This, the first of our regional blogs, is authored by the technology and financial journalist Dominic Basulto. Dominic is a New York native, has been a senior editor at Corante since day one and has written for a number of online and offline media companies. Send tips or story ideas to: basulto@gmail.com.
About this weblog
Here we'll report daily on the latest tech and business developments in New York City. Impossible we concede: comprehensive coverage of the city's every story. What we hope you'll find: tips, tidbits and perspectives you won't find elsewhere. As well as unique insights, original interviews and more that should be of interest to New York's vibrant community of technologists and those who track, invest in and report on them.
According to the New York Daily News, the owners of the Ace Bar in the East Village have put the place up for sale on eBay. The minimum bid: $670,000. So far, there have been no bidders - but one of the co-owners is still holding out hope that a deal is imminent: "I'm a Web kind of guy. I've never heard of this being done before, especially not a bar at its height of popularity. We figured we'd roll the dice and see what happens."...
So what do you get for a cool $670,000? "In addition to a 10-year lease, the new owners will inherit the bar's accoutrements, including its antique lunchbox collection, authentic circus sideshow banners, giant 3-D werewolf, pinball machines and a couple of Skee-Ball games. Less kitschy is the 30-foot bar itself - a beautiful ornate mahogany piece believed to be from the late 19th century. And, of course, the buyer would get a full stock of beer, liquor, juice and soda."
After Governor Pataki lifted a ban on Internet wine sales to New Yorkers in July, 166 out-of-state wineries have acquired a license to ship wines directly to New York state residents - including one California winery (Foxen Vineyards) that was featured in last year's movie hit "Sideways." Kendall-Jackson, which sells 3.5 million cases annually, was also mentioned as an out-of-state winery that is now able to sell directly to New Yorkers.
MSNBC has the details of the legal wrangling over selling wine via the Internet to New Yorkers, as well as local reaction from New York wine merchants. From the article, it appears that California winemakers are attempting to downplay the impact of the move, saying that the wines now available will only appeal to the "real connoisseur" and other lovers of specialty wines that aren't available anywhere else in New York state.
The Whitney Museum of American Art has created ARTPORT, an online portal for net art and digital arts, as well as an online gallery space for commissioned net art projects. One of the commissioned projects is called {Software} Structures, which explores the relevance of conceptual art to the idea of software as art. The artist Casey Reas explains:
"The catalyst for this project is the work of Sol LeWitt, specifically his wall drawings. I had a simple question: "Is the history of conceptual art relevant to the idea of software as art?" I began to answer the question by implementing three of Lewitt's drawings in software and then making modifications.
After working with the LeWitt plans, I created three structures unique to software. These software structures are text descriptions outlining dynamic relations between elements. They develop in the vague domain of image and then mature in the more defined structures of natural language before any thought is given to a specific machine implementation.
Twenty-six pieces of software derived from these structures were written to isolate different components of software structures including interpretation, material, and process. For each, you may view the software, source code, and comments."
According to the New York Post, Gawker Media is shutting down Oddjack, a gambling blog that failed to gain the type of audience and reach that other blogs, like the ever-popular Gawker, achieved. Oddjack is the first Gawker-owned site that "blog tycoon" Nick Denton has shuttered since the formation of Gawker Media in 2002. Still, the site attracted 180,000 visitors a month, or about 6,000 daily, far more than most blogs in the blogosphere.
"Hello, dear, seldom readers. As you may(or may not) have heard, this plucky little gambling site which rarely reported gambling news or serviceable insights will be no more. Thank yous across the board to those who cared enough to stop by and say nice things. Thank yous across the board to those who took the time to be negative as well. It was an honor to be such a blemish. Over the next couple days, we’ll do our best to post stuff that’s interesting to four or five people. I hope you enjoy it...
[dead panda photo]
On a personal note, I am thrilled to be constructing a resume. I am looking forward to entering the office life again with its ashen cubicles and casual Fridays. I am ecstatic to have a job that will require I wear pants. My parents will be delighted to talk about my unemployment with friends and relatives over Thanksgiving dinner. I look forward to seeing them awash with pride.
[dead panda photo, again, for emphasis]
It is a glorious day. It’s raining and there are six bottles of wine with my name on it. I shall commence wallowing for three hours and then try to find my shoes..."
Over the past few days, the local New York tabloids have been building momentum for the annual multi-billion-dollar post-Thanksgiving spending orgy known as the holiday shopping season. Forget Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), now there's Black Monday (the first Monday after Thanksgiving), when online shoppers really shift into buy mode. With that in mind, the New York Daily News included a handy guide to comparison shopping sites for Internet-savvy New York shoppers. Among the sites mentioned: Yahoo's shopping site, Shopzilla, Shopping.com, Become.com, FatLens.com, Dulance, ConsumerClub, Dealio, and SquareTrade.
Interestingly, the folks at Yahoo prefer to use the term "Cyber Monday" when discussing Monday, November 28. Which term do you prefer, Black Monday or Cyber Monday?
According to the New York Post, Apple iTunes is now the seventh-largest music retailer in the U.S., trailing only Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, Amazon.com, FYE and Circuit City. A year earlier, iTunes pulled in at #14 according to the survey conducted by NPD Group, so it's easy to see how Apple's online music store could break into the Top 5 by 2006. The writing is on the wall, obviously, for traditional music retailers like Tower Records, Coconuts, and Sam Goody.
