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The New York Times takes a look at a wild, undiscovered travel destination in this week's edition of "36 hours" (a travel feature that appears every Friday)... Yeah, Brooklyn. Does that mean the gawking, fanny-pack crowd will now be emboldened to make the trip to Williamsburg and Fort Greene? Stay tuned.
In raving about the iPod Nano, New York Times personal tech guru David Pogue predicts that Apple will soon control more than 80% of the global marketplace for digital music players -- a feat that many on Wall Street didn't think was possible. One analyst cited by Pogue, in fact, earlier stated that, "Nobody can sustain an 80% market share in a consumer electronics business for more than two or three years. It's pretty much impossible." The iPod Nano could change all that: "To see one is to want one. If you hope to resist, lash your credit card to your wallet like Odysseus to the mast."
SearchEngineWatch takes the new Google blog search engine for a test drive and has a detailed rundown of what works and what doesn't work... Here's a link to the FAQ for Google Blog Search.
Greg.org points out that New Yorker articles are now available via RSS feeds. In addition, Google News has started indexing The New Yorker, including articles dating back to July 31.
According to Lauren Mechling of the New York Sun, blogging is the hot new after-school activity for New York City-area teachers. (subscription is required to access the article)
In today's Wall Street Journal review of the new Toulouse-Lautrec show in Chicago, New York art critic Karen Wilkin calls Montmartre the "Williamsburg of Paris..." Usually, it's the other way around, right? As in, "the Harvard of the West" or "the Venice of the North." Maybe Williamsburg really has arrived...
Overheard in New York consistently has the funniest snippets of conversation heard around the city. Maybe it's just silly Monday morning humor, but this one had me ROTFL:
College girl: Excuse me, sir. Which way is the river?
Man: There's two. (He walks away)
A new survey from Salary.com ranked the top 10 "sexy" jobs. No surprises that firefighters (FDNY rocks!) came in #1 or that jobs like lawyer, doctor and CEO also ranked highly on the Top 10 list. However, news reporters came in at a very impressive #3. As Paris Hilton would say, "That's hot."
The Citizen's Guide to Refusing New York Subway Searches - now available as a free PDF flyer. If you're stopped by the NYPD for a random bag search, stay cool, calm and collected -- even if you don't like what's happening, never raise your voice or escalate the hostility level.
Crain's New York courts the stoner crowd this week with a behind-the-scenes look at New York execs who like to smoke a little 420 after a hard day's work: "For many of these otherwise law-abiding citizens, taking a few tokes of their favorite illicit substance is simply their preferred way to decompress. Though they might conceal their after-hours smoking from their co-workers, they insist that, used in moderation, the evil weed doesn't have to hurt job performance."
The New York Times is pushing the term Halli-blogger into broader use: the paper points to a recent article on Salon by Zachary Roth ("Beware of the Halli-Bloggers'"), which warns of potential loopholes in the campaign finance laws that would enable corporations such as Halliburton to finance political blogs.
Weblog publisher Jason Calacanis notices that uber-blogger Jeff Jarvis is rockin' out a new look over at BuzzMachine. (Check out the screen shot Jason captured for a hint of what Jarvis might have in mind for his popular citizen's media/politics/technology blog)
Alt Text has discovered a Web site for would-be assassins in New York City. Apparently, the splish-and-splash mayhem (via water soaker pistols) will kick off on July 25th on a street near you.
A new study from Helsinki concludes that large companies that are run by women tend to be more profitable than those run by men. There are a lot of statistical problems with the survey (say the men), but the numbers are nevertheless representative of the situation in the business world (say the women)...
New York Magazine polled 100 commuters outside of Grand Central for their take on the London terrorist bombings and what it all means for the Big Apple. Only 5% of New Yorkers said that they were now less likely to visit London and 62% said that they would be willing to work in the new Freedom Tower.
Sony's Wonder Technology Lab in midtown was named as one of the Top 10 free things to do in the city by Deborah Crawford of BellaOnline. In order to attract more visitors to the site, Sony is apparently calling the lab a "free technology and entertainment museum."
Fimoculous points out that blogger Jim Romenesko of the Poynter Institute is pulling down a very respectable $169,187 a year for news snippets and opinions about the media industry.
