The NanoBusiness 2005 event, held last week at the New York Marriott Financial Center, attracted little or no attention from the MSM (mainstream media). In fact, a search at Google News didn't turn up any MSM links to New York nanotech news, only a short preview of the conference from a site called Monsters & Critics:

"While applications for the technology are wide open and venture capital dollars are readily available - many of the companies assembled at the NanoBusiness Conference 2005, a trade show held here wherein nanotechnologists are rubbing elbows with each other and Wall Street types - the challenges are great for the industry, which is still in its infancy."

A few tech sector publications, however, did provide coverage of the nanotech conference keynote speech from Bell Labs president Jeffrey Jaffe: Information Week, PC Magazine and Red Herring.

JupiterResearch recently launched a podcasting service, called JupiterResearch Conversations, that will feature regular podcasts from the company's technology analysts:

"JupiterResearch's podcasts feature conversations with JupiterResearch analysts about key topics relating to the Internet and emerging consumer technologies. The first podcast, moderated by David Schatsky, senior vice president of JupiterResearch, is a conversation between senior analyst Gary Stein and research director David Daniels, on direct marketing online, and explores the best practices of paid search and e-mail marketing."

Jupiter's podcasting experiment owes at least a small debt to the efforts at IT Conversations, which was one of the first sites to offer high-quality audio content from technology Big Thinkers.

Viacom's stock price is down 18% over the past 12 months, but Sumner Redstone's paycheck is bigger than ever, and that's got shareholders rankled, says the New York Daily News. The news of Redstone's "mega payday" was especially irksome to CBS employees, who labor in the part of Viacom's media empire that is experiencing the most turmoil.

For those keeping track, the 82-year-old Redstone pulled in $56 million last year, a hefty 58% increase from the previous year. His left-hand and right-hand men, too, had nice paydays, with each of them pulling in $52 million last year.

MIT Technology Review has been sponsoring Innovation Futures, a "predictive marketplace" focused on technological innovation as it relates to economic growth. It's similar in nature to the futures markets for political elections, which claim to predict the outcomes of elections with uncanny precision. If enough people believe it's true -- and are willing to put their money where their mouth is, it must be true... Or something like that. Anyway, it's worth checking in now and then to see how popular sentiment is shifting:

64% predict that more than 7.0 million satellite radio receivers will ship in 2005

53% think that approximately 15% of US households will have an HDTV by the end of 3Q05

44% think that SIRIUS will have between 2.5 million and 3.0 million subscribers by the end of 2005

36% of those polled believe that there will be 2.51 million to 2.75 million VoIP US subscribers by the end of 2005

By now, stories of iPod subway muggings are nothing new. The New York Daily News, though, has apparently found a new twist on the same ol' story: three urban teenagers tried to steal a subway commuter's iPod only to be busted a few minutes later by a Manhattan cop who happened to be sitting a few feet away.

Gotham Gazette highlights a number of blogs that post regular updates on the plans of Big Box retailers to set up shop in the city. The blogs include The Neighborhood Retail Alliance, Big Cities Big Boxes and the Wal-Mart Free NYC Coalition.

As might be imagined, there's a predominant anti-Big Box ethos at work here, especially when it comes to Wal-Mart.

On Memorial Day, the New York Post splashed a "Big Brother" story about the NYPD across the front page:

"Big Brother really will be watching. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has told top police brass that he wants to put up about 400 surveillance cameras on high-crime and high-traffic streets to catch crooks in the act, even if cops are not there. In the next few weeks, police officials are expected to give Kelly a list of roughly 50 areas where they think cameras should be placed."

Over at the Village Voice site, we almost did a double-take.. Looks like the Village Voice has outsourced its online real estate coverage to top-flight NYC real estate blog Curbed. It may not be a lucrative deal, but surely is an example of how a niche content Web site can make some money without counting on online advertising dollars to pay the bills.

Anyway, Curbed fans (and we're one of 'em) should check out the 'Hoodwinked contest that the site is sponsoring over the Memorial Day Weekend:

"Here's How it Works: You email us the specific boundaries, name, and a detailed description of a New York City (all boros welcome) neighborhood of your creation... You may rename an existing 'hood, but you are encouraged to create your own. The more detailed the description, the better."

As seen in the print edition of New York Magazine -- online grocer FreshDirect is summering in the Hamptons this year:

"FreshDirect introduces summer delivery in the Hamptons. Go to the beach, not the grocery store. Order your food online from FreshDirect."

There's even a convenient drive-thru pickup location in Riverhead, just minutes from the L.I.E. -- "great for both The Hamptons and the North Fork."

The Web is starting to look a lot more like TV, according to The New York Times, and that's great news for marketers who once were afraid to venture online. There will soon be all-video Web sites, a greater concentration of traditional "offline" brands appearing online, and more cases of consumers staying glued to the monitor for 20 minutes, even 1 hour, at a time, as they watch video clips over high-speed broadband connections.

There are finally some signs of life in New York's early-stage VC market! Early stage investment group New York Angels recently announced two new angel financing deals: MediaTile and Spotlight Data. In addition, New York Angels made follow-on investments in three portfolio companies -- Content Directions (CDI), Zero-G and BioScale.

Over the past 18 months, membership in New York Angels has increased from 20 to 54 -- a sign that either the tech sector has bounced back, or that well-heeled private investors are tired of speculating in real estate deals.

Tom Foremski, a blogger journalist with SiliconValleyWatcher, fresh off a week of events and meetings in New York City (including the Syndicate Conference), discusses some topics that should be front-of-mind for any "successful micro-media mogul." There's talk of the "furious pace of M&A activities in the media sector" -- as well as other topics of lesser importance (how to avoid being mistaken for a humble blogger during a midtown power lunch).

Crain's New York reports that About.com has signed a two-year deal with comparison shopping site Kayak.com to offer readers online travel information:

"In a first-of-its-kind deal for Manhattan-based About.com, an online consumer information network that was bought in March by the New York Times, Kayak.com will serve as its 'premier booking partner.' Visitors to About’s travel pages will find a box where they can enter basic information on a planned trip; they will then be connected to Kayak’s site. Links to Kayak will also be embedded in articles about destinations."

There's a high-powered team at Kayak -- some senior-level execs from Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia.

Eugene Hernandez, editor-in-chief of indieWIRE, draws a link between the world of independent blogs and the world of independent films. Hernandez, who will be teaching a class at The New School on American independent films, hints at the impact of blogs on the future success of underground NYC films:

"A peculiar hallmark of New York's cinematic counterculture is the role that the city's intense, sophisticated audience has played in pushing once-fragile films like ''Open Water'' and ''Garden State'' into prominence. Often, small movies that break out have taken root on a single screen at the Angelika Film Center, Film Forum or Lincoln Center, where an enthusiastic reception has opened the door to a wider audience in other cities and on DVD. That audience seems to renew itself each generation, with fans of newer styles and genres (like Asian horror or Dogme, the Danish-based film movement) joining the aging cinéastes who devour sophisticated European fare. And the tribe has grown through the Web, which is alive with blogs and enthusiast sites like indiewire.com that create viral marketing and lead fans elsewhere to order up DVD's of lesser-known films."

The old journalism is broken, now it's time to fix it: The Carnegie Corporation and the Knight Foundation are contributing a total of $6 million over a three-year period to five top U.S. schools (Columbia, Cal-Berkeley, Northwestern, USC and Harvard) to "try to elevate the standing of journalism in academia and find ways to prepare journalists better."

The dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Cal-Berkeley explains what's at stake:

"Journalism as a whole is clearly in something of a crisis. Those of us who run journalism schools are confronted with the prospect of ever fewer distinguished media outlets - especially in broadcast - to which we can aspire to send our students to work. So this is a time not only to try and make journalism schools as relevant as possible to the evolving profession, but also to have universities begin to weigh in on the debate about what happens in the media."

No word yet on whether blogs and podcasting will become part of the new training in journalism.

Long Island-based Allion Healthcare priced its IPO yesterday. The company plans to sell 4 million shares at an estimated price range of $12 to $14 per share, for a total of up to $56 million. The lead underwriter for the deal will be Thomas Weisel Partners. Allion provides specialty pharmacy and disease management services to patients with HIV and AIDS.

Tired of following expired links that have disappeared behind paid subscription walls, Tom Coates of Plastic Bag is finally cutting the cord with the New York Times:

"Eurgh. I am so bored of following other people's links to something on the New York Times and finding it all login-required and password-protected. I cannot be bothered any more. I. can. not. be. both. ered. So as of now I'm not going to link to them any more. And I'm not going to follow any link that goes to them. And I'm not going to engage in any debates they allegedly start behind their blanket of white."

Mark Glaser of Online Journalism Review interviews a few big-name media pundits (including A-list bloggers Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen) about the future of magazines in the digital age.

In response to a question by Glaser, Jay Rosen puts the future of the magazine business into perspective:

"At NYU, I have colleagues who share my fascination with the future possibilities of long-form journalism, and social criticism in periodical form; and if you start where we do, the natural question is not 'how can magazines prosper economically in the digital age?' (your perfectly valid industry query) but 'how can a Republic-enhancing form of journalism -- long-form journalism, narrative journalism, the journalism of ideas, of criticism in tune with the news -- thrive in the years ahead, whether or not the market values it at such and such a rate, whether or not people call it a magazine.'

Profit, non-profit, semi-profit, patron model, public radio model, new model, old -- we'll take anything that works -- even bake sales -- because we care about continuation of a form, and the chance to be great in it, guaranteed for future authors."

Jason Gooljar of Daily Gotham provides a public service reminder on good cellphone etiquette:

"I hate those Motorola two-way radio cell phones! It is one of the worst inventions ever! Well actually it's a good invention it's just being used in a horrible way.