If you're desperate to win a chance at a green card as part of the upcoming "Green Card Lottery," the New York Daily News has a warning for you - don't believe everything you see or hear. Scams are proliferating all over the Internet to draw in the unwary and naive:
"Immigration scams linked to the approaching December 4 deadline for green card lottery applications are flooding the Internet. The sites are charging from $30 to $500 to help fill out the electronic entry forms, work that actually takes less than a minute. 'People are desperate to get the cards, grabbing at anything, paying anything, and others are preying on that desperation... It's a lottery and nobody can help you win.'"
Oh - and if you're from Mexico, Canada, China or the Dominican Republic, fuh-get about it... Citizens from those countries are excluded from participating in this year's Green Card lottery.
You're looking at the raw space that's about to become Google's new Chelsea Googleplex. Curbed provides the photo and details about the "mad square footage" of the new digs:
"The space stretches the entire square block from 15th St to 16th St, from 8th Ave. to 9th. It used to be occupied by Prudential Financial Services. You could probably host quite a sizeable party in there. Looks like they have a lot of work to do! I actually saw someone walking around in there today, so I think they are starting to build it out. I actually had to run out of there so I wouldn't get questioned. They take security pretty seriously in this building. Several weeks ago I was snooping around as well and there wasn't a soul to be seen."
The folks over at Dow Jones must have been drinking the Blog Kool-Aid this weekend -- today's WSJ has a two-page spread on the favorite blogs read by insiders in a number of different industries - ranging from real estate (Curbed) to digital content (Paid Content) to venture capital (Jeff Nolan's Venture Chronicles). In between, there's a description of tax blogs, M&A blogs, economics blogs and insurance blogs. Good stuff. There's even a question of the day meant to draw in even more would-be bloggers: How many blogs do you read weekly?
David Carr of The New York Times takes the blogosphere to task - and especially the celebrity scandal blog Gawker - for its embrace of sleazy and disturbing news stories in an article called "When Bloggers Joke About the Unfunny." Consider the case of Peter Braunstein [aka "The Chelsea Rapist"], a story that has captivated the daily tabloids as well as the gossip blogs for nearly 10 days:
"[Peter Braunstein's] real moment in the sun has come in the Manhattan-based media blogs, which have given him the Paris Hilton treatment. Gawker, the snarky annotator of life in New York's publishing circles, has run almost daily items, making fun of his eyebrows, his alleged fetishes for pantyhose, shoes, and Kate Moss, and his one try at playwriting. Jossip, another blog, suggested in a headline that "Rape isn't funny, but Peter Braunstein sure is." Do tell.
In a way, Mr. Braunstein represents the very sweet spot of Gawker: he is a media writer, he worked at a division of Condé Nast, his publication covered the fashion world and he was convicted of stalking someone else from the same company. The fact that Mr. Braunstein is likely reading over the shoulder of the blogs adds a significant tingle-factor."
Apparently, that's not all. Carr accuses Gawker and other blogs of its ilk of "a peculiar tone-deafness around death and its collateral damage." Traffic deaths, suicides, murders and other grisly crimes should not be the fodder for blog postings, writes Carr: "The great thing about the Web is that people can say almost anything they please. But it will only mature as a medium if people see that as less of a license than as a burden."
As reported in the New York Post, popular blogger Andrew Sullivan will move his blog ("The Daily Dish") to the Time.com site sometime in 2006. According to a Time executive quoted for the piece, Sullivan's blog will become "the first of a blog neighborhood on Time.com, offering readers opinions from all points of view."
For those worried about a sell-out by Andrew Sullivan: Time made clear from the get-go that Sullivan (a Time contributor since 2003) will maintain "full control over the content of his postings." On his blog, Andrew explained the move, reiterating his ability to maintain full editorial control over the blog:
"As for the deal, I can simply assure you that I have retained exactly the same editorial control as I have had since the beginning. This is a blog. I won't be running posts before any editors before they appear. I will continue to write simply what I believe or think, however misguided I may be. I will continue to correct any errors in the full light of day and change my mind if new events demand it or new facts compel it. I will try and air counter-arguments as often as possible. In other words: the essence of the blog won't change. You will still like it for the same reasons or hate it for the same reasons; or, as many of you keep telling me, both."
As one might imagine, the blogosphere has been abuzz over the news. Blog Network Watch has started to piece together commentary about the move from notables such as BuzzMachine and Jason Calacanis.
The folks at Gawker Media amused themselves this weekend by typing "Why are there bad people in the world" into Google. The top two results turned out to be Gawker and Wonkette, both parts of the sprawling Gawker Media empire.
Tongue-in-cheek, Gawker called the Google results "the culmination of all our efforts." What's scary, perhaps, is that a handful of other blogs are apparently part of the blog axis of evil: The Volokh Conspiracy (#3), the Mother Jones blog (#4), Eschaton (#8), Gizmodo (#9), and BuzzMachine (#10).
Now that Michael Bloomberg has been re-elected as mayor of the city, where will political junkies in the Big Apple look for their next fix? Gotham Gazette suggests taking a look at the race for City Council Speaker, via the web site Backroom Deal Breaker:
"With the mayoral election over, a group of "outsiders with a unique view of the inside" have set up this blog of the next big race: the contest for City Council Speaker. It follows the ideas and actions of those running, and directs readers towards other things being written about it."
