Not how you will look in Glass. (Photo: In.com)

Though Google Glass makes even models look vaguely dorky, a host of celebs are lining up to try them out. Stanford computer science doctoral student Andrej Karpathy analyzed the winners of the #ifihadglass contest and pulled them into a neat little table organized by follower count. The result makes it super easy to see which celebrities were chosen as part of the lucky 8,000 winners of a Glass explorers kit.

The hip hop/R&B crowd is well-represented by Soulja Boy, he of recent hack fame, and beloved "Boy Is Mine" singer Brandy. Neil Patrick Harris also made the cut, as did driverless car enthusiast Newt Gingrich. Wonder what he thinks about wearing Glass and driving?

Your favorite bars are about to get a lot more cyborg-friendly: Local NYC tech celebs cleaned up too, including Foursquare's Dennis Crowley, Foodspotting co-founder Soraya Dorabi and Reuters social media editor Anthony de Rosa.

So are these celebs die-hard Glass fans, or are they just plain lucky? New York Mag writes that an outside firm was responsible for picking the winners, and may have used a random number generator (so not Google-y!) to pick the winners. That explains why someone who tweeted “#ifihadGlass, I’d throw it at your face ._.” ended up getting picked--and why Google started rescinding offers almost as soon as it doled them out.

Don't worry, Soulja Boy! We're sure you'll get to keep your pair, even if it doesn't run Windows.

Morning, sunshine! (Photo: flickr.com/photos/wordridden)

How do Stanford students get the human education they need to lead startups? Many of them take CS198, a program that teaches computer science TAs how to teach, but ends up being a crash course for future CEOs. [New York]

Steven Sinofsky--the dude who spearheaded the newly released Windows 8--has decamped from Microsoft. That doesn't look bad at all, guys. [New York Times]

Yahoo Mail is reportedly working on a Gmail-like redesign. Just don't expect that to attract any CIA directors to the product. [AllThingsD]

"The advent of 3D printers shows that technology continues to exceed the limits of gun control." That's a comment from a pro-gun group, by the way. [Animal New York]

Lockheen Martin--the top supplier to the Pentagon--has seen a sharp upswing in the rate of cyberattacks. [Reuters]

The NowThis site (formerly called Planet Daily) currently pulls in newsy video clips from sites like Twitter, Facebook and--most typically--Buzzfeed, another Lerer Ventures portfolio company. The company's Twitter handle, @NowThisNews, is run by its social editor, Drake Martinet, who's also an adjunct professor at Stanford. Mr. Martinet said that 90 percent of the video content on the site is produced by the NowThis team.

"We're building a video news company, and today that means being native to the social web," Mr. Martinet told Betabeat by email. "We think of Twitter, Facebook and other social sites as our front page... thats where we want users to find and share our videos."

Last night, each time a state was called by one of the major news networks, NowThis tweeted a piece of ASCII art relating to that state. Seeing the graphics pop up on our Twitter feed every so often was a welcome break from typical political tweets--though not everyone enjoyed the flashback.

NowThis said it worked with noted Twitter ASCII artist Matthew Haggett, known on Twitter as "tw1tt3rart," to come up with the illustrations. "We wanted to try something ambitious and a little bit fun," they tweeted.

Check out some of our fav tweets in the slideshow.

High praise.

Today is the online debut of Forbes' "Top Colleges" issue. Only they should have called it the "Top College" issue, because--though the rankings aren't online yet--that big splashy profile of Instagram founder Kevin Systrom makes it pretty clear that Stanford is coming out ahead. Apologies all around to Cornell, Technion, Columbia, NYU, MIT, Harvard...

Mr. Systrom's debt to his alma mater is no secret, and Ken Auletta's New Yorker profile is really patient zero in this epidemic of Stanford Fever, but Forbes takes it to the next level, devoting a fair bit of the piece to crowning the Palo Alto Trade School as king of the academic hill, tech-wise. The feature is full of lines like this:

"These windfalls, serendipitous as they seem from the outside, are almost never accidental. In Systrom’s case his good fortune can be traced directly to Stanford."