Just like how there is talk about possible legislation geared towards cell phone camera users, who use them for voyeurism. There needs to be talk about these little annoying two-way radios. Matter of fact I’ll throw in those new phones that play snippets of songs when the phone rings! Sitting on a bus or a train that can really be annoying too. Not to mention these little phones can pack a wallop with that little speaker. It's enough to jar you out of whatever you were thinking or reading!"

If you're flabby, you've got to slim down: MarketWatch has the details on the impending layoffs at the New York Times Co. About two-thirds of the 190 job cuts will come from The New York Times, with the remainder of the cuts coming from publications in the NYT's New England Media Group.

Worried that many of your favorite op-ed columnists at the New York Times will soon be disappearing behind a paid subscription wall? Susan Mernit uncovers a comprehensive plan by Peter Levinson to replace the New York Times op-ed columnists with bloggers. Paul Krugman? Replace him with blogger Brad DeLong. David Brooks? Try Andrew Sullivan. Tom Friedman? How about Juan Cole?

Jason Calacanis points out that Andrew Rasiej, candidate for New York City Public Advocate, recently added a campaign videoblog to his growing arsenal of online tools. As a preview of things to come, the Advocates for Rasiej site has posted a short two-and-a-half minute campaign video that was shot using a handheld mini-DV camera.

Another sign that podcasting is entering the mainstream: both ABC News and NBC News are experimenting with podcasting initiatives. Paid Content compares and contrasts the two rival efforts, calling them "far too reminiscent of a round of Spy vs. Spy." Looks like both networks will offer a mix of short clips as well as hour-long podcast specials and news updates.

This came across my desk recently: on Thursday, there will be a news briefing in midtown in which the Carnegie Corporation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation -- together with Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern, UC Berkeley and USC -- will announce a new multi-year, multi-million dollar initiative to "revitalize and reform journalism education in the U.S." Among those scheduled to speak at the event: Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation and Hodding Carter, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Just browsing the Knight Foundation Web site, I stumbled across a pretty cool resource: News University, "an innovative Web site designed to help journalists improve their work." Looks like a number of e-learning modules and courses are available now.

Unions are picketing IBM's headquarters in Armonk in an attempt to get the company to curtail - or even abandon - its workforce downsizing plans. For now, though, "there have been no signs Big Blue is about to blink," according to the Poughkeepsie Journal. Union pressure in New York is having less of an impact than one might suppose because most of the job cuts are planned for Europe; thus, most of the efforts within the U.S. are aimed at showing solidarity with their European co-workers.

According to the New York Times, the Starr Foundation is planning to donate $50 million to three Upper East Side medical institutions (Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Rockefeller University and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center) in order to conduct stem cell research. Details on how the $50 million will be allocated has not yet been determined, but officials say that "the foundation favors projects that cross institutional boundaries." Interestingly, the foundation also said that it was not attempting to make a political statement about stem cell research -- the broader goal was simply to keep New York City as a world leader in medical science.

Peter Rojas of Engadget interviews Jeffrey Citron, chairman and CEO of Vonage. In a wide-ranging interview, Citron discusses the big picture view of VoIP, the emergence of Skype as a potential rival, the new generation of Wi-Fi phones, and E911 calling.

Heather Green of Business Week's new Blogspotting blog interviews Buzz Machine's Jeff Jarvis about his decision to quit his full-time job and devote himself full-time to the blogosphere and citizen's media.

Jarvis, who will be a consultant for About.com and the New York Times, explains part of his vision for distributed media at About.com:

"The world of centralized marketplace is yielding to distributed news. Our new role is finding new ways to aggregate. I am hoping there are ways to set up ad hoc networks. I want to enable good things to happen and allow people to be supported, with training, content sharing, etc. About starts with this incredible army of people putting out 500 guides. It's my hope that they can become a platform for distributed media. A locus and starting point for new and great things."

The New York Daily News has the details on Trump University, which won't award grades or degrees, but will charge $300 per course for a business education approved by The Donald:

"Don’t expect ivy-covered walls or a football team. Trump University will consist of online courses, CD-ROMS, consulting services and Learning Annex-type seminars."

(We will expect, however, a cool coat of arms that looks like something from Oxford or Cambridge as a logo for the school)

At a press conference, The Donald explained how the learning mission of Trump University differs from that of traditional schools:

"The problem with school is that school is a little academic, a little theoretical, not necessarily practical. It doesn’t necessarily serve the general public, who may just want to know how to do something. [Trump University] is going to be a tremendous venture. It’s going to really help a lot of people, which is what we really want to do."

If nothing else, the project is an interesting way to take advantage of unleased space at 40 Wall Street, one of Trump's properties that will serve as the HQ for the new "university." We speculate also that Donald Trump may need to create a third category for the next edition of "The Apprentice" -- E-learning Smarts. (The most recent season of "The Apprentice" featured a team of "Book Smarts" versus "Street Smarts.")

The New York Daily News takes a futuristic look at RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology for retail consumers. In one scenario, small computer tags would be embedded right into clothing and other store items. Consumers would then scan the products that they want to buy, and the items would be automatically billed to your debit or credit card. It sounds kinda cool, but as the article points out, there are a number of privacy issues to resolve before RFID technology really takes off.

Looks like more people have stopped drinking the Blog Kool-Aid... Ad Rants explains why blogging is no longer cool (was it ever?):

"Following the recent whirlwind of blog hype including Nick Denton's love affair with the New York Times, his pie to the face at the Radar Magazine party, the launch of Blogebrity, Jason Calacanis' three million micro-blogs, a sudden explosion of branded character blogs and "all marketers should blog" blog conferences, it's now official. Rick Bruner and I, today, declare blogging to have gone the way of the trucker hat. In celebration of this sacred event, May 20, 2005, you can pick up your memorial, Nick Denton Trucker Hat over at Cafe Press."

What's going on behind that gleaming facade at Time Warner Center overlooking Central Park? Fortune goes behind the scenes with Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons to see if there are any interesting new initiatives afoot at the company. Somewhat surprisingly (depending on how you look at it), the answer is basically "business as usual." The company is paring down debt, stabilizing operations, settling federal investigations, and trying out a few ideas to boost the stock price. The only problem is that Wall Street isn't paying much attention -- the company's stock price hasn't budged in nearly 12 months.

The takeaway lesson? A few new projects are in the works, but not "some newfangled thing that people can't understand." When asked about some kind of grand strategy at Time Warner, Dick Parsons doesn't seem to have much in mind: "It's not terribly different from what you see today." If you own shares of Time Warner, that has to be disappointing.

(Photo credit: Cornershots)

At a Securities Industry Association conference in Manhattan, "acquisitive-minded" Archipelago CEO Gerald Putnam hinted that additional market consolidation could be on the way for electronic trading networks. While Putnam has not discussed any concrete deals with NYSE CEO John Thain, he conjectured about the possibility of cross-border deals, in which U.S. markets join with foreign ones.

Putnam also shed some light on the details of the merger between Archipelago and the New York Stock Exchange. For now, the two exchanges plan to operate separately after the deal closes, with "no immediate plans to integrate the entities."

Christopher Lawton of the Wall Street Journal Online interviews newspaper exec Gary Pruitt, who explains how traditional newspapers are attempting to attract younger readers and, at the same time, counteract the recent growth trend in online advertising. When Lawton suggests that the traditional print newspaper might be "dead," Pruitt quickly counters:

"I would say that the migration of content and advertising online means we will face new competitors. The barriers to entry are less, and there are many more classified companies that can compete... There are many more competitors online, but it also means that we have opportunities. We now compete in the breaking news space that we once fed to broadcasters. We can deliver targeted advertising to online audiences, measured and identified with greater precision than ever before..."

Not quite as exciting as the news about Saddam Hussein in his undies, but... Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine quit his full-time job at Advance.net on Friday to pursue a number of interesting media projects -- including a high-profile consulting assignment with About.com and New York Times Digital:

"I just quit my job at Advance.net to do lots of new things -- a damned career smorgasbord -- all related to changing news and to citizens' media. I'm going to work on content development About.com, on a consulting basis, working with Martin Nisenholtz at The New York Times Company... I will act as editor in chief of a new news start-up founded by Upendra Shardanand (ex Firefly, Microsoft Passport, AOL, and Time Warner) and a sterling team... I got a chance to write the new media curriculum for the new City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism... I am hanging out my consulting shingle to take on a few good projects... I have a book I'm finally ready to start writing and I'm thinking about writing some of it here on this blog. And, of course, I will blog -- blog more, I hope."

Congratulations, Jeff, and good luck!

Bookmark this for the Christmas shopping season: KidRobot NY in SoHo. The store offers "the best in urban vinyl toys, mini-figures, t-shirts, posters, accessories, action figures & more!" The lil' pink fella is called Fling the Monkey and retails for $59.95.

A number of factors -- including the proliferation of bloggers and other Internet pundits -- has resulted in the demise of the newspaper art critic. Nowadays, when art journalists gather, supposedly all they talk about is their declining influence on the masses. There are perhaps only a few "stern, doctrinaire" critics left who can literally make or break a show:

"What happened? Besides the Internet and its rash of blogs, suspected culprits include the culture of celebrity, anti-intellectual populism, stingy newspaper owners and what some critics say is a loss of vitality or visibility in their art forms."

Oh... and the New York Times says that the Internet also killed the narrative joke of the type "Two guys walked into a bar...":

"Whatever tenuous hold the joke had left by the 1990's may have been broken by the Internet. The torrent of e-mail jokes in the late 1990's and joke Web sites made every joke available at once, essentially diluting the effect of what had been an spoken form. While getting up and telling a joke requires courage, forwarding a joke by e-mail takes hardly any effort at all. So everyone did it, until it wasn't funny anymore."

