In illustrious company. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Time has just released a list of its 50 favorite websites. The metrics? All the selections are something the editors find "useful, entertaining, innovative or just plain addictive." The result is a list that happens to be something of New York tech who's who. Among the honorees: 

• Squarespace
• If This Then That
• Aereo
• Songza
• CodeAcademy
• BuzzFeed
• ZocDoc
• Digg
• LooseCubes

However, before anyone starts emailing his mom, it's worth noting that Timedeliberately works to include sites that "aren't yet household names." Someday, kids. Someday.

Also on the list: Outlook.com. With all due respect, suddenly we're questioning the methodology, here.

The redesigned Nestio iPhone app.

Hunting season Nestio has redesigned its iPhone app, designed to help apartment hunters stay organized and share information with friends. In addition to improved camera functionality, the 2.0 version has some new features, including an activity screen to help users see what progress their roommates have made in the search, as well as a checklist to help potential renters and buyers remember what features to look for when they’re viewing an apartment.

Guilty convenience Gilt Group just announced that they have (finally) added search capabilities to the site. Members can now search each Gilt store by category, brand and price—just like almost every other website that exists.

1000+ Zinio—which produces interactive versions of existing magazines, providing a reading platform which enables readers to easily navigate text, interactive graphics, animated illustrations, and videos—just announced the production of its 1000th interactive magazine.

Learn python Codeacademy, an interactive, user-generated platform for users to learn programming, now offers users the ability to learn python, in addition to front-end technologies like JavaScript, HTML, CSS and jQuery.

Female report American Express has released more results from its second annual State of Women-Owned Businesses report. Though the numbers report growth of women-owned businesses in 2012, AmEx concedes, predictably, that things could be better. If you don’t feel like reading the whole report, they’ve made some helpful infographics to get people talking.

Manhattan Transfers The predictive game studio PrePlay—which creates mobile and tablet games designed to enhance the experience of watching sports, reality, and other “awkward” television shows—is expanding its Manhattan operations and moving into a new Midtown headquarters at West 38th Street, following its $3.1 million series A funding.

Virtual college Yale has partnered with YouVisit to enhance virtual tour features available to prospective students on their website. Now, high schoolers, pre-frosh and curious parties all over the world can take “realistic and engaging” virtual walking tours of the campus and enjoy full-screen 360 panoramas of various Yale landmarks, which are also available for a bunch of other less prestigious institutions.

Changeup The interactive video startup Qwiki just announced that they’ve hired Sonya Penn, formerly Time.com’s Director of Business Development, as VP of Business Development.

Next big thing The Paley Center for Media is partnering with the New York Comedy Festival to put together a special “comedy-themed” edition of Next Best Thing, the Paley Center’s quarterly showcase for digital media startups, and they’re currently accepting submissions from startups to present at the November 7 event. Interested parties should send a description of their company, presenter bio, and presentation draft to paleymediacouncil(at)gmail.com; submissions are due September 14.

(Source: Warby Parker)

PERFECT TEN. Last Wednesday Time Inc. brought together editors from many of their news properties to bestow upon us the "10 NYC Startups to Watch." Only in the startup picking game since lat year's Internet Week, Time Inc. has already picked winners like GroupMe, which was purchased by Skype for a supposed $85 milion.

The startups that made the cut for 2012 are Adaptly, a social advertising platform; Art.sy, the Pandora of art; Codeacademy, an interactive self-paced tool to learn to code; Enterproid, a mobile platform to segregate work from personal information on a single mobile device; Fab—you already know what Fab does; Fancy Hands, a provider of virtual personal assistants; Loosecubes, a matchmaker for workers and workspaces SideTour; a community marketplace for booking and hosting adventures, Stamped; a five-star-only mobile rating app and Truth Art Beauty; an online platform where users can custom-create skincare blends.

FOUNDER POWER. This Friday Women 2.0 is hosting their New York Founder Friday at 16 East 34th Street. Featured founders Cheryl Yeoh of CityPockets and Eloise Bune of GraciousEloise will begin speaking at 7 p.m. but the event will kick off at 6 p.m. with an introduction by Matt Wolfrom of Makovsky and Company, the event's sponsor. Founder Friday is free, and open to people of all genders, unlike the LOL-inducing "Jews against the Internet" rally, which is $10 and closed to women. Unfortunately, Founder Friday is already at capacity. Add your name to the wait list and cross your fingers.

RALLY IN THE ALLEY. The Association for a Better New York Foundation and Mayor Bloomberg honored the city's technology leaders in Union Square last Thursday including Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley, Greycroft's Alan Patricof, ideeli CEO Paul Hurley and NYTM cofounder Dawn Barber. The Lew Rudin Founder's Award went to New York City deputy mayor for economic development Robert Steel.

MEDIUM MAYHEM. Shelby.tv sat squarely at the intersection of social media and video and last week they began making strides to kick to competition down the block. At The Next Web 2012, cofounder Reece Pacheco unveiled Shelby GT, currently operating in private beta. "Rolls," a tool for organization, curation and the sharing of videos by way of tweets, Facebook posts and other social platforms, make up the centerpiece of this latest social video iteration. Request a private beta invitation to the virtual viewing party here.

DESIGNBOX. Last week LayerVault, an online, unlimited storage space for design files, underwent a redesign adding color extraction and an ability to measure mockups. The "Github for designers" has also introduced "Wormhole," a way to search art files visually by highlighting different design components. That recent shell-out for CS5 might feel a little worse now.

CLOTHES BUY YOU. New York fashion ecommerce company Ruby Ribbon got a $3 million go ahead from Trinity Ventures to launch, sell and market a fashion line "exclusively through social commerce." The company plans to connect to customers on a highly personal level through a national network of stylists who will introduce customers to Ruby Ribbon products at private social functions and in their homes. Ruby Ribbon has been operating stealthily, without so much as a landing page, until today.

PURCHASEST. Ever come across something on Pinterest that you wanted to buy? Well now you can! Sort of. The Fancy wants to treat your eyeballs like a lady while and your wallet like... well pretty much how everyone else treats your wallet. "Everything you see on the site is for sale, or can be for sale, in a function that operates like Groupon in reverse," a press release said. "If someone posts something that develops a huge following -- merchants can come online to sell that item and meet the demand." Fancy just hit half a million users and has big name backers like Square's Jack Dorsey and Facebook's Chris Hughes.

WARBY DARKER. Online prescription eyewear retailer Warby Parker just launched a new line of snazzy prescription sunglasses. At $120 they're a little pricier than their non-polarized counterparts.

COMMUTE. Spotify is on the hunt for a senior product manager with at least five years of experience to drive user revenue. App management platform Appboy wants to add a developer to its small team to provide the server backend for mobile client SDKs and the developer dashboard.