Mayor Bloomberg has repeated time and time again that he believes New York City will be the next Silicon Valley. And, in some senses, his dream is coming true: SoHo has become a start-up assembly machine, Long Island City is attracting tech-hybrid manufacturers with its large, abandoned warehouses and the list of NYC-born boom companies is growing faster than you can say "I just checked in here on Foursquare." Needless to say, the Big Apple has gone ebusiness.

So, to solidify the present shift, it makes sense to capture the future minds of New Yorkers. Or, in tech talk, ditch the textbooks and just teach the kids how to code.

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On Wikipedia, a blog is defined as a "discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). As you're reading this, you are on the Village Voice's Runnin' Scared news blog and this is a post about how Bloomberg thinks this said post, and others like it, have "dumbed down" the populace. We live in the post-post-modern age; think 'meta' for a second.

In an interview with The Atlantic, the Hozziner criticized people like us (the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad bloggers) for lessening the national intelligence on how we perceive, understand and react to news. However, the Mayor is still unsure just exactly what a blog is. This lack of definition was seen in his inability to distinguish a blog from a newspaper: "I don't know what the difference between a blog and a newspaper is... sometimes they have different standards, even under the same logo and name."

A key part in Bloomberg's argument - and he's certainly not the only one to believe this - is that the 'blogosphere' (2006, can you hear me?) creates this overload of information where the truth disappears somewhere in the vapor of the Interwebs. And this may be true but it underlies a main motive of what the blogs are meant to do: take a news story, analyze its players and come to a conclusion beyond the headline.

This is exactly what I'm doing right now (or at least trying to do) with this story about Bloomberg's anti-blog rhetoric. Everything is 'meta,' remember?

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If there's any way to get consumers on your side in the Digital Era, it's to make sure they have connection anywhere and everywhere to the World Wide Web on your tab. In other words, providing free Wi-Fi is a damn smart method of promotion because, regardless if you even want to buy the product, it's a win-win situation for both you and the provider. You get your Wi-Fi and they get your attention.More »

It seems like almost every day, we read a story that makes the social network come off as that much creepier and then proceed to open a new tab on our browser, pull up Facebook and scan our notifications. And this one, in regards to marketing, it is a real doozie.More »

The Hozziner has his eyes set on the tech industry, repeating over and over that he wants New York City to become the new Palo Alto, the new Mountain View and the new Copertino - all hubs of some of the past decade's greatest innovations. Progress is rapidly being made to make that dream a reality: SoHo and Dumbo have become the new destinations for start-ups, NYU-Poly is proposing tech incubators left and right in Downtown Brooklyn and Bloomberg just signed off on Cornell's new applied sciences graduate school on Roosevelt Island.
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Twitter + Swoosh = Twoosh.

Have you ever really nailed a tweet? After typing your message, you know you used those 140 characters to the best of your ability? Then you just wait for the RTs to start pouring in (if you don't use Twitter, we apologize in advance for this entire post).

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The art of resume-writing is exaggeration; we are all taught to transform "filing" into "transferral of paper entities" and "job" into "duties and responsibilities." Our listed activities and interests are always hobbies we dream of doing on our free time ("fly-fishing," "biking up mountains," etc.). And everyone knows you aren't proficient in MS Excel because no one really is. They're not lies - just simple abstractions to mete out a conversation come interview time.More »

Should we be penalizing people like this or just accept that it's a (sometimes hilarious) side-effect of the Information  Age? The authorities in Fort Lee, New Jersey, are choosing the former.

In a recent quasi-legal move, police officers in the village have shifted their position on "twexting" (worst technological lexicon combination ever) and will begin to hit these messengers with a summons ticket if spotted. According to the police chief of the town, 23 accidents have occurred due to the twexting "epidemic," giving his force enough reason to penalize the activity all together. Except one thing: is that legal?

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Photo by Joe Corrigan/Getty Images for AOL, licensed via cc

Today is the first day of TechCrunch Disrupt, the tech-news site's annual three-day conference of exhibitors, panels, and start-up schmoozing, this year held at Pier 94. Each morning's agenda consists of onstage "fireside chats": Tomorrow, for example, will feature Charlie Rose interviewing Ashton Kutcher. But this morning's star was AOL content head Arianna Huffington (after AOL's recent HuffPo acquisition, she is the boss of TechCrunch) who emerged for a panel discussion -- ostensibly about journalism in the social-media age -- to answer questions from email OG Nora Ephron, alongside friend NYU J-school professor Jay Rosen. (TechCrunch co-editor Erick Schonfeld later informed the room that he initially invited New York Times editor Bill Keller to debate the Lady Huff, but that Keller "chickened out.")

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