(Screencap: YouTube)

Google announced a campaign this morning that would allow non-developers to score a pair of Google Glass by tweeting a missive about what you'd do with the specs along with the hashtag #ifihadglass. The whole thing quickly devolved into a bunch of bad Twitter jokes. But techies, it seems, are pretty desperate to get their hands on Glass.

First, we have tech writer Jason Kincaid, who made a music video about how badly he wants Glass. If he doesn't win, at least now the Internet knows what a magical singing voice he has.

Business Insider writer Nich Carlson wants to use it to make "better, experience based slideshows." NEW MEDIA JACKPOT.

https://twitter.com/nichcarlson/status/304213322637660162

There were the suckups:

https://twitter.com/ajt/status/304233891315732481

https://twitter.com/nickbilton/status/304282064851726336

The impossibly topical entries:

https://twitter.com/spencerchen/status/304260383093452800

https://twitter.com/spencerchen/status/304289259341369344

https://twitter.com/alexismadrigal/status/304279568301301760

The geniuses:

https://twitter.com/joshgreenman/status/304299102353649664

https://twitter.com/BarryTheArtGuy/status/304312879283322881

The humblebraggers:

https://twitter.com/jeffjarvis/status/304308390925049856

https://twitter.com/Natkinns/status/304313587592224768

And of course, the doubters.

https://twitter.com/bendreyfuss/status/304300046164324352

https://twitter.com/bendreyfuss/status/304304671449808898

https://twitter.com/kashhill/status/304281088258359296

As for Betabeat, we made the completely rational and reasonable offer of our left kidney, but are still waiting for a response from Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google/Babies.

(Photo: DeviantArt)

2012 was quite a year for the New York tech community. Several NYC startups scored monster exits, while others raised millions to up their chances of scoring a ping pong table for the office. Whether or not that hotly debated bubble bursts, we imagine 2013 will be another exciting year for NYC's tech set. Here are some New Year's resolutions from some of the NYC tech community's boldest names.

Rachel Haot, NYC Chief Digital Officer

1.      Cook more meals at home (FreshDirect and BlueApron)

2.      Shop local (local goods on Etsy: http://on.nyc.gov/ZPpbIp)

3.      Read more books (both physical and digital: all three NYC public library systems now offer e-books)

4.      Volunteer more often (http://www.nycservice.org/#s)

5.      Learn a new skill – like middle eastern cooking or how to use a letterpress.

Ryder Ripps, Cofounder of OkFocus

Work more, vroom bye haters.

Mallory Blair, Cofounder of Small Girls PR

Identifying our year's wins and losses and using that information to create defined roles for new team members to hire in the first quarter. Then the rest of 2013 is  about running the business instead of being the business.

Cindy Gallop, Founder of Make Love Not Porn

1. To champion and help every entrepreneur who wants to change the world through sex....This is the one place with enormous potential for innovation, disruption, and colossal financial returns, that the tech world refuses to go. I want to help drive more open-mindedness in the tech community around startups to do with sex.

2. To identify and use anything that is the future of money and payments. This resolution is born out of the frustrations and difficulties we've had setting up our payments infrastructure for MakeLoveNotPorn.tv.

Those difficulties led us to spend a lot of time and effort researching and talking to fintech startups, with the result that I am now passionate about working with and using anyone/thing inventing the future of money, finance and payments, both in an MLNPTV context and also a personal context.

Paul Berry, Cofounder of RebelMouse

My resolution is to keep focused and clever and build the fundamental culture for RebelMouse to grow from.

Christina DiRusso, PR Manager at Livestream

More: Reading, Engineering (currently learning to be a Livestream Encoding Engineer), Entertaining in, and exploring, my new Brooklyn hood, and Reality-TV watching. Less: Emailing, English (honing my Italian skills), Gchatting with my dad.

Josh Miller, Cofounder of Branch

Figure out how to get my (non-techie) roommates to be addicted to Branch, and learn how to rap so I can complement A-Flock's beat boxing (one of our engineers).

