Walt Mossberg with Steve Jobs in 2007. (Source: Wikipedia)

DIA DE TECNOLOGIA. New York Tech Day was full of NYC based startups—from the established to the unfunded—all stages in the NYC tech lifestyle were represented. The companies that follow really stuck out to NY Tech Day Judges. Best use of Location - BiteHunter, Best Design - Chartbeat, Best Educational Startups - Three Ring, Best Social Startup - GiftSimple, Best Booth Design - Cannonball, NY Tech Day Staff Choice - Snakblox, Best use of Data - Hoppit, Best Mobile App - Uber, Best Business Model - Temboo, Best Enterprise Startup - SendGrid, Best Unfunded Startup - Unroll.me.

KICK BUTT. Everything Butt Art, the adorable drawing app for iPad, just launched a Kickstarter campaign. As of this writing, the founders have raised just over $1,000 and still have a ways to go towards that $20,000 goal.

SMELLS LIKE... "Inside the Internet Garage," a new series from NYU Steinhardt with thoughts on early Internet history from technology's leaders will kick off  tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. at NYU's Courant Institute. AllThingsD cofounders Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg will be interviewed by professor Aaron Cohen for the series' first event. More information and registration is available here.

IN THE APP STORE. MyCityWay, an app that users can personalize to get the information they need, is now available on iOS. From theatre tickets to fuel, users can find deals on the things that matter to them with real time updates.

JOB HUNT. The Daily Muse, a website devoted to women and their careers, has been featuring cool employers with job openings on its company board. Busy bees seeking a new hive can search by company type, size and location among the likes of StumbleUpon, Airbnb, Giorgio Armani, Tumblr and Mashable, to name a few.

HELLOOO, NURSE. Thanks to ZocDoc, Detroit residents no longer have to pull out hair or fight dangerously high blood-pressure when scheduling doctor's visits. The Motor City is the startup's 17th market.

FUNDS. AdSafe Media just locked down $10 million in funding from Pelion Venture Partners, Atlas Venture and Coriolis Ventures. AdSafe helps protect brand identity by determining, at the page level, whether or not the content is appropriate for that particular ad.

PARTY. Another entrant to the party planning space, imbookin.com seeks to make throwing a party at one of New York City's main attractions easily and of course, below full price. Partners with over $1,000 New York venues, imbookin.com allows users to customize all the details online. Open bar? Check. Light appetizers? Check to that one too. Eventup, another party planning and event booking site, also popped up recently in New York.

JOBS FOUND. Work Market is looking for a community manager with "STRONG ENTREPRENEURIAL desires" to work on email marketing campaigns and viral marketing initiatives. Apply here. DerbyJackpot needs a lead Rails developer slash chief gambling officer for the first gambling game to be launched on Facebook (coming in June). If you have Rails, CoffeeScript, Redis and Jasmine chops, email Tom. Vimeo is looking for backend, PHP application, cloud system, Java data, junior video encoding and entry-level web application engineers. Apply here.

(Daily Deal Media)

All the tech world loves a demo, so we couldn’t leave yesterday’s Daily Deal Summit without catching the Tech Showcase. Four CEOs--slowly losing their audience to lunch--were each assigned eight minutes to sell us on new solutions. Billed as having the potential to "dramatically improve" attendees' businesses, how did they stack up?

First up and perhaps most relevant to the daily-deal-selling audience was ActivePath CEO Jeff Kupietzky, just in from Israel and ready to sell us on the merits of the company's direct marketing solution, ActiveMail. He whipped out some scary statistics about how people get more than a hundred emails a day and spend two and half hours a day weeding through them. Meanwhile, marketers are still opting for a “spray and pray” approach, often at the risk of being tagged as spam. The current solution is to strip out all the rich media, opting for a “lowest common denominator” approach. The problem, of course, is that dampens engagement. ActiveMail’s solution: Add back the interactivity, including things like video, roll-over menus, and purchase ability in the email itself.