The New York Daily News reports that the NYC subway photo ban has been dropped:

"Click away without fear, shutterbugs - a controversial proposal to ban photography in the subways is dead. The Police Department recently told transit officials the photo ban is unnecessary."

According to the New York Daily News, though, police officers will "continue to investigate and intercede if necessary, if the activity - photo-related or not - is suspicious."

Bloggers are celebrities, right? With that in mind, A-list blogger Jessica Coen points to Blogebrity:

"Hi, everyone, I'd like to introduce you the load of genius behind Blogebrity since, you know, normally venerable folks like Glenn Reynolds are even linking to this odd site. Blogebrity poses as a "blogger gossip" page, which smartly creates a blogger hierarchy and has everyone all pissy and intrigued."

Andrew Rasiej, candidate for New York City Public Advocate, recently sent out an e-mail announcing a new feature on his campaign blog:

"In the coming days I will be launching a new feature on my website -- IDEAS4NYC. Each week we will post a question on a different issue, and ask you to give us your specific solutions. We'll share the results on our blog. And we'll take the best ideas and add them to the policy agenda we are developing."

It looks like Rasiej is having some initial success with the online campaign blog -- according to papers filed with the Campaign Finance Board, he's already raised $72,000 in just two weeks. All the more impressive, since Rasiej is not taking any donations over $100.

SliceNY experimented with the Apple iPod to create piPod: An iPod-Based Field Guide To NYC Pizzerias.

Podcast NYC has a wrap-up of Thursday night's NYC Podcasting Association meeting. If you want to know who's who in the New York podcasting world -- including the first podcaster from the NYC area to get a play on KYOU (the West Coast all-podcast station) -- here's a chance to find out.

Daily Gotham applauds grassroots efforts already underway in Queens to save the NY State Pavilion in Flushing Meadow Park (built for the 1964-65 World's Fair) by turning it an Air and Space museum. Create, an architectural and planning firm, has already come up with the sketches and vision to save the decaying New York State Pavilion, which is at risk of "collapsing into a pile of rubble" if steps are not taken soon.

Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine explains why editors and politicians are customer-service representatives. Not literally, of course, but in the way that they respond to the needs of a community. To support his claim, he points to Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, who frequently refers to himself as a customer service representative. In snippets from a Q&A at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York, Craig explains why trust and goodwill are important factors in providing any customer-focused service and why customer service is actually "a high expression of moral values."

At his company's annual shareholder meeting, Cablevision CEO James Dolan rejected any notion that the company was up for sale:

"Our management team has set the bar very high... I don't think anyone's going to offer a price that can beat what we can do ourselves."

Of course, things could change if family patriarch Charles Dolan, the chairman of Cablevision, decides to start meddling again. (Charles didn't attend the meeting -- he was vacationing in Russia this week, of all places.)

In Wired Magazine, Adam Penenberg describes how a 24-year-old NYU grad is creating a Chinese Weblog empire along the lines of Nick Denton's Gawker Media:

"The 24-year-old Chan, who has a business degree from New York University, is hoping to build a blog empire in China. His model? None other than Nick Denton, the Rupert Murdoch (without the money) of the weblog set, who started the Gawker Network, operator of meanie gossip rag Gawker; Gizmodo, which feeds gadget lust; and Wonkette, the Dorothy Parker of the web set."

Chan's blog network consists of three blogs: Dianziren (consumer electronics); Shuanga (humor); and Jiaexp (gaming). Two more are on the way: a blog for women about beauty and cosmetics, and a gossip blog about celebrities.

This just in: Netflix will be taking over Wal-Mart's online DVD rental business:

"Under the agreement announced Thursday, Wal-Mart will offer its existing online DVD rental customers the chance to continue their subscriptions with Los Gatos-based Netflix at their current price for the next year. Wal-Mart also will begin promoting the Netflix service on its Web site. In return, Netflix's Web site will remind its subscribers that they can buy DVDs from Walmart.com."

Wall Street loves the news -- Netflix's shares are already up 28% in pre-market trading. Someone taking on Wal-Mart and winning? That's impressive. Next up for Netflix: the destruction of Blockbuster's DVD rental business.

Susan Mernit points to the launch of Daily Gotham:

"Blogdiva Liza Sabater's just launched Daily Gotham, a community journalism site for NYC. This local site uses CivicSpaces' Community Network tool set and comes equipped with wikispace, plus message boards, polls, surveys, blogs and other features that can be turned on as the site evolves."

The grassroots news & activism site was created as a way to stimulate intelligent conversation about community politics in New York -- and also out of a frustration that the Democratic Party candidates for mayor this year leave much to be desired. The political cartoon to the left was one of the inspirations for the Daily Gotham site.

The "The Long Tail" thesis, first proposed by Wired Magazine's Chris Anderson last year, continues to draw its fair share of proponents, adherents and supporters. At the Syndicate conference in New York earlier this week, for example, Martin Nisenholtz of New York Times Digital mentioned the theory at least twice in his keynote address.

Now, there's a complementary (competing?) theory known as the "Variety Revolution" thesis that is being developed by Virginia Postrel. At her Dynamist site, Postrel explains what it all means:

"The variety revolution is one of the biggest business stories of the past decade. Thanks to production and distribution innovations, consumers now have access to far more choices for all kinds of goods and services, from fresh vegetables in the supermarket to DVDs from Netflix... The variety revolution is an economic story, but it has much broader implications for how we think about pluralism and individual differences."

Postrel's most recent book (The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, & Consciousness), published last September, started to explore many of the concepts that form the basis for the Variety Revolution thesis.

Sirius Satellite Radio has inked a deal with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum to become its official satellite radio partner. Under the terms of the deal, Sirius will be able to broadcast daily from the Hall of Fame’s Alan Freed Radio Studio in Cleveland. The Cleveland Plain Dealer has more details about the types of exclusive rock 'n roll programming that Sirius is planning.

All over Wall Street, analysts who cover Sirius must be thinking, "It's only rock 'n roll, but I like it, like it, yes I do."

With the announcement earlier this week that the New York Times is planning to put the commentary of its esteemed op-ed columnists behind a paid subscription wall, it was only natural that Krugman, Friedman, Dowd, Brooks & Co. would have something to say about it... Once bloggers have to pay to read them, will these op-ed columnists remain a vital part of the blogosphere?

The Yellow Line has an amusing parody of how these op-ed columnists might have reacted when informed by Times management. Here's Maureen Dowd, for example:

"It really is true. I work for plutocrats. I used to think those Bush bumper stickers and Cheney shirts owned by our illustrious editorial board were just wry winks at the nature of power. But I see now I was wrong, we all were. The leadership here has no interest in running a paper. They’re much happier heading out to their Vermont lodges, sipping their Pinot Noirs and plotting their next money grab."

Tom Coates of Plastic Bag points to Blogpoly, a Monopoly board influenced by the blogosphere.

According to the creator of Blogpoly, "It is just a game. It is fun to use the board to lay out the Blogosphere Ecosystem. It helps me to think and learn about blogging culture by transforming the original game into this version. I had to think about which company and enterprise to choose and set up first on the board. The space is limited, so I picked well known names in blogging industry..."

In this week's New York magazine, Huffington Post blogger Walter Cronkite inadvertently confuses "boggle" with "blog": "I admit that the boggling [sic] is fascinating, or so I gather. But I don't who the people are who are boggling. There's no editorial judgment. Although the marvelous thing about Arianna's is that I can write anything I want." That's the definition of mindboggling.

According to Jay Greene of Business Week Online, Microsoft founder Bill Gates is in the preliminary stages of writing a new book that will look at the future of technology, especially as it relates to world health and education. In 1996, of course, Gates penned a bestseller (The Road Ahead) that "predicted technical wonders we take for granted now." Expect more of the same this time around. (Thanks, Craig)

Aren't there enough ways to play the ponies in NYC, without the need for online horse wagering? It seems like there's an OTB facility within a fifteen-minute walk anywhere in the city. Plus, hasn't telephone betting been legal for years? But, no, that's not convenient enough, according to proponents of online betting:

"Horse racing experts on Tuesday touted online betting as a way to increase revenue and pump life into an industry that has seen better days in New York. They testified at an Albany hearing on the future of racing, saying the state should revamp its laws to allow people to point, click and bet."

According to one horse owner, the move to online betting is essential in order to "attract younger people to the game." (Just what we need, a younger generation weaned on online poker and online horse betting) OTB execs in New York are also griping that online betting is legal in New Jersey, ultimately draining jobs and taxes out of New York state.

Newsday says that the city is studying the effect of UV light on drinking water:

"The city's Department of Environmental Protection is studying the use of ultraviolet light to disinfect most of the 1.3 billion gallons of water that residents of the five boroughs and Westchester County use each day. It will take at least four years before New Yorkers could actually drink the UV-treated water, provided DEP can get all the necessary approvals."

Ultraviolet light, of course, is also used by tanning salons to give patrons that healthy, all-over orange glow. Hmmm, this could be an interesting marketing hook for New York's indoor tanning salons: 10 tans and 10 jugs of water for the same low price.

Based largely on the city's dramatic economic recovery since 2001, S&P raised New York City's credit rating by one level to A+ -- the highest rating ever given to the city by the rating agency. (The A+ rating is the fifth-highest of 10 investment grades). The credit upgrade follows a similar move by Moody's, which recently upgraded its rating on New York City municipal debt to A1. Bloomberg.com has more on the economic outlook for the city as well as a sophisticated look at municipal debt yields.

Announced at the Syndicate conference in New York: Google is extending its popular AdSense program to RSS feeds. It's still in beta, natch.

