New Tech City

Airbnb Suffers Setback In NYC Court Decision

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:00:00 -0400

A New York City judge has issued a rebuke to Airbnb, the popular short-term home rental site.

Airbnb had intervened on behalf of a user, Nigel Warren, who faced stiff fines for renting his Manhattan apartment to a visitor from Russia for three nights. It was the first time Airbnb made a legal motion on behalf of a user. But the judge upheld a violation notice from the city, writing that the term lodger “does not apply to complete strangers who have no, and are not intended to have any, relationship with the permanent occupants.”

Administrative Law Judge Clive Morrick's decision in the case of Airbnb and Nigel Warren

Teens Share More Online, But Also Know the Risks

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 21 May 2013 12:00:00 -0400

Teens are sharing more photos and personal information on social media, but they are also taking calculated steps to manage their online reputations, according to "Teens, Social Media, and Privacy," a study released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center and the Berkman Center at Harvard University.

The study's focus groups also indicated that teens are increasingly using Twitter and moving away from Facebook.

That fact also turned up in "Gen Z: The Limitless Generation," another study on how teens use the internet from Wikia and Ipsos MediaCT.

"A lot of them are reporting that they're bored with Facebook," said Jimmy Wales, president of Wikia and founder of Wikipedia.

You can hear more from Wales below.

Seven Things New Yorkers Need to Know About the Tumblr Deal

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:24:38 -0400

Forget about Yahoo and Silicon Valley for a minute. How do the people here in New York City — tech people and Tumblr users — feel about Yahoo's $1.1 billion acquisition of the social blogging platform?

Well, the technorati are elated: "Right on New York. Right on David Karp, and right on Tumblr," said Andrew Rasiej, chairman of the NY Tech Meetup.

But some of the young, creative users — gif-makers, meme-starters, cat-lovers — are worried, sad or even a little angry.

"I was kind of upset at first," said Laura Olin. She ran the official 2012 Obama campaign Tumblr.

Olin was a heavy user of both the photo-sharing site Flickr and the link-organizer Delicious before Yahoo bought and transformed them into things she no longer recognized.

"Both of those acquisitions didn't seem to go well," she said.

Click on the listen button above to hear more from both camps. Plus, if you're unclear what you should take away from the Yahoo-Tumblr deal, here's a breakdown.

Yahoo-Tumblr Deal in 7 Statements

1. Tumblr isn't going anywhere.

It will remain a separate platform and David Karp will stay on as CEO. "We promise not to screw it up," said Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!.

2. There will still be plenty of gifs. Nothing is supposed to change.

"Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn't changing. And our mission — to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve — certainly isn't changing," said David Karp, founder and CEO of Tumblr

3. Then again, Yahoo doesn’t always have the best track record when it comes to buying other companies.

One word: Flickr.

4. And Tumblr users are a little worried.

"I was kind of upset at first just because, I was a Flickr user and also actually a Delicious user and both of those acquisitions didn’t seem to go well," said Olin.

5. Then again, it might be OK.

"They seem to understand that this is a huge deal for the Tumblr community and they seem to be reaching out in Tumblr’s own language." — Laura Olin

6. And New York City's "Silicon Alley" sure is excited.

"It really shows that New York can create a top-tier tech company," Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for an Urban Future

7. If you build it, they will come.

Instagram and now Tumblr have shown that once a social networking site attracts a fervent user base, deep-pocketed companies like Google, Facebook and Yahoo will come calling.

In Boost for Silicon Alley, Yahoo to Buy Tumblr for $1.1B

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Mon, 20 May 2013 06:45:52 -0400

The board of the long-faltering tech giant Yahoo has reportedly agreed to pay $1.1 billion for Tumblr, a New York-based social blogging platform with more than a hundred million blogs and a young, engaged user base. The deal might just make Yahoo hip again.

So, what does it mean for Tumblr and the Silicon Alley startup scene?

New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi says there has not been a splashy IPO or big acquisition in New York's tech scene in recent years, so all eyes are trained on the deal to see how it shakes out for Tumblr and its 26-year-old founder David Karp.

Zomorodi speaks with Soterios Johnson on Morning Edition.

Attend Every NYC Tech Event? Not a Chance

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:00:00 -0400

It can feel like the events, conferences, meetups and hackathons in Silicon Alley never end.

Now that it's Internet Week in New York City, chances are you or someone you know is either planning, watching, sitting on, moderating, streaming or avoiding a panel AT THIS VERY MOMENT.

So, why are we so obsessed with conferences in an age when everything can be done online? Maybe you're desperate to get out because your butt hurts from sitting at your desk all day (or your back hurts from being subjected to a poorly hacked standing desk).

But it's also likely that you fall into one or more of these four categories.

The Personal Brander

Every meetup, dinner or panel is a chance to spread the word about your startup. You pride yourself in having actually met most of the people you follow on Twitter. You stopped calling yourself a freelancer and started referring to yourself as an entrepreneur way back in 2009. There’s lots of Seth Godin on your Kindle. You understand the new paradigm of the workplace.

The Constant Content Maker

Conferences are your goldmines. You run around tweeting, blogging, interviewing and shooting video on your phone. You come armed with an extra battery pack, know where all the outlets are at every city venue and attack panelists the minute they walk offstage. You are a Social Media beast. Roar!

The Reality Checker

Going to events confirms that you do indeed know your things. You mostly sit in the audience, feeling annoyed, thinking, "I could be sitting up there. This is nothing new." You vow to stop attending so many conferences but then check Gary's Guide and feel a wave of FOMO wash over you.

The Mind Melder

Between managing "workflows" and sorting out the intern’s security clearance, you hardly have time to live up to your impressive title. Then you discovered that conferences are a chance for you to turn off your phone, sit quietly and actually use your brain. So once a week, you sneak out of the office, listen to some "thought leaders" and remind yourself why you got into tech/media, et cetera in the first place. It sure wasn’t to fill out timesheets for a living.

MY INTERNET WEEK EVENTS

Feel free to be one or more of these "types" at the events I'll be hosting, speaking, and moderating this week:

5/20 — Brand Camp

5/21 — WNYC Presents: STEM is the New Space Race

5/21 — Social Advertising: Sharing and Powering Relevant Conversations

5/22 — Multiscreen: Getting It Right

A Tumblr Boost for Silicon Alley?

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:44:56 -0400

New York City's tech scene is on fire, but it has yet to produce a Facebook, a Google or an Amazon, and there have been no splashy IPOs or recent mergers and acquisitions.

But now Yahoo is in talks to acquire Tumblr, the micro-blogging service that's a Silicon Alley darling, according to the Wall Street Journal tech blog All Things D.

What does that mean for tech investors, Tumblr users and the startup community in New York?

New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi explains on All Things Considered.

Dean at Cornell NYC Tech Dishes on First Semester

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Wed, 15 May 2013 04:00:00 -0400

As the inaugural class at Cornell NYC Tech wraps up its first semester, we checked in with the school's founding dean Dan Huttenlocher on the real-world skills stressed in the curriculum, the school's mission and what's being done to attract more women to the one-year program.

All seven of the graduate students in the so-called "beta class" are guys.

"The applicant pool is overwhelmingly male. Overwhelmingly white and Asian male," Huttenlocher told WNYC's Dan Tucker at a recent Open Studio where the students showed off entrepreneurial projects.

Cornell NYC Tech is reaching out to undergraduate institutions to drum up interest among young women, Huttenlocher said. It's also working with the startup Girls Who Code to train middle school girls in computer science.

The school expects about 20 students in next year's class.

Better WiFi Coming to Union Square

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:43:35 -0400

Union Square is getting a digital makeover.

Starting this June, 3,000 people will be able to access the free wireless connection in Union Square at the same time. That’s up from just 250 people today.

"With the growth of personal handheld devices, particularly phones and tablets, more and more people than ever before are trying to log on to free, complimentary WiFi," said Jennifer Falk, executive director of the Union Square Partnership. "So we knew that we needed to boost the system."

The partnership paid for the initial installation of three new antennae, and Beth Israel Medical Center will cover the costs of the new network in 2014 and 2015.

According to Falk, the location of the antennae means the WiFi will even extend to the sidewalk cafés at a few neighboring businesses, like The Coffee Shop, Republic, and Heartland Brewery.

Kids Need STEM Education in the Digital Age

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 14 May 2013 05:00:00 -0400

"We're in the early days of the Internet. Every other industry will be eaten by tech," says Paul Buchheit in a recent New York Times magazine article about startups. Buchheit was Google's 23rd employee and helped develop Gmail and AdSense, Google's online advertising platform.

If Buchheit is right, every American worker is going to need to know something about the so-called STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and math.

Had my 14-year-old self known this, I probably would have started crying. I liked novels back then, not computers.

Nowadays, teachers are starting to teach STEM subjects in creative ways, using Legos, games and real-world examples. And yet, it's still not enough. Check out these statistics from Change the Equation about how the U.S. is falling behind.

We’ll be talking about what makes teaching STEM so tough at WNYC's The Greene Space on Tuesday, May 21. I'm co-hosting the event with WNYC's Beth Fertig of Schoolbook. The focus will be on K-12 schools in New York City. We'll be asking: What techniques work? How can teachers and parents ensure kids succeed and enjoy learning STEM subjects?

