(Photo: DeviantArt)

2012 was quite a year for the New York tech community. Several NYC startups scored monster exits, while others raised millions to up their chances of scoring a ping pong table for the office. Whether or not that hotly debated bubble bursts, we imagine 2013 will be another exciting year for NYC's tech set. Here are some New Year's resolutions from some of the NYC tech community's boldest names.

Rachel Haot, NYC Chief Digital Officer

1.      Cook more meals at home (FreshDirect and BlueApron)

2.      Shop local (local goods on Etsy: http://on.nyc.gov/ZPpbIp)

3.      Read more books (both physical and digital: all three NYC public library systems now offer e-books)

4.      Volunteer more often (http://www.nycservice.org/#s)

5.      Learn a new skill – like middle eastern cooking or how to use a letterpress.

Ryder Ripps, Cofounder of OkFocus

Work more, vroom bye haters.

Mallory Blair, Cofounder of Small Girls PR

Identifying our year's wins and losses and using that information to create defined roles for new team members to hire in the first quarter. Then the rest of 2013 is  about running the business instead of being the business.

Cindy Gallop, Founder of Make Love Not Porn

1. To champion and help every entrepreneur who wants to change the world through sex....This is the one place with enormous potential for innovation, disruption, and colossal financial returns, that the tech world refuses to go. I want to help drive more open-mindedness in the tech community around startups to do with sex.

2. To identify and use anything that is the future of money and payments. This resolution is born out of the frustrations and difficulties we've had setting up our payments infrastructure for MakeLoveNotPorn.tv.

Those difficulties led us to spend a lot of time and effort researching and talking to fintech startups, with the result that I am now passionate about working with and using anyone/thing inventing the future of money, finance and payments, both in an MLNPTV context and also a personal context.

Paul Berry, Cofounder of RebelMouse

My resolution is to keep focused and clever and build the fundamental culture for RebelMouse to grow from.

Christina DiRusso, PR Manager at Livestream

More: Reading, Engineering (currently learning to be a Livestream Encoding Engineer), Entertaining in, and exploring, my new Brooklyn hood, and Reality-TV watching. Less: Emailing, English (honing my Italian skills), Gchatting with my dad.

Josh Miller, Cofounder of Branch

Figure out how to get my (non-techie) roommates to be addicted to Branch, and learn how to rap so I can complement A-Flock's beat boxing (one of our engineers).

Dave Winer, Software Developer and Writer

My resolution for the New Year is: I will do what I can to make tech writing more literate. (Ed. Note: Read more about Mr. Winer's resolution here.)

Ricky Robinett, Hacker at Ordr.in

Be the first hacker in XXL.

Jason Baptiste, Cofounder of OnSwipe

On a personal level, I really want to get back into writing and blogging.  It's why I started Onswipe and lead to my book coming out.  On a professional level?  It's growing Onswipe in a revenue generating machine.  It's an aggressive goal and year, but we have the team + traction to do it.

Jose Mejia, Editorial Director at Huge

One of my resolutions, which I think a lot of people can relate to if they're honest with themselves, is to stop using work/being busy as an easy excuse for what are really just basic character flaws that I need to fix. If I can avoid issuing  "Sorry I'm running late, something came up at work" texts like they're stock in the Shitty Friend IPO, it'll be a good year.

Alex Taub, Biz Dev Builder at Dwolla

My New Years resolution is to be faster and better at creating relevant pop culture twitter parody accounts- a la @invisibleobama

Suri Ratnatunga, Community Lead at Sidetour

To take no cabs in 2013 unless I'm stranded/drunk in Brooklyn.

Crystal Fawn, Community Engagement at Atavist

To read all the books that Stanley Kubrick based his films on.

Taylor Lorenz, Social Media Specialist at McGarryBowen

Stop and think before including emoji in every text message.

Nitasha Tiku, Editor of Betabeat

Make friends based on charger compatibility.

(Illustration: Robert Grossman)

Jack Dorsey, cofounder of Twitter and Square, recently tried to disabuse the tech industry of its infatuation with the word ‘disruption.’ “We don’t want ‘disruption,’ where we just move things around. We want a direction. We want a purpose,” he said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, humbly suggesting the biannual conference change its name. But it’s more than just semantics. The tech sector’s claim to produce world-changing products and services often gets drowned out in a chorus of me-too companies solving problems no one ever complained about. The umpteenth nightlife-recommendations tool or empty real-time dating app can obscure the whirr of a nascent robotics sector in Manhattan or a futuristic, even revolutionary, experiment in manufacturing in Queens.

