Couldn't miss it.

Chief Yahoo Marissa Mayer looked pretty damn chipper as she took the stage in a small room overlooking Times Square, late yesterday afternoon.

Technically, the press had gathered for the announcement of a revamped Flickr. (It's biggr! It's spectaculr!) An entire lounge had been papered over with giant images pulled from the service, and in the square below a mob of T-shirt-wearing fans/paid actors were jumping up and down and hollering and waving Flickr signs in celebration.

But with David Karp slouched in the front row, it was clear this was about more than the addition of full-bleed photos to a decade-old service. 

Coach Mike Bloomberg turned up, of course. How could he miss the party for a billion-dollar consumer-web exit? He entered to "Empire State of Mind" and broke out the pom-poms: "This really is very exciting news, not just for Tumblr and Yahoo but also for New York City, because it helps show what a player New York City has become in the tech industry."

He also welcomed the announcement of Yahoo's new New York presence, harkening back to the bad old days: "Twenty years ago if you looked out the window, there were plenty of yahoos in Times Square. But now the Yahoos here will make an honest living." Only a few months left to nail down that legacy.

Skeptical tech journalists took the opportunity to ask how, exactly, Ms. Mayer plans to ensure that Tumblr doesn't turn into another one of Yahoo's many, many bungled acquisitions. "I think that the big piece here is all companies come down to people. David and I have a very clear understanding," she said, adding, "We have an all-new executive management team so everyone has the benefit of history." Time will tell!

After she'd brought the presser to a close--more "Empire State of Mind" playing--a smiling Ms. Mayer approached the hoodie-clad Mr. Karp, who slouched, hands in pockets, next to a caftan-wearing blonde. "Is this your mom?" Ms. Mayer asked.

The answer must've been yes, because the older woman promptly pulled the CEO of Yahoo into an immense hug.

Cozy! (Photo Credit: Spencer T Tucker)

Yesterday was Mayor Bloomberg's final Inner Circle dinner, an annual gathering of politicos and a chance for the city's chief executive to indulge his inner vaudevillian. Every year, the mayor participates in a parody of a popular Broadway show, recapping the year's events.

This time, though, Bloomberg went a bit over the top. The New York Times reports that he hired (with his own money) the casts of several Broadway musicals to lend a hand. And perhaps as a nod to his role as Godfather to the New York tech scene, he traded his usual slacks for jeans and a blue hoodie (perhaps the gift from Yext?).

“Bloomberg. Zuckerberg. No difference,” the Times quotes him.

But donning the developer's uniform wasn't the show's only reference to the city's startup scene. The show also included a bit where pastel-clothed flappers from Nice Work if You Can Get It each identified themselves as a particular tech company, culminating in "Tumblr" cosying up to the Mayor. "Lean in," he responds. "That's what Sheryl Sandberg says."

There's video, in case you've ever wanted to hear the mayor belt out "Tomorrow":

That's a lot of lanyards.

"Mr. Mayor, I know you're wearing a suit on the outside. But this industry is all about hoodies, and I know based on who you are you're a hoodie on the inside," CEO Howard Lerman told Mike Bloomberg, presenting the mayor with his very own honorary pullover--Yext branded, of course.

As he took it, Mayor Bloomberg informed the shaggy entrepreneur that, "My mother would have said you needed a haircut." A room full of techies held up their smartphones for a digital souvenir of the moment.

Back in July, Yext, which helps businesses sync location data across the web, raised a $27 million series E at an eye-popping $270 million valuation. Scads had RSVP'd for the party, a housewarming for the startup's spacious new offices at One Madison Avenue. The spread was impressive, with bartenders pouring top-shelf liquor into wine glasses and stations staffed by local businesses like Luke's Lobster and Brooklyn Brewery scattered throughout. Betabeat spotted former Bloomberg spox Stu Loeser at check-in, and we bumped into GroupMe cofounder Steve Martocci at the Wildwood BBQ table (he shared our positive assessment of the pulled pork).

"Now I can be an official Yext geek," the Mayor continued, "which I've always wanted to do. And when the bankers at Credit Suisse see you wearing these, they're going to be so jealous...maybe they'll become investors."

Mayor Bloomberg was appearing in his capacity as cheerleader-in-chief, so he quickly ceased the goofing to congratulate the Yext team on their growth (the startup doubled in size last year), and rattle off his usual Made in NY stats (more venture capital raised between '07 and '11; the number-one area for growth in the mobile apps industry, yadda yadda yadda). In less than five minutes, he'd concluded his remarks and melted into the background, stopping by Asia Dog on his way out.