We're messin' with you, Red Sox Nation. The Concord Monitor reports that the Web site and phone lines for enrolling in New Hampshire's E-ZPass program could be down until Thursday, due to a burst water pipe in New York. So what do water pipes have to do with Internet pipes? Plenty, it seems, since the New York-based company responsible for phone registration and Web site operation for E-ZPass has been struggling to patch together a busted water pipe since Sunday.
Ahh, what will those Williamsburg hipsters think of next? Apparently, trucker hats were not enough. Now Capture the Flag games are springing up all over New York. In fact, 50-plus people showed up for the first game in Williamsburg. Gothamist has more on why Capture the Flag is taking over certain neighborhoods of Brooklyn.
Daily Gotham has coined a new term for New York City's blogosphere: the Gothamsphere. (check out the site's blogroll on the right-hand side of the home page)
Thanks to the magic of the Internet, the start of the minor league baseball season in Brooklyn was eagerly anticipated in far-flung geographic locales around the globe, according to the USA Today. These fans are not always Cyclones fans or even Brooklyn fans -- but they do remember the glory days of the Brooklyn Dodgers. The article even quotes one fan from Italy who plans to make the "pilgrimage" to Coney Island later this summer to see the Cyclones play.
How likely is it that the U.S. government will attempt to crack down on online gambling operations? Well, according to one insider, it's about "as likely as drawing four aces in a game of five-card stud." A law professor from the University of Buffalo goes one step further: "It's so remote that the chances approach those of being hit by lightning..."
Remember those Etch a Sketch toys from back in the day? It looks like Jason Kottke has found the Human Etch a Sketch, who has traced one year of walking and biking in New York City.
The New York Times has the second interactive feature on the "Tribes of New York." This time, it's a look at the "sandhogs" who work underground digging the tunnels of New York City.
Online community MetroChai ("New York's site for mixing pleasure with business") is launching several new Blogger-powered blogs in order to provide real-time updates of new job and real estate listings. There's also an NYC Dating blog and an NYC Event blog.
Did you hear the one about the undersea train from Paris to New York? Apparently, it was a bit of viral marketing cooked up by a French travel agency, says Ad Rants:
"While we knew the website that promoted an undersea train/subway from Paris to New York was a hoax all along, Adrants reader Bruno points us to a story in LeJournalduNet which reveals the prankster to be a travel site called Voyages-sncf.com."
This is obviously the work of an obsessive-compulsive personality: 80 years of The New Yorker in an 8-DVD set. We're not just talking about a random cartoon here and there or a nice article or two: "The collection, titled "The Complete New Yorker," will consist of eight DVD's containing high-resolution digital images of every page of the 4,109 issues of the magazine from February 1925 through the 80th anniversary issue, published last February. Included on the discs will be "every cover, every piece of writing, every drawing, listing, newsbreak, poem and advertisement."
The Village Voice suggests some summer reading for cubicle dwellers everywhere: How to Be Idle, by Tom Hodgkinson, founder of British magazine The Idler. If you believe that "clocking in, being paid by the hour, and depending on a single employer for your wage" is an artifact of the Industrial Revolution, this book's for you.
The New York Daily News now has RSS feeds! Separate feeds are now available for business, local news and the front page, among others. (Hat tip: Micro Persuasion)
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.
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.
Ever wanted to develop a real New York accent? Check out the Langwich Skool uv Noo Yawk.
MemeFirst takes a closer look at the evolution of the Chase/JPMorgan re-branding effort. That white octahedron was like sooo 20th century...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
Wired News profiles the Wooster Collective, a New York City-based Web site that showcases an array of graffiti and street art from around the world: "Artists and camera-happy passersby send in photos of their works and sightings, and site creators put them up in blog-style postings that ensure the pictures take center stage."
The Wall Street Journal reports that the 800-pound gorillas of the tech sector are ready to wage a bruising, nasty war for the right to control your living room... PC companies are ready to beat up on the consumer electronics companies while the telephone giants are lining up against the cable giants.
New York-Presbyterian Hospital has made two RSS feeds available -- "Health in the News" and "Hospital News." (Hat tip: Micro Persuasion) Look for more companies and organizations to experiment with RSS as a way to keep customers in the loop.
