Photo: Macro Sea

"New Lab" For Brooklyn Navy Yard Real estate developer Macro Sea opened the first "beta" portion of its New Lab project at the Brooklyn Navy Yard yesterday, a year ahead of schedule. The opening, which was attended by City Council Speaker and mayoral candidate Christine Quinn and Borough President Marty Markowitz, will welcome a "first-of-its-kind advanced manufacturing hub" which will be the centerpiece of the Brooklyn Navy Yard's 220,000 square foot Green Manufacturing Center. The New Lab will give entrepreneurs a place to create and test their businesses alongside other engineers and designers. Maybe the first thing they can figure out is an easy way to actually get to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

More Bitcoins With Gift Cards Mobile gift card company Gyft is the most recent business to jump on the Bitcoin bandwagon, agreeing to let users who purchase gift cards on its Android platform use Bitcoins as a purchasing method. Gyft is partnering with Bitcoin payment system BitPay for the transactions, which will now open 50,000 physical locations including GAP, Lowes, Sephora, GameStop, American Eagle, Sports Authority, Nike, Marriott, Burger King, Fandango, Brookstone, and more to customers wishing to use Bitcoins.

City Council Approve Tech Campus The New York City Council voted Wednesday to approve the building of Cornell's Roosevelt Island Tech campus. The vote is the final step in the city’s land use review process for Cornell NYC Tech, the two million-square-foot applied sciences and engineering campus that will be located at the Goldwater Hospital site on the island. The vote also included a number of programs associated with the campus that will be instituted, including a one-year summer ferry pilot program to the island.

Meetup For Women In Tech Google is teaming up with Personal Democracy Forum to offer 15 free registration/fellowships to their 10th annual Tech/Politics/Advocacy Conference, which will be held June 6-7 in New York. PDF is apparently looking for women who are "deploying new applications of technology in the political or civic arenas." While coding & dev skills are a plus, they aren’t required, so ladies with any level of tech skills should consider applying. The lineup already includes Becky Bond, Catherine Bracy, Kimberly Bryant, Sara Critchfield, Jaclyn Friedman, Dan Gillmor, Joi Ito, Nancy Lublin, Liz Mair, Nate Silver, Ben Rattray, Harper Reed and Douglas Rushkoff along with top execs from Github, Google, Uber, Union Square Ventures, with more to be announced later. Personal Democracy Forum is aiming for 50/50 representation of women onstage,which is probably some sort of record.

Film Startup Gains Investors Digital distribution service Yekra, known for its “AffiliateConnect” feature which allows studios, networks, and filmmakers to build movie for specific audiences by genre or topic, announced it raised $3 million in a recent round of seed funding from Angel Maurice Gallagher and Bray Capital. Next Thursday, the site will premier the digital release of the new art culture documentary Tattoo Nation, which features Danny Trejo, Travis Barker, Ed Hardy and other icons of the tattoo world.

Art Meets Tech Marina Abramović and Siena Oristaglio will be speaking about the cross section of tech and art next Wednesday at 7 p.m., at an event hosted by General Assembly. The Serbian performance artist will be speaking alongside her social media developer Oristaglio about the development of the MAI Institue as well, which will open in Hudson, New York, in the near future, and will pursue "a role in culture by seeking productive unions between the arts, science, technology, spirituality and education."

The Real Nerd Prom 

Who Doesn't Want To Take More Pics? If all the apps out right now aren't filling your photo-taking habit, start up company Wander's new app Days may be for you. Days, which was released last week for iPhone, aims to create a digital photo journal, where all your pictures are uploaded and categorized by day, with the hope that its users will take pictures of their entire day and not just what they're eating for dinner.

Mobile Gift Delivery Are you ever running late and wish you had more time to select the perfect gift for your significant other? Online floral service H. Bloom is here to help, with their new mobile gifting app released yesterday, which will help its users send a variety of gifts no matter where they are. The H.Bloom app offers a "curated selection of the highest quality chocolates, cupcakes, candles and macarons, as well as H.Bloom’s own luxury floral arrangements." The app is currently available on the Apple App Store, and is launching in New York City, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Dallas.