And this:

"It was on the Palo Alto campus that Systrom got his first look at the worlds of tech and venture capital, his first internship at a startup and his first job at Google."

And this:

"Systrom’s Stanford dividends continued long after graduation."

Oh, and here's a whole video on the subject, titled "How Stanford Made Instagram's Kevin Systrom a Silicon Valley Star":

We like to imagine that Michael Bloomberg is, this very minute, summoning university officials from all over the East Coast to a top-secret summit in the abandoned City Hall subway stop, like a team of academic Super Friends.

In fact, maybe it would look a little something like this:

Bloomberg: "I thought we agreed this could not be allowed to happen," his icy gaze sweeping across the room. (Unlikely enforcers David Karp and Dennis Crowley stand next to him, cracking their knuckles meaningfully.) NYU president John Sexton is the first to look away; Cornell-Technion Innovation Institute Director Craig Gotsman stares him down. Notably absent is Harvard University president Drew Faust.

Or at least, that's how we like to imagine it.

Stanford's proposal for Roosevelt Island

In this week's issue of The New Yorker, the illustrious Ken Auletta, who recently profiled Sheryl Sandberg's attempts to "upend Silicon Valley's male-dominated culture," looks at the Bay Area from a different perspective. This time, he analyzes how Stanford became "the farm system for Silicon Valley," and whether the "gold-rush mentality" among both Stanford's students and faculty is good for the university.

Tucked inside the story are also a number of details about why Stanford, which was widely considered a frontrunner to open a its first-ever second campus on Roosevelt Island, abruptly dropped its bid at the last minute.

In our post-mortem about the botched deal in December, Betabeat previously reported how Stanford balked at costly penalties for failure to meet deadlines, even if the factors were outside the university's control, such as toxicity on the Roosevelt Island site. Stanford wasn't the only institution whose legal teams threw up a red flag. Other universities that applied and those familiar with the city's development process cited an alarming vulnerability to legal action. Stanford appeared to be particularly insulted by last-minute attempts to pit Stanford against Cornell in an attempt to see which institution would make more concessions.

(Aggressive negotiating tactics and contracts with onerous demands in the city's favor have been a hallmark of Seth Pinsky's career as president of New York City Economic Development Corporation.)

Mr. Auletta's investigation offers more details and insights along those lines.

According to Mr. Auletta, Stanford President John Hennessy was pissed that the school was being held to impossible deadlines:

On December 16, 2011, Stanford announced that it was withdrawing its bid. Publicly, the university was vague about the decision, and, in a statement, Hennessy praised “the mayor’s bold vision.” But he was seething. In January, he told me that the city had changed the terms of the proposed deal. After seven universities had submitted their bids, he said, the city suddenly wanted Stanford to agree that the campus would be operational, with a full complement of faculty, sooner than Stanford thought was feasible.

Mr. Auletta cites "city lawyers," and not the Mayor's office as responsible for the millions of dollars in penalties sprung on Stanford during negotiations:

The city, according to Debra Zumwalt, Stanford’s general counsel and lead negotiator, added “many millions of dollars in penalties that were not in the original proposal, including penalizing Stanford for failure to obtain approvals on a certain schedule, even if the delays were the fault of the city and not Stanford. . . . I have been a lawyer for over thirty years, and I have never seen negotiations that were handled so poorly by a reputable party.” One demand that particularly infuriated Stanford was a fine of twenty million dollars if the City Council, not Stanford, delayed approval of the project. These demands came from city lawyers, not from the Mayor or from a deputy mayor, Robert Steel, who did not participate in the final round of negotiations with Stanford officials.

Deputy Mayor Robert Steel, who had "an agreeable conversation" with President Hennessy the same week Stanford dropped out, insists that there were no last-minute changes, but in fact schools were pitted against each other to see who would offer the city a better deal, Mr. Aulleta reports.