Dave Winer, Software Developer and Writer

My resolution for the New Year is: I will do what I can to make tech writing more literate. (Ed. Note: Read more about Mr. Winer's resolution here.)

Ricky Robinett, Hacker at Ordr.in

Be the first hacker in XXL.

Jason Baptiste, Cofounder of OnSwipe

On a personal level, I really want to get back into writing and blogging.  It's why I started Onswipe and lead to my book coming out.  On a professional level?  It's growing Onswipe in a revenue generating machine.  It's an aggressive goal and year, but we have the team + traction to do it.

Jose Mejia, Editorial Director at Huge

One of my resolutions, which I think a lot of people can relate to if they're honest with themselves, is to stop using work/being busy as an easy excuse for what are really just basic character flaws that I need to fix. If I can avoid issuing  "Sorry I'm running late, something came up at work" texts like they're stock in the Shitty Friend IPO, it'll be a good year.

Alex Taub, Biz Dev Builder at Dwolla

My New Years resolution is to be faster and better at creating relevant pop culture twitter parody accounts- a la @invisibleobama

Suri Ratnatunga, Community Lead at Sidetour

To take no cabs in 2013 unless I'm stranded/drunk in Brooklyn.

Crystal Fawn, Community Engagement at Atavist

To read all the books that Stanley Kubrick based his films on.

Taylor Lorenz, Social Media Specialist at McGarryBowen

Stop and think before including emoji in every text message.

Nitasha Tiku, Editor of Betabeat

Make friends based on charger compatibility.

Mr. Taub and Mr. Schonfeld

The Credit Card Killers

With an ever-crowded financial tech market and companies like PayPal and Google Wallet elbowing for industry dominance, the race to kill the credit card is heating up. But among the standouts is Iowa-based mobile payment startup Dwolla, thanks to an innovative pricing structure and a growing New York presence helmed by Michael Schonfeld and Alex Taub. Dwolla has raised money from two New York venture capital firms, Union Square Ventures and Thrive Capital. (Josh Kushner, a Thrive principal, is also part-owner of Observer Media Group.)

Much like PayPal, Dwolla seeks to disrupt the traditional money-wiring business and enable users to send payments with ease. Users set up a Dwolla profile, link it directly to their bank account, and can then instantly send money to friends and businesses through an iPhone or Android app.

The company also processes bank-to-bank transactions, eradicating the need for slow and costly credit card processing. “We’re building a human network based on how we think the future of payments will work,” CEO Ben Milne told Business Insider. “The current model needs to be blown up.”

PayPal, Dwolla’s main competitor, is far more established and is a trusted brand name in online payments, but its fee structure makes it expensive to use. Unlike PayPal, Dwolla doesn’t take a percentage of each transaction, instead charging a 25 cent fee for any payment over $10 (under $10 is free), making it much cheaper for businesses and consumers.

“PayPal is a pioneer, but it can only innovate so much on the backs of these 40- or 50-year-old networks that they’re using,” Mr. Milne told The Observer. “Dwolla is a new conduit to move money in a better way that anyone can use.”

Next: Mike Karnjanaprakorn, Skillshare: The Principal of New York

Back to the beginning

(Illustration: Robert Grossman)

Jack Dorsey, cofounder of Twitter and Square, recently tried to disabuse the tech industry of its infatuation with the word ‘disruption.’ “We don’t want ‘disruption,’ where we just move things around. We want a direction. We want a purpose,” he said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, humbly suggesting the biannual conference change its name. But it’s more than just semantics. The tech sector’s claim to produce world-changing products and services often gets drowned out in a chorus of me-too companies solving problems no one ever complained about. The umpteenth nightlife-recommendations tool or empty real-time dating app can obscure the whirr of a nascent robotics sector in Manhattan or a futuristic, even revolutionary, experiment in manufacturing in Queens.

