nextNY Archive

It seems everyone will be at the Techcrunch Disrupt event this week…if you aren’t purchasing a ticket, here are some other events I thought were worth highlighting. Check Gary’s Guide for a comprehensive list of events in your city.

The Brandhackers group will be discussing search engine optimization and social media on Monday evening.

SmallBizTechnology is hosting the Taste of Technology series this Tuesday evening at Columbus Circle. Google and Microsoft will be discussing using cloud services for your small business.

Wednesday evening check out the Girls in Tech happy hour. The event will begin at 7pm at the Union Bar.

Wednesday also brings the Guru Loft event series to town. The event is titled, “Turning Passion Into a Paycheck” — there will be a panel discussion and networking with the experts who will work with you to start doing the work that you are passionate about.

Please leave any other events for the week in the comments and I will add them to the post.

There are a couple of events next week that I thought were worth highlighting. Check Gary’s Guide for a comprehensive list of events in your city.

Tuesday evening the NY Gaming group with over 175 attendees will get together at the AOL HQ to discuss Ms. Pac Man, Frogger, Tron and whether Dragon’s Lair was the worst game of all time.

If you are into .Net, you better be at this month’s New York .Net group meeting which will be held at the home of .Net – Microsoft HQ!

The Hive at 55 coworking spot is holding two events this week: ShopKeep launch party and Tech in Residence demos.

If you don’t mind heading over the bridge or through the tunnel (I guess you could swim too) – check out the Dumbo breakfast group which meets this Friday morning.

Please leave any other events for the week in the comments and I will add them to the post.

When I moved back to NYC in 2007, I wanted to throw a party for CN. The party worked out great but finding help to serve the food that I cooked was a real pain. I put notices on the tech boards and on Craigslist but only found a few actual people that wanted to work. The people that showed up to work did a good job, but there was a period of time where I wondered if any of the people would show up. Sure there are vendors but finding one wasn’t easy and the ones I did find were out of my budget.

A new startup based on both coasts aims to help me with my next CN party. EventNow is similar to many of the other vendor request services except they focus specifically on parties and events. Some of the categories that EventNow can help with include: ice sculptures, dancers, video production, balloons, carnivals, DJs and party rentals. There’s also an “adult” category for those needing something a bit more.

To use EventNow you submit a simple request form that outlines what you are looking for in a vendor. EventView will then provide between one and five quotes based on your request.

Vendors on EventNow are screened and customers are asked to provide a review of the vendor after the service is completed. I like the idea of actual customer reviews — it’s similar to ZocDoc’s doctor reviews service and Reevoo’s product reviews.

EventNow is free to use and they appear to have some level of vendors across the country. The key for EventNow is having enough vendors to always provide a reply to every consumer request.

There are a couple of events next week that I thought were worth highlighting. Check Gary’s Guide for a comprehensive list of events in your city.

The NYC Amazon Web Services group will get together for their monthly gathering on Monday evening. If you are using any of Amazon’s web services (S3, EC2, etc.), this group is for you.

On Tuesday evening, the Long Island startup group will bring together entrepreneurs located outside the boundaries of the five boroughs.

If you are into coding with Ruby, the Ruby group meets this Tuesday at the AOL HQ. David Michael will present the Veneers library.

Wednesday evening the Android meetup gets together to discuss how they will beat Apple at their own game. I hope one day to own an Android phone for development and testing.

Robert Scoble probably wouldn’t be interested in this one…a Thursday morning free breakfast discussion of privacy and security in a digital world.

The Mets may suck but this one’s a winner…on Thursday morning at Citi Field (that’s where the Mets play) a discussion will take place on how to drive revenue using digital tools.

Please leave any other events for the week in the comments and I will add them to the post.