Google product manager Shuman Ghosemajumder, one of the guest speakers on a panel about RSS and advertising, explains Google AdSense for Feeds:

"We really want to nurture this market. As we're getting the business model right for media on the Web in general, it's imperative that advertising be integrated into feeds properly."

The cover story in this week's New York Magazine asks a provocative question: Is Your Apartment Like a Dot-Com Stock? It's a timely question to ask, we suppose, but consider that the author of the story is none other than disgraced Wall Street analyst/stock shill Henry Blodget.

Real estate blog Curbed comments: "The mere experience of reading Henry Blodget's take on the real estate bubble nearly made our head explode. Blodget, the deposed king of the Amazons, makes two salient points: 1) the Internet collapse was not his fault and 2) the collapse of the real-estate market will not be his fault."

Rafat Ali of Paid Content has excellent coverage of the keynote speech given by New York Times Digital's Martin Nisenholtz at the Syndicate conference in Times Square.

Two points from the speech especially stood out:

(1) Nisenholtz's plan for a New York Times affiliate program based loosely on Amazon.com's affiliate program. It's still a work in progress, but it looks like the New York Times is thinking about ways to provide revenue to small blog publishers. Bloggers willing and able to direct readers to premium content offerings from the New York Times would get a cut of any revenue. (The day before, the Times announced a $50 per year all-you-can-eat subscription plan)

(2) Nisenholtz's analysis of the forces at work in the world of media (e.g. the unbundling of content from central organizing principles, the need to balance serendipity and technology-driven personalization). In the old days, of course, everyone got their news from print newspapers, and there was a generally accepted way of organizing the information. With RSS readers and other innovations, content has become "unbundled" and stripped of context. People no longer access content through the "front door" either. The New York Times online is trying to find a middle between two extremes.

Overall, I was impressed with what Nisenholtz had to say. He didn't have all the answers, but who does? According to Robert Scoble, the New York Times is "preparing for the death of print." That may be a bit extreme, but it is clear that the Times is taking steps to avoid becoming a media dinosaur. Companies like Google and About.com have been instrumental in changing the company's thinking. Google has altered the way that traditional media think about advertising, while About.com has shown that it is possible to monetize micro-niche content that users find through non-traditional means (i.e. search engines).

Monday's Personal Democracy Forum at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York featured a number of high-profile bloggers, political activists, and other supporters of citizen participation in the democratic process.

Andrew Rasiej spoke on how the Internet can be used to change the political landscape.

Media Post covered the future of political advertising online

Jeff Jarvis participated in a panel discussion on religion and God online

Slant Point managed to get a pic of Arianna Huffington for commentary about liberal spell-casting

Hugh Hewitt provides observations and insights from various panel discussions

Micro Persuasion (via Scoble) points to the recently-launched internal blogging initiative at IBM:

"As has been reported on a variety of blogs around the net, IBM today is publishing an announcement on its Intranet site encouraging all 320,000+ employees world wide to consider engaging actively in the practice of blogging."

In just the past 18 months, behind-the-scenes efforts to interest IBM employees in blogging has resulted in 9,000 registered users in 65 different countries, 3,097 individual blogs (1,358 of them active) and a total of 26,203 blog entries and comments.

Now that the blogging effort has gone official, the IBM Blogging Community has drafted a number of Corporate Blogging Guidelines that are "designed to guide IBMers as they figure out what they're going to blog about so they don't end up like certain notable ex-employees of certain notable other companies."

On Monday, the New York Times announced the creation of TimesSelect, a new $49.95 per year premium content offering for its online readers:

"For a modest fee, TimesSelect will provide exclusive access to Op-Ed and news columnists on NYTimes.com, easy and in-depth access to The Times's online archives, early access to select articles on the site, as well as other exciting features."

According to the company's press release, TimesSelect goes live sometime in early September.

Working off a rich selection of reference material that included videotapes, photos and historical essays, the new DreamWorks film "Madagascar" (opening May 27) was able to recreate a virtual Grand Central Terminal that is a near-identical replica of the original:

"It's almost as if someone who was doing a live-action shoot decided to replicate a set of Grand Central, built it to scale and lit it. That's kind of what ours is except it's done virtually, in the computer."

The film also features other New York landmarks, such as the Central Park Zoo, Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center and Times Square -- as well as famous human stars like Chris Rock and Ben Stiller.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision, ruled that consumers in New York state can buy their favorite bottles of wine from out-of-state vineyards. The ruling overturned laws that barred out-of-state wineries from selling directly to consumers within a state. As might be expected, New York winemakers (now free to ship across the country), together with Internet and mail-order wine companies, celebrated the decision.

A local Elmira paper explains why the ruling is important for online commerce:

"The court's divided 5-4 ruling could dramatically expand markets for small wineries that rely on the Internet to boost sales. The victory for small vineyards that challenged state restrictions in New York and Michigan may also be a boon for consumers who have been prevented from buying wine online because their states' laws are aimed at protecting local producers."

A number of high-ranking New York City government officials and captains of industry (like Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson) will be in China this week to discuss ways of enticing more Chinese companies to set up shop in New York. Already, about 120 Chinese companies have offices in the metro area (including 68 in New York City alone). In fact, of the 32 largest Chinese companies that have a U.S. presence, 13 have already opened their doors for business in New York City.

After a short stint as a "guest blogger" for a political blog, David Greenberg of Rutgers University explains why blogging is not for everyone. Quite simply, "blogging is no longer for amateurs or the faint of heart. Blogging - if it's done well - has evolved into an all-consuming art."

As Greenberg soon found out, simply posting a few snippets of information is not enough: "I now realized that I didn't need only new information. I needed a gimmick - a motif or a running joke that would keep the blog rolling all week... The best bloggers develop hobbyhorses, shticks and catchphrases that they put into wider circulation. Creating your own idiosyncratic set of villains to skewer and theories to promote - while keeping readers interested - requires as much talent as sculpting a magazine feature or a taut op-ed piece."

It's May 16, and that means the re-launch of the New York Times business section, featuring more blog and media coverage. There's a story about a dispute between an NYU journalism professor and Tom Wolfe over who created the New Journalism, speculation that Tina Brown may have lost her magic touch, and details about CNN's Web site overhaul.

According to Crain's New York, the Pentagon has proposed closing 17 military installations in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and downsizing others "as part of a plan to shutter 180 bases worldwide and save nearly $50 billion."

The Ft. Hamilton base in Brooklyn ("vital to the city’s homeland security strategy") will be spared, but an Armed Forces Reserve Center in Amityville, Long Island is scheduled to be shut down. We hope, of course, that this unfortunate turn of events in Amityville does not lead to another tale of horror about a creepy building that hides a dark secret.

There's a white mucky substance at the bottom of the Gowanus Canal, but nobody knows exactly what it is. Within a few weeks, though, we may soon have the answer, thanks to the efforts of Nasreeen and Niloufar Haque:

"Members of the Urban Divers, a group of about 150 volunteer scuba divers fighting pollution in local estuaries, got the Haques a sample of the murky white stuff, called "Bio-film." It is thought to be colonies of microbes or other living matter that floats in clouds near the bottom of the Gowanus."

The Gowanus, of course, is popularly known as one of the most polluted waterways in New York.

Ever wanted to develop a real New York accent? Check out the Langwich Skool uv Noo Yawk.

Sittin' in the mornin' sun
I'll be sittin' when the evenin' come
Watching the ships roll in
And then I watch 'em roll away again, yeah

I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay
Watching the tide roll away
Ooo, I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time

In the New York Daily News (scroll to the end of the page), Neil Steinberg pleads with the advertising industry to get rid of the TV spots where wealthy, relaxed yuppies recline on the dock of the bay with a laptop computer:

"I don't want to sit on a dock. Sitting on docks is uncomfortable. There is nothing to lean against, the wood of the dock is hard. It might be okay to dangle your feet in the water for a moment, but that's it. So why does every single blessed advertisement I see, in print and on TV, for everybody from banks to insurance companies, always show a solitary guy or gal sitting on a dock, pecking at his laptop before a placid lake. As if this were our collective dream, to check our E-mail on a dock at Loon Lake."

A group of dissident Morgan Stanley shareholders are calling on CEO Philip Purcell to spin off the company's institutional securities businesses as a separate firm. The new firm would be led by six "Old School" Morgan Stanley executives and, presumably, recapture the glory of the old investment banking days at Morgan Stanley -- the golden era before the company was forced to dirty its hands with businesses like retail brokerage.

In an open letter to shareholders, the eight retired Morgan Stanley executives (the so-called "Group of Eight") who have campaigned against Purcell for weeks released a detailed proposal that would, for all practical purposes, reverse the 1997 merger of Morgan Stanley with Dean Witter, Discover & Co.

The anti-Purcell faction has even created a Future of Morgan Stanley Web site that includes the full text of the open letter to shareholders, biographies of the "Group of Eight," and copies of advertisements that have appeared in the Wall Street Journal (in PDF format).

Lenovo, which acquired IBM's "Think"-branded line of notebooks last year, has launched a re-branding campaign to introduce itself to America. The company is China's #1 PC maker and one of the country's most recognizable brands, but the name is not well known in North America. Anyway, Ogilvy recently landed the $100 million Lenovo Group account, and already, full-page ads are starting to appear in the New York Times and other mainstream publications.

So who or what is Lenovo? "It's the company you'd build if you could start over. Without starting from scratch. A company with the scale, infrastructure and customer base of a Fortune 150 behemoth. A company with the freedom, innovation and entrepreneurship of a start-up..."

Yet, not a word about China. No foreign faces in the ads. And no graphics that could be even faintly suggestive of Asia. Even the name doesn't sound Chinese (le novo = the new?)

