This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

Last week was crazy. First, the pope resigned (last time that happened? 1415). Then, a 55-foot-wide meteor crashed into the little Russian town of Chelyabinsk, sparking a 300-kiloton blast. Whoa. And then, an asteroid narrowly missed Earth (by a mere 17,000 miles). Yikes. Aaaand then....then everybody really went crazy and started doing the Harlem Shake! Google's doing it. So are Facebook and Linkedin. Even my friends at WeWork, BuzzFeed, CollegeHumor, NYU Stern & ERA have gotten in on the action. There's a cute puppy version and even a bookmarklet. Yup, it was a crazy, crazy week indeed!

Wanna hang out with David Pakman (Venrock), Esther Dyson (angel investor), John Frankel (ff Venture Capital) and other top investors at the Funding the Best in Global Innovation conference this Wednesday? But of course you do! I have a couple of free passes; email me if interested. (You also get 30 percent off with discount code "innovation").

My buddy Steve Rosenbaum (NYC EDC’s entrepreneur at large) is doing another virtual office hours tomorrow (12-1pm) to answer all your startup & entrepreneurship questions. Register here.

This week is Social Media Week. What does that mean? Why, a ton of social media events, of course! ;-) Three events I like are: New York City's Tech Future, The State of Civic Technology and Health Tech Innovation in NY.

This Wednesday at the Museum of Jewish Heritage is Running Away with the Band, a revealing conversation with music industry legend Ted Cohen (three decades in the business helping shape the careers of The Who, Prince, The Beach Boys, The Ramones, The Sex Pistols and Van Halen). Go check it out.

Our "ULTIMATE Guide to SXSW 2013 Parties" list is shaping up quite nicely! 115 events and counting. Hopefully y'all have been smart and RSVP'd. You have, right? Here's a few you're gonna like: Klout Afternoon Delight, Innovation City, The MoPub, Metamarkets, Prolific Interactive Party, OpenWeb Pool Party and Mashable's MashBash. Rumor also has it that last year's uber-popular Conduit Corner is coming back, but this time as a carnival! Stay tuned for more details ;-)

I've been to photo hackathons, fashion hackathons, local hackathons, even food hackathons. And then, I came across a brain hackathon. Yeah, you heard that right. My buddy Ramzi Abdoch (whose team, Swatchit, won the Decoded Fashion hackathon, congrats!) told me all about it. One of the rules? Your project must involve a brain-computer interface. Yup, better watch out, the Matrix is coming, people!

A few weeks ago, I raved about the food at Danny Meyer's Maialino. Later that day, I got an email from Danny himself, appreciative of my enthusiasm. A few days ago, I ran into him in person. He remembered my comments and thanked me again. There's a lesson here for all founders and CEOs: Always be aware of your customer, appreciate their feedback (good or bad) and always make them feel special. If Danny can do it while running an empire of 24 restaurants, so can you! (I also highly recommend you check out his book, which is chock full of business wisdom).

And to all my Jewish friends, I wish you (in advance) Happy Purim! (Hope you enjoy your Se`udat Purim!)

And now let's see what's going down in the Alley this week...

[SMW] We Built This City: The State of Civic Technology
With Jessica Lawrence (New York Tech Meetup), Noel Hidalgo (Code For America), Lara Torvi (NYC Dept. of IT & Telecomm), Beth Viner (IDEO), Betsy Scherzer (NYC EDC) and others.
Tuesday (Feb. 19), 2:30 p.m. @ Bloomberg Tower, 731 Lexington Avenue

Confessions of a Social Butterfly: Managing the Future of Social Media
With Jeanette Horan (CIO, IBM), Fred Santarpia (Chief Digital Officer, Conde Nast Entertainment) and others.
Tuesday (Feb. 19), 6:30 p.m. @ Capitale, 130 Bowery

Funding the Best in Global Innovation II
With David Pakman (Venrock), Brian Cohen (New York Angels), Matt Turck (Bloomberg), Kirill Sheynkman (RTP Ventures), John Frankel (ff Venture Capital), Esther Dyson (angel investor), Ellie Wheeler (Greycroft), Adam Ludwin (RRE), Ann Li (NYCEDC) and more.
Wednesday (Feb. 20), 8:30 a.m. @ SNR Denton, 1221 Avenue of the Americas

Running Away with the Band
A revealing conversation with music industry legend Ted Cohen (three decades in the business helping shape the careers of The Who, Prince, The Beach Boys, The Ramones, The Sex Pistols and others).
Wednesday (Feb. 20), 12 p.m. @ The Museum of Jewish Heritage, 33 Battery Place, The Pit

Get To Know DreamIt Ventures (Happy Hour)
Wednesday (Feb. 20), 6 p.m. @ Bulls Head Tavern, 295 3rd Avenue