Panelists include the Deputy Chief Academic Officer for the city's Department of Education, educators from NYU/Polytechnic University and teachers who will demonstrate some of their methods for getting students psyched to learn.

We'll also discuss how we can explain, to older kids especially, why STEM education is so important.

"Suppose you're sitting in a meeting with clients, and someone asks you how long a certain digital project is slated to take. Unless you understand the fundamentals of what engineers and programmers do…any answer you give is a guess and therefore probably wrong," writes Pubmatic President Kirk McDonald in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. "Even if your dream job is in marketing or sales or another department seemingly unrelated to programming, I'm not going to hire you unless you can at least understand the basic way my company works."

The title of that op-ed, by the way, is "Sorry, College Grads, I Probably Won't Hire You."

When I was in college, a warning like that might convinced me to transfer from Advanced Watercolor to Beginner Computer Science.

High School Students Train for Tech Jobs

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 14 May 2013 04:00:00 -0400

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been pressing his idea of a "homegrown workforce" to feed New York City's tech industry, and it is one he is trying to foster in the city's public schools.

The Academy for Software Engineering, a high school in Manhattan devoted to computer science, opened in September, and the school received 1,400 applications for its next freshman class of 125.

Not a surprising showing to Gio Rascigno, 14, a current student.

"The world is pretty much dictated by computers and electronics, and you shouldn’t be ignorant about something that controls the world pretty much," he said.

Rascigno said he knew some code when he entered high school. But plenty of others did not. Any eighth grader can apply to the school, regardless of grades or computer science background, and students are chosen through a system similar to a lottery.

Students take a basic coding class in their first year, along with a data functions course that blends math and computer science. They are also paired with mentors from tech companies like Foursquare and Twitter.

Seung Yu, the school’s principal, said the computer science curriculum will expand over time. But he added that the success of the school will rely on establishing more industry partnerships for mentoring or after-school programs.

"We're going to need to rely on more people if we really want this school to be what we think it can be," he said.

This first year, he said, has been focused on establishing a school culture. He gives student-of-the-month awards, based on both academics and character. A student this year won an award for "Most Mature." Another received an "All Around Nice Guy" award.

The attendance rate, so far this year, has hovered above 94 percent.

Next year, the city will open a second computer science high school, the Bronx Academy for Software Engineering, and launch pilot programs on a smaller scale in 20 middle and high schools that will allow students to take computer science classes on topics including coding, web design or 3-D printing.

The number of software engineering positions is expected to increase by about 30 percent this decade, according to the Bureau for Labor Statistics.

From Future Coders to Your Grandma, STEM Education for Everyone

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Whether you're 18 or 85, keeping up with new technology is increasingly important for success and even well-being.

This week on New Tech City, WNYC's Yasmeen Khan visits the Academy for Software Engineering near Union Square to meet the students at the city's first public high school to put computer science front and center in the curriculum.

The first freshman class is about to wrap up its first year. So, what did they learn?

"I built a data center in my bedroom," said student Gio Rascigno.

Also this week, New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi visits the Senior Planet Exploration Center on West 25th Street where seniors like 85-year-old Muriel Beach are learning how to use Microsoft Word, Gmail and other technologies.

Cutting and pasting hyperlinks might be second nature for the "digital natives" at AFSE, but it's a different story for someone born in the 1920s or 1930s.

"Although I've had a PC for years, I didn't know the full use of it," Beach said. Now she does.

Brooklyn Navy Yard's Future As Manufacturing Center

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 10 May 2013 16:00:00 -0400

There was a time when ships launched from the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Now, it launches companies.

At least that’s what a sign told visitors who made the trek to DUMBO Thursday for the official unveiling of New Lab. And while the tenants of the new space are mostly manufacturing companies, they don’t assemble ships.

New Lab plans to take up 84,000 square feet by 2015. For the time being, however, during its first phase, it occupies nearly 8,000 square feet on the 8^th floor of Navy Yards Building 280. The space is a well-lit, open office loft with tables and desks and no cubicles. In one section, a company makes baby spoons. Another creates robotic lamps and another makes cranial implants.

The manufacturing hub aims to bring together designers and engineers occupying the loft space with new technology like 3-D printers, said David Belt the founder of Macro Sea, which is developing the space.

On Thursday, three 3-D printers were humming, manufacturing prototypes for the companies at New Lab. One was printing a tiny robot figurine as a demonstration for visitors. There was little mess and hardly any noise.

For those working at New Lab, having 3-D printers on site makes it easier for them to create and tweak prototypes, thereby reducing the time it takes to move from design to manufacturing.

"You can design something today and have it in your hand tomorrow," said Siavash Mahdavi of Within Lab, a London-based designer but also a tenant at the Navy Yard.

Mahdavi designed software which tells a 3-D printer how to create the mold for a new kind of recyclable coffee cup. The mold, which he also designed, creates a fine, perforated surface that eliminates the need for the thin layer of laminate which typically keeps coffee cups from being easily recycled. It's a design Mahdavi said only a 3-D printer can manufacture.

The tenants of New Lab, however, said they are not there solely for the 3-D printers, but for access to other people who are part of this city's new manufacturing industry. It’s what entrepreneur Marcel Botha called "intellectual cross-pollination." Botha works with Spuni, which is manufacturing an ergonomical baby spoon.

Other designers are building customized hip implants and submarine antennae.

City Council speaker Christine Quinn, who attended the event, joked that some of the ideas coming out of New Lab were so good that she didn't understand them. "That’s what we want more of in Brooklyn. Big, smart ideas that I don't understand, that put people to work every day," said city council speaker Christine Quinn who attended the event.

The new manufacturing center is expected to cost $60 million, with $42 million financed by private sources and $18 million from public sources. That includes grants from the New York State Regional Council, the City Council and the Brooklyn borough president's office.

"Make no mistake, an idea is a nice thing, but it's not a particularly productive thing unless it puts people to work," Quinn said. "And that's what we're doing here, creating jobs that are going to be open to all New Yorkers, jobs that are creating actual things," Quinn said.

Airbnb Case Inches Forward

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:34:52 -0400

Remember Nigel Warren? He’s the East Village man who racked up a pile of violation notices after renting out his apartment on Airbnb for three nights, while he was out of town. The fines could cost him thousands of dollars. WNYC reported his story in February.

After some delay, Warren and a lawyer for the city each made their case before administrative law judge Clive Morrick on Thursday.

While the two sides agree on most of the facts, they interpret state law and local codes differently. Michael Burns, an attorney with the Department of Buildings, argued that paid occupancy of apartments for “transient use” of less than 30 days is clearly illegal (friends and relatives who do not pay may legally sleep on the couch for a few nights.)

Speaking without notes, Warren argued that the law makes an exception for short-term paid lodgers when a permanent occupant is present. And he provided an affidavit from a former roommate saying she was indeed in the apartment while Warren’s renter was there.

Burns countered that this interpretation was so broad as to render the law “meaningless.” He said the exception should apply only to renters who intend to stay for a longer time, like a long-term lodger who renews their lease weekly.

While the violations were issued to Warren’s landlord, Warren agreed to clear up the matter himself because he posted the listing to Airbnb. It's unclear how great the penalty could be. Warren has said he believes the fines could total as high as $30,000, but the judge on Thursday listed possible fines that would total $7,000.

Also present in Judge Morrick’s small, windowless office were three representatives of Airbnb, which successfully petitioned to be a “discretionary intervenor” in the case. This is believed to be the first time Airbnb has made a motion on behalf of a user.

Judge Morrick asked questions and scribbled notes on a white legal pad throughout the proceeding, which lasted over an hour. He promised to make his decision known by mail within 30 days.

Afterwards, Warren gave himself middling marks for representing himself.

"This was far more of an official court procedure than I imagined. And I'm not a lawyer. I don't know how to cross examine somebody," he said.

MakerBot CEO Dreams of Google Fiber in NYC

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Thu, 09 May 2013 05:00:00 -0400

"Absurdly fast and wonderful." That's how MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis describes Google Fiber, a kind of futuristic internet 100 times quicker than broadband. You can get it in Kansas City, but not New York.

Listen to the 3D-printing guru lay out what he thinks New York needs to grow its tech economy: Better broadband, Wi-Fi in every subway car and station, more STEM education, less red tape.

"You either embrace the future or get left behind," Pettis said. "We need to get a few steps ahead so we can continue to be an innovation center."

Four Minutes with…Jack Dorsey

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Wed, 08 May 2013 05:00:00 -0400

When he was 14, Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of Twitter, worked as a barista at his mother’s café in St. Louis.

Dorsey recalls that to take a credit card payment, he had to consult a rate sheet, and then slide the customer’s card through a “knuckle-buster” imprinter. It all seemed like too much effort.

“And meanwhile this person’s cappuccino is getting cold…It did bug me,” Dorsey said.

Years later, Dorsey co-founded Square, a card-reader technology that challenges the dominant card-processing companies by taking payment through smartphones and tablets.

But Square isn’t stopping there. It is now challenging the makers of restaurant “point-of-sale” software with a new application, Square Register, that allows businesses to take and modify customer orders through the same Square interface.

“Internet companies and e-commerce has all this analytics about what people are doing on their sites,” Dorsey said, adding that restaurants should be able to see the same kind of real-time information.

“So they can make decisions about – I need to move the biscotti jar over here because if I do, I sell more biscotti. I can see it in the data,” Dorsey said.