In Sunday's New York Times, James Fallows (a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly) provides a "Where are they now?" update on some cool gadgets & gizmos that have previously appeared in the paper, like Skype, Google Maps (now with satellite imagery), and mind-mapping software for the Mac.
IT Conversations has audio of Malcolm Gladwell's talk at this year's SXSW event in Austin for streaming or download. (Hat tip: Kottke)
Paul Boutin points to a Google zoom movie from Pat Di Justo that creates the sensation of blasting off into outer space from the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
The New York Times is justifiably famous for its slogan "All the news that's fit to print." Here's another suggestion, from an article about why the New York Times may need to start charging for online content: "All the news that fits, we print."
Mitch Ratcliffe nominates "The Long Tail" (coined by Wired Magazine's Chris Anderson) as the "most abused phrase of the year." People are over-simplifying the meaning of the term or abusing it in wrong-headed ways to explain just about any phenomenon, says Ratcliffe.
Yahoo announced Wednesday that it will soon begin giving users of its free Web e-mail service 1 gigabyte of storage -- the same amount offered by Google's Gmail service.
From Smart Mobs via PC Pro: "Google is inviting open source developers to swarm on its code..." If you know anything about perftools, coredumpers, sparsehashtables and goopy/functionals, you're golden.
Amazon is analyzing the text of books to find statistically improbable phrases -- by knowing which phrases are unique for any one book, the reader (or prospective reader) knows instantly what a book is about. With that in mind, Onfocus lists the SIPs for Malcolm Gladwell's new book Blink: rapid cognition, intuitive repulsion, sip test, adaptive unconscious.
In today's New York Post, media columnist Keith Kelly notes that New York Times investigative business reporter Tim O'Brien has signed a six-figure contract with Warner Books to write an unauthorized biography of Donald Trump. The working title is "Trump World: The Art of Being the Donald."
If you think oil at $55 a barrel is bad, what about oil at $100 a barrel? The New York Daily News talks to some Wall Street analysts who think that scenario is not so far-fetched. If true, "New Yorkers can expect to be socked for items from gasoline and heating oil to rent and groceries."
Ever had a personal item confiscated by an airport security screener? Now, there's a solution to those problems from ReturnKey Systems and ItemReturn.com: the two companies are "setting up automated kiosks near screening areas that will, for $6 to $22, send a restricted item home by mail." The kiosks are currently in five U.S. airports, including La Guardia and Newark Liberty.
In this week's "Circuits" section, The New York Times takes a look at how cell phones are changing the rules of social interaction and blurring the line between "efficiency" and "dependency." For one thing, nobody memorizes phone numbers anymore. But does that make us more efficient by freeing up room to memorize other more important details -- or does it have the insidious result of "dumbing people down"?
JetBlue is thinking about adding New York-Boston shuttle service, with fares around $100 round-trip, says the New York Post.
FishBowlNY on the news that the New York Sun's business section is being scrapped after only two months: "Budgetary issues, we hear. (Doesn't Michael Steinhardt want to read about his friends and enemies? Isn't that why financiers put money into print media properties? It's certainly not the ROI.)"
HowStuffWorks.com offers a primer on how satellite radio works, including an easy-to-grasp technical look at how Sirius Satellite Radio works. If satellite radio isn't your thing, there are also articles on how Firefox works, how flash memory works, and how the Predator works...
Blogads is conducting a brief survey ("Blog Reader Demographics 2005") to learn more about typical blog readers. The goal, presumably, is to give advertisers as much information as possible about the types of people who read blogs. (Hat tip: NewYorkology)
The New York Academy of Sciences has launched a new & improved science education site: Science EduNet.
More than a month after Curbed mentioned the possibility of a new Apple store on Fifth Avenue, the New York Times "breaks" the news about a new glass cube structure at the GM building that will lead visitors to an underground Apple Computer store.
The real news, says Curbed, is the prospect of a third Apple store somewhere in the Flatiron District: "Plans are on the table for a boutique Apple store (about one-tenth the size of the Soho outpost—the iPod Mini, as it were, of retail outposts.) at an as-yet undisclosed site in Flatiron."