NYC Data Business Meetup #13
With Mike Simone (global head, CitiData platform), Emile Werr (head of enterprise data architecture, NYSE EuroNext) and Raj Patil (former data innovation CTO, UBS). Talks by Quantopian, Plaid and ZestFinance.
Wednesday (Feb. 20), 6 p.m. @ Bloomberg Tower, 731 Lexington Avenue

The Intersection of Tech & Media in NYC
A Conversation with Rachel Haot (Chief Digital Officer, NYC)
Wednesday (Feb. 20), 6 p.m. @ TimesCenter @ The New York Times Building, 242 W. 41st Street

[SMW] Its Complicated: Dating and Relationships in the Digital Age
With Sam Yagan (cofounder & CEO, OkCupid), Brian Schechter (cofounder & Co-CEO, How About We) and others. Moderated by Joyce Chang (executive editor, Cosmopolitan).
Wednesday (Feb. 20), 9:30 p.m. @ Hearst Tower, 300 W. 57th Street

[SMW] New York Citys Tech Future
With Alan Patricof (Greycroft Partners), Ann Li (NYC EDC), Jonathan Bowles (Center for an Urban Future), Steve Rosenbaum (entrepreneur-at-large, NYCEDC) and others.
Thursday (Feb. 21), 9:30 a.m. @ Bloomberg LP, 731 Lexington Avenue

Lean Startup Meetup: Fireside Chat
With Charles Adler (Cofounder, Kickstarter).
Thursday (Feb. 21), 7 p.m. @ Meetup HQ, 632 Broadway, 9th Fl.

Queens Tech Meetup 6
With Wiley Cerilli (CEO and founder, SinglePlatform, sold to Constant Contact for over $100M). Demos by Derby Jackpot and Falcon.
Thursday (Feb. 21), 7 p.m. @ Hunter's Point Plaza, 47-40 21st Street, 10th Fl., Long Island City

Tails and Rails: Tech Innovation for Pets and People
One-day hackathon bringing together technologists to build a better life for pets. Develop apps for pet food, pet adoption and pet recreation. Hosted by Mashable and Purina.
Saturday (Feb. 23), 10 a.m. @ Harbor Room at SoHo Grand, 310 West Broadway

Assembled E-Commerce
With Shauna Mei (AHAlife), Adam Schwartz (BustedTees), Alex Taub (Dwolla), Andrew Kortina (Venmo), John Rote (Bonobos), Nihal Mehta (LocalResponse), Shan-Lyn Ma (Chloe+Isabel) and others.
Saturday (Feb. 23), 12 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Fl.

More events on the horizon...
Entrepreneurs Roundtable 55 on Feb. 25 @ NYU Stern
Analytics Roundtable on Feb. 26 @ SNR Denton
Is Ownership Obsolete? When Sharing Isnt Enough on Feb. 26 @ Studio X NYC
The Story of the Paper App on Feb. 26 @ Huge
AIPAC Technology Division: Launch Event w/ Dan Senor on Feb. 27 @ Bloomberg Tower
IA Ventures on Leveraging Big Data on Feb. 28 @ Orrick
Mobile UX Design Four-Part Series: Theory, Science, Optimization & Design on Feb. 28 @ Venue
2nd Annual NYU Entrepreneurs Festival on Mar. 1 @ Tisch Hall
NYC EDU Startup Weekend on Mar. 1 @ Alley NYC
Startup Funeral on Mar. 1 @ New Work City
BRITE 2013 Conference on Mar. 4 @ Columbia University Lerner Hall
Founders@Fail: How To Build A Community on Mar. 4 @ General Assembly East
In NYC for SxSW? Join us for Brunch! on Mar. 10 @ Venue
Unleash the Beast: How to Hack a Hackathon Save the World and Make Your Parents Proud on Mar. 14 @ Internet Media Labs

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! ;)

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

First things first: Stop reading this and go watch "House of Cards" on Netflix. Yup, it's that good. You're welcome!

Back? Okay! Hope y'all survived the weekend #snow-pocalypse (a.k.a. Nemo) and had a blast sledding in the park, hurling snowballs at each other and making elaborate snow sculptures. Here's an awesome Vine mashup of the storm that my friends Kelsey and Steve made.

Now that you've had your winter fun, it's time to get ready for spring. And that can only mean one thing: internships! That's right. It's that time of the year again, when bright-eyed young kids will be running around your offices eager to learn the ropes, change the world, and...err... get you your early-morning fix of decaf-grande-mocha-soy lattes.  So, who's looking for interns? Everybody, that's who! Squarespace, Metamorphic Ventures, UrbanDaddy, HowAboutWe, ff Ventures, MoviePass, Birchbox, Artsicle, Learnvest and many, many more.

