Sprint turns up LTE in 21 new cities; preps for big 4G push this summer
Apart from Los Angeles, this week’s expansion mainly targets smaller cities and towns, but Sprint is going urban once again this summer with a big 120-city push. Read more »
Which borough has the fastest 4G in NYC? Sorry Manhattan, it’s the Bronx
RootMetrics recent New York City tests reveal that the Bronx game out on top among the five boroughs in mobile data performance. Of the four major carriers, AT&T’s networks were the fastest. Read more »
NYC approves one-year pilot of taxi e-hailing
New York is getting on board with e-hailing services for taxi cabs though it’s doing so slowly. The Taxi and Limousine Commission approved a one-year pilot program that will allow companies like Uber, Hailo and others to offer taxi hailing from a smartphone. Read more »
Office space search engine 42Floors lands in NYC with $5M in new funding
42Floors, a Y Combinator-backed startup, on Friday announced an expansion to New York and a $5 million Series A round of funding. The company, which launched in San Francisco in May, provides businesses with a search engine for finding office space to lease and sublease. Read more »
East vs West: Tumblr’s Karp on why New York is no ‘Valley Jr.’
photo: Monaco Media Forum
Start spreading the news — New York’s buzziest new media start-ups draw from a richer cultural tapestry that can lure engineering talent from Palo Alto, Gotham founders say. Now they just need a massive exit. Read more at paidContent »
Thrive Capital’s Joshua Kushner working on healthcare startup
photo: David Yellen
Joshua Kushner, the well known founder of New York-based Thrive Capital, an investor in hot startups such as Instagram, Fab, CodeAcademy and Warby Parker is working on his second startup, that is said to be focused on the healthcare industry. It is all very hush-hush. Read more »
NYC co-working spaces and startups step up for Sandy refugees
photo: Secret Club
New York co-working spaces and startups are opening their doors to workers who are either displaced from their offices or can’t get to work because of the crippled transit system. Read more »
New York startups can compete to get a fiber connection
photo: New York City
New York startups can apply to be part of a new Fiber Challenge, which will award 240 business with a fiber hook up to their building. The competition is being done in partnership with Time Warner Cable and Cablevision, which will be wiring up the winners. Read more »
Banking industry opens new FinTech accelerator in London
Following a successful first two years for the original FinTech Innovation Lab in New York, Accenture and its banking pals are trying to replicate the scheme in the world’s top financial center. Read more »
Thrive Capital raises $150M for third fund
photo: David Yellen
Thrive Capital, the New York VC firm that has invested in Instagram, Fab, Warby Parker and GroupMe, has raised a third fund totalling $150 million. Thrive, led by 27-year-old Joshua Kushner, will continue to look at Internet and media companies at any stage. Read more »
Does Hailo have Uber on the run in New York’s taxi wars?
Two of the biggest taxi service startups are preparing to go head-to-head as San Francisco’s Uber and London’s Hailo gear up for launch in New York. Who will win? Evidence so far suggests it’s a tough game, but the British company may just have the edge. Read more »
What can anybody do to make London better for tech IPOs?
photo: Zef Nikolla
European technology companies looking to go public usually desert their home turf and head to the U.S. — creating an echo chamber that has made some local investors angry. Now reports suggest that the British government may be trying to reverse that trend. Can it work? Read more »
TechStars NYC leader David Tisch steps down
David Tisch, the managing director of TechStars New York, is stepping away from his duties to pursue new projects. He will remain active with the accelerator program. His replacement has not been announced yet. Read more »
SecondMarket adds former U.S. Congressman Scott Murphy to board
New York-based SecondMarket Thursday announced that the company was adding former U.S. Congressman Scott Murphy to its board of directors. Murphy, an entrepreneur, was previously managing director at Advantage Capital, a venture capital and small business financing firm. Read more »
New York starts turning payphones into free Wi-fi hotspots
Payphones, those relics of the pre-cellphone era, may just get a new lease on life in New York. The city is testing a new pilot program in which it installs free Wi-Fi on select payphone kiosks. It is starting with ten kiosks in three boroughs. Read more »
First London, now Paris: Metro gets free WiFi
photo: Flickr / bredgur
Paris is following London by starting to provide free wireless access to subway travelers, thanks to a new initiative from WiFi service company GOWEX. With similar moves in New York as well, is this boost in transport connectivity a trend? Read more »
Red hot Codecademy gets $10m from Index and KPCB
Education startup Codecademy — which promises to help anyone learn to program with its game-like online courses — is stepping up to the international market with a $10 million round of funding from new backers including Index Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. Read more »
What’s the biggest thing TechStars NYC looks for in a startup?