#StartupCity: Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson's Advice for NYC's Next Mayor

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 07 May 2013 05:00:00 -0400

"The Godfather of New York's tech scene!"

That's how Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer introduced venture capitalist Fred Wilson at his Start-up City: An Entrepreneurial Economy for Middle Class New York event, held recently at New York Law School as part of his Partnership NYC Jobs Blueprint proposal.

As anyone who attends tech conferences knows, Wilson isn't the kind of godfather who sits in a back room, plotting his next hit — he is out, front and center, explaining how he thinks the momentum of the city's tech economy can be sustained and grow.

Wilson, more clearly and succinctly than anyone that day, including mayoral candidates, laid out ways to build on NYC tech:

Three Ways To Build NYC Tech

Workforce Development

Wilson quoted Netscape founder Marc Andreessen: "In the future there will be two kinds of jobs — those for people to tell the computer what to do…and those where the computer tells people what to do."

We want to teach our children so they can be in the first camp, said Wilson.

The first Academy of Software Engineering opened in Manhattan last fall, with Wilson's support. The second will open in the Bronx in September and build on his "quest to put more computer science and software engineering in the NYC public school system."

Wilson also gave shout-outs to the coming Cornell NYC Tech campus and NYU's new Center for Urban Science + Progress.

But he called for more continuing education opportunities (like the Flatiron School and General Assembly) to help mid-career New Yorkers get the digital skills they need to reinvent themselves.

Connectivity

"I would love to see a Mayoral candidate say 'I'm going to bring Google Fiber to New York,'" Wilson said. Basically, broadband and Wi-Fi still are subpar in New York City.

Wilson called on the city to put free and open Wi-Fi on every subway car and in every tunnel as a "shot across the bow" at all cell-service providers. He admitted it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to do it.

Regulatory Reform

"We have a problem in the way that cities and the federal government regulate innovation — It’s all permission based," Wilson said. He went on to explain that the Internet has been such a hotbed of innovation because it is "permission-less."

Wilson cited Airbnb as an example of an innovative business (with a share-based business model) that will bring a billion dollars into the city's economy this year but is technically illegal.

"Corporate companies use money to stop competitors from coming in…sending cease and desist letters…this is the kind of nonsense we can't let happen," said Wilson.

Wilson's New Paradigm

City officials, he said, need to rethink how they operate.

They must move from "Regulation 1.0: Bureaucracy, friction, permission" to "Regulation 2.0: Transparency, accountability, innovation."

The Next Mayor

After apologizing for mixing metaphors, Wilson said, "Tech is like Pandora’s box: We can't put the genie back in bottle…and we can’t bring back those lost jobs." He said he's going to vote for a mayoral candidate who is "willing to speak up against the city's entrenched interests."

As Fred Wilson finished up his presentation, I leaned over to my neighbor, who happened to be Makerbot CEO Bre Pettis, and asked, "Has Fred ever talked about running for Mayor?" Bre shrugged and yelled "Fred Wilson for Mayor!" as Wilson walked offstage.

Sure enough, an hour latter a Twitter account called @DraftFredWilson appeared. Would you vote for Fred?

Visualizing Big Data in the "Reality Deck"

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 07 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The Reality Deck at Stony Brook University was created to help those working in STEM fields visualize big data — data sets so large and complex that a simple computer monitor cannot do them justice.

The facility's 416 Samsung LCD monitors pack an astounding 1.5 billion pixels into a space the size of a classroom. Standing in the middle of the room is a bit like being at the center of whatever is displayed on its four walls.

The Reality Deck can display the Milky Way and its trillions of stars in incredible detail or take you inside a molecule.

This week on New Tech City, WNYC's Dan Tucker goes on a tour of the Reality Deck and looks at how it could transform how scientists do research in fields as diverse as medicine and meteorology. It might even save lives.

Plus, New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi looks at a new 9/11 Memorial app that is changing the way we remember tragedy.

"A cell phone is a very personal thing," says the memorial’s chief technology officer Sean Anderson. "We do so much on it. It tells us where we need to go next, where we are, who is trying to contact us. And so in using it to memorialize someone or an individual, I don’t think that’s improper at all....I think for the individuals who choose to go that direction, it adds to their experience."

Three Barriers that Make it Hard to Pass on Digital Accounts After Death

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:00:00 -0400

When we die, we leave behind not just intangible memories and tangible physical possessions, but a whole host of digital accounts that are somewhere in between the two. Unlike the photos and documents you store in your desk, access after death to data stored with email providers and social networking websites is impeded by several major barriers.

1) Passwords. Unlike the lock on a safe, a relative is unlikely to be able to crack a Google password. Providers like AfterSteps let you store your passwords so they can be passed on to a designated “verifier” who would follow your instructions about disposing of your digital assets after death. “This is sort of the simplest way to do it,” AfterSteps founder and CEO Jessica Bloomgarden told us. But it’s not always in step with those companies’ policies.

2) Policies. As many who have lost loved ones have found, the policies of Google, Facebook and their ilk aren’t simply to hand over account access to the next of kin. The specifics of the policies, however, differ between companies in important ways. Facebook’s standard procedure, after being contacted and presented with evidence of a user’s death, is to “memorialize” the account. Far from handing the account over, this “restricts profile and search privacy to friends only, but leaves the profile up so that friends and family can leave posts in remembrance.” Last week, Google announced a new “Inactive Account Manager” that allows you to designate trusted contacts who could inherit your data (though, again, not the account itself).

3) Laws. There are two flavors of laws that affect digital accounts after death, according to estate planning attorney Jim Lamm. One are the federal and state data privacy laws (like the Stored Communications Act), which treat your accounts as private and protected. The second are federal and state laws that criminalize “unauthorized access” to computers and data (like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act).

The challenge of these laws comes out in their interaction with the policies of companies like Google and Facebook. Facebook cited the Stored Communications Act in refusing to turn over the account of British model Sahar Daftary, saying, effectively, that this law required them to keep Daftary’s private information private, even after her death. Meanwhile, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act has been interpreted to turn violations of a company’s Terms of Service into a felony. That means that, technically, you could be breaking the law if you pass on your Facebook password, since their Terms of Service state: “You will not solicit login information or access an account belonging to someone else.”

There are efforts to update those federal laws. In New York, assemblyman Michael Kearns introduced a bill to update laws in the state to empower courts to order email providers and social networking sites to hand over access to accounts of the deceased. Until laws and policies change, individuals will continue to have to make their own way, sometimes violating the law in an effort to pass on their own digital legacies.

Tech Writer Anil Dash on The Web We Lost

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:00:00 -0400

Blogger Anil Dash says we tend to trumpet the tech revolution, with its vast social networks and slick smartphones, as a triumph of usability and empowerment. But Dash says a spirit of collaboration and emphasis on the user experience has been lost along the way.

He wrote about this shift on his blog in a post called The Web We Lost.

“There is an ignorance or a lack of history to the way that a lot of people that build the social networks, especially the young engineers, think about this because they weren’t around to see it any other way,” Dash told Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC’s New Tech City.

Dash cites as example Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram. “The first thing that happened as soon as Facebook bought Instragram was they shut off the ability for you to import your friends and find your friends through Twitter because Facebook and Twitter are enemies now.”

Dash says that may be good for Facebook’s shareholders, but it’s not good for users who want to Tweet photos to their friends. He adds that the walling off of content wouldn’t have happened in the earlier days of the Internet.

“There used to be a time when you put the goals and desires of the user ahead of the corporate infighting and battles,” he said.

Dash believes technology’s new vanguard should take a look at the philosophies that drove their forbearers.

“There are cycles to this stuff,” he said. “The pendulum swings back and forth.”

Planning For Your Digital Life After Death

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

When we die, we leave behind more than friends and family, homes and possessions. These days, we leave behind Facebook profiles and Twitter accounts and thousands of emails.

For Dr. Stephen Kelly, tapping into that digital footprint is a way to stay connected to his son John, who passed away two years ago. Once or twice a year, Kelly checks John’s Facebook account to read the messages and memories his friends have been posting.

“It’s a little bit, you know, unusual. I do leave a message. I post a message from us. Just thanking people for remembering him,” Kelly told reporter Stan Alcorn.

Kelly is able to stay in touch like this because he could guess John’s password. It was lucky, but it may also be illegal. Laws reaching back decades ban unauthorized access to computers and data. As a result, some tech entrepreneurs are stepping in to offer digital estate planning services.

Also on this week’s show, host Manoush Zomorodi talks to Anil Dash, who recently wrote the blog post “The Web We Lost” about the way the Internet used to be.

He said he’d like to see the new generation of tech leaders hearken back to some of the collaboration of the Internet’s early years – especially when it comes to putting the user experience first.

Mapped: Subway Stations With Wi-Fi

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:47:00 -0400

New York will have to wait until 2016 for Wi-Fi in all underground subway stations — putting it years behind other American cities like San Francisco, Boston and Chicago as well as international cities like Singapore and Hong Kong.

"If you look around the world at other mega-cities, New York is probably the farthest behind in terms of the technology infrastructure in the subways," said Anthony Townsend, a visiting scholar at NYU's Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management.

UPDATE: On April 25, 2013, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced 30 additional subway stations with Wi-Fi. Wireless and data services below ground will allow subway riders to use their phones, send and receive texts and e-mails. There are now 36 stations with online and cell services. AT&T, T-Mobile and Transit Wireless are paying for the project, which the governor's offices estimates will cost up to $200 million.