Want $40,000, four months of free office space and access to Esther Dyson, Jeff Stewart, David Pakman and John Frankel? Well, duh. You, my friend, need to apply to the awesome ERA Accelerator, pronto! Deadline is March 7.

Speaking of accelerators, DreamIt is holding a meet-and-greet event next Wednesday, where you'll get to meet some of their partners, alumni and heavy hitters. In more accelerator news, west coast pirate Dave McClure and his merry band of 500 Startuppers will be coming ashore this Friday to give us all a little taste of what they've been building at their Demo Day. And in still more accelerator news, The New York Times Company  is launching timeSpace, a new incubator initiative to bring entrepreneurs to their HQ for four months to refine and grow their businesses. They're looking for three to five early-stage companies focused on the media space with a product launched. Deadline is February 19.

Applications to the 2013 TechCrunch NYC Disrupt Startup Battlefield are open. Deadline is February 22. TechCrunch is also holding a pitch-off competition + meetup tomorrow.

Congrats to the Drobe team for winning the Hearst Fashion Hackathon yesterday!

Don't forget, if you wanna help the city reinvent the payphone, submit your prototype idea by February 18. And if you wanna hang with Zac Posen 'n Dennis Crowley at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, I have an extra pass. Email me if interested.

AIPAC Technology Division is having its launch event on February 27 at Bloomberg HQ, featuring Dan Senor (co-author of Start-Up Nation: Story of Israel's Economic Miracle). AIPAC Tech's host committee includes Alan Patricof (Greycroft), Avi Fogel (NY Angels), Jordan Levy (SoftBank) and others.

Startup Bus (where you get on a bus with 30 strangers and hack your way across America) is going to SXSW. Here's your invite code. Got questions? Email Jon Gottfried, your StartupBus East Coast Conductor!

As you all know, red is my favorite color (gasp, surprise). And lately it's been everywhere, from the red carpet at the Grammys last night to the red roses many of you are getting on Valentine's Day and, of course, red is the color for Chinese New Year. To all my friends who celebrate, Gong Xi Fa Cai! (and hope you get lots of Red envelopes ;-))

And now let's see what's going down in the Alley this week...

On Deck Sports and Technology Conference
With rockstar list of speakers including Bob Bowman (MLB Advanced Media), Tiki Barber (former NFL), Alexis Ohanian (cofounder, Reddit), Ben Lerer (Lerer Ventures), Ryan Spoon (ESPN Digital Media) and others.
Tuesday (Feb. 12), 8 a.m. @ Bohemian National Hall, 321 E. 73rd Street

Cocktails & Conversation
85 Broads invites you for cocktails and conversation with Joanne Wilson (angel investor) & Rohini Dey (restaurateur).
Tuesday (Feb. 12), 6 p.m. @ Vermilion, 480 Lexington Avenue

TechCrunch NYC Meetup
60-second pitch-off competition for entrepreneurs looking to launch their product at the Disrupt conference in May. Plus there's beer. Enough said.
Tuesday (Feb. 12), 6 p.m. @ Santos Party House, 96 Lafayette Street

NY Enterprise Technology Meetup
Demos by Aerohive Networks, DataSift, MapR Technologies, Datadog and Videolicious.
Tuesday (Feb. 12), 6:30 p.m. @ Cooley, 1114 Avenue of the Americas

Startup Weekend Strategic Partnership Series
With Nancy Jo (VP Strategy & Biz Dev, Bravo Digital Media), Leora Schacter (VP Digital Strategy and Planning, Food Network) and Ryan Osbourne (VP Digital Innovations, NBC News).
Tuesday (Feb. 12), 7 p.m. @ General Assembly East, 902 Broadway, 4th Fl.

Digital Disruption: Media in Non-Profits
With William Baker (President Emeritus WNET / Channel 13 PBS), Don Undeen (Media Lab, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Suzy Gooch (Director, Metropolitan Opera).
Wednesday (Feb. 13), 6 p.m. @ McMahon Hall, 155 W. 60th Street, #109

NYC Real Estate Technology Startups Demos
With Efrem Weiss (PivotDesk), Oisin Hanrahan (Handybook) and Nate Friedman (Living There).
Wednesday (Feb 13), 6:30 p.m. @ TechStars NYC, 36 Cooper Square, 6th Fl.