"Well, that was fucking surreal," remarked one Yext employee to a friend. "Yeah, you don't often see the Mayor in your office," his pal replied.

Actually, Hizzoner's a pretty common sight if you work for a startup.

Mr. Bloomberg. (Twitter)

Has there ever been a person more relentlessly energetic than Mike Bloomberg? The New York Post reports that our outgoing mayor is launching yet another initiative in his ongoing campaign for clean living, and it's targeted to the young folks and their deafness-inducing earbuds.

Oh, and clean your damn room while you're at it.

The Post says:

Hizzoner’s health officials are planning a social-media campaign to warn young people about the risk of losing their hearing from listening to music at high volume on personal MP3 players, The Post has learned.

“With public and private support, a public-education campaign is being developed to raise awareness about safe use of personal music players . . . and risks of loud and long listening,” said Nancy Clark, the city Health Department’s assistant commissioner of environmental-disease prevention.

Too bad there's no PSA campaign that'll turn down the volume on the subway platform.

Next he'll make us all sign smartphone contracts promising to put our iPhone away during dinner.

(screencap)

Back in November, Livestream partnered with Tumblr for a "live-GIFing" of the final presidential debate. Seems the experiment was successful enough for a return engagement: The company's bountiful stream of coverage tonight from Times Square will include not just the usual interviews and musical performances, but also GIFs. Glorious GIFs!

This officially solidifies 2012's place in the Internet history books as the year even your 80-year-old nana learned what "those little moving pictures" were.

Livestream has handled the ball drop's official feed (produced by Times Square Alliance and Countdown Entertainment) for the last four years, but the GIFs are new. The results will be cross-posted to Gifwich, the site built by Tumblr for the debate festivities. To illustrate what to expect, a Livestream spokesperson provided this magnificent moving snapshot of our mayor cha-cha-chaing with Lady Gaga at last year's broadcast:

The show starts at 5:55 EST this evening and will run until 12:15 p.m., hosted by one Allison Hagendorf of Fuse TV and the CW. The feed is here; if you bookmark it now, perhaps you can avoid the mistake last year by this reporter, when a bit of Googling accidentally turned up a video from the 2010 festivities, rather than the live ball drop. (File under: When time-shifting goes terribly wrong.)

Besides the GIFs, Livestream also partnered with Toshiba to create a free app (both iOS and Android versions are available) where you can watch the event. The app will also let users submit photos they'd like to see on Toshbia's ginormo Times Square screen.

Betabeat encourages everyone to send Snapchat-style photos of their wooly-sock-clad feet, just to remind everyone freezing their butts off on 42nd and Broadway what they could've done instead.

(Screencap)

Hurricane Sandy drove many New Yorkers out of their homes and, given the impending Nor'easter, at the worst possible time. Something like 20,000 to 40,000 people need somewhere to stay. Hoping to help alleviate the situation: Airbnb. Thanks to a partnership with the mayor's office, the displaced can now turn to the site for places to stay, free of charge.

The hub for the effort is this page, which greets visitors with the guilt-trip-inducing message, "It's time to help each other." Anyone with a place to stay, be it spare bedroom or humble couch, can list it for free.

In a statement, the company told Betabeat: 

This morning, we announced that Airbnb hosts in Hurricane Sandy–affected areas can now offer their space for free. People who require a temporary place to stay can quickly find a free space via our list of free, available housing for Sandy-affected areas. If you live close to an affected area and have an extra house, an extra room, or even a spare couch, we encourage you to sign up to help.

The page says 100-plus people have already opened their homes. That won't put much of a dent in the housing crisis, but we suppose it's a start.

Can we trust that the illegal-hotel hatchet is well and truly buried?

Guest of a Guest is worried that the next mayor of New York won't use the Foursquares and the Twitters. "Technology and social media has taken over the world and has even inserted itself into the heart of Mayor Bloomberg ... He has made the use of technology important and a priority to the city's growth and well-being." The writer cites Mayor Bloomberg checking into Duane Reade on Foursquare and tweeting about the opening of the Twitter office as evidence that the next mayor has "pretty big tech boots to fill."

As far as Betabeat can tell, Mr. Bloomberg uses social media in the exact way one would expect a 69-year-old man to. His feed is full of links to press releases and sorely lacking in twitpics, jokes and banter. He retweets the History Channel and the economic development agency and there's reason to believe he doesn't do his own tweets. (If you were a billionaire senior citizen, would you?)

If our next mayor wants to own social media, there are better examples to follow:

Cory Booker, mayor of Newark.

Sam Adams, mayor of Portland, Oregon.Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago Dan Sinker.

