Tech

via unionsquareventures.com

Fred Wilson.

When we caught up with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey during his visit to the city last month, he told us he had been meeting with venture capitalists and others in the local tech scene to get their input on launching a startup in New York.

As we reported at the time, Mr. Dorsey is strongly considering moving his new company out here. (Judging by his Tweets over the past few days, it also looks like his personal move back to New York is complete.)

He said he was gauging whether New York was conducive to fostering startups and that he was also concerned about the challenge of scaling a new company here.

One of the people from whom he sought advice about these issues was Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, who recalls his chat with Mr. Dorsey in a blog post today:

• No recovery in sight for New York's non-profit sector (City Limits)

• George Parker: "Social Media Won’t Save Madison Avenue!" (PSFK)

• What city education data should be opened up? (Gotham Schools)

• Report: Only 10 percent of NYC area venture capital has gone to NYC startups (Chubby Brain)

• Need an affordable attorney? Try this virtual law firm. (Crain's)

• Check out which cities' and states' Web sites got top honors in the 2009 Best of the Web awards (Government Technology)

In his 2009 State of the City address back in January, Mayor Michael Bloomberg outlined plans to create thousands of new jobs and bolster the city's workforce.

The following month, on Feb. 18, he announced a series of 11 initiatives specifically targeting job creation and entrepreneurship.

One of those was to create "incubators" for startup businesses: "To help entrepreneurs launch new start-up companies, the City is partnering with academic institutions, property management companies and commercial landlords to establish high-quality, ready-to-use office space that comes with basic business services and administrative support."

Earlier today, Mr. Bloomberg welcomed 27 new businesses to the first such hub, the 160 Varick Street Incubator, for which the city negotiated a three-year lease between Trinity Real Estate and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University.

From the press release the mayor's office sent out this afternoon:

The businesses represent a cross-section of promising start-ups, including a green retrofitting company, a global fund management firm for feature film production and distribution, a digital forensics and data recovery product developer, an electronic fixed-income brokerage, and an online company that will help patients make informed healthcare decisions. More than 300 start-up companies have applied to lease space at the incubator, which is now fully subscribed and will be expanded this fall to offer space to another 15 start-up companies.

...

The 16,000-square foot incubator now offers high-quality, ready-to-use office space that comes with basic business services and administrative support. NYU-Poly is providing mentoring services, business seminars and networking opportunities for tenants, who can sublease space starting at $200 per person per month for six months with an option to renew. In addition, up to 2,000 desks are available at discounted rates starting at $180 per desk through City partnerships with the Coalition of Office Space Providers and the Office Business Center Association of New York.

The full list of tenants is below:

Getty Images

A scene from SXSW Interactive 2009.

Next year's SXSW Festival, Austin's annual week long, booze-fueled convergence of music, film and digital events, is still a ways off (March 12-21). But there's been a lot of online chatter lately about the techie part of the festival, SXSW Interactive, which takes place March 12-16.

Chances are you've come across some Tweets from people asking you to vote for their SXSW panels. You can do so at the SXSW 2010 Panel Picker site, a Web application that lets you browse panel proposals and help decide which ones are worthy of inclusion in the festival. You can browse the Interactive proposals here, but we've rounded up a few below that are either relevant to, or are being proposed by people from, New York. If there are other New Yorkey ones, let us know by tweeting them using the #nyfi hash tag. (Voting closes on Sept. 4.)

Read the proposals after the jump:

via topplabs.org/civichacker

Amid the ongoing controversy over the M.T.A.'s attempt to block a local blogger's iPhone application for Metro North train schedules, members of The Open Planning Project on Tuesday evening held a New York Public Transit Summit to discuss forging "a positive, mutually beneficial relationship between the M.T.A. and the wider New York development community."