Wi-Fi services are through Transit Wireless which has an agreement with Boingo Wireless to manage and operate the system. For now, Wi-Fi is free thanks to sponsorship with HTC One. To access, chose SSID: FreWifibyHTCONE.

(The story originally appeared on September 19, 2012.)

Made in America Phonebook

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 05:00:00 -0400

For the manufacturing sector to bounce back in the U.S. after years of shrinking, one thing that will come in handy is a directory for domestic manufacturers and small businesses to find one another. A New York City startup is now hoping to bridge that gap.

When Matthew Burnett started a boutique watch company, he thought the only way to manufacturer the timepieces was to use foreign companies. But that proved complicated.

He could only order enormous quantities, and if there was a problem, he couldn’t just write-off thousands of defective parts. There was also the different in time zones between his company in Brooklyn and Asia. And of course, there was the language barrier.

For his next venture, a clothing company, he decided to make the products in the U.S.. He then discovered, however, that it was easier to find manufacturers overseas than here at home. So with his business partners, he created the website Maker’s Row, a sort of combination of the Yellow Pages and dating websites, but this time uniting American designers with factories.

The website has helped Nicole Levy’s company, Baikal, which builds fashionable handbags in New York City's Garment District. She's even had to hire someone to handle the increase in calls and requests.

But the experience hasn't been without some challenges for some manufacturers who have joined. Terry Schwartz of Sherry Accessories finds it a waste of time to field calls from inexperienced designers who find him through Maker's Row and don’t know how the fashion industry works.

The site continues to evolve, trying to find ways bring together domestic manufacturers with those who want to slap the sticker "Made In America" on their products.

The Age of Entrepreneurship and Self-Help. Barf?

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 05:00:00 -0400

Why is it that whenever I talk about the tech “scene,” the conversation often turns to doing what you love, being your best self, and finding your passion?

All this self-reflection and analysis makes me feel slightly nauseous. But I’m going with it.

As Business Insider noted last week, “People are voluntarily quitting their jobs at the highest rate since the pre-recession era.” That’s according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

Many of us have technology and digital tools to thank for the flexibility we have to work anywhere and anytime. That easy connectedness has let the entrepreneurial spirit, formerly reserved for geniuses, trustafarians, and the fiercely competitive, trickle down to us regular white-collar folks.

Suddenly we are being given a chance to become “CEO of our own destinies,” as Maynard Webb, author of Rebooting Work: Transform How You Work in the Age of Entrepreneurship put it.

Maynard was tech guy who saved eBay and now invests in tech companies. A former IBM security guard turned CTO, he says he wants everyone to wake up to the new reality of work.

“We are still using outdated models of work and people still have outdated expectations of what your company should do for you,” he told me.

Even if you have a regular job with regular hours, you need to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit, he said and think like an “intrapreneur.”

This is a different mentality than the one I had when I graduated from college (in the ‘90s) and bought my copy of What Color is Your Parachute. Mapping a career trajectory has taken on a new soul-searching quality. In a recent New York magazine article called The Power of Positive Publishing: How Self-Help Ate America, writer Boris Kachka noted, “We are in a new era of mass self-help, wherein the laboratory and the writer work together to teach us how to change ourselves, rather than our world.”

I think technology has a lot to do with that. It’s given us the ability to think outside of the corporate ladder and the 9-5 day. But I think it’s unfair to insinuate that we’ve become so self-involved that this new era of self-help is only about benefiting ourselves. I hear many people asking themselves, “How can I do work that I like AND have an impact on others for the better?”

Maybe I’ve gone soft (or Millenial?) but isn’t one of the tenants of self-help “You have to be able to help yourself before you can help others”?

Reboot Work, Find Success, and Become CEO of Your Destiny

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Maynard Webb is the chairman of the cloud-based customer service company LiveOps, the former COO of eBay and the founder of the Webb Investment Network.

His first book, Rebooting Work: Transform How You Work in the Age of Entrepreneurship, was published in January, and he recently sat down with New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi.

Work — "Work isn't working for people anymore....People don't have jobs for life anymore. Most people don't have pensions....The world has evolved in a huge way, and I think we're still using outdated models of work."

Entrepreneurs vs. Freelancers — "Google was an entrepreneurial company. A lot of the companies I invest in are entrepreneurial companies. And they're not freelancers. I think entrepreneurship is a mindset about 'I'm not going to cede control of my career or my destiny to somebody else. I'm going to be in charge of it,' even if I decide to work for a company."

CEO of Your Own Destiny — "You can work for yourself or you can work for a company. It's about taking accountability for where you want to go, staying with a company as long as they're continuing to teach and to grow you. I think the best talent will have multiple options."

Happiness at Work — "Half of the country today is unhappy in what they do in the workforce. I think that's criminal....Just think of what the national productivity would be if all of us were engaged and happy and fulfilled."

Advice — "Assess exactly where you are and where you want to be and take a risk."

The New "Made In America"

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

A New York City-based website is using new technology to help sustain and even grow America’s industrial base.

This week on New Tech City, reporter Eric Molinsky meets the founders of Maker’s Row, a New York City-based tech firm that combines the Yellow Pages with dating services in order to bring together American designers, and inventors, with factories based in the U.S. that can make their visions a reality.

Plus, Manoush Zomorodi interviews Maynard Webb, formerly the President of Technology and Chief Operating Officer at eBay and author of Rebooting Work: Transform How You Work in the Age of Entrepreneurship.

Webb, who is now chairman of the cloud-based customer service company LiveOps, says people must become CEOs of their own destinies.

“I think entrepreneurship is a mindset about ‘I’m not going to cede control of my career or my destiny to somebody else,’” he said. “‘I’m going to be in charge of it, even if I decide to work for a company.’”

Your Guide to Personal Finance Apps

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 05:00:00 -0400

Ismat Sarah Mangla is a staff writer at Money magazine and author of the "Best Apps to Manage Your Money," a guide to nearly two dozen smartphone applications and browser extensions for finding discounts, paying bills and monitoring your investments.

"When they say: 'There's an app for that,' they're not kidding," Mangla told New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi. "There are so many new things that have come out that can kind of make your head spin."

Here are some of the apps and browser extensions Mangla found helpful for everything from shopping to travel to banking.

Hukkster — "When you are, say, looking at something on Amazon or on Macys.com and you see something you like but you don't want to pay full price for it, you want to know when it goes on sale, you just 'hukk' it as they say on the site, and that means you just sort of click it and pin it to your account and then you'll get an alert when the item goes on sale."

Mint — "The thing about Mint is that it does use bank-level security, and it's a read-only app, which means you input your accounts, like I would put in my credit card and my bank accounts, and it won't be able to actually make any transactions. It's just catching sort of a picture of what's going on and aggregating that information, but I feel pretty confident."

Decide — "If you subscribe to the premium service, which is $30 a year, it will tell you, 'OK, this is a really good time to buy this right now. There is a 95 percent chance that this price is going to rise in the next three weeks, or there's a new model coming out, or there's a really good chance that this is going to go on sale in the next couple weeks.'"

Personal Capital — "They really sort of track and analyze all your investments, your bank, and your credit card accounts, and analyze, like, 'What is my asset allocation?' Like, 'How are my investments broken down?' 'Am I paying extra in fees?'"

Manilla — "It sort of helps you cut all the clutter of all your documents out of your life. You know, a lot of people have gone paperless. They just get their statements online or via email. And what Manilla does is it pulls all your statements together in one place in PDFs and stores them for you."

Tingo — "Nobody wants to know that the person staying in the hotel room next to them paid half of what they did, right? So, with Tingo, what Tingo does is when you're booking hotel rooms, it basically automatically locks in the savings."

LearnVest CEO Alexa von Tobel on Modern-Day Money Management

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 05:00:00 -0400

Alexa von Tobel is founder and CEO of LearnVest, a startup that connects users with certified financial planners to help them manage their money.

Von Tobel likens her three-year-old company to programs that help people achieve goals, like shedding a few pounds.

"Think of Weight Watchers meets personal finance," Von Tobel told Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC's New Tech City. "You come to LearnVest online. You fill out a quick profile. We find out what's going to be best for your finances."

The mission of the project, von Tobel said, is to help bring money management and knowledge to the masses.

"Financial planning should not be a luxury. It should not be something that only wealthy people get access to," von Tobel said. "It literally is one of the most critical life skills and I would say that financial education is a civil right."

The New York-based startup has a mobile app for the iPhone and a web platform, and it offers plans that have startup fees ranging from $69 to $399. Once a member, there is a $19 a month charge for ongoing support with a certified financial planner, in addition to free tools and content to teach financial planning.

Listen above to the full interview and how LearnVest and Wall Street firms are working together, who is using the service and how LearnVest compares to other money management apps like Mint, Betterment and Personal Capital.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story capitalized the "v" in von Tobel. Also, this version said LearnVest charges yearly fees of $69, $299 or $399. Those are the initiation fees.

Will Personal Finance Apps Replace the Financial Planner?

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

With Tax Day come and gone again, New Tech City’s Manoush Zomorodi looks at the online services that might help you get on top of your finances for the this year.

MONEY Magazine staff writer Ismat Mangla has been testing some of the newest tools for managing purchases and scouting deals. She says the new apps may not be able to replace a real life financial advisor yet, but they’re getting close.