All the stipulations that Stanford now complains about, he says, were part of the city’s original package. Actually, they weren’t. In the city’s proposal request, the due dates and penalties were left blank. Seth Pinsky, the president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, who was one of the city’s lead negotiators, says that these were to be filled in by each bidder and then discussed in negotiations. “The more aggressive they were on the schedule and the more aggressive they were on the amount, the more favorably” the city looked at the bid, Pinsky told me. In the negotiations, he said, he tried to get each bidder to boost its offer by alerting it of more favorable competing bids.

Along with responsibility for the toxicity of the Roosevelt Island site, Stanford was asked to shoulder penalties as high as $25 million for delays outside of its control:

At one point, Stanford asked about an ambiguous clause in the city’s proposal request: would the university have to indemnify the city if it were sued for, say, polluted water on Roosevelt Island? The city responded that the university would. According to Pinsky, city lawyers said that this was “not likely to produce significant problems,” and that other bidders did not object. To Pinsky and the city, these demands—and the twenty-million-dollar penalty if the City Council’s approval was delayed—were “not uncommon,” since developers often “take liability for public approvals.” To Stanford, the stipulations made it seem as if the goal posts were not fixed.

This may not be the end of Stanford's presence in New York City, however:

Jeff Koseff, who played golf with Hennessy within a few days of Stanford’s withdrawal, recalls, “He was already talking about what we could do next.” One venture that Hennessy was exploring, though there is as yet no concrete plan, is working with the City College of New York to establish a Stanford beachhead in Manhattan. Deputy Mayor Steel says, “I’d be ecstatic.” Still, a Stanford official is dubious: “John’s disillusionment with the city is pretty thorough.”

A partnership with City College was one facet's of Stanford's initial bid for the campus competition.

No photography allowed at 92Y :(

For a lifelong perfectionist overachiever, 36-year-old Marissa Mayer (known in some circles as Google employee no. 20), is rather adept at projecting an aura of  relatability. Pro-tip: it never hurts to pepper your tales of 130-hour work weeks with verbatim quotes from High Fidelity. Of course, as the longtime friendly public face--sweeter than the acerbic Mr. Schmidt, less aspy than Larry--of a $212 billion company like GOOG, she's had some practice.

That easy demeanor was on full display at the 92nd Street Y Tuesday night, when Ms. Mayer stopped by for an hour-and-a-half Q&A session with Bloomberg Businessweek editor Josh Tyrangiel, who pointed out that her latest job title, "VP, Local, Maps & Location Services," made it sound like she worked at AAA.

To give the Upper East Side crowd some idea of Ms. Mayer's celebustatus in Silicon Valley, Mr. Tyrangiel pointed out that a YouTube loop of her unusual laugh, which sounds kinda like a guffaw being sucked through a vacuum, has been viewed a quarter of a million times. "They've also made it into a ringtone!" Ms. Mayer noted gleefully. But Mr. Tyrangiel needn't have worried. In line for tickets, one heavily-perfumed older woman ticked off a list of influential projects Ms. Mayer has helped define since she started there in 1999: Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail.

Women in Tech

Ms. Mayer, who wore knee-length boots and a fitted-waist jumper with a flouncy skirt, described herself as "gender-unaware," when asked whether she was the only woman in her advanced Symbolic Systems classes at Stanford. In fact, she said, it wasn't until her junior year at college when a "Carrie Bradshaw"-like columnist at the Stanford Daily wrote a piece identifying campus icons (i.e. people you recognized without knowing their names, like the cashier who always gets your sandwich order wrong) that she even realized she was an aberration in her major.

The column called out "The blonde woman in the upper division computer science classes," said Ms. Mayer, leaving her to wonder if she knew this mystery blonde, before making the connection. "Is that descriptive alone enough to just mean me?" Ms. Mayer recalled asking herself, "Am I the only woman? Am I the only blonde?"

Ms. Mayer said she thought not calling attention to her skills in science and math helped her progress. "My teachers never said, 'Wow you're really good at this for a girl,'" she noted. "Just asking that question, I think, can sometimes handicap progress. I think if I had felt more self-conscious, it would have stifled me."

