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 follow him at @garysguide and reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

NYU ITP (where foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley got his start) is now accepting applications for ITP Camp. What is ITP Camp you ask? Well its like ITP Classic put in the blender and smooshed into a month! It is ITP’s test kitchen, its R&D arm, its back of the napkin. It’s the place they encourage you, their faculty, former students, colleagues, and community to experiment, challenge, and play. Intrigued yet? You can apply here.

The good people at SkillShare are hosting their first ever education conference, Penny, at The Times Center on April 20th. Great line-up of speakers including the incomparable Baratunde Thurston (The Onion), Charles Best (DonorsChoose), Zach Sims (Codecademy) and much more.

The 2012 User Experience Awards is now open for submissions. Get more details here and buy tickets here.

And now lets see whats going down in the tech parts of town this week...

Hack and Tell: Round 16: Ivan Drago went down in 15, but we're still going!
5 minutes to show off your hack, and 5 minutes for the audience to applaud, cry, laugh, inquiry, snore, chew, stand, sit, dance, grow, interact, etc :)
Monday (Apr 09), 6:30 p.m. @ Meetup HQ, 632 Broadway, Ste 901

NYC Music Technology Meetup
Demos by Limited Run, Music Dealers, VYou, Spinrs, BandsInTown, WeAreHunted, Maestro.fm and a Kinect hack!
Monday (Apr 09), 7 p.m. @ Knitting Factory, 361 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn

NJ Tech Meetup 23
Featured Speaker: Tad Martin (Collective[i], Overstock, Gear.com). Demos by Meddik, Patient Communicator and Inquisit Health.
Tuesday (Apr 10), 6:30 p.m. @ Babbio Center at Stevens Institute Of Technology, 513 River St, Hoboken

Women in Design & Technology Series: The Future of Fashion: Trendsetting in the High-Tech Age
A discussion with Mariah Chase (President & Co-founder, Send The Trend). Moderated by Julia Lovallo (Member, Damsels in Design and Co-Founder, 4eCreative).
Tuesday (Apr 10), 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Floor

Investor Feedback Forum: Future Energy
With Kef Kasdin (General Partner, Batelle Ventures), Ann Partlow (General Partner, Earthrise Capital), Willem Rensink (GameChanger, Shell International Exploration & Production) and Yanev Suissa (Venture Capitalist, New Enterprise Associates). Pitches from Kristen Cleven (Green Charge Networks), Adam Rein (Altaeros Energies), Beth Stewart (United Catalyst), Michael Newell (Ener-G-Rotors) and more.
Wednesday (Apr 11), 6:30 p.m. @ NYU Stern Business School - Kaufman Management Ctr, 44 W 4th Street

Design + Tech: Stories of Collaboration from the Past, Present and Future
With Keenan Cummings + Eric Jacobsen of Wander, Renda Morton + Andy Pressman of Rumors and Robert Lenne + Craig Spaeth of Art.sy
Wednesday (Apr 11), 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Floor

ER Accelerator Happy Hour
Applications now open for ERA June 2012 class
Thursday (Apr 12), 6:30 p.m. @ Connolly's NYC, 121 West 45th Street, 3rd Floor

Appsumo presents #Techdrinkup - Open Bar @ Inc Lounge - The Anniversary Party
A party for NYC's brightest and savviest people in tech to get together at exclusive NYC venues and mingle over drinks and food.
Thursday (Apr 12), 8 p.m. @ Inc Lounge, 224 W 49th St

FounderMatchup New York
Are you a marketing wizard looking for a Ruby on Rails guru? Are you an MIT mastermind whose ideas need a customer sales 007? On Friday the 13th, come meet your match!
Friday (Apr 13), 6 p.m. @ Dogpatch Labs, 36 East 12th Street

Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy (BLIP) Legal Hackathon
With Art Chang (Tipping Point), Sherwin Siy (Public Knowledge), Andrew Rasiej (Personal Democracy Media and NYTM)
Sunday (Apr 15), 9 a.m. @ Brooklyn Law School, 250 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn

More on the horizon…
An Insiders Guide to Angel Fundraising on Apr 17 @ General Assembly
Founders@Fail Avi Muchnick: Aviary on Apr 17 @ Dogpatch Labs
April NY Enterprise Technology Meetup on Apr 18 @ Cooley
AWS Summit 2012 | NYC on Apr 19 @ Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
New York Tech Day on Apr 19 @ Lexington Armory
SkillShare Penny Conference on Apr 20 @ The NY Times Center

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

A few months ago, Google introduced photos, videos, coupons, links and other flair that businesses can add to their Google search results for $25 a month, as part of the company's effort to dominate the local advertising market.

The move threatens the bread and butter of locally-focused sites like Citysearch, which is owned by IAC—especially considering Google can prioritize its listings, called Places, ahead of Citysearch's or Yelp's.

Yext launched a similar feature today called Yext Tags, right now just a 50-character highlighted message that businesses can use to distinguish themselves in a list of search results. Businesses can control their tags from Yext, updating the message simultaneously across Yext's partner sites.

Yext started out offering pay-per-call listings in its network of Web directories. Local businesses could sign up and have their listings show up on Yext.com as well as sites like Superpages.com. Then the company rolled out real-time reputation management to local businesses, a site that helps business owners monitor what people are saying about them online.

Now Yext wants to establish itself as a hub where business owners can control their listings across the Web from one place.

Yext has partnered with several of the leading listings sites on the Web, but not Google—leading to the impression that Yext represents an anti-Google alliance.

When asked if he was organizing an anti-Google coalition, CEO Howard Lerman demurred.

Yext would love to add Google's Places pages to its network, he said.

"Our goal is to create a comprehensive tag for local businesses. Our thesis as a company is that local is going to be fragmented and the pace of fragmentation is accelerating," he said, citing Groupon and Foursquare which have emerged as sources of information about local businesses.

He declined to say whether he is talking to Google. Maybe the ten ex-Googlers on Yext's engineer-studded staff can help with negotiations.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries