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Metro Tech

By Nitasha Tiku 4/17/12 1:22pm

Metro Tech

The Mayor's Instagram account is working just fine.

Gov 2.0 FAIL: El Bloombito Thinks New York City’s 311 App Really Bites

While the outside world piles accolades on New York City  for tech-forward initiatives like the applied sciences campus, hackathons, and open data efforts, residents who’ve tried to digitally interact with city government know there’s still a ways to go.

That’s partly why the city’s 311 app is so vital–imagine reporting that pothole or broken traffic light when you see it. Sadly, that has not been the case. The city’s social media presence may have gotten a sprucing up, but reviews of the app like “Greatest city in the World with a govt that uses 1980s technology,” are not uncommon.

Although it was first released back in 2009, the app’s general ineffectiveness finally came to Mayor Bloomberg’s attention earlier this year when he tried and failed to complain about a dirty, vacant lot. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 4/03/12 3:59pm

Metro Tech

cab

Now That Taxis Will Have Cellphone Charging Stations, So Should Everyone Else

Today, Nissan revealed a prototype for its new-fangled NV200 van, which was selected by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission last year to transform existing fleets with the “Taxi of Tomorrow.” The cabs will feature a “low-annoyance horn,” more leg room, a skylight, odor-reducing fabric, and sliding doors (you’re welcome, bikers!).

But most importantly, as promised, it will offer a charging port with 12V electric outlets and two USB ports for you to plug in your device chargers. Good thing considering we’ve drained many an iPhone trying to help cabbies navigate to and fro the bowels of Brooklyn. The NV200 promises a navigation system too, but based on outdated models we’ve seen gracing drivers’s dashboards, we’ll take Google Maps all the same. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 3/28/12 3:30pm

Metro Tech

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If New York City Doesn’t Put Down Its Pom-Poms, We’re Gonna Become a Startup Stereotype

In order to win its war against the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ has put together a little video outlining “What it means to be Made in NYC.” The logic goes something like: (1) this video convinces the next Mark Zuckerberg to launch in New York (2) Zuck 2.0 invents Facebook 2.0 (3) when it comes time to go public, he/she looks back fondly at the inspirational video that brought him/her here and gives Duncan Niederauer the finger.

The video is cute and charming and makes New York sound like one big happy family, well except for the sobering presence of recently-defoundered Naveen Selvadurai, of course. But the U-Haul advertisement also veers dangerously into caricature. Read More

By Jessica Roy 3/14/12 4:50pm

Metro Tech

bloomberg

City Contractor Fined $500 M. for CityTime Kickback Scheme

It’s been a disaster from the get-go, but finally New York City is due to make back some of the millions of dollars it casually tossed into the black hole that is CityTime. The Science Applications International Corporation entered into an agreement with the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office today to pay $500,392,977 in restitution to the Department of Justice for fraud committed during a contract with the infamous CityTime Project. The agreement resolves a dispute between SAIC and the city for the fraud perpetrated with CityTime, the digital timekeeping and payroll system implemented to streamline the payment process to city workers. SAIC was the main contractor for the CityTime project. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 3/02/12 3:21pm

Metro Tech

via dailydooh.com

As Square’s Plan to Put iPads in Cabs Get Approved, It Turns Out Verifone Was Already Testing Tablets

It seems like every other tech story these days is about the old guard banding together to protect the status quo. So it’s a relief to hear that  New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission agreed yesterday to test out Square’s proposal to replace Taxi TV with its own iPad mobile payments system, despite objections from Verifone and Creative Mobile Technologies–the duopoly that currently controls what technology gets placement in your yellow cab’s partition.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, Square will mount a “ruggedized” iPad on the divider of the cabs. Using Square’s payment system, riders can swipe a credit card and decide whether to receive a receipt by paper, email, or text. Oh yeah, and a chance to look at a map on an iPad’s sleeker touchscreen. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 3/01/12 8:51am

Metro Tech

418px-NYC_taxis

Square’s Old School Competitors Really Don’t Want To See iPads and Apps Instead of Taxi TV

Last week, we told you about an innovative proposal from Square, the mobile payments company run by dashing parallel entrepreneur Jack Dorsey, who is simultaneously employed as the executive chairman of Twitter. Rather than squawking Taxi TVs, which allow consumers to pay by credit card, but force cabdrivers to absorb costly processing fees, Square proposed testing out iPads with apps–and its own cheaper mobile payments system, of course.