A common misconception about computer science, she added, is the trope that it's populated by boys who have been obsessed with video games since childhood and are therefore predisposed to programming. When this reporter was in an undergrad computer science class, male engineering students looked at me quizzically when I admitted to never taking my computer apart as a kid just to see what it was made of. The implication in both scenarios being that women start off at an incredible disadvantage for not growing up steeped in that world.

But Ms. Mayer pointed out that she didn't get into the field until college when she quickly caught up with the older student who first taught her how to use a mouse and turn on her PC. It was only a matter of time until they were both TAs for a computer science class on equal footing. Can someone start in college? "Absolutely, yes," she said. "Because it's a new and young science, it also means you can catch up fast."

Avoiding Burnout

Somewhere around the part in the discussion where Ms. Mayer was detailing the 14 job offers she had lined up after Stanford, Mr. Tyrangiel felt compelled to ask, point blank, "So, your friends must hate you?" Not at all, insisted Ms. Mayer, "I think a lot of people can [get 14 job offers], but a lot of people don't," she said, citing her need to have a copious amount of choices to exhaustively assess before proceeding—how Google-y! "Does that make sense?" she asked. No, responded Mr. Tyrangiel. The audience shuffled their feet in agreement.

But Ms. Mayer made a much more convincing argument later in the evening when she explained why, "I don't really believe in burnout."

In the early days of Google, Ms. Mayer said, "I pulled an all-nighter every week for the first five years," and so did everyone else. People wondered how she and other employees worked 130-hours when a week only contains a 168 hours, but you can do it "if you're strategic about when you shower and sleep."

"People have the sensation that it just happened," she said of Google's success, offering a version of a quote from the movie Titanic, "I assure you the experience of it was quite different." Sometimes, said Ms. Mayer, she goes around to other startups who sheepishly admit they're not quite on their way to becoming Google, and she thinks, well, they're "working categorically less hard."

So how does someone with that kind of work ethic and drive not believe in burnout? "My theory is that burnout is about resentment," she said. "Know yourself well enough to know what you're giving up" by staying at work. Ms. Mayer says she often asks employees about their rhythm. What's the thing that if you miss it, it ruins your week? For one engineer it was about missing Tuesday night dinners with friends. If he had to cancel, especially when it was his turn to host, he lost his motivation to stay late. "Okay, Nathan, now we know you can never miss Tuesday night dinner," Ms. Mayer said, describing their conversation.

For an executive in Google Finance, the 1 a.m. conference calls to India were no problem, but missing her kids afternoon soccer practices and recitals was demoralizing, especially when they could see her walk in late. So now, said Ms. Mayer, if there's a meeting and someone asks if she can't just stay five minutes to finish something up, she says, "No, Katie's gotta go."

For Ms. Mayer, the trigger that makes her resentful is inability to travel. "I never get a lot of sleep at night," she said, but every four to six months, she wants to go somewhere she's never been before. It's good for her and her team's sense of self-sufficiency, she said, if she "misses every standing meeting" for a week every once in awhile. Figuring out those rhythms, "empowers you to work really hard for a really long period of time on something you're passionate about."

Even with her burnout theory in place, however, Ms. Mayer says she still finds herself weighing the cons of unplugging from the office before telling herself, "Oh, just take that trip to Croatia already." Hmm, maybe we will buy that ticket to China after all.

Gleaming the cubes.

On Monday, the lobby of the Weill Cornell Medical College, which resides on a particularly gray stretch of the Upper East Side, was crawling with men and women in wooly blazers dotted with “carnelian” buttons—the technical name for the maroon hue that invariably moves Cornell students to chant some version of “Go Big Red!”

Inside the auditorium, as an assembly of press, pols, and local technorati waited for Mayor Bloomberg to appear, a giant projector flashed a mosaic of the Cornell University logo.

The news had been leaked to every major news outlet by midnight on Sunday; there was no point in being coy.

