bclinesmith via Compfight cc

According to Jennifer Falk, executive director at the Union Square Partnership, increased use of iPhones and the like put pressure on the network they set up in 2008. So, USP contracted with Sky-Packets, which partners with the Bryant Park Restoration Group, to revamp the system. Sponsored by Beth Israel Medical Center, USP will be adding new technology to two existing antennae at the north and south ends of the park, as well as adding a third antenna at 18th and Broadway.

"This will be a 1,001 percent increase over the old system," Falk said.

People eating at outdoor cafes around the square should be able to log onto "USP Park Wifi," too. The only downside we can think of is faster video upload times for Union Square's notorious peeper population. Dammit.

[@sydbrownstone][sbrownstone@villagevoice.com]

Art or commerce? Somebody may be the judge.

Think about it like a phone system: The Internet operates on just a handful of top-level domains (TLDs) -- like .com and .org -- that function like area codes. Right now, the internet needs more of them. And pretty soon it's going to thousands of them: .law, .house, .gay, .soccer, pretty much anything you can think of. But that's not the radical part. See, unlike area codes, TLDs need someone to run them -- and the saga of .art is a microcosm of what that might mean for the artistic community, and for the Internet itself.

By now, we're sure you've heard of it. Why? Because the President has done one. And so has a participant on MTV's deceased wonder "Pimp My Ride." Pretty much everyone currently significant in pop culture has signed on for the ride.

But, last weekend, the AMA was localized for our viewing pleasure. On Friday, the Reddit community welcomed a 26-year-old cabbie from the Big Apple with open arms. The twentysomething gave this description about himself:

I'm not the typical New York City cab driver. I'm younger and I was born and raised in the USA. I went to prep school and four year university. I have been moonlighting, sometimes heavily, for 3 years. I'm working full time now until the end of the summer when I'm quitting for good. I work the night shift.

Transportation truths we've all been thinking about definitely ensued. Here's a few that every New Yorker should read:

The most memorable of those expressions of outrage against SOPA came a year ago Friday when a number of the most prominent websites, including Wikipedia and Reddit, participated in an Internet Blackout--urging users to reach out to their congressmen and senators to kill the bill.

In light of the recent death of dedicated Internet activist Aaron Swartz, who was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment a little more than a week ago, and the many threats to Internet freedom that still exist--techies, activists and users alike are guarded in their celebration of last year's victories.

"What we've heard after last year is that in this legislative calendar, nobody really plans to address copyright enforcement...Even a year after the SOPA protests, it's still considered toxic on The Hill," Parker Higgins, an activist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells the Voice. "That's a good thing, but we also know that won't last forever, and that it's not an absolute either."

Screenshot of Wikipedia Page for '2012'

The minute December 1st was upon us, the Internet and print media alike began to fill its shelves and papers with content-heavy, link-heavy and rank-heavy lists, all of which give the reader some sort of guidance as to what actually happened over the past 365 days. Of course, we here at the Voice were guilty of it, too: we put together 'Top 10 Films of 2012,' 'Our Favorite Books Of 2012,' and the like. And you should read every single one of them.

In that essay -- if you want to call something so rambling and self-indulgent an essay -- ex-New York Post gossip columnist/current XOJane Deputy Editor Mandy Stadtmiller describes how a handful of dates she went on with Sorkin wound up inspiring the Oscar-winning writer. The piece includes screenshots of e-mail convos between Stadtmiller and Sorkin, photos of birthday flowers he sent her at the Post (and the handwritten card that went with them), as well as quotes from their conversations.

Now, we really don't feel like picking apart Stadtmiller's piece line by line -- it was hard enough to read the first time, as it has the vibe of a Cat Marnell screed minus the uppers.

Here's what it did make us think about, though: Sure, Stadtmiller divulged a lot of personal shit about her interactions with Sorkin sans his permission(she claims he said 'OK,' see update) -- the piece is a classic example of the unstructured, hyper-confessional oversharing characteristic of so much internet-age writing.

But is oversharing like this necessarily a bad thing?

Really Old Subtitles

This specific case provides some info about how movie and music studios treat subtitles in the U.S., too.

Verizon has apparently decided to protect your privacy, despite demands that the internet service provider ID subscribers suspected of copyright infringement.

And the company's decision -- as well as other recent developments intellectual property realm -- might have broad implications.