However, there are insurgents in our midst, quietly pushing the city closer to Mayor Bloomberg’s goal of "reclaiming our title as the world capital of technological innovation." To identify those mindful mutineers, we tried to look beyond established leaders (see: Wilson, Fred) to the next class of innovators, who are forcing corporations to come to terms with the mobile revolution or shepherding startups toward making money without selling out. We found investors, developers, educators and agitators. We identified pioneering companies that set off the self-education craze (you’re welcome, Peter Thiel). We spotted a trio of provocateurs in Long Island City and an open-source radical on Roosevelt Island. Looking at this constellation of entrepreneurs, you can start to see the outline of New York’s tech future taking shape.

Valery Komissarova, Grishin Robotics: Rallying the Robots

Phineas Barnes, First Round Capital: the Bottom-Up Investor

Marleen Vogelaar, Shapeways: the Manufacturing Maven 

Anil Dash, Activate and ThinkUp: Amiable Agitator

Alex Taub and Michael Schonfeld, Dwolla: The Credit Card Killers

Mike Karnjanaprakorn, Skillshare: The Principal of New York

Rick Webb, Tumblr: The Undercover Ad Man

Deborah Estrin, CornellNYC Tech: the Entrepreneurial Egghead

Ryder Ripps, Jonathan Vingiano and Jules LaPlace, OKFocus: The Merry Pranksters

Daniel Loeb, Third Point LLC: the Poison Pen

This story appeared on the cover of the November 14, 2012 issue of The New York Observer. 

Mr. Murphy (Photo: Twitter)

Looks like startup non-incubator Betaworks is in a hiring frenzy. Days after announcing it had snapped up former Tumblr VP Andrew McLaughlin, the company is making news again with another Entrepreneur-in-Residence hire.

Paul Murphy, COO of Aviary, is leaving his post at the photo editing startup to join the Betaworks folks at their sweet Meatpacking office.

Mr. Murphy wrote on his Tumblr today:

I’ve wanted to help start and run businesses from the earliest stages since I wound down a company I co-founded in college.  Even though we’ve recently hit a number of major milestones (funding, partnerships, growth), I’m at a time in my life where if I don’t pursue my goals now, I may never.

Ah, the "now or never" mentality, a truly classic excuse for leaving a startup.

Mr. Murphy, who worked at Microsoft for 10 years before joining Aviary last year, will be working with Betaworks "to incubate new ideas while helping a number of companies in the portfolio scale."

Mr. Murphy is also the second executive to be poached from Aviary in a handful of months, following a heady pivot last year. Back in April, Dwolla nabbed Aviary's head of biz dev, Alex Taub.

For all the pivot hiccups, Aviary seems to be doing a-okay. Writes PandoDaily:

Users of the B2B tools grew to 11 million in 10 months, with 150 million photos edited a month. The company launched a partnership with Flickr, replacing Picnik as the photo site’s editing tool, as well as several larger unannounced deals I’ve heard murmurs of. Five of the top 20 photo apps in the iOS app store use Aviary tools. The company raised a new $6 million round of funding in June, bringing its total to $17 million.

Sounds like the kids are all grown up and empty nest syndrome is setting in at the aptly-named Aviary.

Mr. Taub

Dang, looks like we missed a couple prime candidate from our spring Poachables list.

Alex Taub, head of business development and partnerships at Aviary--and a familiar face to anyone in the New York startup scene--just announced that he will be starting a new post in a similar role at Dwolla, the online payments company that has investors swooning for its ability to reduce costly credit card interchange fees. After much speculation, Dwolla finally announced a $5 million round in February led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from Thrive Capital* and Marc Ecko of Artists & Instigators.

The fact that Mr. Taub will be setting up a Dwolla outpost right here in New York City should settle any feathers ruffled over Silicon Prairie poaching etiquette.

"You are probably asking yourself, isn’t Dwolla based in Iowa?" says Mr. Taub. "Well, yes it is. To that regard, I will be establishing Dwolla’s NY satellite (location TBD) with my good friend Michael Schonfeld, as he is joining Dwolla as their developer evangelist." Mr. Schonfeld was a former web developer at Onvi Media and most recently cofounded Obesh, a company that lets users try out their makeup obsession online.