According to the New York Post, the "L" train will be run by one operator (instead of two) late at night and on weekends starting June 19. It may not sound like a big deal, but it actually means that the MTA is one step closer to realizing its conception of a "robo-train" controlled completely by computers. A number of New York City Council Members, though, could try to derail the plan by warning about the threat to public safety.

Another setback for the scandal-plagued ImClone: Crain's New York reports that the company has shuttered its Brooklyn-based small-molecule research program, which attempted to develop cancer drugs in pill form. For now, ImClone will focus on infusions (i.e. Erbitux) and injections.

MemeFirst takes a closer look at the evolution of the Chase/JPMorgan re-branding effort. That white octahedron was like sooo 20th century...

Hugh Macleod of Gaping Void explains why corporate blogging works. The key, says Macleod, is creating a "porous membrane" that enables people within the company having "internal conversations" to relate better with customers outside of the company having "external conversations." Blogs, quite simply, "poke holes in the membrane," thereby enabling ideas to move freely between internal conversations and external conversations.

OK, OK... it makes a lot more sense once you've seen the diagram and read Hugh's 15-point summary.

Matt Clayfield's Quicktime movie "On Hyperlinkage and the Evolution of the Species" raises an interesting question: "Is Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) actually an evolution of our information-infested species?" After all, "we're constantly consuming, filtering, threading and associating" -- doesn't it make sense that our brains would evolve to reflect that reality?

(Hat tip: Blogumentary)

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has been bustin' the chops of New York's insurance industry bigwigs, and now they're fighting back with a vengeance... Recently, the CEO of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America claimed that Spitzer "has bypassed due process and used McCarthy-like tactics to wage 'corporate terrorism' against the insurance industry even while ignoring his own alleged conflicts of interest..."

And there's more: "Spitzer has discovered the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. It wasn't Saddam Hussein; it was Spitzer's corporate terrorism, the threat of an indictment, the threat of going to jail." Ouch.

Ameritrade may claim that it's not for sale, but that didn't stop rival online broker E*Trade from disclosing an offer that it recently made for the company. A deal between E*Trade and Ameritrade would be a blockbuster, creating a combined company that would have more than 7 million customers generating about 300,000 trades a day and boast total client assets of approximately $170 billion.

According to TheStreet.com, E*Trade's proposal included terms that would give Ameritrade shareholders 47.5% of the combined company, plus about $1.5 billion in cash. Terms of the deal also included joint participation in senior management roles and representation on the board of the combined company.

Remember Internet contagions like Hot or Not, Black People Love Us! and Dancing Baby? Well, the "Contagious Media" exhibit at the New Museum of Contemporary Art examines some of the most famous of these Internet contagions that have been transmitted to millions of online users worldwide via email, IM or Web sites.

Sarah Boxer's review in the New York Times called the exhibit "adolescent" and "male," but that's OK. However, there's a part of the review where Sarah sounds a bit sardonic that does bother us:

"Don't worry if you've never heard of these. It just means that you're not cool. And now that you've learned about them in the mainstream media (known as MSM on the Web), they're not all that cool, either."

After a successful gallery event at Marymount Manhattan College last year, Art Mobs ("Art" + "Smart Mobs" = "Art Mobs") will remix MoMA:

"We've produced (unofficial) audio guides for MoMA, and we're making them available as podcasts. We'd love for you to join in by sending us your own MoMA audio guides, which we'll gladly add to our podcast feed. Why should audio guides be proprietary? Help us hack the gallery experience, help us remix MoMA!"

(Hat tip: Kottke)

The New York Times has a feature on Citimove, a Web site founded by two Manhattan software engineers that enables New Yorkers to find the best movers available by reading customer reviews. In addition, people who are about to move to the Tri-State area can invite bids from "reliable" moving companies.

The site went live about 18 months ago and already attracts about 3,500 unique visitors a month and has lined up advertising from moving companies like MoveMaster and MiniMoveUSA. In many ways, the site acts as a way to cross-check the "man with a van" ads on Craigslist -- while such ads are useful as a jumping off point, they offer no guarantee that the "man with a van" is not a "man with a scam."

Back in January, Kottke had a great post about the "man with a van" cottage industry that has been made possible by Craigslist.

Silicon Beat reports that Google has acquired Dodgeball.com, the New York-based mobile social networking site founded by grad students at NYU.

Clay Shirky, a contributor to Corante's Many 2 Many blog, is clearly excited about the deal (wOOt! wOOt!):

"Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert were students of mine at ITP. I’ve watched them build Dodgeball over the last few years, which was both inspiring and instructional. Given the level of thought and effort they’ve put into it, this is really good news, for them and for Google."

The acquisition is an interesting one for Google, Shirky notes, since it means that the company could be attempting to reconcile two completely different views of the world: an information-centric view and a social-centric view.

If you're intrigued by tech entrepreneur Andrew Rasiej's campaign for Public Advocate, be sure to check out Jake Dobkin's interview for Gothamist, where Rasiej explains why the city needs a universal Wi-Fi network:

"Low-cost universal broadband will plug our kids into the information explosion, 24-7, not just the one hour a week that they now get scheduled in a computer room. Imagine the value of buses and subways that can ping passengers a few minutes before they arrive at a stop, so you don’t have to wait out in the cold. Every family and small business that now pays up to $600 a year for broadband will save hundreds of dollars. And then think of how this can improve public safety... We can’t afford not to do this, the same way we invested a century ago in things like the water system, the subways and Central Park."

Ad Rants describes a new Times Square billboard for Nike that uses SMS text messaging to create an interactive customer experience:

"The Nike billboard allows people to manipulate the board's imagery using SMS to build their own sneaker which can them be purchased online at a web address sent back to the person's phone. The board only accepts manipulation between noon and 1PM and 3PM to 5PM. It's an admirable effort towards increasing time spent with the brand."

The Deal LLC has launched a new magazine, Tech Confidential, that will primarily target dealmakers, entrepreneurs and investors who are on the prowl for innovative new ventures. There will also be a companion Tech Confidential blog that will feature postings by Tech Confidential’s writers as well as reader comments.

However, if you've tried to follow any of the above links to Tech Confidential, you'll find that the "blog" is hidden behind a registration wall. Apparently, once a reader fills out a brief registration form, content from the blog will be available for free -- however, it's uncertain how many readers in the blogosphere will actually take the time to register for a blog. (Does anybody else do this?) Plus, if you link to the blog, will readers from elsewhere in the blogosphere actually be able to follow the link?

In contrast to the Tech Confidential blog, consider the Silicon Beat blog, which covers "tech money and innovation" for The Mercury News -- pretty much the same beat as Tech Confidential, but with a Silicon Valley focus. This is a traditional blog powered by TypePad, with trackbacks, permalinks, a blogroll, and daily updates arranged in chronological order. And it's free and easy to access!

When Business Week announced a "VC/start-up blog" in the beginning of the year, Silicon Beat was quick to point out a number of deficiencies -- no RSS feeds, no trackbacks, no reader comments:

"Searching for the RSS feed, comments and trackbacks was my first reaction. Can't find any of these (you have a comment box, but it is not linked to a given post). So it has the presentation and the navigation of a blog, but it is not a blog...yet."

I have many of the same reservations about the Tech Confidential blog. The Deal LLC has a number of informative and timely publications, and I expect that Tech Confidential will be another welcome media addition to the dealmaking community. However, I suspect that traffic at the blog will be minimal unless they open it up to the entire blogosphere. We'll see.

UPDATE: A big apology is due to the folks at Tech Confidential. Turns out there is a Typepad blog after all for Tech Confidential that was launched on May 9. Already, there are postings about the IBM/Gluecode deal, the Google/Dodgeball deal, and news snippets about other deals in the tech sector.

On the CyberJournalist site, Ann Morton has posted a quick six-minute online news survey that will be used as part of a graduate student media research studies project at the New School. The project examines "the factors impacting the current tectonic shift in news consumption patterns."

NewYorkology applauds The Guardian (U.K.) for its recent blog-inspired tour of New York City, but points out a few New York-centric blogs the Brits may have missed:

"Unfortunately [the reporter's] experiment led him down wrong paths because he made some bad choices and looked at months-old posts. If you'd like to repeat his test armed with a better list of guides to New York, here are some of the city's best blogs that frequently post info about things going on in New York now..."

In the New York Post, John Podhoretz discusses the mass media meltdown:

"It can't be a coincidence that the five major pillars of the American media — movies, television, radio, recorded music and newspapers — are all suffering at the same time. And it isn't. Something major has changed over the past year, as the availability of alternative sources of information and entertainment has finally reached critical mass... Newly empowered consumers are letting the producers, creators and managers of the nation's creative and news content know that they are dissatisfied with the product they're being peddled."

Something has to give, says Podhoretz, since "peddling unwatchable nonsense in Hollywood and on TV, and foisting politically correct pseudo-information on increasingly sophisticated consumers of news — isn't going to hack it any longer..."

When you see the letters "PDF," you probably think of Adobe Acrobat. Well, there will be another PDF in town on May 16: Personal Democracy Forum 2005. The conference, to be held at the CUNY Graduate Center, considers itself the "premier event for political leaders, activists and operatives; technologists, journalists and futurists and anyone else looking for strategic understanding and market opportunities in the evolving world of technology-driven politics." Among the guest speakers: Craig Newmark of Craigslist and Dan Gillmor of Grassroots Media Inc.

An ABC affiliate in Portland, Oregon points out that New York lawmakers are looking to clamp down on Internet hunting: "Lawmakers plan to pass legislation that will bar anyone from creating or maintaining a Web site or hunting gallery in New York for remote control hunting through the Internet." Apparently, a Texas Web site plans to enable remote hunting via the Internet.

According to Dow Jones Newswires, Warner Music is cutting the size of its upcoming IPO, from approximately $750 million to less than $550 million. Insiders speculate that the company will reduce the number of shares it will sell to the public to about 27.2 million from 32.6 million; in addition, Warner Music is cutting the price range for the deal to $19 to $20 a share from $22 to $24 a share.