There are a few interesting items on the Backroom Deal Breaker site, like the "Net of Wrath" scorecard, which provides a handy summary of "praise" and "wrath" editorial mentions on the site. By this metric, it looks like Lewis Fidler, Christine Quinn and Bill de Blasio are in for a long, hard campaign slog. Until we come up with a more clever nickname, we'll refer to this City Council Speaker scorecard with the Steinbeck-ian moniker of "Big Apples of Wrath."
The New York Daily News is dragging eBay's name through the mud in its continued investigation of the depravities surrounding suspected Chelsea rapist Peter Braunstein. Turns out Mr. Braunstein went shopping on eBay just days before his "sadistic Halloween sex attack," in order to pick up a legitimate-looking firefighter outfit.
If you don't know the story, it goes something like this... A crazed journalist-type gets the crazy idea of stalking a woman in her Chelsea apartment building. He then proceeds to buy firefighter gear on eBay and play dress-up for Halloween. On that same night, he starts a mini-blaze in the stalked woman's apartment building and impersonates a firefighter in order to gain unobstructed access to the woman's apartment. Then he drugged her and tied her up before engaging on a 13-hour orgy of raping and pillaging, some of it caught on videotape.
So, who's next on the New York Daily News' hitlist??? First, it was Internet chatrooms. Then, it was blogs. (Don't you know - all criminals keep sinister blogs with their devilish plots outlined on them?) Then, it was eBay. Maybe the suspected rapist Googled the woman's name on the Internet and then searched for photos of her on Flickr?
It looks like the New York Times' TimesSelect program, in which readers have to shell out cash to read the opinions of venerable op-ed pundits, is resulting in the slow disappearance of Paul Krugman from the blogosphere. It's a natural cycle, really - once you put Krugman's prized opinions behind a paid content wall, fewer bloggers will read his stories and even fewer bloggers will link to Krugman. Over time, bloggers will simply gravitate to other pundits. Wasn't it Def Leppard who proclaimed "It's better to burn out than fade away?"
"Ever since the New York Times placed its opinion columnists behind the $49.95 / year TimesSelect wall in mid-September, Krugman has been the topic of fewer blog posts. Blogpulse’s trend tools show how often the phrase “Paul Krugman” was mentioned in blogs over the last six months... It looks like there is a clear dropoff after mid-September. Krugman hasn’t had a “hit” since the wall went up almost two months ago. He had a dry spell in early summer, but it only lasted a month."
UPDATE: If you check the comments, I've been exposed as a metalhead, glam-rock-loving Def Leppard fan. Turns out the words "It's better to burn out than fade away" should be properly attributed to Neil Young, NOT to Def Leppard. OK, I stand corrected. But can we at least give Def Leppard credit for: "Gunter glieben glauchen globen"?
The first-ever Wired Store is opening in SoHo (160 Wooster) for the holiday shopping season. It's a pop-up retail store that will only be open from November 18 - December 24. (plus, it looks like the store will not be open on Mondays or Tuesdays) Anyway, the site's tagline says it all: "Geek Out in Style." To lure in buyers of expensive tech gear, the store is hosting all kinds of promotions - DJ parties hosted by Flavorpill, Nokia phone promotions and sponsorship tie-ins with VW and American Express.
"WIRED Magazine announced that it will open its first-ever, retail store in Manhattan and bring to life its unique brand of hip gadget advice just in time for the holiday season. With the feel of a gallery located at the corner of Wooster and Houston in Soho... the WIRED Store is designed as a destination that moves e-commerce into a brick and mortar space and allows shoppers to test drive the latest consumer gadgets and gear... The WIRED Store will allow customers to sample more than 65 products ranging from the hot new Motorola PEBL phone to the Ultimate Gaming chair to an once-in-a-lifetime suborbital space adventure."
Speaking at a breakfast conference sponsored by the New Yorker magazine and the Newhouse School, Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons predicted a wave of consolidation in the Internet sector that could result in smaller wireless, gaming or content companies being snapped up by larger Internet/media conglomerates like Time Warner:
"It's inevitable," Parsons said of the recent Internet buying frenzy of its peers. "The little guys will ultimately be consolidated. Rupert (Murdoch, CEO of News Corp) and Viacom are making the right moves. We're making the same moves."
Adam Balkin of NY1 takes a behind-the-scenes look at a new technology from Cisco Systems that will make it easier for emergency responders to coordinate their actions: IPICS (Internet Protocol Intercommunication Solution). The new technology was created in response to a common problem faced by police, fire and other emergency responders - some are using cellphones, some are using push-to-talk phones, and nearly everyone is on a different frequency. Balkin explains how Cisco's IPICS technology can solve this problem:
"It’s a solution that allows even the most antiquated walkie-talkies to communicate easily with even the most state-of-the-art cell phones. IPICS essentially connects them all through a private IP network - think of it like a mini-Internet set up just for first responders. Then, certain individuals with security clearance, like a fire chief, can use a laptop to drag and drop different units in and out of the emergency response dialogue."
In a survey of the best NFL fan blogs, Deadspin honors the three best New York Jets sports blogs:
"JetNation.com. You gotta love a football blog that posts nearly every day, keeps tabs on the entire league, uses four writers and says things like: “Herman Edwards is good for handing out Shrek ears.” We’re not sure what that means, but it’s still funny.