If you have ever searched for an apartment in NYC, you know that the process might be the worst possible thing on earth. You’ve got the hell of Craigslist’s horrible usability, scam brokers, fake photos, and lots of other fun crap. Unlike most cities in the U.S., it’s typically impossible to begin an apartment hunt months before your needed move date. Typically apartments show up as available just a few days to a couple of weeks before they are available. Some landlords post their openings after they are vacant because the apartments typically go within a few days.

New NY-based startup JumpPost is aiming to help relieve some of the stress (and need for prescription drugs) from the apartment hunting process. Their service is a completely new way to find an apartment. The JumpPost service allows current renters to list their apartments months before they plan to move out.  I’ve posted a demo from the founder of JumpPost below.

Current renters post their apartment with photos, maps, etc. and interested renters contact the current renter for a walkthrough. After the walkthrough, the interested renter works with JumpPost and their network of licensed apartment brokers to get all of the massive paperwork needed for a NYC apartment rental. JumpPost charges the prospective renter a 5% fee (most NYC apartment brokers a charge 5-15% fee) and currently they are offering current renters a $500 bonus if their JumpPost-listed property is rented through the service.

The key to JumpPost is that you can browse available listings months in advance.

Will JumpPost be successful? It will require two components – first, they will need to get enough listings so interested renters have a variety to browse and second they will need apartment brokers who are willing to work with a good deal of uncertainty because there’s no guarantee that a landlord will accept a new lease request. No matter what happens, it’s great to see some innovation in a space that is dying for a makeover.

Before I began graduate school, I decided to take several vocabulary classes. The course fees for the classes was some of the best educational money I ever spent.

At the University of Pennsylvania networking event tonight, Jeff Novich presented his startup VocabSushi. I’ve posted Jeff’s demo below in the first comment slot.

Rather than using flash cards, VocabSushi uses real-world content to help you learn. When you create an account on VocabSushi, they ask what type of exam you are studying for (e.g. SAT, GRE, GMAT).  After you take a diagnostic exam, the system sets your level. They take sentences from popular news sources including the New York Times, Forbes, etc. and then they test you to see if you can correctly identify which word is missing in the sentence. You are also asked for word definitions. There are a variety of difficulty levels that you move through as you answer questions correctly. VocabSushi makes learning big words fun – something that frankly can be very boring.

One of the questions centered around whether there are any copyright issues with the content VocabSushi is basically scraping. Jeff noted that the content is fair-use and they also provide a direct link to the site where the content originated from. The system pulls over 3,000 sentences every day.

Not to be outdone by Foursquare badges, VocabSushi uses soy sauce bottles to display progress.

The business model is two-tier: for consumers they will use the freemium model; VocabSushi also sells a Pro option for test prep schools and tutors.

When it comes to chocolate candybars, my top 3 are Twix, 3 Musketeers and M&Ms. As of late I’ve been hearing more and more about new Internet startups that are creating completely custom chocolate bars.

Earlier this month Peter from Web2NewYork interviewed Carmen Magar from German-based CreateMyChocolate which just launched in the U.S. I’ve also spoken with a stealth chocolate startup based in Switzerland that will also be launching soon.

NY-based Chocomize launched last December and also provides a custom chocolate bar service. The Chocomize service was started by 3 students at Columbia University.

The ordering process is very easy – you select the type of Belgian chocolate you want (dark, milk or white) and then select your toppings. Below you can see some of the candy toppings which include Nerds and PopRocks. They even have vegetarian bacon. There are about 100 toppings in the following categories: nuts, seeds, fruits, herbs/spices, candy and decorations.

Some of the other wacky toppings include potato chips, cayenne peppers, beef jerky, good and plenty and cinnamon.

In my creation testing, the bars ranged from $5-10 which is on par with buying a chocolate bar at the Times Square Hershey and M&M stores and a bit more expensive than buying a prepackaged candy bar. Chocomize currently only ships inside the U.S.

Chocomize looks perfect for corporate events and customer thank you gifts – especially if they would create smaller size options.

What would you customize a chocolate bar with? Leave your perfect chocolate bar in the comments.