Visas for Startups: A Panel on Immigration Policy and Entrepreneurship
With Jeremy Robbins (Director, Office of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg), Michael Wildes (Wildes & Weinberg), Owen Davis (NYC Seed), Cyrus Mehta and moderated by Professor Jonathan Askin (Brooklyn Law).
Wednesday (Feb. 13), 7 p.m. @ Geraldo's Cafe at Brooklyn Law, 205 State St, 1st Fl., Feil Hall, Brooklyn

One Of A Kind Party
Open Bar / Clothes Donation by StartupThreads, Amicus, AlleyNYC & Coalition for Queens.
Wednesday (Feb. 13), 8 p.m. @ 1Oak, 453 W. 17th Street

Decoded Fashion - Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week
Keynotes by Zac Posen (fashion designer) and Dennis Crowley (Founder & CEO, Foursquare), as well as the fashion hackathon finale. The top three ideas will be presented on the runway and the winning app will be launched by the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
Thursday (Feb. 14), 9 a.m. @ Lincoln Center, 33 W. 60th Street

Columbia Business School 19th Annual PE/VC Conference
Keynote by Steve Case (chairman & CEO, Revolution and cofounder, America Online)
Friday (Feb. 15), 9 a.m. @ Alfred Lerner Hall at Columbia University, 2920 Broadway

HackInteractive
An education-themed, code-for-a-cause hackathon. Amazing prizes, access to awesome APIs, and delicious food. Hack the weekend to benefit CampInteractive’s programming. Hosted by Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian.
Saturday (Feb. 16), 9 a.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Fl.

More events on the horizon...
Social Media Week NY 2013 on Feb. 18 @ Metropolitan Pavilion
NY Tech for Local Business Meetups Social Media Week event: SoLoCo on Feb. 18 @ Wix Lounge
NYTECH Presents: Killer Strategies from the Worlds Greatest Innovators on Feb. 19 @ Morgan Stanley
Business Design & Tech Transforming The World on Feb. 19 @ Centre For Social Innovation Pop-Up Space
Funding the Best in Global Innovation II on Feb. 20 @ SNR Denton
Get To Know DreamIt - NYC on Feb 20. @ Bulls Head Tavern
NJ Tech Meetup 33 on Feb. 21 @ Howe Center
Unleash the Beast: How to Hack a Hackathon Save the World and Make Your Parents Proud on Feb. 21 @ Internet Media Labs
Fireside Chat with Kickstarter Cofounder Charles Adler on Feb. 21 @ Meetup HQ
Analytics Roundtable on Feb. 26 @ SNR Denton
AIPAC Technology Division: Launch Event w/ Dan Senor on Feb. 27 @ Bloomberg Tower
2nd Annual NYU Entrepreneurs Festival on Mar. 1 @ Tisch Hall
NYC EDU Startup Weekend on Mar. 1 @ Alley NYC

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! ;)

Fancy's fanciest fan. (Photo: wikipedia.org)

Ceci N'est Pas Une Sandy The affordable-art-dealing website 20 x 200 is now selling a print of a NASA satellite image of Hurricane Sandy. All proceeds from the sale will go to the Red Cross to help relief efforts. The striking image was taken at 9:02 a.m on Sunday, approximately 10 hours before NYC’s MTA shut transport service down throughout the tristate area. Hang it above your couch of a constant reminder of the grander universe and just how much you appreciate your wifi.

More Money, More Fancy Fancy, Pinterest's cooler older brother, has raised just over $26 million in additional funding. New investors include Celtics owner Jim Pallotta, Twitter and Square cofounder Jack Dorsey and Edward Gilligan, the vice chairman of American Express. This also ruins rumors that Apple was planning to acquire the company. No word yet on what their favorite user, Kanye West, thinks of the new influx of cash.

Santa Set to Make a Lot Of Web Boxes This Year Boxee, the New York rival to Apple TV and Roku, is planning to sell its $98 Boxee TV in Walmarts all across the U.S. The new device will be sold in 3,000 Walmarts. This is obviously a huge boost for the company, which sold 120,000 units last year. And unlimited DVR is about as American as Apple pie.

Zynga, What? Zynga may have picked some slightly unpronounceable Gibraltar-based startup to launch its foray into real-money gaming. But that hasn't hurt Betable's chances of becoming the Spotify of online social gambling. The platform, which is backed by investors like Path's David Morin and TechStars' David Tisch, lets developers build real-money games on its platform. Today, Betable announced that it will be lending its services to Slingo, Digital Chocolate and Murka. The company also just helped Big Fish launch a casino app called Big Fish Casino that lets U.K. users gamble with actual money.

NYC vs. SF, Finally Settled If you're ever stuck trying to decide whether to decamp to the Valley, then Versus IO is the site for you. It uses an algorithm to compare two alike things and show you points and counterpoints in a sparse layout. It currently can compare cities and a variety of tech products (think iPhone 4 vs. iPhone 5). But what about the immortal conundrum of pizza vs. Chinese?

Shiny New Doors Glassdoor, a California-based jobs site, has raised $20 million in a new financing round led by DAG Ventures. The round also included Benchmark Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures and Battery Ventures. The company told GigaOm that traffic to Glassdoor has reached 13 million monthly uniques and that revenue has increased 175 percent.