The Cockpit. They don’t post as often as we’d like, but they keep a sharp eye out for all things Jets, and exhibit a healthy skepticism that is required to be a Jets fan. Great news site.
The Jets Blog. Worth the trip just for the Fan Confidence Meter alone. The ultimate word in Jets Blogdom, with daily posts, an eye on all Jets media and a green-tinted outlook that may or may not reflect nausea."
JetNation is particularly impressive - just hours after the Jets lost to the Falcons on Monday Night Football, the JetNation blog had a full, position-by-position report card for the Jets. The marks, as might be imagined, were not so good - Coach Herm Edwards, QB Vinny Testaverde and RB Curtis Martin all received F's.
Pointing to the efforts of politicians like Andrew Rasiej and City Councilmember Gale Brewer to bring free- or low-cost Internet access to every corner of New York City, Marcus Banks in the Gotham Gazette makes the case for universal broadband Internet access in New York City:
"Only an estimated 38% of New Yorkers currently have broadband access, but an ever-higher percentage of Internet content (such as video) requires this capability. The “digital divide” between higher and lower income communities may never be closed completely, but municipal broadband and wireless initiatives represent a concerted attempt to narrow this gap..."
According to Banks, there are at least three key reasons why universal broadband Internet access could bridge the "digital divide" and lead to an overall improvement in civic life in New York City:
"More timely access to life-saving information for emergency responders, who could download this information over wireless networks en route to the scene of an accident... Greater involvement of residents in the work of city government... Better ability of children to study at home, and to communicate with their teachers about what they discover online."
All true, no doubt, but Banks sometimes seems to mix "municipal broadband" and "wireless Internet" and "universal Internet access" -- it's one thing to offer low-cost broadband Internet access to low-income communities (e.g. cable or DSL), and it's quite another to build a massive citywide wireless Internet network (i.e. Wi-Fi).
Ever wondered what The New York Times planned to do with About.com? Well, here's an idea: an online travel portal for New England that would aggregate content from The New York Times and About.com (and any other media properties owned by the NYT) and then sell vacation packages to loyal readers. Here's a brief excerpt of a press release from The Boston Globe (which is owned by The New York Times Company):
"The Boston Globe and Boston.com announced today the launch of ExploreNewEngland.com, a one-stop travel guide to the New England states with award-winning content from The Boston Globe, Boston.com, The New York Times and About.com. The site allows readers to get everything they need to plan their next adventure, from lodging to dining to things to do and attractions. And like the region's weather, ExploreNewEngland.com will change for the seasons, with deep packages dedicated to fall foliage, skiing/snow sports and beaches."
Apparently, the site will also include message boards and blogs - for that local, all-knowing touch.
With the $1.85 billion acquisition of Ask Jeeves earlier in the year, speculation started to mount that Barry Diller - the accidental dot-com mogul - was up to something. As New York Magazine's John Heilemann explains, there has always been "the nagging sense that, if anyone was going to figure out this new-media thing, Barry would be the one." Just as Diller took on the Big Three TV networks and won, there's now a chance that Diller (armed with $3 billion in cash at InterActiveCorp) will take on the Big Three Internet giants (Google, Microsoft and Yahoo) and win. So what could Diller possibly have planned? Heilemann thinks Diller is cooking up an out-of-the-box strategy to take on Google:
"The point, as Diller understands, is that he can't make headway by trying to out-Google Google- he needs to counterprogram. This was Diller's genius at the Fox network, remember. With The Simpsons, In Living Color, etc., he fashioned an alternative flavor of programming, and with it a distinctive brand. In the realm of search, however, the notion of programming falls outside the idiom. So what Diller says he's seeking, in the lingo, is "differentiation."
Differentiation means many different things to many different people, but there are a few ideas that make sense, given Diller's background in Old Media: a melding together of Old Media and New Media, video search, or the use of Ask Jeeves as a gateway to IAC's other Internet properties.
Verizon Communications is coming under fire by state politicians for its selective roll-out of new, high-speed broadband technology in the greater New York metropolitan area. In fact, State Senator Nicholas Spano accused Verizon Communications of engaging in "technological racism" by avoiding low-income areas when deploying the new broadband capability. Thus far, Verizon has only rolled out FTTP (Fiber to the Premises) in relatively affluent areas, such as northeast Yonkers and similar areas in Westchester, Rockland, Nassau and Suffolk counties. Is this just good business practice (selling a higher-priced, premium product to higher-income communities) - or is it symptomatic of a growing digital divide between the haves and the have-nots? Does Verizon have a moral and social obligation to bring broadband Internet access to households that may not be able to pay for it?
Verizon, as can be imagined, is trying to downplay the issue as quickly as possible: "Frankly, Verizon's outraged and offended about this. Senator Spano doesn't know what he's talking about," In Verizon's defense, the company said that it was trying to deploy FTTP technology in lower-income areas of Yonkers, but that the city issued a stop-work order.
Time Warner's AOL unit is slimming down ahead of a potential deal with an Internet suitor, reports the New York Post. AOL is shedding 700 jobs, most of them from the dial-up Internet business - the same business that companies like Google and Yahoo have expressed little interest in. While the cuts represent only 4% of the company's worldwide workforce, this is AOL's largest corporate downsizing since December 2004 and marks a new seriousness in Time Warner's efforts to find a partner or acquirer for AOL.
For more on Time Warner's strategic options when it comes to AOL, check out the new piece from Knowledge @ Wharton - AOL: In Search of a New Strategy.