However, there are insurgents in our midst, quietly pushing the city closer to Mayor Bloomberg’s goal of "reclaiming our title as the world capital of technological innovation." To identify those mindful mutineers, we tried to look beyond established leaders (see: Wilson, Fred) to the next class of innovators, who are forcing corporations to come to terms with the mobile revolution or shepherding startups toward making money without selling out. We found investors, developers, educators and agitators. We identified pioneering companies that set off the self-education craze (you’re welcome, Peter Thiel). We spotted a trio of provocateurs in Long Island City and an open-source radical on Roosevelt Island. Looking at this constellation of entrepreneurs, you can start to see the outline of New York’s tech future taking shape.

Valery Komissarova, Grishin Robotics: Rallying the Robots

Phineas Barnes, First Round Capital: the Bottom-Up Investor

Marleen Vogelaar, Shapeways: the Manufacturing Maven 

Anil Dash, Activate and ThinkUp: Amiable Agitator

Alex Taub and Michael Schonfeld, Dwolla: The Credit Card Killers

Mike Karnjanaprakorn, Skillshare: The Principal of New York

Rick Webb, Tumblr: The Undercover Ad Man

Deborah Estrin, CornellNYC Tech: the Entrepreneurial Egghead

Ryder Ripps, Jonathan Vingiano and Jules LaPlace, OKFocus: The Merry Pranksters

Daniel Loeb, Third Point LLC: the Poison Pen

This story appeared on the cover of the November 14, 2012 issue of The New York Observer. 

(Photo: Styleblaster)

In an effort to catalog the underappreciated diversity of style in gentrified Williamsburg, a team of Brooklyn technologists has set up a camera outside their apartment that records the street stylings of passersby and posts the images online. But if passersbys don’t want to be recorded, they’re kind of out of luck.

The site, called Styleblaster, aims to “become a destination for New York City peacocks to traipse by and show off what makes the neighborhood hop.” Using a camera perched a block from the Bedford Ave. L train, the site captures and immediately uploads images of Brooklynites walking by in real time. Users can then click a tophat to signal whether or not the subject is “stylin’."

Click once through Styleblaster and you land on a picture of a moody girl with dark, blunt bangs trudging down the block in heavy black boots; click again and it's a mom pushing a baby stroller; again, and it's a dude with his hand down his pants.

Styleblaster is a personal project of Jules Laplace, the technology director for OkFocus, the creative agency behind the Kanye West/Donda Media PR stunt. The team created WhoDat.biz, a domain lookup site that purported to be the first startup of rapper Kanye West but was eventually revealed to be a big hoax.

Mr. Laplace has created a host of other online projects and games, like Where's the Pixel? and video-sharing chat site Scanner Jammer. Mr. Laplace's business partner, Ryder Ripps, told Betabeat via email that the project is not affiliated with OkFocus.

The idea for the site came from Mr. Laplace and his roommates, who are all "fairly technically minded." His roommate, new media artist and recent NYU ITP grad Jack Kalish, designed the software that takes the photos. "The camera sits in our apartment and takes a photo whenever someone passes by our window," Mr. Laplace said over email. "We have a webcam hooked up to a Processing sketch, which sends pictures up into the cloud.  To get people walking from right to left--so they'd be seen front on--we do motion detection using an optical flow field.  It's pretty cool, seeing it at work: it looks like the person is pulling a bunch of rubber bands across the frame, which tell it to snap the picture."

Mr. Laplace said the goal is to capture a portrait of Williamsburg fashion live and as it happens. "It's an egalitarian take on streetstyle," he said. "There's more to Williamsburg than hipsters and rich ex-Manhattanites. Everybody has their own style, and our site celebrates that."

But the project resurfaces privacy issues that were thrust into the mainstream by the scandal surrounding Reddit's creepshots forum, where users posted sexualized photos of women without their consent before Reddit administrators shut it down. Still, Mr. Laplace insists that unlike WhoDat.biz, this isn’t one of OkFocus’ attempts at subversiveness. He dismissed privacy concerns by noting that with the amount of foot traffic the block sees, the images are quite ephemeral.

"As far as privacy goes, we count on people to be dressed well when they go out in public--especially on a brisk fall day," he said. "Don't expect the pictures to hang around, though. Fashion gets stale after a couple of days, so we don't see a point in constructing an endless archive. This is really about the moment."

There are surveillance cameras installed all over New York City, inside ATMs and subway stations and convenience stores. The laws in New York regarding video surveillance are very specific. To summarize, video surveillance is only illegal if the subject has a reasonable expectation of privacy, meaning "a place and time when a reasonable person would believe that he or she could fully disrobe in privacy." You're probably not going to begin undressing on Bedford Avenue--unless you're the dude with his hand in his pants.