Next up was Closely CEO Perry Evans. He introduced the audience to Perch, Closely's new small-business app. The elevator pitch: “It’s a merchant’s birdseye view of their business environment.” In short, local businesses are spending way too much time combing social check-in and daily deal sites, attempting to figure out a) what their competitors are doing and b) what’s going on around them, event-wise. Perch pulls in data from sources like Foursquare and Yipit to aggregate the answer. The app is currently in private beta, but right now they’re only taking businesses. Harel said it should open up in a couple of months.

Centzy in particular piqued our interest (though it seemed the least directly relevant to the conference). Backed by Lightbank and ffVC, the company was described by CEO Jay Shek as “a comparison shopping engine for local services.” So why bother? Apparently fewer than 25 percent of local businesses post their prices online. “Imagine if you went to Google and 75 percent of websites weren’t listed,” Shek said. “It would be like the stone ages.” Right now, if you want the cheapest oil change within three blocks, you have to pick up the phone and start calling.

Their solution: Use paid crowdsourcing, like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, to get that information. Shek claimed this approach is 97 percent accurate and 100 percent comprehensive, and he’s confident the approach can scale nationwide for a reasonable amount of money. We’ll see.

Last and perhaps most cruelly given the competition with lunch: BiteHunter, which aggregates local dining deals. CEO Gil Harel took the audience through a tour of newly released version 2.0, currently burning up the app store charts and boasting 60,000 downloads. He explained they’d learned two things with their previous iteration: People are still overwhelmed by their choices, and it’s a pain to leave the app to purchase a deal. To crack that first nut, they’ve made it possible to browse via photo grid, map view, or list. For the second, they’ve added in-app purchases.

(maketecheasier.com)

BIG BITES. Big Apps winner MyCityWay partners with NYC app Bitehunter. "No other app helps you navigate a city like a true local than MyCityWay and now... the apps make it possible to roam and find a great meal for cheap. Users can share tips on activities, hot spots and restaurants with each other, as well as create 'best of' lists to share with users and, as of today, foodies can find the top local deals for each market thanks to BiteHunter’s thousands of sources."

GEORGIA STARTUPS. OnWednesday, January 18th, Union Square Ventures will host the first Flashpoint Demo Day. Flashpoint is a three-month accelerator program based at Georgia Tech; 17 startups will demo.

ONLY IN THE ALLEY. The 12-startup calendar, from SNAP Interactive and Hotlist, has been released and the syndicate will ring the opening bell at the NASDAQ on December 28.

CHRIS CLINGLE. "Clingle launched a new feature that ‘merries’ social, tech and the holidays to let you gift conveniently and thoughtfully right from your smartphone.

Here’s how Clingle Gifts work:

1. Download the Clingle App (available for iPhone and Android)
2. Select a friend on the Clingle platform or through Facebook.
3. Choose a gift from a choice of 40+ brand partners, powered by iStash, including Zappos, Barnes and Noble, SpaFinder, Wine.com and Travelocity.
4. Pay securely by credit card and attach a video or audio message to send to friends."

HOLIDAY LARGESSE. "For each new group created on our special Happy Holidays page or in the Featured tab on your GroupMe app between now and New Year’s Day, we’ll donate $1 to the Food Bank For New York City, for up to 2,000 groups.  For every $1 donated 5 meals can be provided to New Yorkers in need."

GET UPDATES. "GetGlue rolled out major updates to its iPhone app and website... These updates will enable users to be introduced to new content based on their check-ins and connect them to other fans who like the same type of content." The features include redesigned profiles, different UX for real time chat, a more visual stream, and a Guides tab to help users find stuff to watch.

APP LAUNCH. Pocket Card Greetings is made in NYC. "The latest is an iOS app perfect for the holidays--it lets you send virtual greeting cards to your friends and loved ones.  The front of the card is a Christmas/NewYears/Holiday message and the back of the card is a 30 second video message."

DEADLINES: Peter Thiel cradle-robbing fellowship: Dec. 31. Rockstart Accelerator Amsterdam, Jan. 6. FinTech Innovation Lab, Jan. 18. TechStars NYC, early deadline Jan. 10, final deadline Jan. 23. NYC Big Apps Awards, Jan 25.

JOBS. Spotify looking for head of communications. SignPost needs a product manager. P2PU is looking for a Django developer. Lot18 needs a junior operations associate. Loosecubes needs an office manager. Producteev is looking for a social media manager (intern).