Get Your Game on GitHub has just announced a monthlong gaming hackathon on its blog. The GitHub Game Off will take place during November, and entrants will have to create a game looselybased on the concepts of forking (or forks), branching (or branches), cloning (or clones), pushing or pulling. There are five new iPads with Retina displays (64GB wifi models) available as prizes.

Big Conductor Conductor, an SEO platform, has just announced a big raise that it's calling "the largest venture capital round of funding in SEO technology." The company managed to scoop up $20 million, led by Investor Growth Capital. FirstMark Capital and Matrix Partners also participated.

Vimeo Workout Plan Reece Pacheco's video startup Shelby.tv, which is still in beta mode, has teamed up with workout site Nerd Fitness to create Nerdfitness.tv. The new site has a scrolling feed of videos to keep you motivated and to teach you how to work out. Let's hope no one gets caught up watching too many videos and forgets to go to the gym.

Dream It, Do It, Microsoft It Startup accelerator Dreamit Ventures has partnered up with Microsoft to give its startups access to the software development tools and networking of the BizSpark program. DreamIt also is planning to select one company from each of its programs to receive additional benefits as part of the BizSpark Fellow program. Fellows will get access to Microsoft expert engineers and evangelists to help build out their products. Qualifying startups can also access up to $60,000 in Windows Azure services over two years. FlagTap, an online capture the flag game that aims to increase web traffic, has been chosen as the first fellow of the program.

Dejamor's Rodrigo Fuentes

“Bow chicka wow wah,” someone yelled from the packed, cheering audience at the Time Life Conference Center this morning. The rowdy crowd was there for DreamIt Ventures Demo Day, a first opportunity for investors to see the startups who just finished a three-month stint at the well-regarded New York City incubator. The event featured seven-minute presentations from 15 different startups, five of which were part of DreamIt’s new program, DreamIt Israel.

The general “dream” of this year’s crop of startups? Love. Weesh, pronounced “wish” with an Israeli accent, is an application that helps couples break out of a routine rut. The platform provides couples with a relationship timeline and helps them discover date-night ideas, which the startup calls “weeshes.” The “weeshes” are saved in an easy to access “weesh-list” which serves as scrapbook for all activities, photos and memories the couple have shared together. CEO and cofounder Ofir Beigel, a Zell Entrepreneurship graduate, is a veteran of the dating industry. In 2006, he founded a dating school in Israel where he taught men how to interact with women. “I had no idea what I was doing [when talking to women], so I set out to teach guys the principles of how to do it,” he told Betabeat, adding, “The way I describe it is the same way you study martial arts. You study a technique and you gain a form of knowledge and skills, whichever way you choose to use it is up to you.”

Weesh wasn't the only monogamy-minded startup to present today. CEO Rodrigo Fuentes pitched Dejamor, a subscription commerce company that delivers romantic--and intimate!--products for couples to, shall we say, enhance their relationship. Mr. Fuentes, a practicing lawyer, husband and father, said he got the idea for the startup after watching the spark and fire fade from his marriage. Think of it as a Birchbox for the marrying kind. Once a month, couples receive two boxes, one for the man and one for the woman. The boxes contain a romantic, sexy or erotic idea, instructions, and a kit for an easily-implementable and one-of-a-kind experience with their loved one. “We tell you how much prep time there is; it’s very parent-friendly.” Mr. Fuentes swears that this idea has saved his own marriage. “Not only am I the president, I am also the member,” he quipped, riffing off the Hair Club for Men tagline. 

Companies, apparently, are also in need of some passion. Irad Eichler, CEO and co-founder of Teamayala, aims to make employees more engaged with their jobs and with each other. “We are trying to make the dynamic in the work environment friendlier and cooperative, which will make employees more productive in the work environment,” he told Betabeat. The process begins before employees even set foot in the office. According to its site, new hires receive a Welcome Wall where existing employees can greet them, they can learn about the company’s goals and culture through an interactive game, and they receive tips from current workers to help them navigate through their first few days.  The company launched two weeks ago and already has seven clients using the service.

Branch.ly, the last startup that caught our eye, falls more on the friendly end of the love spectrum. The company was founded by two Harvard undergraduates: Nuseir Yassin, a Palestinian-Israeli, and Peregrine Badger, a fencer with an eye on the Olympics. Mr. Nuseir got the crowd’s attention by solving a Rubik's Cube in 30 seconds. Branch.ly capitalizes on the fact that people often don’t actually know whom they know. The startup lets you people-search your social networks to help answer the question, “Do I know someone that …” It uses an algorithm that identifies the best candidates, both in terms of similar interests and likelihood to respond to a request.

Mitchell Golner, managing partner of DreamIt Israel, said that DreamIt Ventures gives the 15 participating companies up to a $25,000 stipend ($5,000 per company and $5,000 per founder). It is set to begin its accelerator program in Philadelphia on September 7^th and will launch a new accelerator in Austin, Texas, this December.