As Dwolla's Biz Dev Leader, Mr. Taub says, "I will be tasked with growing out the API platform- similar to what I did at Aviary with their photo API, except now with a payment API."

He's wasted no time rallying New York natives (or updating his Twitter/LinkedIn/About.me/Tumblr), adding, "If your business is creating revenue and you are paying a percentage of that revenue in credit card fees, you should consider adding the ability to accept Dwolla as a payment option." We'll update the post with comment from Mr. Taub as soon as we hear back. In the meantime, check out his prolific contributions to Forbes.com under "Alex's Tech Thoughts."

Checkin in on 4sq? NYC cred in effect.

*Disclosure

Mr. Pollack, in a tux.

Business development professionals still don't have their own noun. It's either "I do biz dev for ____" or "she's in biz dev" or, our favorite, "they're biz dev folks." Maybe business... developers? Bizzy devvers? Bizzy dev bees? Hustlers-in-chief? Someone should come up with a phrase quick, because biz dev folks are increasingly visible and sought after, and more and more job listings are asking for biz dev rockstars and ninjas.

Nowhere does the business developer shine more than at the small, scrappy startup with a million users whose revenue possibilities are basically anywhere between zero and infinity. "Business Development is a mysterious title for a little discussed function or department in most larger companies. It's also a great way for an entrepreneur or small business to have fun, create value and make money," the marketing pundit Seth Godin wrote in 2009. "And often it's a little guy who can be flexible enough to make things happen."

While biz dev is still somewhat behind the scenes, some of these players are moving into the spotlight. Foursquare's Tristan Walker is usually cited as the Platonic biz dev ideal—tenacious but not too obnoxious, energetic but not too manic, and super creative. Under his direction, Foursquare has closed deals with tiny East Village restaurants all the way up to chains like Payless and mega, global companies like American Express. Betabeat recently noticed some restaurants have their menus in Foursquare now, thanks to Battery Park startup SinglePlatform (and their EVP of biz dev, Kenny Herman). Keith Rabois is another star, of course; locally, Aviary's Alex Taub and Foursquare's Eric Friedman both write blogs.

Scott Pollack, who does biz dev for American Express, teaches a class on business development through Skillshare and General Assembly. He hosted one last night, he told Betabeat by phone, for newbies from all backgrounds who want to get into the biz dev game. Students include startup founders and freelancers.

"The term applies broadly across startups or big companies," said Mr. Pollack, who is contemplating writing a book about biz dev called The Start of the Deal. "The challenge with it is one of the reasons I started this class is, I dont think there is one consistent definition out there as to what exactly business development is."

That's actually how he opens his class, which he started teaching partially in order to explore opportunities in the startup world. Mr. Pollack, unlike some other biz dev people we know, is the opposite of abrasive. He speaks at a normal pace and does not seem overcaffeinated. He did not try to sell us anything. And yet somehow, at the end of the conversation, we decided we should really write an article about biz dev.

"I'm trying to be the diplomat of business development," he said. "There are a lot of
strong personalities out there. There's certainly a sales component to any business development job and traditionally sales people have strong personalities and it's like, close deals immediately! There's a proactive drive and aggressiveness that definitely serves a purpose and has lots of value, but you also need a desire to truly hear out the other side."

He says he's definitely noticed a growing number of business development-centric events around the city. It's pretty gender-balanced, he said, which surprised us—especially given the dearth of women on this list. Four guys and two women attended Mr. Pollack's class last night, but it's usually 50-50, he said, and he pointed out that Skillshare recently hired Abigail Besdin to head up brand partnerships and business development. Aol's Andrea Hong made it into the Betabeat Most Poachable list. (Huh, that sorta nixes our "BD Bros" slideshow idea.)

