By Jordan Valinsky 4/09 1:31pm

App Ecomony

Fancy parking meter. (Photo: Flickr)

City Unveils Exciting New App That Lets You Refill Your Parking Meter

Be gone, parking meter anxiety!  Today Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled  a new app that lets users refill their meters remotely, thus eliminating the debilitating mental condition of worrying when the parking meter maid is going to strike next.

The free pilot program is currently being tested on nearly 300 meters in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx, according to a press release from the Mayor’s office. The New York Post notes that the initiative was announced in 2009 but is now finally being deployed. Read More

By Jessica Roy 3/25 8:34am

Linkages

(Photo: Celebrity Net Worth)

Booting Up: Return of the Winklevii

Mayor Bloomberg has his own geek squad of statisticians who are using sexy, sexy big data to make the city better. [New York Times]

Zuck’s political ambitions continue to grow with the news that he will join a superpac with techies and Republican strategists that will focus on issues like immigration and education reform. Psst Zuck, if you’re gonna target Congress, you might have to start wearing an actual suit. [AllThingsD]

Lawmakers are already trying to ban Google Glass while driving. One step at a time, everyone. [CNET]

Hey all you people who care about privacy: look what you did to Google Reader! [AllThingsD]

The Winklevii are back, and they have a nicer Silicon Alley office than you. [New York Times]

By Nitasha Tiku 2/20 2:00pm

Metro Tech

charles_schumer

Eric Schmidt Told Chuck Schumer That Google Gets More Productivity Per Worker In NYC Than Mountain View

Senator Chuck Schumer dropped an interesting factoid this morning at a breakfast co-hosted by The Association for a Better New York and the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association. Mr. Schumer was there to discuss recently authorized recovery funding for Hurricane Sandy, but offered some remarks on the state of New York’s tech industry.

During the Q&A period, Dawn Barber, cofounder of the New York Tech Meetup, asked Mr. Schumer what he thought of the role of the technology community would play in the city’s future. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 2/14 5:00pm

Digital City

Bon voyage and happy trails. (Photo: Screencap)

New York City Is So Startup It Now Has a Chief Analytics Officer

Today Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered his final State of the City address. Amid wisecracks about the Knowles-Carter family (you might know Barclays Center part owner Shawn Carter “by what he’s been called since the Super Bowl: Beyoncé’s husband”), Hizzoner had plenty to say about the city’s tech sector. Hey, he can’t let President Obama totally blow up his spot.

Below, a few of the big shout-outs: Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 1/25 3:40pm

Lobby 2.0

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With an Eye on Citywide Elections, New York Tech Tests Its Political Klout Score

It’s never too early to start speculating about the next election cycle. So we’re calling it, less than a month into the new year: 2013 will be New York tech’s debut as a political force.

Tech moguls and politicians have always been willing bedfellows, of course. Last year, technophiles in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area outpaced “Hollywood celebrities and Wall Street moguls” in funding President Obama’s reelection campaign, according to a report from MapLight.com. On the other side of the aisle–like far, far to the right–Facebook investor Peter Thiel “almost single-handedly” funded Ron Paul’s super PAC. After his fringe candidate dropped out of the race, Mr. Thiel donated $1 million to Club for Growth Action, a Tea Party super PAC. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 1/08 9:30am

Planet GOOG

sergey-brin-google-glasses

Get Your Internet On: Google Is Giving Free Wifi to Southwest Chelsea [UPDATED]

Give it up for GOOG, boys and girls: Later this morning, the search behemoth is expected to announce an initiative to blanket southwest Chelsea with free Wifi. That’ll mean easier access to the Internet for not just Chelsea Market shoppers and Google employees, but also residents of the NYCHA-run Fulton Houses and several local public schools.

Nice to see someone getting after that digital divide. Read More

By Kelly Faircloth 1/08 7:58am

Linkages

(Photo: flickr.com/leweb3)

Booting Up: Sean Parker Is Now a Daddy

Congrats to Napster cofounder and former Facebook president Sean Parker, who is now a proud papa. Earlier this week he and his fiancee welcomed a little girl named Winter Victoria Parker into the world. [US Weekly]

Google’s having a press conference with Mayor Bloomberg today–so of course everyone wants to know whether we’ll be getting Google Fiber. (Pretty please!) And the company is hiring a New York sales rep. [Business Insider]

Eric Schmidt isn’t the only Silicon Valley denizen venturing abroad this week. Apple CEO Tim Cook is currently ambling across China, meeting with the U.S. ambassador and other high-and-mighties. [TNW]

Several companies, including Logitech, have teamed up to create an “Internet of Things Consortium.” Righto. [TechCrunch]

Do you share a Netflix account with five other family members? Soon you’ll all be able to have your very own personalized profile–and here’s what it might look like. [GigaOm]

Myspace Tom went to Hawaii; ain’t you jealous? [Daily Dot]

By Nitasha Tiku 12/24/12 11:40am

Code or Be Coded

Screen shot 2012-12-24 at 10.34.18 AM

Catching Up With Codecademy: Nothing Says Christmas Like Building Your Own HTML/CSS ‘Code Cards’

Codecademy managed to win the holiday news cycle last year with its Code Year pledge that even got Mayor Bloomberg to learn to code in 2012–or at least tweet his New Year’s resolution. It was hard to miss the headlines crowing about coding as the lingua franca of the 21st century. But despite the best intentions, some of us fell off the wagon, hard. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 12/14/12 10:40am

Ride or Die

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Mayor Bloomberg on Taxi Apps: ‘There Is a Group of Cab Owners That Are Opposed to Anything’

This morning, on his weekly Friday radio show with John Gambling, Mayor Bloomberg discussed the Taxi and Limousine Commission’s vote in favor of a year-long pilot program to test out e-hailing apps, which let riders flag down a cab with their smartphone.

As we noted yesterday, the pilot was a last-minute compromise when it seemed like lobbying from black car and livery car incumbents would prohibit the passage of permanent rules to open up the taxi market to any app with a license. (Black cars and liveries worry that the ability to “pre-arrange” taxi rides with an an app will hurt their business.)   Read More