“There really is a lot out there," she said. "When they say 'There’s an app for that,' they’re not kidding.”

Also on this week’s show, Zomorodi tours LearnVest, an online money management service where customers pay a monthly fee to get matched with an adviser for unlimited financial advice. The adviser then coaches the customer “on demand” over the phone, email or Skype. LearnVest Alexa von Tobel says the goal is to make finding a financial adviser as easy and affordable as joining the gym.

“Financial planning should not be a luxury,” she explain. “It should not be something that only wealthy people get access to. It truly should be something that the whole country gets access to.”

Pay-By-Phone Parking Being Tested In The Bronx

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:57:29 -0400

An 18-block stretch in the Bronx will be the first in New York City to test pay-by-phone parking.

The pilot program will allow people to use phone, internet or smartphone app to pay for 264 metered parking spaces along or adjacent to Arthur Avenue — as well as spots in the city’s Belmont Municipal Parking Field. To participate, motorists must sign up in advance on the Pay-By-Phone website. Each Muni-Meter in the pilot program has a QR code and a seven-digit number; the motorist must use either to confirm payment.

For more on this story, go to Transportation Nation.

Climbing TheLadders: CEO Alex Douzet Explains the Online Job Search

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:51:14 -0400

TheLadders is a New York-based job site that charges subscribers, mostly professionals from the white-collar world, $25 dollars a month to search its database. CEO Alex Douzet says the goal is to pair people with appropriate jobs. It even tells job candidates who they’re competing against.

"The number one complaint we hear from people is 'I've see jobs online that I'm a good fit for. I apply and I don’t hear back. Why?'" he said.

To answer that question, TheLadders launched a new service called Scout that shows where other applicants work, went to college, even how much they make.

"We stripped out the confidential information. So we're not showing you their name or the company they work for," Douzet said. "What we've done is show you their title, what skill sets they have."

Even with all that competition, Douzet said job seekers should be optimistic especially if they're interested in tech.

"We're seeing all kinds of sectors hiring," he said. "New York has been known in the past for industries like insurance, financial service, real estate, media, but we are seeing new tech, and the new economy going really fast and creating jobs and hiring people....Every industry is being transformed by technology."

In fact, TheLadders itself is going through a transformation of its own as job seekers conduct searches on the go.

"Our traffic coming from mobile has doubled every year for the past couple of years," he said. "Today, one out of every three persons will access TheLadders from a tablet or a smart phone. We think that by the end of this year over half of our users will come from a mobile device."

Still, Douzet said taking that professional leap may take a little while. The average job search takes about six months and that jobs seekers should be prepared to apply and interview numerous times for multiple positions before actually getting an offer.

TheLadders has faced some of its own challenges. In March, it was sued for allegedly posting jobs that did not exist and that did not pay more than $100,000 as promised, and it was alleged those postings were scraped illegally from elsewhere on the internet. Read the complaint here.

In response to those allegations, Douzet told New Tech City's host Manoush Zomorodi: "This case has no merit, and we hope that it will be thrown out of the court quickly."

To Create Your Own Tech Job, a Little Irrational Exuberance?

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0400

When it comes to finding a job in the tech sector, sometimes an entrepreneur (aka Ideas Guy) and a developer (aka Coding Dude) strike up a conversation, develop some synergy and decide to create their own new product, thereby making work (jobs) for themselves in the process.

At the SXSWi festival last month in Austin, I met developer Pablo Quinteros and entrepreneur/journalist Seth Porges. Seth found Pablo when he hired him to create his fashion app Cloth.

It's hard not to be won over by their enthusiasm, sweet honesty and patient explanation about how the relationship between the Ideas guy and Coding Dude can play out. Take a listen above.

Their tale of teaming up — and their sheer enthusiasm for the project — got me thinking about what might be called "irrational exuberance" and the role it plays in Silicon Alley. Here are some questions the sprang to mind after I spoke with Pablo and Seth.

Are tech sector workers and the journalists who cover the industry prone to irrational exuberance?
Has the concept of failing changed, in part because of the tech sector?
Is it American to feel failure is not shameful but simply part of any learning process?
Is un-American pragmatism (I don’t mean that in a bad way) partly why some critics like Evgeny Morozov, author of To Save Everything, Click Here, are so disgusted with the tech sector?

Let us know what you think about any of these questions and about the excitement around tech in New York right now in the comments section below or at @NewTechCity on Twitter.

Job Opportunities in Your Pocket

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0400

Since the recession began, policymakers have been looking for new ways to connect the unemployed with work. The Bloomberg administration now believes it's found a powerful new tool to accomplish this goal: TXT-2-Work which sends text messages about job listings directly into the hands of unemployed New Yorkers.

One of those now receiving those text messages is Crystal Sampson.

"For the past, a little over two years, it's been kinda rough," Sampson said, explaining that she lost a job as a manager in a clothing store when the retailer downsized. "And I have 2 girls. Single parent."

On a dreary, wet morning, Sampson was waiting for her second round of interviews for a bank teller position at a branch in Tribeca.

"I have my resume, my cover letter, even a thank you letter, just in case I get the job," she said.

Sampson learned about the opening from a short text message which read:

Business Link is recruiting bank teller must have 6 month exp cash

handling with in retail/check cashing & HS/GED to apply 2/4 @ 9:30 to

348 W 34th St.

Business Link is a city-run employment bureau.

Katy Gaul, deputy commissioner for employment at the city's Human Resources Administration, said the texts are written as a call to action "meeting the client right where they are, getting the information right in your pocket." Gaul added, it's how people talk to one another these days. "That’s the way I communicate with my friends, the way I communicate with my family."

HRA used to send announcements about recruitment events by standard mail two weeks before an event. That long time horizon, however, meant that many employers looking to hire people faster weren’t interested in working with the agency.

Some of the businesses posting jobs openings through the TXT-2-Work program include the Barclays Center, Applebee's, the Soho Grand Hotel, and Citarella.

The feedback, Gaul said, has been good. "We did have a home healthcare agency that was really shocked and surprised we were able to send 30 people the next day when they had asked for home health aides."

TXT-2-Work was developed by Brooklyn-based Mobile Commons using a text message program that has also been used by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the 2012 Obama campaign (and WNYC).

It's available only to public benefits recipients, including 1.8 million food stamps users and three million people on Medicaid. So far, almost four thousand recipients have signed up for program. As the program is so new, HRA does not yet know how many people have found work. And because many of the jobs are short-term or part-time, the jobs may only do so much to improve people’s economic well-being.

Crystal Sampson felt positive about her second interview at the bank branch. But after several weeks passed and she hadn't received an offer, she accepted another job with the New York City Department of Sanitation. She found that position without the help of TXT-2-Work; finding a job was what mattered most.

"I'm very happy,” Sampson said. "Overwhelmed, but I’m happy"

High-Tech Tools for the 21st Century Job Search

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

In response to New York City's 9.1 percent unemployment rate, many New Yorkers are exploring new tech-based strategies to find jobs on their tablets, smartphones and even "dumb" phones.

This week on New Tech City, WNYC's Ilya Marritz reports on new service offered by New York City called TXT-2-Work. It sends text messages about job openings directly to the cell phones of New Yorkers who receive public benefits.

It's about "meeting the client right where they are, getting the info right in their pocket," said Katy Gaul, deputy commissioner for employment at the city’s Human Resources Administration. According to Gaul, the program also helps employers fill jobs fast.

Nearly 4,000 recipients have signed up for the text messages, but as the program is new, the city has yet to release numbers on how many people have found jobs as a result.

Also on this week's show, host Manoush Zomorodi tours the New York-based startup TheLadders, which recently launched a service called Scout that matches a job applicant with open positions and provides information, like current and requested salary, about the other people vying for the same job.

"We're not showing you their name or the company they work for," said TheLadders CEO Alex Douzet. "What we’ve done is show you their title, what skill sets they have."

In fact, TheLadders itself is going through a technological transformation of its own as job seekers conduct searches on the go instead of at their desks.

"Our traffic coming from mobile has doubled every year for the past couple of years," Douzet said. "Today, one out of every three persons will access TheLadders from a tablet or a smart phone. We think that by the end of this year over half of our users will come from a mobile device."

Aereo CEO on Taking on Networks Over Streaming TV on the Web

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Chet Kanojia is the CEO of Aereo, a New York-based web startup that allows users to stream live television on the internet without a cable subscription.

On Monday, a federal appeals court in New York City upheld a ruling favoring the company and perhaps paving the way for it to expand to other major media markets across the country.

"What's important here is to recognize what this means for consumers is that for the first time, there is a real alternative to the cable model emerging, which would allow for greater competition," Kanojia told WNYC business and economics editor Charlie Herman.

Kanojia said the questions about infringement that the broadcast networks raised during the trial were the same types of claims that were brought out when cable television debuted in the 1970s and VCRs came out in the 1980s.

"The typical reaction in this industry is sue first, ask questions later," Kanojia said. "It's unfortunate, but that's the path that some of these companies choose to take."

According to Kanojia, Aereo appeals to the Millenials and Generation Z, the people who will define how TV is consumed in the future.

"We are solving a tremendous problem for this industry, which is an ever-dwindling participation of the consumers, of younger consumers in particular," Kanojia said.