The New York Post explains how the regulated are now the regulators: "The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission set up a hotline and e-mail address to field complaints about its 495 inspectors from brokers, investment advisers, and others subject to regular SEC exams."
Gawker continues to delight Fast Company with items like this: a hilarious memo from the New York Sun exhorting newspaper staffers to stop stealing food from the office refrigerator.
The MTA is considering putting flat-screen TVs in the New York subway, says the New York Daily News. Based on a similar plan already underway in Atlanta, straphangers would be able to tune into local television news broadcasts, one of three different music channels, or an MTA informational channel.
A sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage sold for $65,000 at the Origins of Cyberspace auction at Christie's on Wednesday. (By way of comparison, Christie's had posted an estimate of between $30,000 - $40,000 for the item.) So what do you get for $65,000? "The first separate edition, extremely rare, of the most important paper in the history of digital computing before modern times," according to the Christie's auction catalogue.
The New York Daily News has an exclusive on the proliferation of pre-paid porn cards that are being "peddled by bodegas and newsstands across the city - even to underage kids." The so-called PPP cards ("pre-paid porn") cost anywhere from $5 to $50 and have been widely available in the city for the past four months.
Internet phone service provider Fusion Telecommunications, based in Manhattan, recently raised $23.2 million in an IPO. According to the company's Web site, "Multinational corporations, government agencies, Internet service providers, cable operators and carriers with strategic opportunities - and challenges - in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean count on us to drive high-quality, cost-effective global solutions into the world's hardest to reach places-fast."
If you have anxiety about going into work on Mondays, you're not alone, says the Wall Street Journal. For many workers, the anxiety starts on Sunday night -- just as it did during the years of grade school and high school:
"People who suffer from the Sunday-night doldrums don't necessarily dislike work, but they sure don't like the thought of it. For many of the afflicted, the pre-Monday funk is yet another workplace echo of grade school. The only difference between this one and fire drills, cafeteria trays, bullies, teams and report cards (a.k.a. performance reviews) is that it happens every week, and yelling "Force field!" won't protect you."
The Paid Content empire establishes another outpost: the Digital Media Events Blog. A quick scan of upcoming events in NYC: the Digital Music Forum on March 2 and the Billboard Music & Money Symposium on March 3.
The New York Times has a mini-feature on OverheardinNewYork.com, which has been amusing New Yorkers with its "priceless gems you overhear on the street." The site has been so successful in diverting cubicle dwellers from their PCs, in fact, that it has spawned a spin-off: OverheardintheOffice.com.
According to Business Week, Donald Trump was the author of two of the seven best-selling business books of 2004 -- TRUMP: HOW TO GET RICH and TRUMP: THINK LIKE A BILLIONAIRE. It's all the reason we need to watch tonight's Apprentice.
Smart Mobs has a quick synopsis of "Cellphones," a new off-off-Broadway rock musical playing at La MaMa, in which audience members get cellphone calls from the cast.
Verizon Wireless took out a splashy two-page ad in the front section of today's New York Times trumpeting the arrival of its VCAST service in the NYC metropolitan area.
The latest mini-scandal at the MTA: blueprints of the Atlantic Avenue subway station - complete with diagrams of the location of station air ducts, manholes and electrical systems - were allegedly found on a windblown street corner in Brooklyn. (Hat tip: NY1 News via Gothamist)
Don't miss David Pogue's review of the Delphi MyFi, the first pocket-size satellite radio that you can take anywhere, anytime.
AOL's Ted Leonsis talking about media business models: "100 percent ad-funded businesses are one bad quarter away from a subscription model."
Didn't F. Scott Fitzgerald once say that "there are no second acts in American lives"? Well, he never met Martha Stewart...
Donald Trump will be downtown at The Trump Building (where else?) interviewing potential 'Apprentice' contestants at 9 am on Friday. Past auditions have attracted tens of thousands of hopefuls dreaming of Trump-like wealth, so show up early.
Joyce Wycoff of ThinkSmart is looking for a new phrase to replace the irksome cliche "Think Outside the Box" once and for all... (Hat tip: Fast Company)
There has to be a better phrase, but some of the new suggestions at Survey Monkey are, quite frankly, not that inspiring: "Crack the egg"? "Bounce the coin"? "Spark the gap"?