Songza Updates Music curator, streaming app and party playlist savior Songza yesterday released its most recent update, version 3.0, which supplies some new features and shortcuts to the award winning service. Version 3.o cleans up the user interface, while also allowing users quicker access to playlists with a long tap on the home screen or by shaking your phone. Other improvements include better audio quality and new search tools and new artist playlist options.

New Inno/vators NYU-Poly announced on Monday the winners of its Inno/Vention competition, which challenged students to create and pitch a buisness or startup that solves real world problems. The winner, Ex-Vivo Dynamics, is a new technology for patients who suffer blood transfusion iron overload, which pulls free iron from blood, reducing the number of blood transfusions that patients need. The runner-up, HuddleUp, is a crowdsourcing platform that lets users buy group rate tickets without having to find a group.

The handgun, which could easily pass for a kid’s toy, is named “the Liberator” and contains 16 pieces of plastic along with a nail which functions as the firing pin. It fires standard handgun rounds, although the gun comes with different barrels if a user wants to use more high-powered rounds.

Defense Distributed also included a six-ounce metal piece in the design so that it can't pass through a metal detector, a legal requirement for U.S.-manufactured guns, although it doesn't seem like anyone downloading a DIY gun would want to keep that piece in.

Mr. Wilson and his company have had plenty of difficulty getting to this point from last September, when we first covered his weapon-making attempts. The company has faced wide condemnation, with the 3D printer company Stratasys seizing a printer that Defense Distributed rented last August and 3D Printing file hoster Makerbot removing all gun component files from their site in the wake of some of Mr. Wilson's first creations. And although the idea of a plastic toy-like gun seems like the perfect tool for someone wishing to commit a gun-related crime, Mr. Wilson has continued with production, even in the face of staunch critics.

“Everyone talks about the 3D printing revolution. Well, what did you think would happen when everyone has the means of production?” Mr. Wilson told Forbes.

The Liberator still requires substantial testing, as most weapons Defense Distributed have tested in the past tend to fall apart or degrade after repeated use. But it appears that Mr. Wilson believes the gun will work soon. “You can print a lethal device,” Mr. Wilson said. “It’s kind of scary, but that’s what we’re aiming to show.”

When it comes to 3D-printed guns, it's probably best to consider that time-honored advice from A Christmas Story: "You'll shoot your eye out!"

Although it is unknown if Mayor Michael Bloomberg will veto the bill, the City Council has enough votes to override any challenge from the Mayor. The bill, sponsored by Bronx Council Member Fernando Cabrera, calls for new maps which will allow users to search for crime statistics on monthly and yearly levels as well as by address, zip code, and police precinct.

The law requires the NYPD to supply monthly criminal data to the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DOITT), which will manage the maps. Currently the only crime data available comes from an incomplete series of PDFs, which only display crime stats at the precinct level.

The measure gained momentum after it emerged from journalists at Bronx newspaper the Norwood News that police officers in New York's 52nd Precinct had stopped supplying crime statistics. For several years, journalists had to file Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests to obtain the stats, which delayed investigations and stories by many months or were sometimes outright ignored.

Public Advocate and mayoral hopeful Bill de Blasio recently published a new “Transparency Report Card,” and the NYPD was one of only two agencies (the New York City Housing Authority being the other) to receive a dubious failing grade.

According to the report, the NYPD ignored nearly a third of FOIL requests last year. Council Member Gale Brewer, who ignited New York's transparency movement last year with her open data law, told the New York World that the NYPD is one of the last remaining closed-off agencies in the city, and that this bill would help alleviate that issue.

“The NYPD does need to be pushed,” Brewer said. “I’m a big believer in community input on crime solving. If you don’t know where crimes are, it’s hard to be helpful.”

Can't wait to see a map filled with Stop and Frisk icons.