UPDATE: Warner Music Group's (WMG) IPO raised $554.2 million; the IPO was finally priced at $17 per share.

Marketing guru Seth Godin claims to have found the perfect billboard at Grand Central Station:

"Everything about this Tiffany's billboard at Grand Central is perfect.
No URL. No slogan. No USP or benefits or call to action.
Just a story... worth 1,000 words.
Perfect."

Actually, there might even be a better Tiffany's billboard in the city. Take the 4-5 line to Bowling Green and walk over to the Goldman Sachs building in the heart of the financial district. On the same cobblestone street where Smorgas Chef and Financier Patisserie are, there's a huge Tiffany's sign that faces directly into the Goldman Sachs building. In fact, the sign seems to be created with only that one purpose in mind: to remind bankers to buy diamonds. Imagine that -- every day, thousands of wealthy bankers are slaving away, with only one thought on their mind: gotta...buy... a...Tiffany's....diamond.

MemeFirst points out that a number of bloggers who once called the Lower East Side home are either moving elsewhere or shutting down operations:

"First, Below 14th closed up shop, but we didn't mind, 'cos it was replaced by Curbed. Besides, there were other great Lower East Side blogs. EBway.org, for instance – but this weekend we were told that they're moving to Argentina. Never mind, there's still Tale of Two Cities, right? Wrong. Even felixsalmon.com is planning its move out of the LES, albeit just a couple of blocks north to 3rd and B. Pretty soon, all LES bloggers will be confined to one raucous apartment on the third floor of 203 Rivington Street..."

"The Cows Are Coming May 12." But what does it all mean? asks Ad Freak. Even Gothamist admits that the NYC cow ads are a mystery:

"If, like Gothamist, you've seen those posters of squeezy toy cows around town, with the words "The Cows Are Coming May 12" and wondered, "Hey, why are the cows coming?" but then forgot about it because, well, you were running ten minutes late or are lazy and didn't want to Google it on your Treo or just wanted to have a Treo but don't and you forgot about Googling "The Cows are Coming May 12" when you got home."

One theory: it's all part of a marketing campaign for Nestle's Coffee Mate creamer.

As seen in Tuesday's Metro newspaper: blogger Kabi Jorgensen has teamed up with a former writer for the Village Voice to petition the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to grant CBGB landmark status. Since March 2005, Jorgensen has been posting to the Project Save CBGB & OMFUG blog. What's cool is that Debbie Harry of Blondie has noticed the blog and is now joining the Save CBGB effort.

First Howard Stern. Then Martha Stewart. Now Jimmy Buffett is coming to Sirius Satellite Radio. According to the New York Daily News, Jimmy Buffett is planning to launch Radio Margaritaville, a 24-hour satellite radio channel that will feature, among other things, live broadcasts of his concerts.

Gothamist has details on a new "Bloggers" sitcom supposedly in the works. BackStage recently had a casting ad for "young, attractive, comedic, and quirky actors, 20s-30s" to appear in an HBO/WB-style sitcom pilot.

Good Blog has an excellent summary of the goings-on at the BDI "Blogging Goes Mainstream" event last week in midtown. According to the participants at the 1/2-day event, blogs represent many different things to many different people: conversation "amplifiers," "a new form of decision-making," a "form of persuasion," a way to create loyalty and influence, a way to connect to the customer, and a crisis-management tool. Or all of the above. (Hat tip: Micro Persuasion)

Rumors are circulating that New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer could be ready to launch an investigation of Ask Jeeves as part of a broader crackdown on spyware and adware:

"Some news reports have suggested that Ask Jeeves might find itself one of the companies Spitzer is investigating. Ask Jeeves' stock, which opened at $29.05 Friday, fell as low as $27.63 before climbing slowly back to close at $28.13, still down 2.83%."

If true, a Spitzer investigation would be a serious blow to Barry Diller, who was counting on search company Ask Jeeves to anchor his sprawling Internet empire. In March, Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp agreed to acquire Ask Jeeves for $1.85 billion in stock.

Julian Dibbell of the Village Voice explains why the Annotated New York Times -- despite having the appearance of a "graffitied storefront" with a "chaos of links" -- is actually a wonderful resource for understanding the many voices that contribute to a democracy.

Mary Hodder of Napsterization is the latest blogger to hop on the Andrew Rasiej bandwagon:

"Andrew is a really smart, thoughtful guy, who I think really cares about making things better than they are now... Show that a candidate worth supporting can do this with small contributions in with an online infrastructure by donating and participating. And get on the bus!"

Weblog publisher Jason Calacanis is also asking bloggers to sign up for the Rasiej campaign e-mail distribution list.

Andrew Rasiej is running for New York City Public Advocate on a tech-friendly platform that includes support for universal public Wi-Fi and a slogan of "Our supporters are smarter than us."

Netflix fans, rejoice! There's yet another reason to love Netflix: the company recently won a Copernican award from Creative Good, a New York-based customer experience consultancy. The Copernicans are awarded to "top companies and organizations that succeed by putting customers at the center of their business universe."

An interesting aside: the New York State DMV - License Express was also a finalist, while JetBlue won a Copernican award in the "large company" category (> $1 billion in revenue).

According to the New York Times, IBM will announce an acquisition of open-source start-up Gluecode today. The deal is "small in size but significant in the evolution of the company's plans in open-source software, according to industry analysts." Exact terms of the deal were not disclosed, but most analysts expect the price tag to be less than $100 million.

The Learning Annex is advertising on Craig's List for a real estate blogger:

"The Learning Annex is seeking a writer to create editorial for a real estate blog that must be updated every day with interesting current events both local and national. Writer must be self-directed. Site will be supported by Learning Annex advertising. $100 a day. We can provide work station or work from your location."

If nothing else, it means that blogs like Curbed will soon have some additional competition in the race to cover the movers and shakers of the New York real estate world.

Maybe this is old news, but Major League Baseball now has a $4.95/month blog offering. After watching highlights of last night's Yankees win at Yankees.com, I stumbled across an advertisement for Major League Baseball Blogs:

"Sign up for your own blog. You're following baseball. Now let them follow you. Choose your favorite MLB template with team logo. Blog around the clock with your baseball thoughts and photos -- and then watch your crowd form!"

If Orioles Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson or former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda can be a blogger, so can you...

Gothamist points to a story in the New York Post hinting that the MTA and TLC could collaborate sometime in the future on a new swipe card payment system that would enable MetroCard holders to pay for taxi cab rides:

"They're already good on subways and buses — and the next frontier for MetroCards might be yellow taxis. Cubic Corp., the California-based transportation company that designed New York's MetroCard system, is studying the idea of in-cab swipe card systems."

The TLC has already put out an RFP for credit and debit card readers, advising bidders to build in some extra flexibility for something like a MetroCard-type swipe system.

The Wall Street Journal is shaking up its European and Asian operations in order to attract more readers and stanch the flow of red ink. Most notably, the company is changing from a broadsheet to a tabloid format for its Asian and European editions and moving more of its international staff to New York. Starting in 2006, the moves could save Dow Jones (the publisher of the Wall Street Journal) as much as $17 million annually.

According to Mobiledia, Nickelodeon and Verizon Wireless are teaming up to bring Nickelodeon video content to Verizon Wireless' VCAST wireless phones. By the time summer arrives, Verizon VCAST customers will be able to watch Nickelodeon television programming on their mobile phones. In addition, VCAST customers will have access to an increasing number of music videos, each about one to three minutes long.

If you believe that blogging is an art form and that markets are conversations, then check out the following event hosted by the New York Public Library: A Conversation About the Art of Conversation.

"What could be more necessary in democratic societies than conversation consisting of an exchange in which participants are considered equal, where the pursuit of truth is combined with respect for others' opinions, and whose ultimate goal is the pleasure of sharing knowledge?"

Starting May 16, look for more blog and new media coverage from the New York Times. Contained in a recent NYT press release announcing a new format for its weekday and Saturday business sections, there's this little gem:

"On Mondays, Business Day will focus on media and marketing news, with technology included as it relates to those industries. David Carr will write a column on new media; the world of blogs will be covered as a regular feature."

From Crain's New York: Memorial Sloan-Kettering plans to build a new $174.4 million Breast and Imaging Center on Second Ave. between 65th and 66th streets. Construction of the new center, to take place on land already owned by the hospital, is expected to begin in early 2006.

"A takeover skirmish among three of the nation's largest online stock brokerages erupted over the weekend," according to the New York Times:

"E*Trade Financial made an unsolicited bid to buy Ameritrade Holdings on Friday for more than $5.5 billion in a letter to its board, according to executives involved in the talks. Ameritrade, meanwhile, has been holding secret negotiations to buy TD Waterhouse, the executives said. The boards, managements and advisers of all three companies spent the weekend plotting their next moves. Competitors like Charles Schwab also spent telephone time discussing where they might fit in..."

The bad news, of course, is that any kind of consolidation among the big online brokers will likely lead to an increase in fees, commissions and the overall cost of trading for the individual investor. Online trading volume has never returned to levels seen during the dot-com boom, so online brokerages are looking for ways to squeeze out more revenue.

Mass-market celebrities are experimenting with niche media like never before: Martha Stewart is moving to satellite radio, Britney Spears and Rosie O'Donnell are blogging, Arianna Huffington recently launched her celebrity super-blog and, yes, Paris Hilton has been podcasting. Over at Tech Central Station, The Digital VIP Room is a look at how mass-market celebrities are adapting to the world of micro-market media.

Andy Warhol once famously remarked that "In the future, we will all be famous for 15 minutes." Maybe it's time to update that for the 21st century: "In the future, we will all be famous to 15 people." Within our hyper-niches, we will all be famous.