Kanojia said Aereo's next step is to expand to 22 markets across the country, and that 2013 and 2014 will be big growth years for the country.

Despite Problems After Sandy, Wireless Providers Resist Change

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Cell phones are as much a necessity as electricity or water in the digital era, just ask anyone who lost service when Sandy knocked out a quarter of the cell towers across ten states in the storm's path.

"I realized, oh, if there’s actually an emergency, I don’t know if a call would get through," said Lori McCaskill, a resident of Sunset Park, Brooklyn, who lost her Verizon Wireless service right after the storm and just as her sister was due to have a baby.

Like thousands of others, McCaskill had no bars, no 4G, no texts or calls and was completely cut off from her friends and family.

This week on New Tech City, reporter Tracey Samuelson investigates how cell network providers are responding to Sandy and what they are doing to prepare for future natural disasters.

One commonly proposed solution is to mandate that cell towers have back-up power, like generators; however, some sites in the city aren’t zoned for that.

"There are some buildings in some zoning areas where we can have back-up generators and others where we’re not allowed to," said Crystal Davis, who manages crisis communications for Sprint Nextel.

AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile declined requests for interviews. CTIA-The Wireless Association, a trade group for wireless providers, responded by resending a statement from the initial days after the storm in which it said the cell networks had performed well.

According to Susan Crawford, author of the book Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, the end of Ma Bell and the shift to a more competitive phone and wireless industry did not enhance or ensure reliable service.

"We assumed that cable would compete with phone, phone would compete with wireless, and that therefore we didn’t need to have this whole super structure of regulation," Crawford said. "It turns out we were wrong."

Now that a third of Americans have cell phones and no landlines, service interruptions can cause a lot more harm than they did in the past, Crawford said.

Plus, Chet Kanojia, the CEO of web startup Aereo that streams TV over the web, talks about his company's legal battle with the big broadcasters like NBC, ABC and CBS.

Women, Work-Life, Tech: 4 Things You Can Do

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 04:00:00 -0400

When we scheduled “How Tech is Changing the Way Women Work” (this was the inspiration) we had no idea just how timely the topic would be: with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In just out, Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Myer decision to ban working from home, and Anne-Marie Slaughter morphing into a feminist rockstar -- holy moly, this was the place to be.

But we were determined to push the conversation forward without rehashing all the work-life balance discussions and articles already out there. So we hit 3 topics:

Digital tools and how they have broken the traditional model of work but created a chance to re-frame the work-life debate.
The new window of opportunity for female entrepreneurs and startups to reinvent the employer/employee relationship.
Where learning to code and STEM fields fit into gender equality for the next generation of women.

It’s a challenge to sum up a deeply rich and nuanced discussion but I’ll leave you with a final takeaway that each panelist bestowed on the audience. Take these actions and keep up the momentum…

4 Takeaways:

1. “Find 3 small things that you want to make part of your work-life fit this week, schedule them, and make them happen. You’ll see you have more control over your life than you thought,” said Cali Williams Yost, the CEO Flex+Strategy Group and author of Tweak It: Make What Matters to You Happen Every Day.

2. “The next time you go to an event where everybody looks like you, ask yourself why you are there,” challenged Stacy-Marie Ishmael of Percolate. Listen to her comments on diversity in tech. They should not be missed.

3. “The next time someone asks you to speak, say ‘YES.’ And the next time you buy a toy for a girl, buy her something that she can make and build,” urged Jessica Lawrence, executive director of New York Tech MeetUp. She told a touching story of an 8-year-olr girl decked out in pink, showing off the robot she built. Girly and tech-savvy can go hand-in-hand.

4. Marie C. Wilson, founder of The White House Project and Take Our Daughters to Work Day said, “In the next 24 hours, call some woman you think should be involved in this area and tell her you were thinking of her at this panel.”

The conversation continues for the next three Tuesdays with Twitter chats with each of our panelists from 12-12:30pm. The hashtag is #womentech.

One question left unsettled: how to frame this topic so it’s an equal-opportunity discussion for BOTH genders?

Join us with questions and ideas! I’m @manoushz

March 26, Noon EST: Cali Williams Yost, Flex+Strategy @caliyost
April 2, Noon EST: Jessica Lawrence, NY Tech MeetUp @jessicalawrence
April 9, Noon EST: Stacy-Marie Ishmael, Percolate @s_m_i

Former Inmates Struggle to Learn New Technologies

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Tech-savviness is a must-have for even low-skilled workers in today's job market and former inmates coming out of prison are on the wrong side of the digital divide.

"They've just missed out on so much," said Joanne Page, president and CEO of the Fortune Society, an organization that helps recently released inmates adapt to life after prison. "The image I have is Rip Van Winkle. You go to sleep. Then you wake up and you're in a different universe."

As of Monday's daily count, New York State had 54,558 inmates spread across 60 prisons. Nine of those facilities offer classes that include digital literacy and five recently started training offenders as computer network administrators, but prisons in New York are largely low-tech.

Computer labs have no laptops or tablets and inmates have no access to the internet, according to the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. Even employees cannot bring cell phones into the facilities.

Preventing inmates from communicating with the outside world has the unintended consequence of putting them at a disadvantage when they are released years or even decades later.

"Coming into this new technology for me was just — it was like going from the old ages to Star Wars," said Jessie Pender, 48, who was released from the Clinton Dannemora correctional facility in 2011 after 13 years in prison. "It was very overwhelming."

Pender said when he went away, he had a Walkman, a beeper and "big radios." After a lot of hard work and classes offered by the Fortune Society, he now he uses gmail to apply for jobs and a video-chat app on his Samsung Galaxy II smartphone to talk to relatives in North Carolina.

Nevertheless, Pender worries that he'll always be a few steps behind every else when it comes to technology.

It's a common anxiety for former inmates.

"People who have done 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 30 years, I see the horror in their faces," said Barry Campbell, special assistant to the director of the Fortune Society. "There's a fear that they'll never catch up. They'll never be where other people are."

This week on New Tech City, WNYC's Dan Tucker talks with former inmates about what it's like to get out of prison and try to learn years of new technology in a matter of weeks.

Plus, host Manoush Zomorodi reports on so-called "virtual incarceration," a new idea for releasing prisoners and tracking them with GPS anklebands and smartphones rather than keeping them behind bars.

The proposed program is the result of brainstorming at GovLab, a think tank within the consulting firm Deloitte that explores how innovation can improve the public sector.

For example, virtual inmates could check in with their parole officers by video chatting on smartphones instead of driving 50 miles to meet in person.

According to Kara Shuler, one of the Deloitte consultants, it costs $78 a day to keep a person in prison, but this monitoring system would only cost $25 a day.

Live Panel: How Tech is Changing the Way Women Work

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 08:30:00 -0400

WNYC's New Tech City comes to The Greene Space for a dynamic conversation about career, family and technology: "How Tech is Changing the Way Women Work." The event and the livestream begins at 9:00am.

New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi moderates the discussion with guests:

Jessica Lawrence, Managing Director of NY Tech Meetup

Marie C. Wilson, founder of The White House Project and Co-creator ofTake Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day

Cali Williams Yost, CEO and founder of Work+Life Fit, Inc

Stacy-Marie Ishmael, lead product managemer at Percolate, former editor and journalist at the Financial Times

And of course, you can join in the conversation online: our Twitter chat is #womentech. And you can talk our panelists at @manoushz @jessicalawrence @mariecwilson@s_m_i and @caliyost.

How Tech Changed the Way I Live and Work

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

This week is New Tech City‘s first ever event and it is SOLD OUT. But you can join WNYC and me for “How Tech is Changing the Way Women Work” at The Greene Space online, where we will be streaming the panel LIVE…and not just audio, video too.

When we were planning this gathering months ago, we had no idea just how timely the topic would be: with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s book coming out, Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer deciding to ban working from home, and Anne-Marie Slaughter becoming a feminist rockstar.

But we don’t want to rehash old ground, or all the articles you’ve read over the past couple of weeks. So we’re going to hit three topics: digital tools and how to manage them, female entrepreneurs and start-ups, and finally, coding and working in STEM fields and what that can mean for the next generation.

Of course, we hope you’ll share YOUR story either here or on Twitter #womentech.

THE PANEL

Jessica Lawrence, Managing Director of NY Tech Meetup

Marie C. Wilson, founder of The White House Project and Co-creator ofTake Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day

Cali Williams Yost, CEO and founder of Work+Life Fit, Inc.

Stacy-Marie Ishmael, lead product managemer at Percolate, former editor and journalist at the Financial Times

Listen or watch at 9am on March 19. Open your favorite browser and see or hear the event streaming live. Better yet, have a listening coffee klatch with your co-workers or friends and discuss afterwards. Or come back later…we’ll also have a podcast of the event up soon. Flex-work, flex-media consumption.

Arianna Huffington on Unplugging and Slowing Down

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

As founder, chair and president of The Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington champions a fast-paced, news cycle and has shaped the digital culture in which we now live. But Huffington says our round-the-clock schedules aren't working.

"They're not working at the individual level with a greater incidence of preventable chronic diseases. They're not working at the collective level [as] our health care system has become unsustainable. And they’re not working at the level of the bottom line," she says. "So I think businesses are recognizing that if we don’t integrate wellness into businesses and prioritizing what we do it can have a big impact on our productivity."

That's why Huffington says the debate over Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's telecommuting ban misses the larger point.