Dream it, bro. (dreamitventures.com)

Philly-based accelerator DreamIt Ventures, which debuted in New York last year, just announced the 15 startups that made it into the second New York summer session. Five of the companies selected are part of the DreamIt Access program, which aims to launch 15 minority-led startups over the next 12 months. Most of the companies from New York, but there's a heavy contingent from Israel, where DreamIt just opened a hybrid program in cooperation with the New York program.

The companies are:

The men of Clothes Horse, confident that they're wearing the right size.

Last April, Stephanie Clifford's New York Times story, "One Size Fits Nobody," went viral. (Or at least as viral as a non-Linsane animal-based memes can possibly go.) That's probably because Ms. Clifford's confession--that she varies anywhere from a size 4 to size 8 without gaining a pound--is a near-universal dilemma. Clothes Horse, a New York-based startup that launched publicly today, thinks it can solve that.

Brands like Bonobos, one of Clothes Horse's beta test cases, use the startup's software to embed a widget on their e-commerce site. After 30-seconds of questions like "What brand's shirt fits you best?" or "Is it tight around the chest?" the widget spits out information on how that retailer's items are likely to fit.

To do that, Clothes Horse uses an algorithm that combines a database of human measurements, sizing specifics from about 50 brands, and some kind of "secret sauce," which cofounder Vik Venkatraman declined to describe.

We first heard of Clothes Horse over cocktails a few weeks ago when Dave Whittemore, another Clothes Horse cofounder, described the process of going into stores to surreptitiously measure one of every size of a particular garment. "Hahaha. We don't usually measure IN the store, but we have been known to buy/return some stuff," Mr. Venkatraman told Betabeat over gChat.

Early beta tests with Bonobos showed a 13 percent boost in sales. But there's also the matter of bringing down shopping cart abandonment and reducing the rate of return for ill-fitting garments you totally thought were your size.

Besides Bonobos, Clothes Horse is already embedded in sites like Modus Man, Duke & Winston, Five Four Jeans, and Frank & Oak. Women's clothes, the Rubik's cube of sizing, are also tap. "We have some terrific brand partners that we're at different stages of a discussion with," said Mr. Venkatraman. As a SaaS business, retailers pay a monthly flat-fee based on their online traffic and revenue. Clothes Horse, which was incubated in DreamIt's inaugural New York City class, has raised an undisclosed seed round led by Contour Ventures.

Mr. Venkatraman thinks the potential of the software is "massive" and didn't seem worried retailers muscling into his newfound niche. "Fashion is just on the cusp of tipping to the future, which could see the industry moving from 8% online to 40%+. The network effects we build through users and brands will be tough for any individual retailer to replicate," he said, adding, "I mean: for the "same" size 32 jeans in Old Navy, BR and Gap will be all different--and that's the same company!"

A fashion tech startup in New York that isn't an e-commerce site or purely social play and provides a clearly monetizable public utility? Well, will wonders never cease.

Mr. Crowder

DreamIt Ventures, the Philadelphia-based accelerator that launched its first New York program last May, has another offering for local startups in the works. The firm recently announced a program called DreamIt Access that will bring five minority-led businesses to each DreamIt Ventures class going forward. The new initiative begins with DreamIt's summer class in New York City.

A number of notable New York startups have graduated from DreamIt's program, including SeatGeek, Parse.ly, Postling, Adapt.ly, KeepRecipes, and more. The emphasis on minority-owned business is an attempt to institutionalize a program DreamIt developed in Philadelphia last year when Comcast sponsored five startups as part of special track in DreamIt's accelerator called the Minority Entrepreneur Accelerator Program (MEAP).

MEAP was financed with $350,000 from Comcast Ventures, the cable company's venture capital arm, as part of a $20 million fund which was also used to invest in other minority entrepreneurship initiatives outside DreamIt. Comcast paid for both the direct funding for those five startups (up to $25,000, depending on the number of cofounders), as well as the cost of additional resources, such as desks and supplies, to incubate those five startups.

The firm has yet to name a sponsor for DreamIt Access, but applications for the summer program have been underway since late last year. Managing director William Crowder told Med City News:

“For us, it’s all about finding great people with great ideas and [no] one should be excluded from that,” said Crowder. “It really boils down to networks. Hopefully, programs like this can provide minority-led startups with resources to be as successful as everybody else.”

DreamIt appears to be going meta and accelerating the accelerator. Just last month, the firm announced that it would be going international with DreamIt Israel.

Philadelphia-based DreamIt Ventures incubator opened its first New York session in May with 15 companies culled from more than 500 applications, a three percent acceptance rate. Three months later, those companies are taking the stage at the McGraw Hill Conference Center in Midtown. There were a couple pivots in the class, but probably the most extreme came from the five founders who left their families back in Honduras to build a Facebook-integrated classroom management platform for teachers, Class.io.