“Today will be remembered as a defining moment,” Mayor Bloomberg told the crowd, officially announcing that a 50-50 joint proposal between Cornell and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology had won the $100 million grant to build a new engineering mecca and applied sciences campus. The project is designed to help New York surpass Silicon Valley as a global innovation capital, creating 30,000 jobs and as much as $1.4 billion in tax revenue.

For the next hour, a stream of political operatives, from New York City Economic Development Council president Seth Pinsky to councilmember Jessica Lappin, who represents Roosevelt Island, where the 2 million sq. ft. build-out will stand, took to the podium to express their breathless excitement at the scope of the $2 billion initiative.

Cornell president David Skorton debuted a video of an aerial rendering of the gleaming net-zero energy building. Set to a dramatic score, it looked like a CGI version of a utopian future—you know, the part in the sci-fi flick before the apocalypse sets in. “There are visions of sugarplums dancing in my head right now,” said New York City Public Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott in response to the bit about Cornell and Technion instructing 200 of his teachers in science education every year.

"Of all the applications we received, Cornell and the Technion’s was far and away the boldest and most ambitious,” Mr. Bloomberg said of the sweeping offer, which included a $150 million venture capital fund, startup accelerator, and ambitious plans to construct 300,000 sq. ft. by just 2017—as close to the end of his third term as the mayor was likely to get.

But what should have been an effortless victory lap for the city’s yearlong plan to remake its economy for the coming century was clouded by a note of confusion. Stanford, after all, was pegged the front-runner at least as far back as March, when Mayor Bloomberg gave a speech in Palo Alto, noting, “We’re particularly pleased that Stanford—which has a top-flight engineering school—is considering the idea.” Stanford batted its eyelashes back by launching a Tumblr—native technology!—featuring a video of Larry Page and Sergey Brin talking up the Mayor’s initiative.

Indeed, as late as Friday morning, the school’s negotiating team was still locked in meetings with EDC officials; a few hours later, news hit the wire that Stanford had withdrawn its bid. And not long after that, Cornell issued a hastily-written press release revealing that it had received a $350 million anonymous donation. The largest gift in the school’s history was announced late on a Friday afternoon.

At the time, it was hard to say what was chicken and what was egg. Was Stanford trying to save face with a preemptive break-up, or did Cornell win by default? Surprisingly bitter recriminations followed from the various players as everyone tried to spin the narrative in their favor.

Part of the difficulty of understanding where negotiations broke down is a silence clause stipulated in the request for proposal (RFP). But numerous sources, who spoke under condition of anonymity, painted a picture of tense discussions and onerous demands that left several schools wary, including Stanford.

Cornell, eager to increase its presence in New York City, was more compliant at the negotiating table and better versed in what it took to get city approval, including fundraising before commitments were made. Sources said the $350 million gift, for example, had been secured for months. "We need to expand beyond Ithaca," President Skorton said plainly from the podium.

“Cornell needed it more. But NYC Tech needs Stanford more,” tweeted New York City–based venture capitalist David Pakman, alluding to the latter's prestige within tech circles and facility with spinning out successful startups. (There's a reason China and Russia are trying to build their own Silicon Valley.)

In the end, it seems the city got a better deal for taxpayers by going with the one that wanted it more, rather than the one it was supposed to want.

A university source familiar with the negotiations said Stanford’s decision to drop out wasn’t based on any one issue, but rather due to “a whole host of things that held them liable for factors outside of [their] control,” such as big-ticket penalties for missed construction deadlines and the city’s desire “to indemnify themselves for any toxicity” at the Roosevelt Island site. Although a Phase II study was commissioned this year, a full scale analysis of the medical dump under the hospital cannot be done until the building is razed. Should serious hazards be uncovered, the school will be on the hook not only for the clean-up but also potentially for resultant delays."You had a lot of institutions that wouldn't even apply because of the terms, and they got even more severe in the negotiation process," said the source.