Currently, fleets can withhold 5 percent of fares paid by credit card from drivers after a shift to cover the 3.5 percent processing fee and a 1.5 percent bookkepping costs. David S. Yassky, the chairman of the Taxi and Limousine Commission, made no bones about his goal in testing it out: to push down the price of credit card transactions.

Existing vendors Creative Mobile Technologies and Verifone, who maintain a duopoly among yellow cabs, already made a fuss when the idea was raised earlier this year, but now, the Wall Street Journal reports, they’ve muscled their way into the TLC’s pilot program. CMT, Verifone, and Square will all get a chance to test out ways to transform 30 yellow cabs a piece. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 2/21/12 10:43am

Metro Tech

square app

Coming Soon to a Taxi Near You: Square Wants to Replace Taxi TVs with iPads and Apps

What if instead of a squawking box, capable only of blaring at you from the partition, Taxi TVs looked more like your smartphone and came stocked with apps like Foursquare? Square, the mobile payment company headed by Jack Dorsey, is trying again with a daring proposal for the Taxi and Limousine Commission: a pilot program that would replace Taxi TVs in 50 cabs with iPads or other tablets.

TLC chairman David Yassky said the tablets would also enable the commission to test out Square’s mobile payment technology “and swipe a credit card at any point in the trip,” reports the New York Times. It should come as no surprise to Brooklyn-dwellers who’ve to had to promise to pay cash in order to get back from Manhattan, but the current credit card system, controlled by Verifone and Creative Mobile Technologies, is hard on cabdrivers, who have to eat the fee for the transaction. With Square, there’s a chance to push down the price of transactions. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 2/17/12 6:44pm

Metro Tech

Screen shot 2012-02-17 at 6.11.29 PM

Meet Your 2012 NYC Venture Fellows: The Founders of Warby Parker, MakerBot, Yipit, and More

On its Tumblr, the New York City Economic Development Corporation posted an announcement this afternoon about the 28 individuals named to the city’s NYC Venture Fellows Program. The press release was actually issued last Tuesday, the NYCEDC confirmed by phone, but was only just added to Tumblr. C’mon, guys, until they plant that RSS chip in our brains, you gotta get with El Bloombito’s new social media agenda: everything updated all a’ the time.

This is the second year of the Venture Fellows program, developed with the agency along with Fordham University. “NYC Venture Fellows promotes emerging business leaders and encourages international entrepreneurs to start or expand their operations in New York City. The program connects fellows with mentors who are investors, serial entrepreneurs, CEOS, and operational managers from New York City and abroad.”

Combine that description with the word “fellows” and you might picture some accelerator-stage startups in real need of mentorship and connections, not far off the the lean Ramen life. Not so with the 28 rising stars on this year’s list, which includes BillGuard founder and CEO Yaron Samid, MakerBot cofounder and CEO Bre Pettis, Warby Parker cofounder and co-CEO Dave Gilboa, and charity: water founder and CEO Scott Harrison. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 2/16/12 12:22pm

Metro Tech

NY ♥ Kelly Choi

Mayor Bloomberg Announces Official NYC Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Foursquare Page

Time to get serious about social media! And what better time than Social Media Week. New York City may be winning accolades for its sloppy, wet embrace of the local budding tech sector, but City Hall was still a step behind. Too that end, during Mayor Bloomberg’s speech at Tumblr headquarters today, he announced that the city will be streamlining its efforts with four new central channels on Facebook and Twitter, and well as hometown heroes Tumblr and Foursquare all under the NYCGov handle.

Of course, because this is government we’re talking about, links to said channels weren’t embedded in the press release. But to get some idea of just how tangled and confusing the city’s existing forays into social media are, take a look at this list, showing the manifold Twitter accounts and Facebook pages by agency, department, community board, etc.,  until it’s practically just a dude on a street corner tumbling about his block. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 1/27/12 4:34pm

Metro Tech

NYTM, meet NYPD.

NYC Product Designers Unite, Name Themselves After the Police

Some people are tired of hearing about the lack of engineers in New York City. Developers, developers, developers! Product designers are in high demand too, you guys. And now they have their own organization.

Betabeat got a tip in our inbox this week alerting us to a new site for New York Product Designers or NYPD. Under the tagline, “New York’s Finest,” the site features the names and Twitter links to the top product designers from local startups like Codecademy (Allison House), Kickstarter (Andrew Cornett, Zach Sears, Jessica Harllee), Etsy (Kim Bost, Randy Hunt, Magera Holton), Forrst (Kyle Bragger), Svpply (Allan Yu), and more. Three more names have been added in just the past few days. Read More