"I'd like to think that sort of behavior [related to Creepshots] is a relic of a time when people really were awful to each other online," Mr. Laplace added. "The internet's junior high phase, if you will. Our site isn't here to judge people or make fun of them. We're really just in it for the fashion, to be inspired by normal people and our great neighborhood."

(h/t Adrian Chen)

Guests mingle on a Long Island City rooftop before demos begin

More than 150 people braved last night’s land hurricane--technically called a derecho--to attend Coalition for Queens’ second Queens Tech Meetup at Hunters Point Plaza in Long Island City.

Unfortunately, the crowd of young professionals was only able to enjoy rooftop views of the Manhattan skyline for a short while before the clouds came rolling in. Thankfully, the demos inside provided plenty of amusement, including a tug-of-war match and a feline photo shoot for mycatandi.com.

Charlie O’Donnell, a partner at Brooklyn Bridge Ventures and the event’s first demonstrator, was astounded by the turnout of the meetup.

“I think I probably went to the fifth or sixth New York Tech Meetup and we were a whopping 30 people,” Mr. O’Donnell told the audience. “Now I look at like five times the amount of people in the room at the second Queens Tech Meetup and it’s really unbelievable.”

Mr. O’Donnell spoke about his outlook on the future of the tech scene in New York and how he sees Queens fitting into it.

“A couple of years from now you’re going to be able to walk across the bridge and go to one of the preeminent engineering and applied sciences school in the country and the only place you can walk to from there is Queens,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “Obviously this is a transportation hub; it’s actually one of the few places that is convenient to get to via the G train.”

Last night’s event also included demonstrations from Skillshare, OKFocus and Aereo.

Leighann Farrelly, community development manager at Skillshare, an online learning marketplace, shared a free lesson in teamwork with the audience through a tug of war match. But she also shared news about Skillshare’s collaboration plans with Coalition for Queens to provide affordable, high-quality tech education in areas such as computer programming, digital marketing and entrepreneurship on CUNY campuses in Queens.

“We’re starting to see people in need of tech skills, and if you go through the traditional education spectrum, they’re super expensive and not that accessible,” Ms. Farrelly explained. “We have the same mission as Coalition for Queens, which is that we need to provide people with more opportunities to be a bigger part of the New York tech scene.”

OKFocus, a full service digital agency run by Ryder Ripps and Jonathan Vingiano that's notorious for PR stunts like that fake Kanye West site, was also in attendance. They demoed a new website called My Cat and I that detects cats in photos. The team explained that the site demonstrates OKFocus’ goal to create concept-driven work that stands out in function and design. Plus, the Internet's affection for cats is well-documented.

Finally, it was Aereo's turn. Nick Sallon, the startup's director of content and business development, and Chris Mckay, Aereo's customer service manager were both on hand to demo the subscription service that enables New York City residents to view locally broadcasted television streamed online. Aereo, introduced by Coalition for Queens founder Jukay Hsu as "a TV platform so disruptive everyone's suing it," recently won a dismissal of injunction brought against it in a lawsuit by 17 broadcasters including ABC, NBC and CBS.

A few months ago, Aereo's CEO Chet Kanojia demoed his service to a packed house at the New York Tech Meetup in Manhattan, eliciting a roar of wild applause.

In Queens, the Aereo team showcased the service’s features and carefully addressed questions from the audience concerning the lawsuit. While they declined to provide much insight on the legal battle, Aereo's representatives told the audience that the startup is considering plans for growth because of its recent lawsuit win. However, they haven't yet decided which cities will be included in its expansion.

We just hope it's not Kansas City, since getting Google Fiber first has undoubtedly spoiled them.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated that Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia was present at the Queens Tech Meetup and demoed the service. Betabeat regrets the error.

• Is Your Dating Site Selling Your Profile?
To keep membership high, niche sites get sly.

• Marissa Mayer on Misconceptions That Hold Back Women in Tech and Why She Doesn’t ‘Believe in Burnout’
"My theory is that burnout is about resentment."

• Branch Cofounder Josh Miller Returning to NYC Because ‘San Francisco is Just Too Nice’
Hard to be heads down in a sweet town.