City officials counter that such stipulations are par for the course. “If we didn’t include these types of commitments, there would be a chorus of people saying: How could the city write a blank check to a university that in five years could just decide it wasn’t into it?!” one official said. “It’s standard in any kind of long-term land lease or land sale that the city would ask the recipient to agree to certain benchmarks.” (Cornell and Technion are leasing the land for the next 99 years, at which point they can pony up $1 to buy.)

However, legal representation for schools besides Stanford also balked at the contract. “The legal document that we got was essentially, if you signed it, it would require you to build even if you didn’t hit the [fundraising] target,” another university source said. “If you state that by this date, you’re going to have this much faculty and this much building completed, and you don’t get it completed, you’re left open to a legal challenge. It was enough for our general counsel to raise a red flag to say they are not comfortable with signing this.”

Even institutions that have negotiated to build in New York City before hadn't encountered this level of vulnerability to legal action. "There wasn't any contract we signed that if our endowment goes to Madoff and then goes to nothing, we're required to build," said another source familiar with land use issues in New York.

The city’s aggressive negotiating stance also created friction. As has been reported, Stanford did not take a shine to Mayor Bloomberg’s assertion during a talk at MIT in late November that “Stanford is desperate to do it,” even if he said the same of Cornell. The bigger stumbling block, according to our sources, seems to have been another remark uttered during that same speech: According to Mr. Bloomberg, the desperation meant that, “We can go back and try to renegotiate with each one." A university source said Stanford “had no idea that everything was back on the table.” The school “responded in good faith, and everything was changing,” said the source, wryly adding, “But apparently Cornell said yes to everything.”

“Seth [Pinsky] famously negotiates every last penny off the table, and that spooked Stanford,” acknowledged a New York City real estate executive. “They thought they had a partner and were shocked with his hard line. They were told not to worry about the particulars and that it would be fixed in the end, but despite assurances, they ultimately felt uncomfortable partnering with the city.”

A city official pointed out that it was that same aggressive stance that helped Mr. Pinsky close "complicated and thorny" deals on Hudson Yards and Willets Points, which the city had been trying to navigate for years.

In fact, a source with knowledge of the negotiation process said familiarity with the way the city does business helped Cornell, which already employs more than 5,000 New York City residents. "There are things the city is going to ask you to do that [Cornell] was very comfortable with, it's not clear that the other side was that comfortable," said the source before dropping a bit of local trivia, "They know what a ULURP is."

ULURP, or Uniform Land Review Procedure is the city's notoriously arduous standardized review process. In October, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger told the school's newspaper, "I’ve been through a ULURP process. Nobody in their right mind should go through a ULURP process more than once in their life.” Of course, Mr. Bollinger was talking about how the ordeal might hold back his competitors for the tech campus RFP, noting that it took Columbia three-and-a-half years from submitting rezoning plans to getting mayoral approval to develop in Manhattanville. It's something candidates no doubt had in mind considering the penalties for delays.

"It's binding," Mr. Bloomberg shot back to a question from the press corps about the contract. "Keep in mind, if we’re gonna invest, commit this land, turn down other people who wanted it, and invest $100 million, you don’t do that unless you have a binding commitment... One of the attractive things about Cornell is that they know how to do business in the city. Just look around," he added, referring to Weill Cornell Medical College.

But both city officials and Cornell say it was the school’s superior offering that clinched the deal. “The catalyst was that Cornell was beating them in every single category,” said source close to Cornell, citing the speed of construction, the size of the campus, and the amount of students and faculty it will serve.

“Cornell was hungrier, Cornell was more humble in the process—I think it helped them win the proposal,” said Charlie Kim, CEO of Next Jump, a loyalty rewards company, who sits on the advisory committee that helped select winners. Mr. Kim said the committee met a thirty to forty-five days ago and then again last week to go into more detail. "I think probably after reviewing everything, and this is kind of my opinion, I felt Cornell-Technion was the number one recommendation."