In India's Business Standard (not to be confused with America's Industry Standard) Jai Arjun Singh has written a piece on metro-blogging and given major props to the best of all the metro-blogging sites, New York City's very own Gothamist:
"Surfing the New York blog Gothamist a few days ago, stopping every few minutes to marvel at the magnitude of information available, I wondered when we might have something comparable for Indian cities. Not just a static, sporadically updated website but a living, breathing resource on the city run by knowledgeable people... Gothamist is one of the most comprehensive blogs around. Even if you haven’t been to New York, or don’t plan a trip there anytime too soon, you might easily get addicted to it."
Maybe the biggest compliment came at the end of the piece, where Jai Arjun Singh expresses hope that there will soon be an Indian version of Gothamist: "Incidentally, Gothamist has expanded into a network of blogs that cover 11 cities, including London, Shanghai, San Francisco and Paris... We’re awaiting Delhiist.com and Mumbaiist.com."
Last week's edition of New York magazine featured a comprehensive day-by-day, hour-by-hour listing of what five New Yorkers read during every waking hour of the past week. For Internet publishers out there, the story no doubt provided a goldmine of info about what types of web sites the average New Yorker reads. As New York magazine explains:
"They surf Websites, at all hours. Our diaries confirm one piece of conventional media wisdom: The computer screen is the future of reading. Most of our subjects spent more time browsing than turning pages, and they directed their computers to every corner of the Internet, from blogs to foreign newspapers."
The sample skews young and skews educated - but here's a representative rundown of which Websites made it on to the list - it's the weekly web-surfing habits of a 32-year-old producer of TV promos in New York: Okayplayer.com, ESPN.com, NewYorkTimes.com, CNN.com, DrudgeReport.com, IMDB.com, Aetna,com, CBS.com, Playbill.com, RottenTomatoes.com, SternFanNetwork.com, SkyDivetheRanch.com, Turntablelab.com, AllHipHop.com, HipHopSite.com, eBay.com, Yankees.com, Strasberg.com, BET.com, DamienMarleyMusic.com, Amsterdam.info, BackpackingEurope.com, Flycollar.com, VillageVoice.com, Judaism.about.com, Corcoran.com, Nerve.com and TheRedMist.blogspot.com.
At the BlogOn social media summit in New York on Monday, McDonald's took the hamburger wrapping off a new corporate blogging program. ClickZ has more details on the McBlogs:
"Last week, the company began an internal program that introduced corporate blogs, available only on the corporate intranet, behind the firewall. While this is seen as a small first step, it's an important one in a company the size of McDonald's... Using a publishing platform from iUpload, McDonald's has initiated a program for several departments and executives to begin blogging. It kicked off the program last week with a live blogging session by McDonald's President and COO Michael Roberts. Senior executives gathered around to watch as employees were given the chance to ask Roberts questions during the two-hour session."
It's been more than six months now since The New York Times acquired About.com for $140 million. In his MarketWatch "Media Web" column, Jon Friedman weighs in with what the deal means - both for the New York Times, which is attempting to court Internet advertisers, and About.com, which is attempting to become one of the top five destinations on the Web. The other top four sites - Yahoo, Google, MSN, AOL - account for 70% of all ads on the Internet, so it's an exclusive club indeed. What's interesting is that Wal-Mart has become a big advertiser on the About.com site, and there are signs that other big advertisers could sign up soon. What's even more interesting, perhaps, is that there's nary a peep about the new TimesSelect premium content offering on the About.com site. What about all the synergies?
Ben Smith of ThePoliticker blog writes in Newsday that the Internet has "yet to come of age" as a real force in local New York City politics. While there's plenty of demand for blogs about real estate, fashion, and celebrity gossip, there's little or no demand for passionate political discourse on a daily basis:
"The number of visits to political sites is a tiny fraction of the traffic that the dominant New York Web logs attain: The media-gossip blog Gawker, for instance, draws hundreds of thousands of readers each day. Curbed, a real estate blog, reigns over a vibrant universe of smaller sites on the same topic. The lesson of New York is that blogs aren't about politics - they're about passion. New Yorkers are passionate about real estate, gossip and fashion. The paucity of political blogs is the online reflection of the city's dismally low voter turnout in city elections: We're not passionate about our politics."
Even politicians who somehow manage to capture the hearts and minds of the blogosphere have a tough time translating that virtual support into real, tangible votes. Consider the recent campaign of Andrew Rasiej for New York City Public Advocate. The Technorati Candidate won only 5% of the vote, despite widespread blogger support. And, as Ben Smith points out, even big-name politicians like Fernando Ferrer haven't figured out how to tap into the power of the blogosphere: "The Ferrer blog's only audience, unfortunately for him, appeared to be Mayor Michael Bloomberg's opposition research team..."
In a deal reached with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, eBay has agreed to block the sale and shipment of stun guns to New York residents. As part of a sting operation that involved 16 eBay sellers, Spitzer's office found the eBay users were easily able to buy stun guns through the online auction site. Over a two-year period, eBay power sellers were able to sell 1,100 stun guns to New Yorkers - including the state-of-the-art $400 "Air Taser" that delivers a 50,000-volt disabling shock. New York is now one of only seven states that bans the sale of electric stun devices.