The Guardian (U.K.) sent travel reporter Mike Hodgkinson to tour New York City for 48 hours. The only catch? Mike could only use tips and advice generated by New York-area bloggers:

"The idea was simple. For 48 hours, I would tour Manhattan using the "blogosphere" as my guide. By tapping the freshly posted thoughts of the city's (perhaps the world's) most opinionated insiders - New York bloggers - I'd leave behind the instantly outdated world of guidebooks, with their inherent obsolescence and excess poundage. What use could I possibly have, in a high-speed world, for knowledge distributed on a crude and bulky medium like paper?"

Among the blogs mentioned: Micro Persuasion, Vittles Vamp, Manhattan Waitress, Tien Mao's Little Read Book, The Food Section news blog, The Gaijin Girl's Guide to Chinatown, Manhattan Transfer, Slice NY, The Ninth Circle of Helen, Le Blog Exuberance, nycbloggers.com, mrbellersneighborhood.com and Gawker.

Well, the Huffington Post went live today, and, granted, there are some big names blogging: Mike Nichols, John Cusack, David Mamet and Ellen DeGeneres.

However, it's all-too-likely that you'll run across postings like this:

"It may be hard to believe in today's Internet universe that allows anyone to become a pundit, but this is the first time I have ever blogged, if that is a word. In fact, I almost never even read blogs, much less write them, but my friend Arianna Huffington's invitation to contribute to huffingtonpost.com was too intriguing to turn down. Maybe my lack of interest in the blogosphere has something to do with the fact that I'm 68 years old and still mired in the Gutenberg era..."

The New York Times takes a closer look at grafedia, a "new and growing form of street art that brings together the wireless and physical worlds." Basically, if you see blue words written in a public place (e.g. curbs, streets, lightpoles, etc.) and underlined in blue to resemble a hyperlink, it's a good bet that it's grafedia.

Warner Music Group is hoping that a little glitz and glamour will win over investors before its upcoming $750 million IPO... The New York Daily News reports that Sean Combs (aka P. Diddy, Puff Daddy) made a flashy appearance in New York for the big IPO road show:

"Looking dapper in a suit and big diamond studs, the hip hop mogul who just sold his Bad Boy Entertainment label to Warner Music, helped fill up the ballroom at the W Hotel in midtown Manhattan. He didn't rap - but did sign autographs for star-struck Wall Street execs..."

(1) Harvard Design Magazine: Dan Doctoroff's Grand Plans for New York City
(2) Steven Berlin Johnson: Everything Bad is Good For You
(3) Metro: The ultimate public transport guide for your PDA or Smartphone
(4) Gothamist: SubwayService Advisories email
(5) Share, share widely: Conference on New Media Education
(6) Quarlo: New York City photoblog
(7) New York Press: Why New York needs London's development rules
(8) Apartment Therapy: the first annual smallest, coolest apartment contest

Legendary Wall Street investment bank Lazard raised $854.6 million in its IPO this week, transforming the 157-year-old private partnership into a public company accountable to shareholders. It's the end of an era for Lazard, one of the last major firms on Wall Street to cling to private ownership (Goldman Sachs went public in 1999):

"The IPO marks the end of a power struggle between Lazard's day-to-day boss Bruce Wasserstein, Chairman Michel David-Weill and the bank's founding partners. David-Weill and the founding families, who are currently entitled to about 36% of the bank's profits, will be bought out in part via the IPO for $1.6 billion."

Borrowing a page from the Howard Dean playbook, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is turning himself into New York's Internet candidate -- at least for five weeks:

"Mayor Bloomberg is launching a $100,000, five-week Internet advertising blitz aimed at recruiting tens of thousand of volunteers... The so-called "impression ads" are on Yahoo and a slew of New York newspaper Web sites, including The News, The New York Times, Newsday and El Diario."

From Bloomberg's campaign strategist: "The Internet is a tool that campaigns are learning to use to their advantage. And no candidate understands the Internet better than Mike Bloomberg."

The New York Times takes a closer look at the science behind the new greenhouses at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx:

"The state-of-the-art greenhouses were designed by Mitchell/Giurgola Architects of Manhattan, in collaboration with the Van Wingerden Greenhouse Company... Just about everything, from the roof vents that open on a sunny day and close when it rains, to evaporative cooling systems that click on when one of the rooms gets too hot, is controlled by computer.

Under these controlled conditions, scientists can now grow plants for research studying the DNA of a primitive nonflowering plant like selaginella, for example. Gardeners can now plant the seeds of Victoria amazonica, the largest water lily in the world, in a pool kept at 80 degrees."

Olga Kharif of Business Week looks at Wall Streeters who are trading stocks without a wire. According to Kharif, "Wall Street is becoming a nationwide hot spot, featuring round-the-clock trading, stronger security, and lower costs for investors on the go..." For example, there's the hedge fund manager who receives his QuoTrek feed on his BlackBerry; the retail investors who sign onto their brokerage accounts on laptops and PDAs at hotels or cafés; and research firms that provide real-time market and stock data specifically geared to wireless traders who need 24/7 access.

Andrew Rasiej, who launched his online campaign for Public Advocate this week with ads on a number of Web sites (including 20 blogs!), describes his vision for universal Wi-Fi access in New York City:

"The good news is that we don’t need to wait to get everybody connected. The technology is there, the talent is there, the precedent is there. It’s affordable, available, and scaleable. I intend to help prove that in the coming weeks by releasing a realistic plan to provide universal, low-cost WiFi for New York... All that’s missing is a common commitment to get the job done."

The Slashdot community is buzzing over an article in the Wall Street Journal which hinted that the New York Times was considering subscription-based pricing to access its vast Internet archives. Instead of paying $2.95 per article for archived material, readers would pay an annual fee of $49.99 for unlimited access to material published within the past 12 months.

Ramon Ray of Smallbiztechnology.com has extensive video coverage of the "Geek Blogging Dinner" event at Grand Central Station this week that featured several notables of the blogosphere: Steve Rubel, Robert Scoble and Dave Winer. (If you're using Firefox, be sure to activate pop-ups if you want to see the video.)

IBM announced plans to downsize its workforce by 10,000 to 13,000 jobs worldwide, with the bulk of those cuts coming from its European workforce. The cuts, which represent approximately 3%-4% of the company's total workforce, come after a "bombshell earnings shortfall" last quarter.

Before the markets open today, IBM's CFO will hold a conference call with investors to explain the restructuring.

Fortune Magazine profiles 25 "breakout" companies that could change the technology landscape in 2005. Two of the companies are based in New York: Scanbuy (consumer bar code technology) and Orchestria (business risk management solutions such as content-scanning software).

Following fast on the heels of deals announced by the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ to acquire electronic trading rivals: Jersey City-based Knight Trading Group will acquire Attain ECN from privately held Domestic Securities. Financial terms were not disclosed. According to the CEO of Knight Trading, the move to acquire an electronic communications network (ECN) was in response to the changing competitive environment on Wall Street: "The acquisition of an ECN marks the next step in the repositioning of our equity markets business to excel in the changing securities landscape."

Stuart Elliott of the New York Times previews the upcoming conference of the American Association of Advertising Agencies ("the four A's") in Bermuda, which will unite the "poo-bahs and panjandrums of advertising" as they debate the future of the industry. At least two big issues will be up for discussion by Madison Avenue execs, says Elliott:

"Agencies are still searching for more effective methods to reach increasingly elusive consumers. They are still seeking ways to more accurately measure the return on investment for advertising spending."

Looking for that little coffee shop around the corner? Try out the Delocator, a Web site that "helps people find out where Starbucks stores are not." The site was launched by a collective of artists who are "raging against what they say is a compliance-driven, coglike work force slinging coffee in the highly regulated architectural constructs of the chain."

Enter a zip code and discover a non-corporate coffee shop near you...

Forrester Research predicts that the total market opportunity for U.S. online advertising and marketing could reach $26 billion within the next five years. For 2005, Forrester is predicting $14.7 billion in overall spend, which means that online advertising will almost double by 2010.

It looks like this is a zero-sum game, as traditional advertisers increasingly deal with the loss of advertising dollars to the online upstarts: "Almost half of marketers plan to decrease spending in traditional advertising channels like magazines, direct mail, and newspapers to fund an increase in online ad spending in 2005." In addition, marketers are likely to experiment with new forms of online media as they look for the perfect mix: "64% of respondents are interested in advertising on blogs, 57% through RSS and 52% on mobile devices, including phones and PDAs."

Crain's New York points out that Broadway is trying to attract more international visitors to the Great White Way through a new multilingual Web site: IloveNYTheater.com. Currently, foreign visitors account for approximately 10.5% of all Broadway tickets sold.

Ad Rants has a summary of the goings-on at the Blogging Goes Mainstream event in midtown yesterday. According to many of the participants, blogs offer an opportunity for marketers to join the conversation about their products and services:

"The largest theme at the seminar was that weblogs create conversations and, to take advantage of these conversations, marketers should join the conversation rather than try to manage it. In a world increasingly filled with consumer created content, created outside the control of big media companies, marketers must subdue their desire to launch the typical top-down, scream from the rooftops marketing campaign. Rather, marketers can leverage consumer created content to listen to what's being said about their brand and join the conversation, just as one would at a cocktail party, rather than attempt to control it."

"Circuits" is gone but not forgotten. The New York Times is running a special section of "Circuits" today on the broader theme of wireless living. It's a grab bag of articles about Wi-Fi hotspots, wireless gadgets, wireless search and an interesting piece from Virginia Postrel that says that the appeal of wireless technology has as much to do with the "glamorous aura" of wireless as it does with practical considerations.