Consumer startups angling for a spot in TechStars NYC better have a plan for earning users. And it better not involve the buzz words “social” and “viral.” Read more »
AT&T starts replacing 2G with HSPA in NYC
photo: Flickr / Joey Parsons
It looks like we were right about AT&T sunsetting its 2G networks to make way for more mobile broadband capacity. On Wednesday, Ma Bell announced it would ‘refarm’ PCS spectrum in New York City currently used by its GSM voice networks for “3G and 4G” services. Read more »
Google kickstarts CornellNYC Tech school with free space
Google is offering 22,000 square feet of free space in its New York headquarters to help CornellNYC Tech university get underway. The space will allow CornellNYC Tech to begin offering courses this fall as opposed to waiting for the completion of its school on Roosevelt Island. Read more »
Forget London v Berlin: Euro startups must join forces
It’s fun pitching cities like Berlin against the Valley, but it’s an artifical contest that makes little sense these days. Two investors believe it’s time to ditch the territorial debate and start building European startups that cross borders. Read more »
EBay puts down roots in NYC with data-focused tech center
EBay is putting down roots in New York and has bought up a 35,000 square foot space. The retailer is announcing that it has purchased an entire floor in the Flat Iron district where it will house 200 people in a new technology center of excellence. Read more »
5 New York startups to watch
New York’s start-up community relived its fondest science fair memories Thursday with the inaugural NY Tech Day, a showcase for 180 start-ups that demonstrated some of the breadth and depth of the local tech scene. The event packed in more than 4,500 attendees. Read more »
Freelancers Union to expand health insurance offerings
Thanks to $340 million in no or low-cost loans authorized by the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), the Freelancers Union is expanding its health insurance offerings for independent workers, offering a new low-cost option to those in New York, New Jersey and Oregon. Read more »
Sign Of The Times: Google Graffiti Pops Up In NYC
Everyone wants to chime in on Google’s privacy polices including, it seems, graffiti artists. In recent weeks, an unflattering version of th… Read more at paidContent »
Turing Fellowship works to fill New York’s engineering pipeline
New York’s got an abundance of most everything but engineers are increasingly a precious commodity. But the NYC Turing Fellows Program is revving up in its second year to really take on the problem and start feeding more tech talent to the exploding start-up scene. Read more »
Hacking solutions to the world’s resource problem
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 »
New York protest takes PIPA/SOPA fight to senators
Members of New York’s tech community, a couple thousand strong, braved the winter chill and gathered outside the offices of New York senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand to protest the PIPA and SOPA legislation Wednesday, calling it a potentially crippling set of bills. Read more »
New York rising: Brooklyn gets its first VC fund
Charlie O’Donnell, a principal at First Round Capital in New York, thinks Brooklyn is increasingly where the action is, and he’s launching the first Brooklyn-based venture capital fund to help kick-start companies on the other side of the East River. Read more »
The latest to target the smart energy home: Time Warner Cable
The 2012 CES show hasn’t even officially kicked off and already the smart energy home has emerged as a key target for a variety of sectors, including telcos, big box retailers, startups, chip companies and now cable operators like Time Warner Cable. Read more »
AT&T overbuilding LTE in 2011, taking on the Big Apple
Its 2011 LTE build goal already complete, AT&T is expanding the new super-high-speed network into more markets in the remaining days of the year, starting with New York City. AT&T’s CFO says the expansion is being driven by ever-increasing mobile broadband demand. Read more »
Facebook to open engineering office in New York City
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 »
What happens when journalism is everywhere?
The authorities in New York are discovering what Egypt also learned — that it’s not as easy to regulate or arrest journalists when everyone is a journalist. But while that may make our lives a little more complicated, it is fundamentally a good thing for society. Read more »
Bambuser exec streams live from New York, for 24 hours
Remember Justin Kan, the Justin.tv founder who broadcasted much of his life online to kickstart his company? Hans Eriksson from Swedish Justin.tv competitor Bambuser tries to bring back some of that early live streaming spirit with a 24-hour live tour of New York this week. Read more »
East coast companies need to win at home in talent war
Charlie Kim, CEO of NextJump, who just organized the largest engineering job fair in New York said the challenge for local companies is to win the talent recruiting wars, which comes down competing at home, playing for the long term and getting top executives involved. Read more »
TechStars’ second New York class shines in their debut
TechStars New York, now a TV brand thanks to a new Bloomberg series, graduated its second class today of would-be break out stars. The class shows that the program is still churning out a lot of quality, with a pretty polished group of graduates debuting. Read more »
AT&T shows more free Wi-Fi love to NYC parks
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 »
NYC SeedStart Media class pushes crowdsourcing, commerce
NYC SeedStart, a New York incubator program founded by NYC Seed along with a handful of VC partners, just graduated its summer class focused on media. The seven startups cover a range of topics, but a few themes emerged like crowdsourcing, commerce and content management. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Building a better paywall: strategies for monetizing news content
The impact of digital technology has shattered long-established monopolies and ways of making money in the newspaper publishing industry. Today, publishers must find ways to subsidize content-creation costs directly, and this report examines a few different approaches, from more flexible paywalls to charging users directly for access and mimicking the business models of other industries, such as online gaming. Companies mentioned in this report include Ford, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Why Index believes Israel is about to have its moment
Index Ventures partner Saul Klein is a champion of Europe’s tech scene, from London to Ljublana. Now he’s in to bat for Israel — a country he says is ready to set aside its history of security, pornography and gambling to become the next great innovation hub. Read more »
![By United States Congress [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AScott_Murphy_official_photo.jpg){kind=link}