The site is slick and the idea seemed great. But after two months of DreamIt boot camp, which emphasizes market research, the founders decided there wasn't enough need for it. So they decided to pivot--or whatever you want to call it--to a completely different industry: travel. Now Pictour, the start-up aims for a better way to document travel. Co-founder Alejandro Corpeño showed the audience at DreamIt's demo day, which was well attended but had plenty of empty seats--a tour of venture capital firms in New York as an example.

DreamIt founder David Bookspan reminded the audience that many of their successful portfolio companies changed ideas--SeatGeek, arguably the hottest alumnus--started out as a blog before it was a ticket vendor.

Pictour is raising money now, Mr. Corpeño said, as it rounds out a marathon month of coding. "So, we just have fun working together 20 hours a day," he said.

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (a.k.a. "The Guy with the Red Tie"), founder of GarysGuide and mentor at ER Accelerator.

Quote of the Week: "We'll see if we can do hackathons every day so long as I don't have to write code!" --Mayor Mike Bloomberg, at the Reinventing NYC hackathon winners' breakfast at General Assembly last week.

Mayor Mike's geek cred would have gone through the roof if he had decided to get down and dirty to crank out some code ;) but big props on committing support to hackathons. Speaking of hackathons, we've got a bunch of hacking-related events this week.

Hack and Tell
The place to be if you have cool hardware, software, scripts or widgets to demo. Just here to watch? No problemo, as long as you remember that there are only three appropriate responses to a demo: constructive criticism, asking clarifying questions or remaining shocked. :O
Monday, 6:30 p.m. @ Meetup HQ, 632 Broadway

Hacking Print Media: Pitching Journalists and Getting Profiled
Jerry Guo, former Newsweek staff correspondent, gives start-ups the inside scoop on how to talk to and charm journalists. It's about time there was a class for this.
Tuesday, 8:30 a.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway 4th Floor

Acting for Entrepreneurs
Let's face it. More business plans would be getting funded if entrepreneurs could just channel their inner Al Pacino during VC partner pitch meetings. Hoo-ah!
Tuesday, 6 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway 4th Floor

iPhone Software Developers Meetup - Start-up Night
As per the event organizers, "the lead developers from a couple of innovative NYC start-ups will sneak out of their Objective-C bat caves for the evening and share some hard-earned technical solutions from the trenches." Sounds interesting. Wait a min, did they say Objective-C bat caves?
Tuesday, 7 p.m. @ Microsoft, 1290 6th Avenue 6th Floor

DreamIt 2011 NYC Demo Day
Incubators, accelerators and their associated demo days are all the rage these days, and DreamIt is right up there with the best of them with alumni including SCVNGR, Easel and SeatGeek. Graduating this week will be their freshman NYC class including 1DocWay, AfterSteps, ClothesHorse, Cognection, CustomCoup, KeepRecipes, LetsGiftIt, ListenVoice, SocialAdMX, TakeTheInterview, Class.io, Hoot.me, LearnBop, NewQuill and Prepfly. Note: Event is by invitation only.
Wednesday, 9 a.m. @ DreamIt Ventures, 1221 6th Avenue

Websdays with Internet Week NY
I'm a big fan of David-Michel Davies (a.k.a. dmd), chair of Internet Week (New York's answer to SXSW) and Richard Blakeley, creator of the wildly popular Webutante Ball (it's prom night for geeks, yo!). And now they've joined forces to give us Websdays, a monthly schmooze-fest capturing the spirit of Internet Week. Wednesdays will never be the same again!
Wednesday, 7 p.m. @ 200 Orchard Street

Feedback Forum And Pitch Showdown
Graham Lawlor is turning Ultra Light Startups into ... American Idol!  Ten start-ups pitch, an investor panel provides feedback and the audience votes via Twitter. In the judging hot seat will be Owen Davis (managing director, NYC Seed), William Reinisch (venture advisor, Paladin Capital), David Teten (partner, ff Venture Capital and founder, HBS Angels NY) and Mark Wachen (founder & CEO, Upstage Ventures and Managing Partner, DreamIt Ventures).
Thursday, 6:30 p.m. @ NYU Stern Kaufman Management Center, 44 West 4th Street

Digital Learning Series: Demos and Discussion
Demos from cool education start-ups including Learnbop, Hoot.Me, Socrative, Pictour.us and New Quill. Yes, there will be food + drinks.
Thursday, 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway 4th Floor

Startup Weekend NYC
Shelve your weekend plans and start flexing your lean start-up muscles. Startup Weekend is back in town for another round of late night hacking fueled by pizza and Red Bull at Manhattan's urban campus, General Assembly. Speakers and judges including Alexis Ohanian (founder, Reddit + Hipmunk + BreadPig), Anthony Casalena (founder & CEO, SquareSpace), Jason Baptiste (founder and CEO, OnSwipe), Mike Horn (founder, CraftCoffee) and more.
Friday, 5 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway 4th Floor