• OMGPOP Founder Charles Forman Made ‘Way More’ Than $22 M. in Sale to Zynga
If not for Draw Something, OMGPOP might have run out of money by May.
• Language Learning Startup Voxy Raises a $4 M. Round from ff Venture Capital, Contour, and Seavest
A filing says the startup has already closed $2.3 million towards its $4 million goal from previous investors.
• What’s a Little App Between Friends? Venmo Only Cares About You and the People You Split Lunch With
Venmo is processing $10 million in transactions per month and growing 30 percent month-over-month.
• Inaugural Blueprint Health Startups Pitch Investors on Disrupting Health Industry
Nine companies from the health-tech incubator presented to investors in Soho today. 
• Oh, So Here’s Why Kickstarter Lets Projects Get Overfunded
It brings in so many freakin' new users.
• The Startup Rundown: Size That Matters and a New Mobile Music Concierge

• The Only OMGPOP Developer to Say No to Mark Pincus: ‘Zynga Asked For Too Much’
He did it all for the values.
• Meet OkFocus, the PR Stuntmen Behind WhoDat.Biz
OKFocus is also behind Is the L Train Fucked? and Dump.fm.
• 83-Year-Old Grandma Breaks Nose on Glass Door of Long Island Apple Store, Sues for $1 M.
"They have to realize that the elderly generation are their customers, too.”
• If New York City Doesn’t Put Down Its Pom-Poms, We’re Gonna Become a Startup Stereotype
Nasdaq and the city release a video.
• ‘Vaporware Is the New Minimal Viable Product,’ Declares Hype Up Weekend
San Francisco vaporware vaporathon elegantly illustrates exactly how hackathons have jumped the shark.
• Former Facebook Social Design Evangelist Says Facebook Model Is ‘Self-Serving, Egocentric’
The Internet is the Wild Wild West, after all.
• Caught in the Webb: JOBS Act Jitters 

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Mr. Vingiano and Mr. Ripps. (okfoc.us)

After some sleuthing, Betabeat discovered that WhoDat.biz is in fact a project of New York-based OkFocus, a full service digital agency run by Ryder Ripps and Jonathan Vingiano that's notorious for their PR stunts.

Mr. Vingiano confirmed to us over email that WhoDat.biz is "an OKFocus project."

We reached out to Small Girls PR, friends of OKFocus, and asked about the project.

"Way to punk the entire Internet, Mr. Vingiano!" we said.

"Yeah, he's very good at that," they responded. "He used to run a @Balenciaga twitter in which the L was actually an upercase i ... rihanna retweeted it."

OKFocus is also behind Is the L Train Fucked? and Dump.fm.

When we reached out to the fake Donda Media address, they originally responded with AIM slang--"a/s/l?" After some back and forth, we finally laid it on the line: "C'mon, Ryder," we wrote. "It will feel so good to be honest. And then you can get press for OkFocus while everyone still cares! This WSJ article obviously didn't do you justice."

The folks at OKFocus responded, "Hehe. Yes it's an OkFocus project." Mr. Ripps even duped his friends, posting a link to WhoDat.Biz on his Facebook page 18 hours ago, along with the following commentary:

Since everyone was fooled, we'll take it upon ourselves to dish out some grades on how long it took various sites to realize the whole thing was a hoax.

The Washington Post: F
Headline: Kanye West’s Donda Media unveils Whodat.biz, the ‘Facebook of Websites’
Time posted: 4:09 p.m. EST
Time redacted: Not yet (as of 7:03 p.m.)

Gizmodo: B
Headline: What the Hell is Kanye's Insane Tech Start Up? updated to This Can't Possibly Be Kanye's Insane Tech Start Up, Can It?
Time posted: 2:53 p.m.
Time redacted: 5:30 p.m. (That New "Donda Media" Site Is Fake As Hell (Updated))

Buzzfeed: B
Headline: Kanye's New Startup is Ridiculous
Time posted: 2pm-ish
Time redacted: 3:47pm (via a tweet and an update: Kanye's New Startup Is Ridiculous (Update: And Fake))

Betabeat: B, because it took a helpful tweet sent just after our original post to cue us in. Also, apparently everyone in New York knew; we were told we "need more Facebook friends."
Headline: Introducing Kanye West’s Bizarre New Startup, WhoDat.Biz
Time posted: 4:10 p.m. (but updated at 4:15 p.m. to Introducing Kanye West’s Possibly Fake But Definitely Bizarre New Startup, WhoDat.Biz [UPDATED])
Time redacted: 5:35 p.m. (Fake Kanye Site Punks Internet, 30 Minutes Later Internet Debunks Fake Kanye Site) and 6:13 p.m. (Meet OKFocus, the PR Stuntmen Behind Fake Kanye West Site WhoDat.biz)

PopDust: A, for being skeptical from the start.