We weren’t prepared to sit Shiva on this beautiful day, but it looks like Pete Cashmore had other plans for us. Out of nowhere, the iconic Mashable icon on Twitter changed from the the angelic face of the site’s beautiful British founder to an icy blue M, that at least reminds us of his stunning eyes. Read More
Journalism 101 It looks like somebody is gunning for a spot at Nick Denton’s soon-to-relaunch Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag. TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis wrote an impassioned post about why tech journalism needs another Valleywag, “a watchdog with enough independence and daring to call it as it is.” Writers at blogs like her own, Ms. Tsotsis argues, are simply too embedded in the ecosystem to properly perform their jobs, unwilling to report on certain unseemly aspects of Valley business and culture for fear of having to, get this, sit next to those she’s written about at a demo day. Read More
Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!
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.
A couple of months ago, while attending the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to chat with a ton of upcoming startups, and I noticed a surprisingly higher-than-usual number of enterprise-focused companies. Yesterday Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson wrote an interesting post highlighting how the consumer web might be entering a stage of maturation as the action shifts from the desktop to mobile, where it’s becoming increasingly harder to reach scale. 500 Startups’ Dave McClure has an excellent rebuttal post on the topic. Read More
Yesterday, word leaked that former Mashable editor Ben Parr is launching a seed stage VC fund targeted at celebrity investors. The cofounders of Tracks.by, a platform for music artists, are also partners in Mr. Parr’s fund. The tech world, as it’s wont to do, erupted into a collective scoff: A star-studded investment firm helmed by a “disgraced” journalist, who was fired for blabbing about his salary, doesn’t sound like the stuff of Sand Hill Road.
Unwilling to let an opportunity for backseat quarterbacking pass them by, tech bloggers immediately swooped in to offer their analysis of Mr. Parr’s newest venture. Read More
Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!
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.
Hola folks,
Batten down the hatches. Stock up on the liquor (and food). Bring out the candles and flashlights. Because Hurricane Sandy (a.k.a. #frankenstorm) is almost upon us. And now, at almost a thousand miles wide, it definitely has our attention. Hopefully by this time y’all are safely at home (and not still slumming in Zone A) with eyes glued to the twenty-four-hour news coverage, watching weathermen expound on “cones” and “surges.”
As you know, the MTA has shut down all subway and buses, and pretty much every event on Monday has been cancelled or postponed including AllThingsD’s Dive Into Mobile conference, Google’s Android event, Facebook’s engineering open house and our own Big Apple Smackdown Silicon Alley ping-pong tournament (which will be re-scheduled).
At this time, the Tuesday events (and the rest of the week) seem uncertain too. They’re still listed below, but I’d highly recommend you confirm first with the event organizers. In the mean time, stay safe, keep your fingers crossed that the storm turns out to be a mild one and don’t forget to check Miguel Bloombito’s Twitter feed for the latest updates! Read More
Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!
This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of Gary’s Guide 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.
iPhone 5 Day is coming, and you know what that means. That’s right–long lines are already starting to form outside Apple stores all over the world as folks clamber to get their hands on the all new slimmer, lighter and faster iPhone 5. A shout-out to Gary’s Guide member (and founder of a new social media startup, Vibe) Hazem Sayed, who is first in line outside the iconic 5th Avenue “Big Glass Cube” Apple Store. Go Hazem!
My friend Dave Lifson (product manager at General Assembly) along with Christina Chaey (associate editor at Fast Company) will be doing a free livestream this Wednesday at 2pm EST, on product management for non-product managers. You’ll learn what it takes to turn your ideas into functional products. And did I mention its free? Oh, and everyone who registers gets a free copy of Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s new e-book, Making Something People Love. So go sign up!
The new Cornell NYC Tech campus has started accepting admission applications for its beta class of computer science students, slated to start January 2013. Deadline is October 1.
And now let’s see what’s going down in the Alley this week… Read More
Bright and early this morning, we hopped aboard an F train and ventured not into Midtown, home of Betabeat, but rather deeper into Queens. Our destination: The Queens Business Solutions Center, an unassuming government building located on Jamaica Avenue and surrounded by bargain stores. Waiting, freshly printed, on every single seat: An updated copy of the city’s digital roadmap, dated August 2012.
Mayor Bloomberg had shlepped out to discuss his plan to bring small businesses into the Internet Age. The means: the Small Business Toolkit, a program incorporating both in-person classes at business solutions centers across the five boroughs, and a new online library of how-to guides developed in cooperation with local tech companies Mashable, Tumblr, Google and Weebly to help neighborhood entrepreneurs figure out this whole Internet thing.
While startups in the Union Square vicinity focus on disruption, few have been addressing the many neighborhood business that aren’t even online, and don’t know how to get there. Perhaps the administration got the memo about that bodega tech gap? Read More
Rapping mogul Jay-Z has 99 problems but an uncharged cell phone is certainly not one of them. In January, Mr. Carter signed up to be a spokesperson for Duracell’s Powermat charging station, a sleek little square that charges your cell phone just by resting your phone on top of it. Now, Mashable reports that HOVA has outfitted his swank 40/40 Club with Powermats, which should satisfy the attendees of those startup parties 40/40 has been hosting.
According to Mashable, the sports bar and lounge is “outfitted with Powermat charging stations through the resin-top bar area, VIP lounges and the stadium style seating with a view of the 165-inch state-of-the-art video walls.”
We be big pimpin‘ spendin volts. Wired charging is a hard knock life–once you have your moment of clarity you’ll realize the only way to run this town is with money, cash and Powermats.
Okay, we’re done.
The rain was really starting to come down hard, but the female CEOs at Internet Week appeared undaunted by the passing storm. Birchbox’s Hayley Barna, Learnvest’s Alexa von Tobel, Nest.io’s Caren Maio, Mashable’s Sharon Feder and Artspace’s Catherine Levene joined CNNMoney reporter Laurie Segall for a discussion about gender in tech.
The panel was entitled “Why Being a Good CEO Has Nothing to Do with Being a Woman,” but it was clear from the first question that the women on this panel were more concerned with talking about their businesses than how being a woman has hindered their growth in the tech sector. And who can blame them? After all, the panel was specifically about how gender had nothing to do with their success–though almost all of the questions revolved around their experience as women in a male-dominated world. Read More
Yesterday we learned that a link in a Gawker post can fetch $175; so how much do you think an A-list television star could get for a tweet? Last night, in between tweets about the McRib being made of people, washing his hair with baby urine, and recovering from the mental image of Bette Midler and Geraldo Rivera having sex, Rainn Wilson tweeted the above. Read More
Affordable Housing or Lack Thereof