In fact, Mr. Pollack attended a business development breakfast on Tuesday hosted by Kristal Bergfield, who works in formerly did business development for Amex, that was "definitely populated by a good mix of genders." Her choice words for what it is, exactly, she does there: "Marketer. Connector. Deal maker."

via Aviary

Aviary has done pretty darn well for itself in the four months since launching its mobile SDK. In a blog post announcing a new version of its embeddable photo editing software for web and mobile, the puppy-obsessed startup shared some noteworthy stats. Aviary is now editing more than 10 million photos were month on mobile alone and picked up 300 partners through its API. Both in terms of unique users and edits, the company is growing at 50 percent a month.

The Aviary blog features a number of luxe screenshots of what the updated user interface, which includes enhanced speed, sleek dials, overhaul of its cropping tools, and more effects, will look like. But Betabeat spoke to Alex Taub, head of business development and partnerships, to get the full story about the upgrade, which also includes some attempts at monetization. In the meantime, if you want to start playing around with it, Pic Stitch will be the first partner to implement and go live with V2.

For those that aren't familiar, Mr. Taub offered a handy summary of how the company evolved from a destination site to an API for web and mobile. Aviary began with funding from the likes of Jeff Bezos and Reid Hoffman to back a founding team that wanted to build Abobe Photoshop, but in the cloud. "While that was going well," he said. "It was built in Flash and we didn’t have a solution for mobile."

"We saw a lot of people use Photoshop, but it is an advanced skill to have," said Mr. Taub. "So we took sort of the good stuff out of it. We said, we want to be around in five years, so we need shift gears. We’re focusing on professional consumers and advanced suite and we need to focus on consumers, developers, and mobile." Rather than limiting Aviary's tools to its own site, "We said, why don’t we take out the best things in our advanced suite, which was effects, and cropping, and rotating, and brightness and stickers—why don’t we take that out and make it into a lightweight editor and put it on third-party sites."

The web API came in Thanksgiving 2010 and the mobile API in 2011. After that pivot, he said, "We went from a good business to a better business."

Bigstock, Ning, Imager, FriendCaster for Facebook, RockMelt, Fashism, and Halftone are all current Aviary partners. Companies that use the Aviary API, he explained, don't need to be photo-centric, rather any platform that allows users to upload photos. "If you’re a dating site, maybe you want to do red eye removal, brightness, cropping, rotating. If you’re a blogging platform, maybe you want stickers, effects, and drawing," said Mr. Taub. "It really takes a full company working on it to build the tools right." With the new version, the Aviary branding is less prominent so that users to have a more seamless experience.

As we spoke, Mr. Taub demonstrated the incredibly easy-to-use dials to adjust brightness. "This is me adding effects in real-time. It’s sick." The brightness dial in particular, he noted, is "ten million times cooler for mobile" and vibrates as you move right and left. "Honestly, we put this in the partners hand and they smile." The best, however, may be how well it works with crappy photos. "Auto-enhancing, night-enhancing, backlight balance, it’s all one-click magic."

Meanwhile, he pointed out, competitors like Picnik, which was purchased by Google, have yet to release a mobile version. Although Aviary sees its biggest competitor as the actual tools in your smartphone, although iOS 5 cropping tools, for example, are still without an interface for developers.

As far as potential new revenue stream, the tool will still be given away for free to developers, but Aviary will start offering premium content like virtual goods on top of its editor to help partners monetize their users. That includes effects packs, sticker packs, and branded sticker packs. That includes "grungy" and "nostaglia" effects, themed stickers for particular holidays and, potentially, partnerships with big brands like the NBA or MLB. Another potential monetization strategy is printing, but right now the focus is on premium content.

"When you’re doing 10 million photos a month, if you can start converting a certain amount of users into buying stuff, it gets really, really interesting," said Mr. Taub, who pointed out that Zynga only converts 1 to 5 percent of their users. In an email to Betabeat, CEO Avi Muchnick said, "I'm most looking forward to seeing our in-app purchasing capability beginning to roll out across our entire developer network."