City officials claim the rush to sign the papers was merely a reflection of the way discussions were being structured. The city was simultaneously negotiating with everyone that applied, trying to move each deal as far along as possible. When Stanford dropped out, the deal with Cornell was already near completion.

And what of the mysterious $350 million donation? Though some speculated that the money had come from Mayor Bloomberg himself, The New York Times revealed Monday evening it had been a gift from Cornell alum Charles Feeney, the Duty Shop Group entrepreneur and subject of the book The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Made and Gave Away a Fortune Without Anyone Knowing.

Which isn’t to say Mr. Bloomberg won’t be opening up his wallet to see that his legacy-defining project remains on track. Although Cornell and Technion have been granted the full $100 million, the city left open the possibility of approving a second smaller-scale project, like  plans from NYU and the Polytechnic Institute to transform the derelict former MTA headquarters into a Center for Urban Science and Progress, or Carnegie Mellon’s proposed partnership with Steiner Studios to build a digital media campus at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, both of which will now likely have to rely on philanthropic donations.

“You assume that when they make phone calls, I’d be on the list,” Mr. Bloomberg said at the press conference, while trying not to crack a smile. “But I also have some commitments to some other educational institutions, as you know.”

ntiku@observer.com

Aerial rendering of Cornell's proposal

Who knew a request for proposal to build a tech campus would offer such edge-of-your-seat drama? Late Sunday night, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Bloomberg, and the New York Times all put out stories saying that Cornell won the bid to build a tech campus on Roosevelt Island. Mayor Bloomberg will reportedly make the announcement Monday.

This latest development caps a tumultuous 72 hours in the year-long process of trying to build an engineering mecca that would transform New York into the next Silicon Valley. On Friday afternoon, Stanford--widely thought to be a front-runner and openly courted by Mayor Bloomberg--abruptly announced that it was dropping out of the race. Hours later, Cornell announced an anonymous $350 million donation towards its applied sciences campus proposal.

Lisa Lapin, a spokesperson for Stanford University told Betabeat that negotiations between Stanford and the city had been active even as of Friday morning. "It’s been a negotiation process that's lasted almost three weeks," said Ms. Lapin. "I know that there have been many conversations at the highest level of the city."

Both Cornell and Stanford selected Roosevelt Island as the location for their proposal. According to the Post, Cornell was willing to invest more to pay for the toxic cleanup required at the site on Roosevelt Island where the Smallpox Hospital once stood. (After being abandoned in the 1950's, the structure fell into disrepair.) Over the weekend, the paper reported that Stanford refused to cover the cost of a remediation bill without a cap on the amount.

New York City Economic Development Corporation president Seth Pinsky has repeatedly said that the amount of money the bidder requests from the city is a factor in the committee's decision and that asking for less could improve a proposal's chances. A decision on the winning bid wasn't expected until January. Mayor Bloomberg, who has taken a particular shine to the tech sector recently, reportedly views the campus as way to redeem his legacy after a fraught third term in office.

As for whether the anonymous donation means Cornell will have a Joan and Sanford I. Weill Engineering Center to go with its Joan and Sanford I. Weill Education Center (after all, Sandy Weill, the former Citigroup CEO and Big Red alum, just came into $88 million for charity), Cornell would only say, "We're not commenting!" The Daily News reports that Mayor Bloomberg is set to make his announcement at the Weill Cornell Medical College in Manhattan.

Neither the Mayor's office nor the EDC have returned requests for comment, but we will keep you updated as we learn more.

Fred Wilson was pleased; but what did the Twittersphere think? Turns out, most were sad to see Stanford go.
Omid Ashtari, former sales and biz dev at Google, currently biz dev for @foursquare in Europe:

This really sucks: Stanford Pulls Bid for New York Tech Campus via @Betabeat betabeat.com/?p=24415

— Omid Ashtari (@thecoolgeek) December 16, 2011

Eric Hippeau, co-founder and former CEO of The Huffington Post:

Huge missed opportunity for NYC RT @betabeat: Stanford Pulls Bid for New York Tech Campus via @Betabeat betabeat.com/?p=24415 — Eric Hippeau (@erichippeau) December 16, 2011

Andrew Hill, product manager at LinkedIn in San Francisco.