"Right now, frankly, it's not about where you work," she says. "The big question is whether you're always supposed to be on. If you work from everywhere are you supposed to work all the time?"

This week on New Tech City, Huffington tells host Manoush Zomorodi that at her company, the answer is no. A self-described "sleep evangelist" and wellness obsessive, Huffington has designated special nap rooms for workers at HuffPo's headquarters.

"I believe this is great for retention, great for productivity and creativity," she says.

In addition, Huffington recently unveiled an iPhone app called GPS For The Soul, which measures stress and offers tips on how to manage it.

"We often use technology now to learn to disconnect from technology," she says.

BuzzFeed COO Jon Steinberg on Social Marketing

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

BuzzFeed president and chief operating officer Jon Steinberg says the company wants to build a media empire the likes of Hearst or Condé Nast. And it plans to use "social advertising" to get there.

Also known as content marketing or content advertising, Steinberg says it replaces the familiar banner ad on top of a news site with embedded content that tells a story about a product.

"It's not saying 'just buy this stuff because I tell you to buy it.' It's more informational and interesting in nature. It's almost like an advertorial in a lot of ways," he told Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC's New Tech City.

In fact, Steinberg believes social advertising takes its cues from the golden era of advertising.

"There’s nothing new about this," he said. "This hearkens back to David Ogilvy advertising in the 1950s. Advertising got really bad in the last 20 years. It became just banners that scream at people."

But some critics question the content marketing, saying it blurs the line between news and marketing. Steinberg said at BuzzFeed, there's a firewall between traditional journalism and advertising.

"We have a completely separate team that works on content with ad agencies and brands,' he said. "They're totally walled off from editorial. So there’s a church and state there."

In fact, Steinberg said more traditional media companies would be wise to follow BuzzFeed's lead.

"The banner has been around for 18 years. It’s a completely broken product," he said. "The solution to make journalism work is to come up with a great product....Great ad products help media businesses to thrive."

Still, company brass won't comment on the profitability of the site. And Steinberg said BuzzFeed's real goal right now is to grow, noting that the company has gone from 15 employees at its start to 230 now.

"The issue with a growth company is we’re always investing ahead of when those resources turn profitable," he says.

The Newsroom of the Future

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Newsrooms are still trying to figure out how to make the kind of money online that they once made during the heyday of print. Just yesterday, the Washington Post announced that this summer it will establish up a paywall and charge frequent users to access the site. Other news websites have already found another way: "content advertising."

"We define content advertising as when brands create stories, messages, ideas that explain what they care about or what the products are able to achieve," says Jon Steinberg, chief operating officers for BuzzFeed, the website known for its addictive lists and posts on animals and pop culture.

Forbes, the Atlantic and BuzzFeed are some of the news organizations that have had some success making informative or funny advertising that they hope is just as compelling as any article.

"It’s not saying 'just buy this stuff because I tell you to buy it,'" Steinberg says. "It's more informational and interesting in nature."

Under the content advertising model, one group of journalists could be writing articles at their desks, while across the newsroom, another group of writers is working on behalf of advertisers.

This week on New Tech City, host Manoush Zomorodi talks with Steinberg to discuss the Buzzfeed business model and a possible future for how newsrooms can make money.

Plus, media mogul Arianna Huffington has a new motto: "Less stress, more living."

The chair, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post has a reputation as a hard-charging executive, but she says it's important to slow down and unplug.

Internet Troll Weev Sentenced to 41 Months in Prison

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:53:37 -0400

Internet troll and hacker Andrew Auernheimer — better known by his web moniker Weev — was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison Monday for gaining access to AT&T's servers and stealing more than 100,000 email addresses of iPad users.

Auernheimer was convicted in November of identity theft and conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers.

According to prosecutors, Auernheimer was part of a group that tricked AT&T's website into divulging the email addresses, including those of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, film mogul Harvey Weinstein and other celebrities.

The group shared the addresses with the website Gawker, which published them in redacted form. A second defendant has pleaded guilty, but Auernheimer refused to go down the same path.

In a recent interview with New Tech City, he said that he was innocent and likened his actions to demonstrating that AT&T's front door was unlocked.

"I won't take a plea because I won't bow to seditious thugs who want to prevent people from exercising their First Amendment rights," Auernheimer said. "I would sooner die than kneel to tyranny."

Before he was sentenced, he criticized the government for an unfair prosecution before a federal judge in Newark, New Jersey, and he continued to tweet until he headed into court.

No matter what the outcome, I will not be broken. I am antifragile.
— Andrew Auernheimer (@rabite) March 18, 2013

Like internet activist Aaron Swartz, Auernheimer was prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a 1984 law that many legal experts and proponents of internet freedom have criticized and out of date.

In July 2011, Swartz was indicted for illegally downloading 4.8 million documents from JSTOR, a database of scholarly articles. In January, he committed suicide as his trial was set to begin this spring.

"What I did seems a lot more saintly," Auernheimer told New Tech City in a recent interview.

Most recently, Reuters deputy social media editor Matthew Keys was indicted under the CFAA for leaking information to the hacker collective Anonymous in an internet chat room.

With the Associated Press.

NYC Tech Startups Shake Up South By Southwest Interactive

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The Bloomberg administration's "Made in New York" marketing campaign to promote the city's tech scene went on the road last week and joined the South by Southwest Interactive technology festival.

Silicon Alley companies came out as well to bolster their own brands and to look for the developers and coders that are the engines behind successful technology startups.

This week on New Tech City, host Manoush Zomorodi reports on New York's presence at the annual digital technology festival and gauges what kind of impact the city and its companies had on the throngs of techies as they converged in Austin.

New York has more than 990 tech companies 75 percent or more based in the city, according to the city's Chief Digital Officer Rachel Haot.

"We truly are a tech town," Haot said at SXSW. "There is an enormous amount of tech talent, and it's really important that people know this — they are hiring for 3,000 different jobs."

One potential problem with this smorgasbord of open positions is that it can be difficult to find the people with the right skills, especially when it comes to software engineers, a message not lost on the startups attending SXSW.

"We need to be encouraging kids in school to learn how to code," Shutterstock CEO Jon Oringer told Manoush Zomorodi at SXSW. "We have to continue to crush borders and allow talent to go in between countries a little bit easier so that we can continue to innovate."

So, what does the landscape look like to someone in, say, Detroit, who's interested in a position at a New York startup?

"Detroit is a long way from this happening," said SXSW participant Matt Shaar, an engineer with a business degree from Detroit who's considering a move east. "What you have in New York is a critical mass to make it happen at a rapid pace."

Nevertheless, Shaar said he's on the fence because of New York City's reputation as too expensive and too aggressive.

Also in this week's episode, New Tech City checks in with Startup Bus NYC after their 72-hour voyage from NYC to Austin.

The 29 "buspreneurs" on board built startups from scratch, including Career Mob, a job site for veterans and military personnel that beat out dozens of other startups in a competition held at the end of the trip.

Correction: In an earlier version Matt Schaar's last name was spelled Scharr.

Made in NYC Event at SXSW: Geeks Wanted

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 23:00:00 -0400

In addition to promoting NYC's tech scene, the "Made in New York" event at South by Southwest Interactive on Saturday was a getaway for busy New York entrepreneurs to schmooze, trade business advice, and, most importantly, scout for talent.

Shutterstock CEO Jon Oringer told me, "We are looking for more tech hires and product people. We look for the scrappy entrepreneur, the kind of person that will get things done without looking to spend money right away."

Sponsored by the Bloomberg administration and New York Tech Meetup, the event took place in a downtown arts center in Austin, complete with spinning classes on the roof and Makerbot machines churning out figurines on the ground floor. On the second floor, CEOs and reps from NYC-based startups like Sherpaa, Songza, Vook and General Assembly manned tables at what looked like a job fair.

SXSW: Doing Biz in NYC from Manoush Zomorodi

Creating Startups on a 72-Hour Bus Trip from NYC to Austin

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Jon Gottfried is a developer evangelist at cloud communications company twilio and co-founder of Hacker Union. He was also the the conductor of the New York City Startup Bus, one of eight buses filled with coders, developers and designers teaming up to create startups during the ride to the SXSW Interactive festival in Austin, Texas.

Once at the festival, the startups from the different buses competed with one another. This year's winner was Career Mob, a job site for military personnel and veterans. Valerie Lisyansky, a user interface and user experience designer, is one of the project's co-founders.

Manoush spoke to Gottfried and Lisyansky about whether the Startup Bus is just a fun exercise or a way to start a legitimate business. She also asked how a motley band of hackers, designers and business development folks go about building companies while on the road.

Gottfried on Startup Bus: "We had 29 'buspreneurs' and we got on the bus very early in the morning in New York and immediately people started pitching ideas and forming teams. And over the course of the following four days, they built those teams out, built products and built fledgling startups that they then demo'ed to a panel of judges."

Gottfried on the Winner: "We actually had the winner from New York this year building an awesome startup called Career Mob that was actually a combination of two ideas from different people on the bus."

Lisyansky on Career Mob: "Our company is Career Mob, and it helps veterans find jobs...not just veterans, I'm sorry, military personnel as well. One of the issues is that the job names are so odd, and they don't translate well to civilian skills, so we have a system that helps them translate their work experience into jobs they can do in the civilian workforce and also hooks them up with mentors to help them with that transition."

