city’s taxi service and asking drivers to return their electronic devices used to operate the Uber system. Read more »
Nissan will deliver a fleet of new taxicabs to New York City starting in 2013. The new model, dubbed the NV200 minivan, is less a traditional cab and more of a comfortable mobile office with more amenities, outlets and leg room than an office cubicle. Read more »
Hot Berlin startup Gidsy, which lets people find and book tours, lessons and other offline experiences, is opening the doors on a service in Los Angeles on Wednesday. Read more »
Fancy, a self-expression social site, is launching a new demand-driven commerce model today that will let vendors and retailers sign up to be a seller on any item fancied on the site. They will be able to conduct the transaction right on Fancy. Read more »
Design shopping site Fab.com is taking a big step toward becoming the Amazon of design with the introduction of five weekly specialty shops for categories like fashion, pets and food that will more than triple the number of products Fab offers at any given time. Read more »
McKay Brothers, a firm that sells high capacity links to trading firms, is connecting the financial districts of New York and Chicago with a network that aims to execute the fastest trades in the country. Instead of using fiber, though, McKay is taking to the airwaves. Read more »
New York City kicked off voting on Thursday on its third annual BigApps competition, which rewards apps that use its open data sets. But one of the most popular resources appears to be Foursquare, which is in use in more than half of the top apps. Read more »
In the past couple of months, New York has attracted former San Francisco startup Qwiki, PlaceIQ from Colorado and recent 500 Startups graduate Snapette of Boston, which spent the past half of a year in Silicon Valley. New York is becoming a destination for startups. Read more »
Does your kid want to play with unicorns? You might want to check out the goods at next week’s Toy Fair in New York, where toy makers will show off the latest-and-greatest augmented reality technology that animates once-static games, books, and toys. Read more »
NRelate, a small boot-strapped fellow New York City start-up, is growing quickly with its content marketing and recommendation widget and just eclipsed 20,000 publishers after a breakout year in 2011. NRelate focuses on medium and small publishers and blogs, helping them monetize and build more engagement. Read more »
Codecademy, which teaches users how to program for free with an interactive and social web application, has garnered more than 1 million users in less than five months. We talked to co-founder and CEO Zach Sims about how Codecademy started and where it’s going. Read more »
Apple’s new iBooks digital textbooks initiative has seen 350,000 downloads in just three days, according to new info. That’s a strong start for Apple’s expanded educational offerings, but the real question will be whether that can translate into long-term success. Read more »
This weekend in New York City, dozens of developers gathered for the second Cleanweb Hackathon, where programmers spent the weekend building mobile and web apps around new ways to manage energy. The event is the latest sign the ecosystem around clean technology is changing. Read more »
Anti-SOPA protesters are taking their cause to the streets on Wednesday, with protests scheduled in New York and San Francisco. We will cover the event in San Francisco, which will feature Ron Conway as a headline speaker, with a live video stream. Read more »
AT&T has turned on its 4G LTE service in 11 new markets, but that expansion may not be quite so big as it appears. AT&T is only covering large cities like San Francisco and New York partially, explaining why it’s only reached 74 million in coverage. Read more »
The Grand Central Apple Store doesn’t officially open until Friday, Dec. 9, but the company detailed what shoppers would find there in an early press release, and gave some New York-based media an early look inside. Here’s a peek behind the curtain. Read more »
Facebook announced Friday it will establish engineering operations in New York City in 2012. This will be the social networking company’s first engineering office outside of the west coast. “We want the next Facebook to start here in New York City,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Read more »
AT&T announced on Tuesday it’s extending free Wi-Fi to five more New York parks, part of the plan to bring Wi-Fi to 20 parks spread throughout the five boroughs of New York. Free Wi-Fi isn’t just good will; it’s a helpful tool in relieving cellular networks. Read more »
Come August 20 and 21, the next Instagram and Hipstamatic could emerge in New York City, ready to do battle in the increasingly tough photo app market. Those are the dates for the Photo Hack Day, billed as the largest photo hackathon for developers. Read more »
Wi-Fi provider Towerstream is turning its superfast Manhattan Wi-Fi zone into a distribution platform for daily deal apps in a bid to monetize its wireless network, the largest in Manhattan. The company is partnering with BlisMobile, which will handle the app distribution through its AppZone service. Read more »
New York City’s new Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne said New York City is trying to turn the city’s government into a platform that enables developers and individuals to take data about life in the metropolis and use it to create apps, services and other resources. Read more »
New York City has launched a “crowdsourcing” effort aimed at getting ideas from city employees to help the city function more efficiently. The program, called Simplicity, is being powered by Spigit, which makes a software platform that companies and governments can use to crowdsource ideas. Read more »
Some 76 percent of consumers watch video on their PC, says a new international study from IBM. But how do IBM’s numbers about the consumption side match with current stats on online video revenue? Read more »
It’s times like this I wish I still lived in Brooklyn. It looks like New Yorkers from Staten Island to the Bronx could eventually get Verizon’s FiOS TV service in their homes if regulators and city lawmakers approve. Verizon already offers its fiber to the home […] Read more »