As seen in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend: former Merrill Lynch equity analyst Henry Blodget has entered the blogosphere with a new blog called InternetOutsider. The blog provides "informal" analysis of Internet companies and technology trends, but steers clear of actually offering personalized investment advice. (You know, the whole SEC "banned for life" deal) In his most recent post, Henry Blodget mulls over the valuation of the Time Warner/Weblogs Inc. deal. Apparently, he's learned a lesson or two from the wild days of the dot-com boom and bust...
If you're interested in what's happening at the New York Times with TimesSelect and About.com, it's worth checking out the profile of New York Times Digital CEO Martin Nisenholtz over at adBUMb. Nisenholtz defends the decision by the New York Times to introduce a premium paid content feature:
"Defending the company’s turn to paid content - which has been the topic of great debate on the web (not all of it positive) - Nisenholtz assures us that the outcry is misplaced. “97% of the Times website remains free after the launch of Times Select. The Times is not putting its website into a pay window. It simply created a tier on top of the free site, and it is a way for us to package more stuff for subscribers to The New York Times.”
"The business model that most Internet publishers have is very simple. It’s the number of unique visitors, times the times they visit you during a given period, times the amount of pages they view per visit, times the rate per page. It’s not rocket science. It’s basically a straightforward formula that all of us live by, whether you’re the New York Times or Weblogs, Inc."
That's cool - the New York Times and Weblogs, Inc. in the same sentence without any touch of irony.
Amanda Fung of Crain's New York notes that Manhattan-based video blog companies like Rocketboom and blip.tv are starting to experiment with subscription fees and paid advertisements, "marking a big step in extending Internet-posting software to a wider audience." Until now, both companies have provided free services and relied on word-of-mouth advertising, but have generated little or no cash flow. By charging subscription fees and experimenting with paid advertising, though, the companies may alienate some vbloggers. According to Rocketboom's Amanda Congdon, "Ads are trickier because visitors don't want to see a bunch of text links on the Rocketboom Web site. Our audience is sensitive to text ads so we are going to be careful."
In Tuesday's New York Post, there was an interesting article about a social networking site for frequent fliers. Apparently, high-powered business execs are buying into the idea of meeting like-minded fellow travelers while airborne. Can't really blame them: "In the Russian roulette world of airplane travel, the person sitting next to you is, too often, a woman looking to discuss her painful divorce, a screaming baby - or a middle-age man with a tenuous grasp on basic hygiene."
AirTroductions, started by a 33-year-old entrepreneur who owns a New York PR agency, is trying to change all that: the networking site attempts to match frequent travelers with people who might have similar business or personal interests. In fact, the New York Post calls it "Air Friendster, or MySpace with oxygen masks and aisle seating."
Oh, and for those of you with dirty minds, AirTroductions is not some kind of online Mile High Club -- although there's plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that steamy romance can result later, after a grueling four-hour, Coast to Coast flight.
Alicia Colon of The New York Sun looks at what it's like to be conservative and online in New York City. As everyone knows, it's tough being a pro-Bush Republican in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans something like 5:1. (subscription required to access site)
After providing some enthusiastic booster-ism for another new blog added to the Jupitermedia universe, Alan Meckler pauses to reflect on the synergies provided by blogs:
"[The new Datamation blog] is another fine blog added to the stable of Jupitermedia blogs that we have launched in the previous 20 months. I have written about the great response we have had to the JupiterResearch bloggers ---these continue to thrive in terms of readership and feedback. This is blogging at its best in that readers get solid information and thoughts and the company gets greater bonding with pressent and future customers."
Check out the satellite maps on the Central Park Web site. When I first saw the maps, I thought they were part of some kind of GoogleMaps/Central Park mashup (maybe it was the red Google-like balloons on the map), but the credit under the maps specifically mentions Zoomify. Anyway, it's still all good. With the interactive maps, you can zoom in/out and zero in on specific landmarks (Wollman Rink, Belvedere Castle, etc.) around the park.
Anyway, take a moment to check out the Central Park Web site. There seem to be a lot of interactive features on the site, like the ability to rate photos of the park. There's even a big shout-out to the Jaunted travel blog, which mentioned Central Park recently.
An innocent comment by Fernando Ferrer on his mayoral campaign blog ("I was educated in public schools for most of my education") has generated a minor firestorm of controversy in the race for New York City mayor. As it turns out, Ferrer was actually educated in Catholic schools. While Ferrer has dismissed the discrepancy as "minor," the Bloomberg campaign sees it otherwise:
"Bloomberg's people today pounced on this - they said Ferrer is either lying about his resume or lying about who writes his blog. If you ask the Bloomberg team, this latest flap goes to the basic honesty of Freddy Ferrer."
The Ferrer campaign team has apologized, saying that the blog was "inaccurately edited." (Which, of course, leaves open the question of whether Mr. Ferrer actually posted the entry to the blog, or whether it was a low-level campaign staffer who posted it as "Fernando Ferrer.")
In his weekly column for Wired, NYU assistant professor Adam Penenberg asks a question on the minds of many bloggers: Is it possible to strike it rich while blogging? Penenberg digs around several weblog publishers, looking for answers.
At Weblogs, Inc. (the weblog empire run by former New York-based Internet promoter Jason Calacanis), bloggers make anywhere from $200 to $3,000 a month - "about a quarter to half what a mid-level editorial job would pay, without the daily office commute." The standard deal appears to be $500 for about 125 entries a month ($4/entry).