Photo: Cornell University

Cornell's NYC Tech Campus Scores Big Along with his wife, Dr. Irwin Mark Jacobs, founding chairman and CEO emeritus of Qualcomm, announced a $133-million gift to Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Monday to build and establish the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute (JTCII). The JTCII will be a part of Cornell Tech, the new technology campus of the Ivy League school located on Roosevelt Island that was heavily supported by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City of New York. The funds will go primarily to two-year graduate programs. Now if only they can find a more efficient way to get to the island that doesn’t involve a 40-year-old gondola.

Women's Lifestyle Site Earns Funding Women's lifestyle and finance website DailyWorth announced Tuesday that it added $1 million in additional Series A financing on top of the previous $2 million earned last year. DJF Gotham led the funding, which the company will use mainly to hire bring in new key new hires. Additional investors included Gabriel Investments, 500 Startups, Robinhood Ventures, Investors' Circle, Bullet Time Ventures, Patient Capital Collaborative, Joanne Wilson, Rebecca Saeger, Carol Chow, Diego Canoso, and Mark Censits.

Amazon Originals Actually Being Watched As we covered last Friday, Amazon is entering the original television business with the company's production arm Amazon Studios releasing 14 original TV pilots. AAnd it appears the shows are doing pretty well, even if some of them weren’t particularly entertaining:  8 out of 10 of the most streamed episodes across the Amazon Instant Video platform were original Amazon programs. The new TV shows are also averaging a 4 out of 5 rating on Amazon--though if life has taught us anything, it's that Amazon reviews aren’t always the most trustworthy.

Quantifying The Best Of The Web The Webby Awards announced a partnership today with Quantcast to bring Quantcast's web tracking technologies to the Webby award process. Quantcast will also specifically help the Mobile & Apps categories with deeper insights into mobile app usage by employing Quantcast’s new Measure for Apps program. Some of this year’s Webby Award nominees for Mobile & Apps are HBO Go, Google Maps, Mailbox, Netflix App, Waze, Lady Gaga’s Workshop and NIKEiD Mobile. If only Betabeat had a mobile app, we'd be in there for sure.

Investors Earn DoD Award Three New York employers, including investment firms Drexel Hamilton and Goldman Sachs, along with the New York City Fire Department, are semifinalists for the 2013 Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award, given to companies that provide extraordinary support to their Guard and Reserve employees. Benefits that these companies have excelled at include setting veteran hiring goals, establishing military employee liaisons, providing childcare for deployed employees, arranging care package drives, and granting additional leave for military employees and family members before and after deployments. Now let's see if the tech startups start opening their doors like their investors are doing.

Photo: Lostnmissing.org

As police searched the Boston area early this morning for the suspects in Monday's bombing, online rumors began to suggest that one of the perpetrators was missing Brown University student Sunil Tripathi, who disappeared on March 16.

Now Reddit users (among the first to speculate about a connection) are trying to right the wrong as best as they can, setting up a page to gather information on Mr. Tripathi's last known whereabouts.

Reddit members began connecting Mr. Tripathi to Monday’s bombings on Thursday, after users noted some similarities in the photos of the "White-Hat" suspect released by the FBI. A .gif was even made that morphed a photo of Mr. Tripathi into the photo of the suspect as a means to prove Mr. Tripathi's guilt.

But when Reddit and Twitter users heard Mr. Tripathi's name mentioned on a police scanner (in error), the rumor took on a life of its own. Mr. Tripathi’s name was soon trending on Twitter and was tweeted by multiple reporters and news outlets. Hours later though, the FBI determined that the "White Hat" suspect was in fact 19-year-old Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, and not Mr. Tripathi.

Soon after it became clear the speculation was incorrect, the moderator of the “FindBostonBombers” subreddit apologized.

I'd like to extend the deepest apologies to the family of Sunil Tripathi for any part we may have had in relaying what has turned out to be faulty information. We cannot begin to know what you're going through and for that we are truly sorry. Several users, twitter users, and other sources had heard him identified as the suspect and believed it to be confirmed. We were mistaken.