Lisyansky on Why Career Mob Won: "We have a working prototype. We have all the data for it. We have every page designed, and we were able to present that....So, sure they liked the idea. They liked that it could be a business, where you can also monetize it in these different ways, but also, it was built. It existed. It wasn't just a PowerPoint slide."

Gottfried on the Startup Bus Atmosphere: "It's a competition, but it's a very friendly competition...We're building these companies and building our products, but really, we're also building a really strong community."

Gottfried on the Entrepreneurial Spirit: "After our competition was over in San Antonio, people got on a shuttle bus from San Antonio to Austin, and instead of resting after four days with no sleep, they decided to found a new company during that two-hour shuttle ride. It's sort of a joke, but it's a very serious joke. They have an LLC now. It's called Drunk Spotting."

Shutterstock CEO on Hiring at SXSW Interactive and "Why New York?"

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Jon Oringer is the founder and CEO of Shutterstock, a subscription-based, crowdsourced marketplace for stock photography, videos and illustrations.

He spoke to New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi about how Shutterstock hires new talent and what defines New York City as a tech hub at the Made in New York event at South by Southwest Interactive.

On Shutterstock: "We have a two-sided marketplace. Anyone can contribute images and we sell them to designers and agencies all over the world."

On Venture Capital: "I found it very helpful not to do the venture round. Instead, I started with very little money, a few thousand dollars, and I did every job myself. I was the first photographer. I was the first customer service rep. I was the first online marketing person."

On Spotting Talent: "We look for the scrappy entrepreneur, the kind of person who will get things done without looking to spend money right away."

On Teaching Tech: "There is a lack of talent in technology, and we need to be encouraging kids in school to learn how to code. We need to encourage computer science as a major. We need to encourage entrepreneurism."

On Mayor Bloomberg: "Once we started to learn that the mayor and New York City wanted to put more of a focus on tech, we couldn't have been more excited because we think about this all the time."

On 2013 Mayoral Race: "Haven't quite gotten there yet."

Redesigning NYC's 11,412 Payphones for the Digital Age

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 23:00:00 -0500

The 11 semifinalists in the Bloomberg administration's Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge imagined payphone kiosks with air pollution sensors, solar-powered cell phone chargers and screens controlled by hand gestures and voice commands.

The competition wrapped up Tuesday night when a panel of judges from New York City's tech community heard project demos and chose five winners.

"I'm floored," judge Andrew McLaughlin tweeted afterward. "A raft of great designs and imaginative reinventions."

Winner for Connectivity: NYFi
Winner for Creativity: NYC Loop
Winner for Visual Design: Beacon
Winner for Community Impact: NYC I/O: The Responsive City and Windchimes (tie)
Winner for Functionality: Smart Sidewalks

Mayor Bloomberg challenged Silicon Alley to redesign New York City's 11,412 payphones in a video message at the New York Tech Meetup in December. Since then, 126 submissions poured in.

The five winners get kudos but no automatic contracts. The city will use their designs as benchmarks when evaluating submissions for an official RFP to be announced soon.

"We thought the best way to get the most energy and best solutions is to approach the folks who are going to use it," said Rahul Merchant, commissioner of the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.

Merchant praised the semifinalists and said there's no way agency employees working for the city would have had the time, energy or imagination necessary to reinvent the payphone for the 21st century.

The city has been taking baby steps toward a payphone overhaul for years. In 2003, it began turning selected payphone kiosks into WiFi hotspots.

In November, it replaced phones in 10 kiosks in Union Square with 32-inch interactive touchscreens displaying maps, public service announcements and entertainment listings.

Many of the designs on display Tuesday night pushed the ball forward even further.

A design called "NYFi" (a pun on WiFi) from the architecture firm Sage and Coombe put the Metrocard machine, payphone, muni meter, emergency call box and bicycle share station into a sleek kiosk with a smaller footprint than your typical payphone.

Another prototype called "Beacon" from Frog Design features LED matrix screens, speakers, lighting and solar cells.

"We've built in an array of microphones and speakers, so it can very intelligently drown out ambient noise," said Jonas Damon, creative director at Frog Design.

Its digital advertising panels can be taken over by the city during emergencies to display flood zone information, for example.

Payphones were a crucial link for New Yorkers during Sandy and many of the designers mentioned the storm in their three-minute presentations and highlighted how their kiosks could be used for emergency response.

New York City's franchise contracts for New York's pay phones expire in October 2014 and the city hopes to roll out a new and improved payphone kiosk by that date.

NYC Women in Tech on Equality, Work-Life Balance

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Two high-powered women in tech — Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg — are leading the debate about women, equality in the workplace and work-life balance.

This week on New Tech City, WNYC reporter Anna Sale talks to women in New York City's tech scene about what they think of the messages coming down from on high.

Mayer recently disallowed telecommuting in order to increase innovation, and Sandberg is encouraging women to work harder to break the glass ceiling. Her forthcoming book Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead will be available March 11.

Sandberg has received praise and criticism in recent weeks, and there's no shortage of both around the water coolers of Silicon Alley.

"I think she’s absolutely correct that we do need to lean in," said Cynthia Schames, senior business development executive at Performance Horizon Group. "A lot of times, we take ourselves off the playing field, to use a guy analogy."

"I think it’s quite bullying to say that the onus is on women to change the nature of the workplace today, and that it’s up to us to step up," said Rachael Ellison, founder of REworking Parents, which helps families and individuals balance work and life.

Also on this week's episode, New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi gets on the Startup Bus with New York City entrepreneurs and hackers as they embark on a 72-hour odyssey to conceive, build and launch a startup on their way to the annual SXSW Interactive technology conference in Austin, Texas.

You can talk to the "bus-preneurs" on Twitter Tuesday morning. New Tech City is hosting a Tweet Chat with them at 11 a.m. for an update on how the trip is progressing. On Twitter, search for the handles @StartupBusNYC, @NewTechCity, @Manoushz, and @danielptucker.

Or, type in the hashtag #Startupbus.

What NYC Tech Women Think of Sheryl + Marissa

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 23:00:00 -0500

So guess who’s leading the debate about women, equality, and work-life balance? Turns out it’s two high-powered women in tech. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer recently banned working from home and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has a book coming out on March 11 that urges women to push harder and "lean in" to their careers.

This week on New Tech City, WNYC reporter Anna Sale talks to some of New York’s women in tech and asks them what they think about these messages coming from the top.

One of the women Anna talks to is Rachael Ellison of REworking Parents/The Reworking Group. She’s also the subject of the second in my series of mommy entrepreneur profiles. But I need to rename this series because of the feedback I got from said "mommies." The phrase mommy entrepreneur didn’t sit well with them.

My goal was to conjure up images of innovative female businesswomen carving out new ways of integrating work and life all while starting cutting-edge consultancies and publications AND managing their children.

But the phrase made them think of homemade baby blankets being sold on Etsy. Not that there is anything wrong with that — it’s just that these women don’t want "mommy" to define them. No matter how impressive their balancing acts are to me, they want their work to precede them. I’m starting to get that.

The other day I told a friend of a friend about some of my upcoming projects and he said, "Manoush, I’ve been underestimating you. I thought you were just a mommy looking to earn a little extra money."

Um, no.

There are bigger plans afoot and I now realize that speaking openly about the madness that is school pickup, potty training, promoting a book, and hosting a show on New York's tech scene will limit me in some circles.

That realization was one reason I wanted to hold an upcoming event called How Technology is Changing the Way Women Work (please join us if you can). Rachael will will be in the audience. She and I found each other on Twitter last summer. But it turns out she lives a few doors down from me. She works with parents and organizations to figure out how to reach the Holy Grail: a career that you actually like, pays well, and works with your family’s schedule.

RACHAEL ELLISON, FOUNDER OF REWORKING PARENTS

Q: Tell us about you and why/when you decided to leave a “real” job and start out on your own.

A: I’m Rachael. Mom to a three-year-old and a two-month-old. My husband has a publishing company. I am an organizational development consultant and executive coach by training. I decided to go out on my own for a couple of reasons. I wanted to make money doing something that made me happy so my daughter could see that work and life weren’t mutually exclusive. I saw a lot of parents around me who were miserable and didn’t have to be. My friends had their kids and went slogging back to work they hated day after day. I wanted them to see the possibilities ahead. The world of work has changed, how and where we work is different than we think. We can find work that doesn’t leave us feeling financially, intellectually or emotionally trapped. I help people — parents in particular — change careers and brand themselves for the new job market, develop professionally as leaders in their fields, and design their work lives for optimum flexibility. I also consult with organizations to advise on approaches to flexible work.

Q: What’s been the best/worst thing about being a lone operator?

A: I have a love-hate thing with “solopreneurship." I love the hustle. I meet lots of people, collaborate, and learn about new fields and disciplines all the time. Sometimes that gets tiring but most of the time it’s pretty exciting.

Q: What’s your goal?

A: My business is about career growth and financial independence for both me and my clients. I work with every client to check in with "5 Ps" over the course of work-life planning and career design: Personal, Professional, Partnership, Parenting and PAY. Financial sustainability is key. You should love your work enough to do it for free, but don’t.

You or the women in your life probably have a very particular and personal opinion on this subject — I know I do — and we are going to get deeper into how technology is changing the way women work at our event at The Greene Space on March 19. I hope you can join us that morning, in person or online.