Thanks to Mayor Bloomberg, Staten Island will soon be home to its own gifted-and-talent magnet school for science & tech, along the lines of Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. Currently, Staten Island is the only borough without a specialized magnet high school that can attract kids from all over the city. (Hat tip: Gothamist)
From Overheard in New York, which posts snippets of amusing conversations from all over the city --
Little boy: "Mom, can I download you?" (Barnes & Noble, Astor Place)
The Park Slope Pavilion, one of Brooklyn's oldest movie theaters, will become the city's first theater with all-digital capability this spring and a "showcase for burgeoning digital technology."
As seen on Engadget: New York-based Wicked Wireless plans to offer "moantones" from adult entertainment star Jenna Jameson to Latin American mobile phone users. What's interesting is that Wicked views the new product offering as just another "consumer-centric brand," similar to its Warner Music Store and its Scooby Doo Mobile Club.
The blizzard of '05 is introducing us to a brand new weather lexicon. One of the local TV stations has been using the word bombogenisis, a real meteorological term to describe a "big, rapidly developing storm heading our way." That's a mouthful, though, so now us common folk will just refer to it as the bomb.
Spotted on the streets of New York: the cheapest hands free cell phone. While you're at it, check out Andrea's ModernPooch.com for your daily doggy fix. (Hat tip: reBlog)
Business 2.0, via Josh Rubin's Cool Hunting, has a quick item about Brooklyn-based Neighborhoodies: "Neighborhoodies is the success story of a couple kids running a t-shirt business out of a basement apartment and 2 years later having a thriving 30 person company. As the name suggests, their t-shirts, hoodies and underwear shout out local pride. It's taking I Love NY to down to the street level, recognizing the individuality of different parts of town." Of course, the company has already been mentioned in the New York Times and Time Out New York and there's a retail store at the South Street Seaport.
From Rare Gallery in Chelsea: PAUSE, "a full-size representation of the Dukes of Hazzard '69 Dodge Charger crashing into the Unabomber's cabin -- two metaphors for lawlessness converging in time and space and providing at least one interpretation of today's geopolitical climate." Cool photos. (Hat tip: Josh Rubin's Cool Hunting)
Curbed points to Cornershots, a NYC architectural photoblog "with a fondness for 90-degree angles."
The New York Times has an amusing look at how Google is cracking down on advertisers who use improper spelling, grammar and slang: "Taking the stance that unorthodox usage and punctuation and slang create a less straightforward searching experience, Google's AdWords division, which is responsible for the contextual ads that appear alongside search results, insists on standard English and punctilious punctuation."
Bloggers accepting money for product placements or positive PR raises the risk of a blogger payola scandal, or blogola, for short. (Hat tip: Buzz Machine)
When identity theft is an inside job, there's not much you can do about it. Crain's New York reports that a former help-desk worker at a Long Island maker of credit software products was sentenced to 14 years in prison for stealing 30,000 credit histories in "one of the largest identity-theft cases on record." The street value of one credit history is about $30, meaning the guy made close to $1 million, according to prosecutors in the case.
Napsterization points to news from the Time Warner media empire: CNN now offers RSS feeds.
With the NYC subway photo ban looming, New York magazine is calling for submissions from photobloggers: "New York magazine would like to publish a selection of photos from everyday subway-riders. Use your digital camera to take shots of trains, passengers, stations, token-booth attendants, defaced ads, rats in the tracks, supermodels waiting for the downtown local -- whatever captures your fancy underground..." (Hat tip: Gothamist)
Six Apart has published a comprehensive guide to comment spam, which includes a list of recommendations about what to do about those annoying comment spammers. (Hat tip: Jason Kottke)
BoingBoing describes The Cubes as a "corporate drudgery playset for grown-ups." Create a corporate labyrinth of cube dwellers!
vloggercon 2005 will take place at the Parsons School of Design on Saturday, January 22. Don't worry about the velvet rope -- "Whoever wants to come is now officially invited." Oh, and all sessions will be video streamed on the Web.
Need a Starbucks fix for a quick jolt of caffeine (or Wi-Fi access)? Photos and descriptions of every Starbucks in New York City, courtesy of Jason Kottke.