We couldn't make it to the event, but TOPP's Civic Hacker blog has a recap. Apparently there were more than two dozen "transit advocates, mobile and web developers, urban planners, lawyers, and open government supporters" in attendance. No M.T.A. reps showed, although they did give the group a statement on the agency's current licensing policies.

If you're curious about some of the specific topics that were addressed, the group has set up a wiki. They've also taken the issue over to Twitter via the #nytransit hash tag.

Flickr via Ed Yourdon

At the same time urban biking is becoming more prominent, so too are bicycle thefts.

But as The Wall Street Journal reports, bike theft victims are using social media Web sites and bike blogs to reclaim their wheels.

Take 29-year-old Toronto resident Heather McKibbon. After her bike was stolen back in May, she posted about the theft on Facebook:

Just hours later, a friend replied with a link to a bike for sale that looked like her own $1,300 Cannondale touring bike on eBay's Kijiji, an online classified-ads site. Ms. McKibbon recognized her bike and, posing as an interested buyer, arranged to meet the seller at a local subway station. She brought the police along as well, resulting in a small-scale sting operation.

Police arrested the man and returned the Cannondale to Ms. McKibbon, who claimed it with photos of herself on the bike, as well as its serial number. "It was a little overwhelming to realize that nobody in Toronto gets their stolen bike back, and here I was about to get my stolen bike back," she says.

Then there are Web sites like StolenBicycleRegistry.com, where people can list their stolen bikes for free. The city of Boston recently launched a similar Web site, StolenBikesBoston.com, which sends out stolen bike alerts to police, bike shops and hospital and school security officials via Twitter and Facebook.

New York doesn't have any such Web site, but the city's recently-passed bike access bill, which reduces the threat of theft by requiring building owners to provide bike storage indoors, gets a shout out in the article:

Flickr via edans

Andrew Rasiej.

In our new series, we send our questionnaire about the future of New York City to notable New Yorkers and post their responses. To start off, we spoke to Andrew Rasiej, the founder of Personal Democracy Forum and our partner in the New York Future Initiative.

What are some of the biggest challenges facing New York City right now?

To compete and remain relevant in the 21st century with other major cities around the world is its biggest challenge. Updating its antiquated infrastructure, continuing to attract talented citizens, connecting them to each other and the world, investing in new industries, becoming green, and creating a new generation of enlightened political leadership. These are just a few examples where we are woefully behind other cities.

Can you suggest a few innovative, outside-of-the-box ideas for improving daily life in this city?

Here are a few:

Flickr via Ed Yourdon

• Public co-working is on the move in New York.

• The Daily News took an in-depth look at the cycling/pedestrian/driver debate.

• Baratunde Thurston talked about the future of...

• Ground broke on the East River Waterfront Esplanade.

• Urban backyard farming is taking hold in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn.

• Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey talks New York City.

• The future of the hyperlocal

• There's a new Web site that tracks city candidates' positions on transit issues.

• We caught up with Janette Sadik-Khan at a bike-sharing demo in Union Square.

• Steve Cohen says it's time to find funds for city infrastructure.

via tacandidatesurvey.org

Cy Vance.

We blogged the other day about the series of City Council candidate debates Transportation Alternatives is hosting in the coming weeks.

Now the alt-transit advocacy organization has launched a new Web site that provides information on where candidates in all city political races stand on transportation issues, including congestion pricing, Bus Rapid Transit, cycling, traffic crime and public space.

The site is called Transportation Alternatives Candidate Survey 2009, and the information it contains is based on surveys given to candidates with different questions targeting specific races and districts. Seventy-three candidates have responded so far, including those in the mayoral, public advocate, comptroller, borough president, Manhattan district attorney and City Council races.

Here's how it works: Users can plug in their addresses to bring up a list of candidates running in their district. Click on the results and you'll get detailed candidate biographies and the survey responses, which are pretty thorough as well.

For instance, curious about Manhattan D.A. candidate Cy Vance's legal philosophy in regard to the prosecution and prevention of vehicular crimes?