Paul Murphy - VP of Business Development at Aviary

Hot on the heels of their successful hack day, Aviary launched a mobile SDK today to embed their photo editing tools into mobile apps. They launched with 31 partners including Picplz, Pictour, Pixable, Piictu, Getaround, Fashism, Yumalicious, Minus and iSocialize.

"Right now it's all about distribution for us," says Aviary's Biz Dev artiste, Alex Taub. "We want to get this in the hands of as many developers as possible, then monetize down the line with premium tools and services."

To that end Aviary has just hired Paul Murphy, an eight year vet of Microsoft, who prior to Aviary was chief of staff for Office, Redmond's largest division.

"I've always been passionate about the startup space and I wanted to find a great team with good investors," Mr. Murphy told Betabeat by phone. "Photos are a part of so many mobile apps these days. My job is to take us to the next level, to help Aviary figure out where the rubber meets the road."

Betabeat doesn't know much about rubber roads, but it seems like Aviary is making a big push to expand its developer base and business partnerships.

That comic book filter does wonders for the abs

This is a guest post by Alex Taub, who leads business development and partnerships at Aviary. He blogs at alexsrandomtechthoughts.tumblr.com

So you’re stuck in NYC for the last two weeks of August (and survived the earthquake/hurricane/tornado/zombie-pocalypse). You work at a startup in business development and don’t want to be dead weight as the summer comes to an end. You could probably convince your CEO that drink-up is a totally worthwhile use of your afternoon, but be honest with yourself, all the important folks are already checking in to their favorite clam shacks out in Montauk and the Hamptons. Here is a list of five things you can do to actually be productive in the dog days of summer.

1. Regroup

You probably have a list of companies you would like to work with. Take a day or two to make sure all notes, statistics, and info on partners and prospective partners are up to date. This will help you prioritize those dream meetings, and prep you to hit it out of the park with those companies  once things are back in full swing.

2. Strategize

Once you’ve regrouped, it’s time to figure out the best plan of action for the rest of the year. Who are you going after? Why will you go after them? And perhaps more importantly--how? Your strategy will depend on what industry you are in. Aviary, for example, works on having our photo editing tools implemented on third-party websites. When we think of strategy, we focus on sites that (1) allow for photo uploading and (2) could use photo editing solutions. This list is broken down into verticals.

We then ask ourselves a slew of questions: Do we want to go after dating sites? Blogging platforms? Marketplaces? Social networks? Do we focus on all the companies in one vertical, or do we go after one company in each vertical? Do we go after one 800 pound gorilla partner, or multiple smaller partners? The process of addressing these details is all part of the strategy process. Now is the time to talk with your team and figure out the best way to proceed.

3. Put Together A Killer Partnership Proposal

While regrouping and strategizing you should be putting together your materials to go and close that killer deal. It should include pages on your product overview, your partner-specific solution, benefits, pricing, examples of existing partnerships, and next steps. Putting together a killer proposal for prospective partners is like showing up to a knife fight with a bazooka.

4. Catch Up On Reading

When you are working hard, it's easy to miss a lot of news. This is your time to catch up. Did you read that awesome piece by Marc Andreessen in the WSJ? What about Mark Suster's article, What Startups Can Learn About PR And Crisis Management? How about the blog post by Fred Wilson, Users First, Brands Second? Staying up-to-date on tech news and BD go hand in hand (hearing about new companies, acquisitions, funding, etc). Get reading. Now.

5.  Get A Tap On What’s Going On In Startup-ville

Similarly, working hard with your head down can cause you to lose touch with current happenings in the startup world. Talk to VCs, entrepreneurs, and press people about what they are seeing: what’s interesting, trending, or upcoming? Go out and catch up with people. Ask them what they are up to, tell them what you are working on. Get your finger back on the pulse of what is to come.

While the pace of work may be slower than normal for the next two weeks, there is plenty to do to put yourself--and your company--in a great position to capitalize when things pick up again.