For mobile office workers who find that it's more difficult to order from a barista at Starbucks than a wine sommelier at a fancy French restaurant: Starbucks Drinks Simplified. (Hat tip: Jason Kottke)
Malcolm Gladwell's new book "Blink", which examines the science of split-second decisions, will be one of the most talked-about books of the year, yet a New York Times book reviewer takes him to task for "naggingly bad grammar."
The NYPD's Auto Crime Division helped to break up a national car theft ring that "chopped up hot wheels and peddled the parts on eBay." A spokesperson from eBay, though, quickly pointed out that, "If you are a criminal, eBay is one of the worst places to fence stolen property because the sellers have to give information about themselves."
MSNBC reports that Howard Stern has been pulled off four radio stations this week for "using a pair of newly forbidden words: Satellite radio."
In the category of stupid neighbor tricks: a 38-year-old New Jersey father of three has been accused of pointing a high-powered laser device at two small aircraft near Teterboro Airport. For the past month or so, reliable news sources across the country have been reporting "similar incidents involving lasers... prompting warnings from terrorism watchdogs about the possibility of the devices being used to bring down planes." Whew. I guess we can put another crazy "terrorists are about to strike" plotline to rest.
Jason Kottke suggests that "The Gates" project in Central Park (think saffron-colored fabric draped all over the park during a two-week period in February) will be "the most photoblogged event ever." The $20 million public art project is an attempt to create "a visual golden river appearing and disappearing through the bare branches of the trees, highlighting the shapes of the footpaths."
The New York Times has an advance preview of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (January 6-9). With over 130,000 "techno-fashionistas" expected to attend, the event is a must-attend for any company making gadgets and gizmos.
Ever had recurring mental scenarios about foiling a terrorist on the subway? Thanks to Craigslist, there's now a documentary maker waiting to talk to you. (Hat tip: Amy Langfield)
Sirius Satellite Radio announced that it successfully broke through the 1 million subscriber mark in 2004, ending the year with 1.14 million subscribers. At the beginning of the year, the company boasted only 260,000 subscribers. The company's plans for 2005 are no less ambitious: to double its satellite radio audience to 2 million.
In order to discuss microcontent-related issues and VloggerCon 2005, Marc Canter will be hosting a dinner somewhere in NYC on January 21st -- probably Katz's Deli.
ClickZ reports that Fastclick could launch an acquisition bid for New York-based DoubleClick. On December 22, Fastclick filed for a $92 million initial public offering -- that's just 52 days after the company raised a monster $75 million round of VC financing.
Disgraced Homeland Security nominee Bernard Kerik will resign from Giuliani Partners (Rudy's consulting firm), effective immediately.
Gothamist has the latest on how NYC photobloggers are fighting back against the proposed MTA subway photo ban. Click here for photos from Grand Central Station, where at least one photoblogger was carrying a "I'm here on a research grant from Al Qaeda" poster.
If you join the NYC Photobloggers, you can take part in activities like the Vintage Subway Tea Party: depression-era suits, flapper gowns and tea all aboard the vintage New York subway trains rumbling through the city. (Hat tip: Jason Kottke)
Connecticut-based satellite broadcaster PanAmSat is preparing for a $1 billion IPO, according to the New York Post. Just four months ago, an investor consortium led by buyout specialist KKR acquired the company for $4.1 billion. Unnamed sources noted that "the proceeds from the offerings will be used to put tons of cash in the pockets of PanAmSat's current private equity owners."
Wall Street boutique Lazard has filed for a $850 million IPO, becoming "the last of the old-line Wall Street partnerships to sell its shares to the public." The House of Lazard traces its pedigree back to 1848.
Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion takes a look back at the year in blogging, pointing to some great resources from Blog Webinar.
Students at NYU are showing off their Solar Powered Wallpaper Project this weekend at Winter Show 2004. (Hat tip: Gizmodo)
In the middle of Section A of today's New York Times: a two-page advertisement for the Firefox browser.
Normally we avoid stories about precocious Manhattan kids and leave those kinds of things to Daily Candy or Gawker or whoever. But this story from the New York Times was just too good to pass up: "Computer-savvy children, with encouragement from the toy and apparel industries, are transforming the old-fashioned handwritten wish list into sophisticated computer presentations, complete with hyperlinks to favored Web sites and downloaded images of must-have items."