DUMBO Tech Breakfast
For folks who like tech, live around Dumbo and can wake up early.
Friday, 8:30 a.m. @ Choice Market/The Gallery, 108 Jay Street, Brooklyn

Hacks & Hackers: Health Innovation & Open Data With Todd Park, CTO Dept of Health and Human Services
Stay up all night salivating about getting access to oodles of government healthcare data sets? Then you don't want to miss this event.
Friday, 3:00 p.m. @ Pfizer Inc, 235 East 42nd Street

More on the horizon ...
Entrepreneurs Roundtable 38 with Albert Wegener from Union Square Ventures @ Microsoft on Aug 17
NYC Startup Crawl @ 10gen on Aug 19
Photo Hack Day with Aviary @ General Assembly on Aug 20

Until next week. Stay social, my friends!

"The goal is to accelerate the growth of these companies at a pace that they would not have been able to do on their own resources," Mr. Wachen said. "DreamIt's founders are all entrepreneurs who have had successful exits. [We have] a long list of advisers and mentors that will be working with them through the summer. In addition to having a broad pool of advisers, we also pair each company with dedicated mentors, seasoned executives or seasoned entrepreneurs, who spend three to five hours a week with the company they're paired with, very dedicated person who can get under the hood and be in the trenches with them."

Companies also hear weekly speakers and attend workshops on things like law and accounting.

Mr. Wachen is a born-and-bred New Yorker who's been working in the New York tech scene since 1994, when he was working on new media for SONY Music. He started investing in internet start-ups for SONY and "had some big wins," and founded his own company, Optimost, which optimized websites in real time and was acquired in 2007. He was introduced to DreamIt Ventures through his investment in SeatGeek, the General Assembly-seated ticket reseller that graduated from DreamIt two years ago. "I was really impressed by how savvy these guys were when they were right out of college. I had learned that they had gone through the DreamIt program, which peaked my interest." A few introductions later, he learned DreamIt was looking to expand in New York and needed a New Yorker to head up the program.

Mr. Wachen has brought on as mentors investors and founders from New York and beyond including Ross Goldstein, DFJ Gotham; Rick Heitzmann, Firstmark Capital; Charlie O'Donnell, First Round Capital; David Frankel, Founder Collective; Ian Sigalow, Greycroft Partners; Joshua Kushner, Thrive Capital; Jason Finger, SeamlessWeb; Jack Groetzinger, SeatGeek; David Lifson, Postling; Seth Priebatsch, SCVNGR; and Mike Yavonditte of Hashable.

The 15 DreamIt companies--two thirds of them from outside New York, one from Honduras--will work out of an office on 27th for three months. DreamIt and TechStars have very similar terms--$5,000 plus $5,000 per founding team member (up to four, for a maximum of $25,000) in exchange for a six percent equity stake vs. $6,000 per founder, up to three founders with a six percent equity stake at TechStars. Y Combinator gives $11,000 plus $3000 per founder and "occasionally" more, in exchange for usually a six or seven percent stake.

The 2011 DreamIt Ventures New York companies are:

1DocWay

(St Louis, MO) Video-chat based doctor’s office with back-end automation

Admitly

(New York, NY) Admission pipeline to US schools

AfterSteps

(Boston, MA) Online end-of-life planning platform. Store your wishes and important information securely in the cloud, and access expert advice on how and why to prepare for worst-case scenarios

Class.io

(Honduras) Online classroom communication, helps teachers share assignments with students

Clothes Horse

(New York, NY) Data-driven platform that makes fashion fit

Cognection

(New Haven, CT) Online retail optimization

CustomCoup

(Philadlephia, PA) Demand-driven deals, focusing on local, aiming to give the user the power to determine prices on the things they want

Hoot.me

(Austin, TX) Interactive knowledge network; put Facebook into study mode by connecting you with friends for homework and projects.

KeepRecipes

(New York, NY) iTunes for all-star chef’s recipes

LearnBop

(Pittsburgh, PA) Online adaptive learning platform

LetsGiftIt

(New York, NY) Social gifting platform; a way for friends, family, and coworkers to contribute towards the purchase of a gift for someone special

ListenVoice

(Boston, MA) App creation and distribution platform, allowing individuals and organizations to launch mobile and web applications without prior programming knowledge

New Quill

(Los Angeles, CA) Mobile publishing and collaborative learning

SocialAdMX

(New York, NY) Social and mobile app publishing and advertising

TakeTheInterview

(Boston, MA) Cloud-based video interviewing platform for employers to more efficiently screen candidates

Disclosure.