(twitter.com)

Did Mayor Mike Bloomberg, tech champion, join the influential geek forum Hacker News? It appears so. About 12 hours ago, someone registered an account for "mikebloomberg" and submitted a link to a video on Mr. Bloomberg's website entitled "My Visit to TechStars' Demo Day in NYC."

Oof, not a good topic for a Y Combinator-controlled forum. But heyy, the billionaire is already on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Foursquare, YouTube and Flickr. Why not Hacker News? What about Reddit? "I am billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg, AMA."

This is the only submission from "mikebloomberg"; it has not left any comments, and it has 12 karma points. We've reached out to City Hall to confirm its authenticity.

The glorious NYC.gov.

UPDATED 2:16 p.m.

Hackathon madness continues! And this time, it's a civic duty. The mayor's office is hosting a two-day hackathon the last weekend in July at General Assembly to redesign NYC.gov (or as it may soon be called, NYC.nyc), inviting developers and designers "to create imaginative, new prototypes of NYC.gov, the City of New York’s primary web presence."

The hackathon is just a first step in the process to redesign the struggling website, which has bloated to almost a million pages, Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne said.

The goal is to rethink what a city website should be, she said, which is why Facebook, Foursquare, Google, Twitter, YouTube, and Donors Choose will be there encouraging developers to use their APIs. The designs will be judged by GA's designer Mimi O Chun, TechStars director Dave Tisch, and Meetup co-founder Scott Heiferman; prizes will be announced next week.

Going the hackathon route does more than save money for the underfunded Digital City effort. Hackathons tend to supercharge innovation, and they're in vogue; a manic hacker sleepover at Silicon Alley's swanky start-up clubhouse gins up way more attention and excitement than a press release announcing the city's hired someone to redo its website.

A hackathon also has the potential to produce a better end product--if it attracts enough talent, that is.

Betabeat pinged a few developers on Gchat to ask them if they'd be participating in the hackathon.

The first hacker we asked responded by linking us to the Wired article, "Is Crowdsourcing Evil," about how the design contest has become a well-known gimmick to trick artists (or in this case, programmers) into doing work "on spec," i.e. creating a full design for free.

"Why don't they just hire a designer?" said the second developer we asked.

"What do YOU think?" we fired back.

"Ha," he said. "I'm not going, that's what I think. Sounds like they want me to do free work for them."

The third person we asked is a designer. "That's certainly an interesting approach," he said diplomatically. "The site certainly needs to be redone. It's ugly."

"My initial reaction was 'no way!'" said another hacker, but he quickly reversed himself. "I might," he said. "There's a certain city pride there."

Unfortunately for the mayor's office, he lives in New Jersey--"so I feel more allegiance here," he said. "But if there's room to do cool stuff, then maybe."

UPDATE: Local developer Mike Caprio was reading through the rather lengthy rules of the hackathon and noticed something odd in the criteria for submissions: "Experience – Has the Contestant designed at least one website that serves over 1 million visitors a month? Does the Contestant have the needed technology expertise? Is the Contestant affiliated with a recognized design firm?"

This criterion is weighted equally with other criteria that evaluate a participant's portfolio, which makes the "hackathon" sound like more of a traditional government request for proposals, or RFP, just without the bid. "This 'hackathon' is basically already designed to only benefit certain companies ('recognized design firms') and allow certain people to compete. They're not really tapping the talent of the city at all or really being open in any way; if anything, they're creating a no bid process for giant design firms in the city to compete with each other to create designs for no pay," Mr. Caprio said in his email.

Lame. We sent Ms. Sterne an email and will update with her response she responded here.

“The initial response we’ve gotten from universities has been very encouraging. We’re particularly pleased that Stanford--which has a top-flight engineering school--is considering the idea," he said in prepared remarks two weeks ago at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

“We are offering the world’s great universities a simple proposition: Build a world-class engineering or applied sciences research center--and we’ll work with you to provide the land, as well as some of the funding," he pitched.

The crush is mutual--Stanford's president John Hennessy is a Long Islander who has spoken highly of the plan for a New York outpost in remarks to faculty.

There are 17 other proposals in the running from schools around the world. Some schools submitted individually; others submitted their proposals in partnership.

Mr. Bloomberg is also compiling a quantitative study of New York's tech sector, which his office is calling the Innovation Index. The index will track VC investment, federal research grants received, employment in science and engineering, new patents and other metrics. "Anecdotally, we know there has been a big uptick in innovation activity in New York City, but now we’re also seeking to quantify our progress," he said. The Index will be out sometime next week.