Crain's New York reports that Time Warner is set to pay $510 million to settle an investigation into accounting irregularities at AOL -- $210 million to the U.S. Justice Department and $300 million to the SEC.
From Crain's New York: Queens-based generic drugmaker Eon Labs received final approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market a generic version of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s diabetes drug, Glucophage XR.
Analysts may be mixed on the $35 billion Sprint-Nextel merger and the $41 billion Cingular-AT&T merger, but Wall Street investment bankers are decidedly bullish. Six banks -- Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Lazard, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase -- had a piece of both deals, meaning a very good year-end bonus season indeed.
Fresh from his conquest of Mark Cuban and Richard Branson in the reality TV wars, New York billionaire Donald Trump is now convinced that Trump has become the most valuable brand in the world. "It's a bigger brand now than Pepsi Cola or Coca-Cola," he says.
Both Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio were added to the NASDAQ 100 index, further proof that the satellite radio revolution continues to gain force. Forbes.com notes that satellite radio listeners are attracted to "a broader spectrum of tunes than the somewhat limited top-40 of free radio... and satellite offers the ever-fascinating theater of extremist politics, round-the-clock sports--and no censorship of naughty words."
Barron's has a piece on Monster.com beating up newspapers. (subscription required)
Paid Content points to an article from the Wall Street Journal suggesting that Internet radio, not satellite, is the greater threat to traditional radio. Currently, there are 19 million Internet radio listeners, compared to only 3.4 million for satellite radio.
Speaking at John Jay College in Manhattan, Tom Ridge argued that additional anti-terrorist funding should go to New York. Interestingly, Ridge also discussed the role that colleges and universities can play in analyzing terrorist threats through the development and support of modern technology.
Crain's New York reports that, according to the latest data on CIO hiring plans for 1Q 2005, "metro-area senior technology executives are more pessimistic than their peers nationwide about the jobs picture."
On December 13, Majestic Research is hosting its second annual Internet conference: "Majestic Conversations 2004: Does Online Shopping = Paid Search?" The event, which looks at the continuing overlap between e-Commerce and Paid Search, takes place at the Hudson Hotel (356 West 58th Street).
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum is currently accepting proposals for Web-based exhibits that will be produced through its Digital Artists in Residence Program (DARP). The exhibits must focus on the "presentation and interpretation" of the immigrant experience on Manhattan's Lower East Side. (Hat tip: reBlog)
News of the city's "pod people" has finally made its way to America's heartland. People in Minnesota will be waking up today and inventing new urban legends about MetroNaps (a 'space-age snooze station') and the pod people who emerge, surprisingly refreshed, from the Empire State Building.
In November, Internet ad revenue at the New York Times Co. increased by a whopping 35.5%.
David Pogue of the New York Times hints that TiVO may be "on a sliding slope": the company plans to add software that will make static ads appear on the TV screen whenever a user attempts to fast forward through commercials. It's just plain "icky," he says.
At Tech Central Station, Glenn Reynolds ("Instapundit") shares his views on the changing dynamics of public spaces in large urban centers. Traditional office towers will never go completely away -- but thanks to new technology such as Wi-Fi and a renewed emphasis on "interconnectivity," cities like New York could be witnessing the return of the "18th century coffeehouse."
For the mobile New Yorker: TCC Teleplex operates a growing number of Web-enabled payphones in Manhattan. In February, the New York Daily News described these Web phones as "streetside portals to cyberspace." Total cost: $1 for four minutes of Internet access. Plus, the phones have wireless capability so anyone within 300 feet can get access to high-speed Internet on a laptop. (Hat tip: NewYorkology)
Well, here's one sector of the New York economy that's poised for growth in 2005: private jet travel. CharterAuction.com, selected as a Rising Star Company for North America by Deloitte Technology in 2003, announced plans to open a New York office at the Westchester County Airport.
DoubleClick will discontinue its own Web metrics product, SiteAdvance, and encourage clients to migrate to Omniture's SiteCatalyst. According to MarketingVOX, "this move is completely unrelated to the company's recent hiring of an investment bank to seek suitors for certain divisions, or quite possibly the whole company."
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