Pulling back is the right move for the University. RT @betabeat: Stanford Pulls Bid for New York Tech Campus betabeat.com/?p=24415

— Andrew Hill (@hillens) December 16, 2011

Shai Goldman, Silicon Valley Bank.

Unfortunate, now I'm rooting for the Cornell/Technion proposal “@betabeat: Stanford Pulls Bid for NY Tech Campus betabeat.com/?p=24415” — Shai Goldman (@shaig) December 16, 2011

Nihal Mehta, angel investor and CEO of LocalResponse:

would LOVE to hear the backstory RT @nitashatiku: BREAKING: Stanford Pulls Bid for New York Tech Campus via @Betabeat bit.ly/ttaKFK

— nihal mehta (@nihalmehta) December 16, 2011

Harry Heymann, lead engineer at Foursquare.

@betabeat very disappointing news — harryh (@harryh) December 16, 2011

Momentum, mysterious Twitter account

@Stanford it was going top be such an awesome move. reconsider :)

— Momentum (@mmntum) December 16, 2011

Julia Claire, LiveIntent

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO RT @betabeat: Stanford Pulls Bid for New York Tech Campus betabeat.com/?p=24415" — julia claire (@hooliaclaire) December 16, 2011

Over on Hacker News, one user wrote: "Surprising indeed. It seems strange that they would take the proposal this far before withdrawing for financial reasons, or fear of losing. Surely there is a more interesting bone of contention here that didn't become evident until late in the process."

To which another replied: "Maybe the data from the online courses came in during the meantime and Stanford realised that they could grow the university exponentially without opening new campuses?"

It didn't matter that the Mayor seemed to have a sweet spot for Stanford, because it all depends, said Mr. Pinsky, on what the schools submit to the requests for proposals (RFP).

In the New York Times today, however, the paper reports that, "the decision as to who gets to build what, and where, will ultimately rest with one man": Mayor Bloomberg. At the half-way marker of his third term which has been marred by cutbacks and managerial missteps, the campus is a potential crown jewel for his legacy. It's not mere conjecture, even deputy mayor Howard Wolfson tells the Times, "This is going to be a mayoral call, because this is something that is incredibly important to him."

Betabeat talked to a source familiar with the selection process for clarification.

Our source advised us to, "Treat that quote in the same way that Steve Jobs 'made all the decisions' at Apple." Hmm, so he's an exacting ruler who does have all the power? The source explained that a group will come to the Mayor with a recommendation that "he will approve (or not)."

"There are specific objective requirements that the respondents have to meet. The challenge is when two respondents are objectively the same, but subjectively different. And that's where the mayor and other judgment will come in," said the source via text. "I wouldn't call it veto power. He can't pick someone who doesn't 'win' on objective requirements."

This sounded a little different than what we'd heard previously. After the deadline, Mayor Bloomberg praised the strength of the proposals. And considering that universities invested in some cases millions in developing specs and soliciting help from alumni, PR firms, and lobbyists, it's hard to see how the seven proposals would fall short on some objective requirements like benefiting the surrounding community. Other mandates, like 1 million sq. ft. of floor space would disqualify NYU, which clocks in at 400,000 sq. ft., expect in the possibility of picking two winners.

It's possible that the selection panel will come to the Mayor with more than one proposal. "They might. He can't just 'want' another."

"This is the same as any complex services ego," the source texted, followed by, "Aah, RFP not ego." Freudian slip or auto-correct?

UPDATE: EDC vice president of public affairs Patrick Muncie responded to Betabeat with the following statement:

"This has been a Mayoral initiative from the very start, so it's no surprise that he will be closely consulted throughout the evaluation process, and ultimately involved in the final selection. The Mayor has firmly stated that there are no frontrunners, and we are presently evaluating each proposal in order make a selection that will provide the greatest benefit to New York City and its taxpayers."