This event shows exactly why the no personal information until confirmation rule is in place. Out of respect for Tripathi and his family, I ask that users here please remove any and all links about him. Thank you.

Reactions to the new search effort, proposed by user AndyAndrophile, were mixed, with users debating the risk of another witch hunt starting during the search. "Because reddit did such a bang up job finding the guys responsible for the bombing right," said user devilrobotjesus, while user iFlick argued that "If there's one thing Reddit does well, it's disseminate information."

We hope that Mr. Tripathi will soon be found safe and sound. If you have any information on Mr. Tripathi's whereabouts you can call the Providence Police Department at 401-641-8691, the FBI, or 911.

After watching any of the free pilots (available to anyone with an Amazon Prime account), viewers are asked to fill out a survey gauging their interest in more episodes.

The headliner is unquestionably Zombieland, the TV show based on the 2009 ZomCom (that's a genre, right) starring Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson (you can check out the trailer here.) But it definitely doesn't look like the best. From what we can tell, the show treads through a lot of the same tropes and gags that were great in the movie but not so much the second time around -- especially when they are copied line for line.

We’re much more excited about Onion News Empire, which gives viewers a look into the pressures and difficulties faced by journalists at the fake outlet. Hopefully some journalism-satire can hold us over until the Newsroom returns.

The move towards original programming on Amazon's video distribution networks comes just months after the release of Netflix’s original programming hit House of Cards. Maybe they can get Mr. Spacey to play a zombie-killing survivalist?

Photo: Conservativedailynews.com

Amid the media’s Boston Marathon suspect screwup, the D.C. ricin scares, and the Senate’s rejection of gun background checks, one bit of news quietly slipped through: the House of Representatives passed a resolution that will bring CISPA, the cyber security bill that tackles the government’s ability to monitor personal information users give to website, to the floor. The resolution passed 227-193, a year after SOPA, another cyber-security bill, was shot down after an enormous amount of backlash from tech companies and Internet freedom advocates. This time though, that support has largely vanished, with companies such as IBM, Intel, and Oracle backing CISPA. President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the bill if it reaches his desk, according to a statement from the White House:

"The Administration, however, remains concerned that the bill does not require private entities to take reasonable steps to remove irrelevant personal information when sending cybersecurity data to the government or other private sector entities."

Internet users are primarily in a tizzy over a component of CISPA that would give the U.S. government the ability to ask private companies’ for the personal user data of ordinary U.S. residents when identifying “threat information," without requiring a court-ordered warrant.

The passage of the resolution had reddit users engraged, with many of the top posts wondering why public support seems so low this time around. "Why didn't this blow up as much as SOPA did?" reddit user seetons asked. "Honestly, it's impossible to get the entire internet to rally around this for 2 years. Money will eventually win, no matter how hard I try," replied user MarcusTheGreat7.

Too bad Alexis Ohanian is busy trying to buy Jay-Z's Nets share.

Correction: A previous version of this post said that CISPA had been passed, when in fact a resolution to bring it to the floor had passed. The final vote is expected later this week.

Photo: NASA

Who Doesn't Want To Meet A Real-Life Astronaut? We've already covered the upcoming 2013 International Space Apps Challenge, the NASA-sponsored space app development challenge, but the event just got even better with the announcement that U.S. astronaut Ron Garan will be in attendance as NASA's official ambassador. Attendees will have the chance to meet Mr. Garan, who has nearly 100,000 followers on Twitter (@Astro_Ron), at the NASA Hackathon Kickoff Party at Alley NYC (500 7th Avenue), this Friday at 7 PM. Trips to space not guaranteed.

SocialSign.In Hopes To Solve Everyone's Wi-Fi Problems At Work SocialSign.in announced the public launch of its social network-powered Wi-Fi platform today at the DEMO Mobile 2013 conference. SocialSign.in allows workers at a company to link their social media presence such as their Facebook with their company's Wi-Fi, giving them easy online access at all of their company's locations with a simple uniform password and ID. SocialSign.in also helps companies track user data and patterns, and can be used across all Internet-connecting devices. Now hopefully we can all clean out our desks filled with those sticky notes for Wi-Fi passwords.