At Gawker Media, the figures are a bit higher: "The amount floating around the internet is $2,500 a month per blogger plus traffic bonuses." Not satisfied with this estimate, Penenberg does the math and comes up with a number of wildly-inflated numbers for the various bloggers at Gawker Media: $5,000 a month (Gawker), $7,000 to $10,000 a month (Defamer), $7,000 to $8,000 (Gizmodo) and $7,000 to $8,000 a month (Fleshbot).
As it turns out, New York Magazine had the final say. In last week's issue on "Who makes what" in New York City, Jessica Coen of Gawker admitted to making $30,000 per year . That works out to about $2,500 a month.
Who's a Rat claims to be nothing more than the "largest online database of informants and agents" that assists lawyers and criminal defendants who may lack more traditional resources, but the Web site's detractors say that the site could lead to reprisals against "stool pigeons," snitches and even undercover cops. Since the site was started by a Boston resident who was busted on marijuana charges, it's quite likely that the "Who's a Rat?" Web site is about more than just truth, justice and the American way -- it's about putting the lives of undercover NYPD cops at risk.
Dawn Eden, who writes the weekly "Blog On!" column for the New York Daily News, has a few pointers to New York City pizza blogs. For example, there's the Brooklyn Pizzeria in New Orleans, which was hard-hit by Hurricane Katrina ("My business was in almost 4 feet of water, everything gone.")
There's also "the city's own pizza blog," SliceNY: "We're Big Apple-based, with a special affinity for New York-style pies, but we're wild about pizza in general. We're even warming up to the idea of deep dish." In a follow-up posting, the editor of SliceNY explains that the site is not a "for-profit enterprise, modeled on corporate-owned blogs like Gothamist," as the New York Daily News implies:
"Well, if we're "clearly a for-profit enterprise," the ad sales team down on seven here at Slice corporate apparently didn't get the memo. I'll have to talk to HR about poaching some of the Gothamist Corporation's sales reps..."
Google is planning to build out its own fiber optic network and become a top-tier player in the Internet telephone and wireless businesses, so it only makes sense that the company is looking to lease space in one of New York's telecom carrier hotels, says the New York Post:
"The company is reportedly in talks to lease a whopping 270,000 square feet in the former Port Authority Commerce Building at 111 Eighth Ave. at W. 15th Street. The massive building is one of New York's most important so-called telecom carrier hotels — home to thousands of Web servers and other critical technology infrastructure."
Google spokespersons offered no comment on the pending deal, but the Post article has plenty of speculation about what Google is planning:
"111 Eighth Ave.'s concentration of interconnected networks would allow Google to offer its new voice-over-Internet service, Google Talk, more efficiently and at lower cost because it would be able to connect directly to the networks of many of the world's leading telecom firms that are also housed there."
Do you have a lot of loose change in your pockets or piles of pennies at home? Well, Amazon.com and Coinstar are linking up with a unique offer to get coin hoarders to spend the money online instead: "Under the new offer announced [last week] with Amazon, Coinstar will now allow users to convert their loose change into Amazon Gift Certificates that can be used online at Amazon.com." Even better, Coinstar won't charge an annoying transaction fee. In other words, $5 in pennies means $5, not $4.50 or $4.25 or anything else.
According to Coinstar, it's a win-win for everyone involved:
"Everybody wins, consumers get a fee-free transaction and Amazon can now offer their customers an easy and convenient way to use cash online. Coinstar attracts new users by providing a no fee transaction and the host retailer (supermarkets) benefits through increased store traffic."
Actually, I guess that's a win-win-win-win for everyone involved.
"The Morgan Stanley stock analyst, who rose to notoriety in the 1990s with her bullish calls on Internet shares, Monday released a 118-plus page report titled "China Internet," and along with fellow analyst Richard Ji launched coverage on seven China-based Internet stocks, six of which are listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market."
One of Meeker's top picks is Netease.com, or as some refer to it, NetTease.com... If Ms. Meeker spoke Mandarin or some other Chinese dialect, we'd be a bit more upbeat about her leap into the deep end of the Chinese Internet sector. But, as it is, it just looks like a lot of hype and false market assumptions. Deja vu all over again...
Consider for a moment that Baidu.com -- billed as the "Google of China" only weeks ago -- has just been given the kiss of death by Goldman analyst Anthony Noto. Shares of the company traded around $114 at the beginning of the week, but Noto thinks "fair value" is somewhere between $27 and $45 a share.
About a week ago, Tom Watson posted an item about the 10-year anniversary of @NY, the first-ever Internet newsletter in New York City that was founded by himself and Jason Chervokas. The newsletter initially went out to a subscriber base of approximately 300 people and was meant to chronicle the Internet subculture as it evolved in the city. Eventually, the @NY newsletter grew to a circulation of 100,000 and was later sold to "empire-builder" Alan Meckler. Watson explains the excitement of those early years:
"As anniversaries go, this one isn't significant to many people besides Jason and me: we founded @NY that summer of 1995 to chronicle what we thought was a great story that needed to be told. The usually under-employed class of writers, designers, artists, photographers, editors - and their pals in sales - had created a tiny but fascinating new class of entrepreneur in New York City, leveraging the commercial dawn of the Internet browser to create a new medium. We came to the story during the preceeding year or so, attracted by art-based Websites, by email lists of interesting young people, and by the parties."