Thanks to all the sponsors who made it possible: J&R, Vonage, Dell, Nikon, Nextel, Bose and Cisco. Look for another special edition of "Circuits" on June 8 that will be devoted to digital photography.

A number of City Council Members are questioning the safety of the $300 million computerized subway train (the so-called "robo-train") planned for the "L" line. Concerned by recent delays and inexplicable software glitches, these politicians claim that "unsuspecting subway riders are being used as guinea pigs to try out untested technology." There's also the fear that hackers could somehow break into the computers and cause widespread havoc and mayhem.

Not to be missed: Instapundit on "The Unbearable Rightness of Nick Denton." There's a blog rebellion going on among the scientists and engineers at Los Alamos, proof positive that blog publisher Nick Denton (of Gawker fame) may have been right when he wrote about blogs as a form of asymmetric warfare. When management is not responsive to the needs of its workers, things like this tend to happen:

"...We've started to see a switch: Where an earlier generation of articles on employee-blogging warned the employees about the danger of retribution from the employers, a newer version of the story warns employers about the power of the bloggers in their midst."

Meet DataShare, the new high-tech crime-fighting tool of the New York Police Department. It's a master database that "aims to speed information on suspects and known criminals to cops, prosecutors and probation officers with an eye toward stopping crime before it happens." Not quite Philip K. Dick's Minority Report, but getting there...

The enemies of Senator Hillary Clinton (i.e. right-wing Republicans) are hoping that the launch of a new "Stop Her Now" Web site can put a wrench in any plans Hillary might have for a 2006 New York Senate bid. The New York Daily News has the details:

"A veteran GOP operative launched an anti-Hillary Rodham Clinton Web site Tuesday, complete with an unflattering photo and a warning that she and her husband are trying to “pull the wool over America’s eyes once again.'”

Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion has already called 2005 the "Year of the Tag." Now the mainstream media seems to be picking up on the idea. Tagging is catching on in popularity as a way to organize online information, whether it's images, ideas or videos: "Tagging has the potential to change how we keep track of and discover things digital -- even whom we meet online... It could be our salvation as we attempt to sift through the growing clutter of data we're amassing on our hard drives and on that growing digital repository that is the Internet."

The founder of Del.icio.us, a New York-based tagging service, explains: "People are awash in an overwhelming sea of stuff. Our ability to produce content far outstrips the ability to sort and consume it.'"

Clay Shirky, an NYU professor (and also a Corante contributor), thinks tagging has the potential to change the online experience: "You start being able to have other people discover things for you without you knowing you wanted to look for them."

How many trees does New York City have? In June, the city is launching a high-tech tree census to find out:

"That question will be answered this summer by some thousand volunteers in a project called "Trees Count." Aside from counting every tree, the volunteers will collect basic data on each tree's location and species; they will also use handheld computers donated by Hewlett Packard to measure the diameter of the trunk and the crown. All this data will be entered into a common database, then run through an economic model to determine not just how much it would cost to replace each tree, but also to assess how much each individual tree is worth."

FYI: Bank of America is offering $1,000 to the adult New York City resident who guesses most accurately how many trees are in the city. (In 1995, there were close to 500,000 trees)

An over-heated real estate market and continuous hype about the blogosphere led to this: Business Week Online has a profile of Lockhart Steele's Curbed.com blog, calling it "a magnet for anyone looking for the lowdown on the industry's Gotham gossip." The article characterizes the blog as a "real estate gossip" blog, but it's actually more than that -- Curbed.com often is out in front of issues and developments that affect all New Yorkers, like IKEA's decision to set up shop in Red Hook or the lack of broadband Internet access in some key neighborhoods. In addition, as Business Week points out, the blog does a great job of enlisting reader support in tracking down tips and details to build a community-like feel.

New York Magazine has a Q&A with Internet entrepreneur Andrew Rasiej, who is running for the Public Advocate position against incumbent Betsy Gotbaum. Rasiej (pronounced rah-SHAY) is promoting a number of issues of interest to the New York techno elite, including universal Wi-Fi access, cellphone-friendly subways and a more technologically-sophisticated 311 service.

For those interested in getting more involved with the Rasiej campaign, there's now a blog called Advocates for Rasiej. Will the grassroots blog campaign have legs? Well, blog publisher Jason Calacanis has already given his support to Rasiej.

Just a heads up: a 1/2-day blog event is ready to take over midtown Manhattan today. Blogging Goes Mainstream: Is Your Company Ready? kicks off at 2:00 with a keynote from Microsoft's Robert Scoble and winds down several hours later with a panel discussion on blogging moderated by Corante's Stowe Boyd. Attendees include Steve Hall of Adrants and Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion.

Catalyst Group Design, a New York-based user interface design and usability testing firm that worked on the redesign of About.com, announced the launch of a newly redesigned brand as well as a brand new Web site and a brand new blog, CoFactors. From the press release, it looks like the blog will be a way to keep abreast of R&D developments as they happen in real-time:

"Welcome to CoFactors, the research + development crucible for Catalyst Group Design. Here, we expand and codify our observations and experience independent of client-driven situations. Our position as consultants gives us an exceptionally broad view of the Web and interface design issues + culture..."

As well, the blog offers the firm an opportunity to tweak its image. In addition to emphasizing innovation, the firm will also highlight its craftsman-like attention to each detail:

"Specifically, the new brand design reflects the firm's focus not only on innovative design and testing strategies, but also on a craftsman-style approach to each engagement. Every detail, no matter how small, deserves attention as a potential key to a better interface, and our designers and consultants, no matter how senior, are always deeply connected to these details."

After analyzing the efforts by weblog publishers Nick Denton and Jason Calacanis to create a profitable, sustainable blog business model, Business 2.0 pokes around John Battelle's new blogging venture (FM Publishing) for a glimpse at the future of blogging:

"Unlike Denton, who publishes only the blogs he finds personally interesting, or Calacanis, who follows the trails of Google AdWords wherever they might lead him, Battelle intends to partner only with bloggers who have decided that their blogs are worth owning and who also already have viable business models."

So how will Battelle conquer the wild and wooly world of blogs? "His plan is to offer himself as a publisher-as-service to blogging entities. He'd aggregate traffic, sell category-specific advertising against the sites in the FM network, and handle the back-end business and tech issues."

In March, we interviewed Craig Plunkett (the guy who put Wi-Fi on the Hampton Jitney, among other things) about his Wi-Fi plans for the MTA ("Put Wi-Fi on New York Commuter Trains"). If you're interested to read what's changed since then, check out the April 29 Wi-Fi Planet interview:

"Meet Craig Plunkett, a networking jack-of-all-trades with three modestly successful Wi-Fi enterprises underway in the New York area, and a Don Quixote-like quest to bring Wi-Fi to New York commuter trains. It's a quest that has so far met with nothing but frustration, but Plunkett is glad to talk about it anytime..."

Writing in Sunday's New York Times, journalist and novelist Daniel Akst challenges the conventional notion that we are living in a time of tremendous technological change. For the past 35 years, in fact, Americans have been living under the identical impression that "things were changing so fast that people couldn't keep up." Yet, writes Akst, "we still live in the same sort of houses, read the same sort of alarmist books and get around in the very same way - in cars, planes and trains, none of them much faster than they used to be."

The bottom line? The pace of technological change may be occurring a bit slower than we think. Take last week's news that the New York Stock Exchange will merge with electronic stock market Archipelago:

"What on earth has taken so long? The technology for electronic trading has been around for years and is used widely on other exchanges. It's another example of how the pace of technological change is not nearly as fast as it's made out to be - or as it could and should be."

Crain's New York reports that Colorado-based EchoStar Communications will take over the 21 high-definition satellite television channels that are part of Cablevision's money-losing Voom service. EchoStar will start carrying 10 of the channels this year, and then expand to the full 21 sometime in 2006. On news of the deal, Voom also announced that it is shutting down for business after a long, painful death.*

*barring another last-minute intervention by Charles Dolan, of course

The New York Times has details on Adam Curry's new podcasting gig at Sirius Satellite Radio. The four-hour daily show ("Adam Curry's PodShow"), which is slated to start in about two weeks, will be devoted solely to amateur podcasts. Curry joins Howard Stern and Martha Stewart as yet another high-profile name in the Sirius talent pool.

Public CIO has a cover story on Gino Menchini, the CIO of New York City. He's the CIO who never sleeps in the city that never sleeps:

"To spend an entire day with Gino Menchini, commissioner of New York City's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT), is to experience New York's traditional, hectic pace in technological overdrive. Menchini works hard and fast to get things done, and like his boss, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, he combines this determined drive with vision, down-to-earth political savvy and a sincere desire to do all he can to make the city better for citizens..."

Reacting to the news that Viacom's Infinity Broadcasting unit is experimenting with a podcast-only radio station in San Francisco, Frank Barnako of MarketWatch.com says that the podcasting phenomenon could tip either way:

For now, "the pod-o-sphere is excited about Viacom's decision to add podcasts to the failed programming of a one-lung San Francisco AM radio station." Some pundits are even hailing the move as a tipping point and a signal that podcasting could go mainstream.

However, as Barnako points out, "It could also go the other way. Like down the well. And that can happen if greed bears its fangs..." After working through a worst-case scenario of how podcasting is subverted by The Powers That Be, he concludes that "it is unreasonable to believe that innocence can survive in the Garden of Podcasting. We've got about 5,000 now. We may someday see the bloom of a million.

But this is America, and what's good for America is good for business. If the village begins to measure its success by MSM acceptance and support, popularity will kill the Podcast star."

New York Times tech guru David Pogue on penny architecture: structures built entirely from penny coins, without the use of glue or other adhesives. There are (X)-penny-span bridges, penny domes, penny pyramids and penny spirals.