New Blog Totally Steals Our Name In a move to simplify several blogs into a single hub, The Wall Street Journal announced the creation of their new leading financial and business blog, Moneybeat. Some of the blogs being integrated into Moneybeat include MarketBeat, The Source, Overheard and all of the paper's Deal Journals. MoneyBeat will be run by former Deal Journal and MarketBeat editor Stephen Grocer, and will be "a one-stop shop for everybody interested in finance and markets, no matter where they are around the world,” WSJ Managing Edito Gerard Baker said in a press release.

Fresh Cash for NYC Cloud Company Booker, the cloud-based communication and marketing system for SMBs and other enterprises announced yesterday a new $27.5 million Series B investment, led by Bain Capital Ventures. Other investors include Booker's Series A supporters Revolution Ventures, Grotech Ventures, TDF Ventures, and Vital Financial. Booker said in a press release that the new funding will be used to increase the product's reach and advertisement capabilities in online marketing. Maybe they can use the money to help fix all those "targeted" Facebook ads.

Alloy Acquires DBG Online distributor and marketing company Alloy Digital, which we've previously featured, announced today that it has acquired digital video advertiser Digital Broadcasting Group. The deal is meant to help combine Alloy's distribution network with DBG’s large video syndications.

NYT and BBC Host Perfectly Timed Social Media Summit The New York Times and the BBC College of Journalism will be hosting a Social Media Summit this Saturday to address the current state of social media and its use by journalists in investigating and reporting stories, and social media distribution company Mahaya will be on site to cover the event. Mahaya, which provides real-time summarization, ranking, and display of stories that appear on social media, is one of three companies currently participating in The Times's new timeSpace initiative to bring entrepreneurs to the NYT headquarters to refine and grow their businesses. Wonder if they're going to bring up this little 'ol Boston Marathon Suspect Twitter mess?

Food Delivery Anonymity Now Possible With Bitcoins Boston-based online food delivering service Foodler announced today that they will become the first online food ordering service to accept Bitcoins as payment for delivery and takeout. Foodler users will now be able to connect their Bitcoin wallet with their Foodler account, which will allow them to buy 'Foodlerbucks', the company's online currency, with their Bitcoins. These "Foodlerbucks" are then used to pay for deliveries. The company, which also has an iPhone app, can be used in 48 states across the U.S. Because who doesn't want to pay for a cheeseburger with the world's most volatile currency?

Ziggeo Completes Beta Ziggeo, the online video network which allows you to privately screen videos of candidates for jobs and roommates, testimonials, and more, has announced that it has completed its beta testing and is now available for public use. Users can choose from a free plan for 20 second videos, a personal plan for up to 2 minute videos and a pro one for up to 10 minute videos.

thepublicqueue.com

Ever feel like your hundredth text of the day may have been just a little too calculated? You may be suffering from a severe case of shallowness, according to a new study by the University of Winnipeg, which found that people who send more than a hundred texts a day are more concerned with their image and what others think of them.

The study, performed on 2,300 first-year psychology students who completed an online survey, also discovered that 30 percent of survey-takers texted over 200 times a day and that 12 percent texted over 300 times a day.

University researchers were inspired to initiate the study after reading about Nicholas Carr's "shallowing hypothesis" from his book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.

According to Carr's hypothesis, texting and using Twitter for extreme lengths of time can change your thought process, making you more superficial because they encourage rapid and relatively shallow thinking. The results seem to confirm this, according to lead researcher and psychology professor Paul Trapnell.

"The values and traits most closely associated with texting frequency are surprisingly consistent with Carr's conjecture that new information and social media technologies may be displacing and discouraging reflective thought," Trapnell said in a news release, according to CBC News.

Now just make sure to text and Tweet these results as soon as your done reading this. You wouldn't want to start thinking with emotions, would you?