"All along, the idea that user-created content - conversations - was the life's blood of the Internet guided our reportage. And that pose was clearly out best: tested by time, it has proven solid as a rock. @NY's legacy is a tiny one outside of a small circle of people. But it was entirely emblematic of its times, and, in retrospect, part of a the movement of citizens media we're all participating in now..."
While Corante New York may not be as hip, as cool, or as popular as @NY, we like to think that we too are trying to chronicle the same tech culture in New York. Maybe 10 years from now, we'll also have a chance to look back in the same way... Congrats, Tom and Jason, and thanks for blazing the trail as an Internet pioneer in the city!
There's a humorous cartoon in the Wall Street Journal every day (or nearly every day) called "Pepper... and Salt." Anyway, yesterday's cartoon was worth clipping for anyone involved in the dot-com boom of the '90s (unfortunately, couldn't find a link to it on the Web):
Two guys in suits walking down a street, both holding briefcases, one with long hair, one with short hair. The short-haired guy turns to the long-haired guy and says:
"You're the only guy I know who didn't cut off his ponytail after the dot-com bust."
Anyway, if you think this is just a smidge funny, check out Science Cartoons Plus (scroll down the page for examples from the Wall Street Journal).
Yankee slugger Alex ("A-Rod") Rodriguez has launched a new Web site affiliated with MLB.com. Fresh off his AL Player of the Month award for August, he'll host a live chat at 2:30 pm today.
A-Rod explains why he's launching a new Website now -- as the baseball season is nearing to a close, and the Yankees zero in on another World Series championship (wishful thinking?):
"The reason I've created my own Web site is simple. I wanted to create a place where there are exclusive programs, photos and opportunities for you to enjoy. We will be working constantly to bring you new and exciting features that are not available anywhere else. And I wanted to be able to communicate all of this directly to you -- the fans. This Web site is my way of being able to reach out to each of you, and also a way you can communicate with me."
The Wall Street Journal takes a closer look at the competition between a handful of companies - including Technorati, Feedster and BlogPulse - to become the "Google of blogs." Since Google and Yahoo are not always able to track the information appearing in millions of blogs in real-time, these smaller upstarts see a real opportunity. However, says the WSJ, these blog search engines will never displace Google and Yahoo until they can work out a few problems:
"The new services, some of which are less than a year old, aren't without their glitches. The technology is still evolving and companies are still looking for the best way to track and sort blogs. Some services miss large numbers of blogs, while others pull up irrelevant sites."
One telling statistic for anyone overly concerned about Technorati ratings and other new-fangled ways of tracking popularity:
"The new blog-search sites draw only a sliver of the visitors that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN do. Most of them didn't have enough traffic in July to register on the radar of Internet-tracking firm Nielsen/NetRatings. Technorati did, with 642,000 unique visitors. But its traffic still made up less than 1% of Google's visitors that month."
Trying to find gas at under $3 a gallon is becoming close to impossible in New York City. Thanks to NewYorkGasPrices.com, though, it's still possible to track down the handful of stations that are offering gas at $2.99 a gallon. (Hint: you can forget about Manhattan -- these stations are in Brooklyn, the Bronx or Long Island)
OnNYTurf has created an interesting mash-up involving Google Maps and the NYC subway map. For those making their way out to Jersey, the mash-up also includes PATH train routes. Last week, NY1's Adam Balkin had a feature on Google Maps mash-ups.
In this week's issue of New York Magazine, hedge fund manager and Wall Street talking head James J. Cramer says that Google is a steal at $280 a share. Who cares that shares of the Internet search company have more than tripled in just the past 12 months? According to Cramer, shares of Google will be trading at $350 by year's end. In fact, the only thing holding back Google, says Cramer, is the wet blanket that New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer stands ready to throw on any kind of Wall Street speculative bubble:
"You can blame Eliot Spitzer if you missed out on the last 200 points of Google. You might even be able to blame the New York State attorney general if you miss out on the next 70 points of the great search-engine stock, which I now expect to soar from $280 to $350 by year’s end. You can point the finger at Spitzer, because Wall Street analysts have become so timid, so downright apologetic and fearful of prosecution, that they have failed to get behind arguably the greatest stock of the young 21st century..."
Reports are coming in that Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp is making a push into the real estate brokerage business. (Didn't he get our housing bubble memo?) Currently, Barry Diller's online real estate empire consists of LendingTree.com and RealEstate.com, which together provide mortgage and property listings for the residential real estate market. For now, it appears that the move into the real estate brokerage business will primarily occur through New York-based RealEstate.com. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has details:
"IAC/InterActiveCorp, the television and Internet-service company that spun off Expedia this month, plans to enter the U.S. real estate brokerage business next year to expand beyond its current Internet offerings of property and mortgage listings. The New York-based company's RealEstate.com business will open brokerage offices in the Pacific Northwest in the first half of 2006. The company has yet to decide how much to invest, whether to buy related businesses or if it will expand the service nationally."
Analysts thus far have been less than impressed with the move, pointing out the pitfalls of entering an over-heated market segment: "IAC may be entering the game late. Growth rates are moderating in the real estate market."
Found via a del.icio.us tag: a list of all Google jobs available in New York City. 35 jobs in engineering, 22 in advertising sales and 12 in product development. Interestingly, there's only 1 opening in "legal." If you're a Google fan, that's probably a good thing, eh?
