Cutting the Ribbon at MakerBot's new Sunset Park facility

New Tech City gets new managing editor WNYC announced yesterday that Manoush Zomorodi will become managing editor of New Tech City, the weekly tech podcast and segment on Morning Edition. According to the press release, Ms. Zomorodi—who co-created and currently hosts the program—“will oversee a new phase of New Tech City, in which WNYC plans to expand the weekly segment into…a digital media enterprise with videos, live events and other components that break from traditional radio programming.”  Keep your eyes and ears peeled, folks!

Google Glass gets Fancy Oh you fancy, huh? This week saw the release of Fancy, a new shopping app for Google Glass. Users can take a photo of whatever they’re looking at, and Fancy will connect them with “the coolest stuff” that matches their snapshot. Take a photo of your kitchen cabinets, and Fancy will match you with the sweetest new silverware set. Grab a shot of your Real Housewives DVD collection, and Fancy will hook you up with a life. Just kidding. But you get the idea.

Brooklyn techies prepare for battle Watch out, Silicon Valley. This week, the Brooklyn Tech Triangle announced plans to make New York the new “global epicenter of the innovation economy.” Next week, leaders of the initiative will propose changes to workforce development, real estate, transportation and public environs that will hopefully “help New York surpass Silicon Valley as the nation’s top tech hub,” according to a statement. Maybe New York should just equip all its tech offices with two-story slides—that might help.

MakerBot makes moves Last week, 3D printing powerhouse MakerBot announced the opening of a new manufacturing facility in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The 55,000 square foot factory will house the manufacturing of various 3D printing, replicating, and scanning technologies, as well as a “Bot Farm,” where 3D prints are produced for MakerBot’s Manhattan store. They might be high-tech, but MakerBot would like to specify that skilled humans—not robots—are responsible for manufacturing their futuristic products.

NYCResistor hosts a high-tech drinkfest This Saturday, party it up ‘till two in the morn with NYCResistor at their 4^th Annual Interactive Show. At 8p.m., head on down to the NYCResistor’s headquarters at 87 Third Avenue in Brooklyn, where “hackers from around the region [will] show off their cool interactive projects with beats and beers provided.” This year’s theme is “Digital Archaeology”—in other words, see if you can put a new spin on an old piece of technology. Let me just dig up my old Tamagotchi…

Learn to fundraise like a pro Have a startup idea, but no cash? No problem—check out General Assembly’s Assembled Capital workshop this Saturday from 10:30a.m. to 6p.m., where a team of industry pros will turn you into the next fundraising aficionado. Learn “fundraising strategies for early-stage startups, common misconceptions and best practices in fundraising, the future of crowdfunding, honest stories from entrepreneurs on successful (and less than successful) capital raises, and more,” according to the event page. Tickets are $299, but who knows? Maybe you’ll run into Zosia Mamet. 

Gym, Tan, Laundry with NJ Tech Meetup Heading to the Jersey Shore this weekend? Check out Friday night's Summer Social at the Berkeley Hotel in Asbury Park, hosted by NJ Tech Meetup and Jersey Shore Tech Meetup. Show off your Google Glass or chat about your latest startup idea over cheap drinks and live music. "This meetup is to welcome summer, have a drink, and meet some new people. Bring biz cards and a smile," the event page says. Spray tans not included.

Mr. Ryan.

We're all deal news this morning, aren't we? Lot18 raises money, Groupon has a surprisingly-healthy trading day and Juice in the City launches in New York. Gilt Groupe, another subscriber-based deals business, is also growing like gangbusters, apparently. Although you gotta wonder where all these business will be after the recession ends and people remember that discounts are gauche.

Anyway, Gilt Groupe now has an astonishing 800 employees, founder Kevin Ryan tells WNYC, and he's been personally interviewing one new hire a day. "It’s the single most important thing I do, making sure that the top 60 or 80 people in the company are really great is really important, ‘cause that sets the tone for everything else," he said.

So is Gilt going to rock an IPO? It seems to be a matter of not if, but when. "It depends on the valuation first of all, but investors own part of the company and employees own a big piece of the company, about 20 percent," Mr. Ryan said in answer to the question of who will profit off Gilt's public offering.

With all that hiring, visas for workers is no. 1 on Mr. Ryan's economic development wish list. "We’re gonna hire technology people. A lot of them don’t live in the United States. So either they’re going to come to the United States and we’re gonna hire them, or or we’ll have to employ them there," he said.

Mr. Dorsey. Source: Crunchbase

Naming a start-up is hugely important. If you are creating the next big thing, you want it to have a name you like. It's tough to change branding in the middle of a cultural revolution. WNYC posted an extended interview with Jack Dorsey about agonizing over the naming of his companies, Twitter and Square. It took about two months to come up with the name for Twitter, he said.

DORSEY: We wanted a name that evoked what we did. We wanted something that was tangible. And we looked at what we were doing and when you received a tweet over SMS, your phone would buzz. It would jitter. It would twitch. And those were the early names, Jitter and Twitch. And neither one of them really inspired the best sort of imagery.

COLGAN: They were the names of the company?

DORSEY: They were the names we were considering for Twitter at the time.

COLGAN: So we could all be talking about Jitter.

DORSEY: Exactly. One of the guys who was helping us build and create the system, Noah Glass, took the word Twitch, and he went down the dictionary. And we all looked at the Oxford English dictionary at the T-W’s, and we found the word Twitter. And Twitter means a short inconsequential burst of information, chirps from birds. And we were like, that describes exactly what we’re doing here. So it was an easy choice, and we got twitter.com for some very low price, and we named the company Twitter.

Mr. Dorsey was concerned that the word "twitter" sounded too much like the pejorative "twit" and he hated the word "tweet"--"We’re like, 'No it’s a status update.'" But users were saying "tweet" and eventually the company gave in. "I thought it was a little bit too cute for such a serious utility," Mr. Dorsey said. "But it’s very approachable. It’s very usable, and it inspires great feelings around the service."

Square was originally called "Squirrel," until Mr. Dorsey found out there was a cash register operating system with the same name. The other names they considered seriously were Jane and Seashell. Then Mr. Dorsey remembered his dictionary trick and started in the "sq" section until he hit upon "square."

"It feels solid. It feels inspiring. It feels trustworthy and conceptually it’s just gorgeous. It’s one of my favorite names, even more so than Twitter. It wraps up all the concepts that I want to see in the world," he said.