Andy Slater joined music community Soundclick last Summer as head of ad sales. Will the decade-old Silicon Alley company push for a breakthrough in 2008?

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Zude Co-Founder Jim McNeil explains how Zude is a fully customizable personal online space where users can grab and share pictures, objects, widgets and information allowing them to communicate with their friends and contacts in a way not possible on Facebook or Myspace. Zude effectively allows anyone to easily create and maintain their very own website.

What we learned about Zude:

• Allows users to organize, publish and share their digital assets
• Uses a premium ad unit model allowing only one perishable ad on any given page
• Zude platform is a social media community with exchangeable objects

To keep toxic materials out of landfills and incinerators, the City Council is proposing a new law mandating the recycling of electronic products. It requires manufacturers of such products as cell phones, computers and CD players to set up free and accessible recycling centers for their products.

Although the bill is expected to be passed by the council, the Bloomberg Administration has shown concern about the burden it would place on those manufacturers. And the bill was first introduced in mid 2006.

So in case things take a while, and you really like the idea, there are some options in the mean time:

The federal Environmental Protection Agency recently announced a recycling partnership with many cell phone manufacturers and major electronics retailers AT&T, Best Buy and Office Depot. Users can drop off electronic accessories at these locations. (via Inhabitat)

And Earth 911 provides a large list of organizations who offer electronic recycling locations in your neighborhood.

Retailers in the city that sell rechargeable batteries have been required since late 2006 to provide recycling drop offs at their stores. (Has anybody seen one?) In this case, a non-profit organization named Call2Recycle actually does the recycling.

Schools, city agencies, businesses and institutions located here are also already required recycle computer equipment.

Just announced:

It seems that the Silicon Alley Insider has opened a job board for digital jobs in New York City.

Long term readers of this blog will remember that classifieds were one of the 3 ways I thought SAI could monetize, so I’m pleased to see this happen if only to think they took my advice (not that it was an earth shattering observation then or now).

Classifieds are a great business (occasional-SAI-contributor Alan Mutter puts it at a $44 billion/year for newspapers) and I think this is a smart move on SAI’s part, if only to see how much they can diversify their revenue.

I do wonder — here’s the personal anecdote test — if I had to leave BricaBox right now and “get a real job,” where would I’d start to look for something in New York, something high quality (management), and in the startup, tech, or digital media space?

Perhaps I could check out TheLadders (also invested in by SAI co-founder/investor Kevin Ryan) or an industry job board or two, but those aren’t NY centric? CenterNetworks has a job board which is mostly NYC-centric, but it also has a lot of jobs for other cities too.

What’s clear is that being The Spot for New York Tech Jobs is a position which hasn’t been won outright by anyone yet, and that job seekers, job posters, and SAI alike would benefit greatly from having this all consolidated with them.

Hopefully I won’t be looking for a new job any time soon, but if I do, I’ll certainly report back as to where I found it in the end. For now, here’s a question:

Where did you find your web startup, tech or new media job?

NY-based IAC is shaking up management across some of their divisions today. Let's see if I can give you the nitty gritty on the changes.

• Jim Safka has been named CEO of Ask.com. He will also continue in his role as CEO of Primal Ventures, a new-venture entity that identifies seeds and incubates business opportunities for IAC.
• Jim Lanzone is out as CEO of Ask.com to serve as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Venture Capital firm, Redpoint Ventures.
• Scott Garell has been named President of Ask.com, where he will report to Mr. Safka noted above.
• John Park will replace Mr. Garell and is named President of IAC Consumer Applications and Portals, which includes Smiley Central, Webfetti, Zwinky, My Fun Cards, CursorMania, Popular Screensavers, Excite.com, iWon, and My Way. Can you imagine telling people you are the President of Zwinky?
• Peter Horan, CEO of IAC Media and Advertising since January 2007, will continue to oversee IAC Advertising Solutions as well as Evite, Pronto, IAC Mobile and Ask Sponsored Listings.

Most of the changes revolve around search engine Ask. Yesterday at the Citibank conference, IAC head Barry Diller said, "We certainly have not bitten an inch out of the hide of Google...I've been daunted by the progress of that." 

I said this as part of my review of the Wikia Search engine and have said it before regarding Mahalo. The switching costs for search engines are very high currently. Google is the Kleenex of search and so there's really no reason to switch. And advertisements like the ones Ask ran earlier this year don't help matters. Barry/Jim, I've got plenty of ideas on how to turn things around. Give me a call sometime. In addition, I wrote a lengthy piece in April with ways to fix Ask.

With an estimated 4,200 public and private cameras in Lower Manhattan alone, New Yorkers should just resolve to frequently being captured on ‘film,’ right? Well not if the Institute of Applied Autonomy can help it. The technology and activist group has created a map called iSee Manhattan, where a user can plot their journey through the city, and the map will send them on the “path of least surveillance.”

Say goodbye to your schedule, however: You might need to go pretty far out of your way to avoid cameras, as the map above shows. And with the Police Department planning another 3,000 in the area, you might end up having to go through Jersey to get from Wall Street to Union Square.

But why would anybody feel the need to do such a thing?

“We all do things that are perfectly legal, but that we still may not want to share with the rest of the world. Kissing your lover on the street, interviewing for a new job without your current employer’s knowledge, visiting a psychiatrist – these are everyday activities that constitute our personal, private lives,” the site says of the average Joe. ” While there is nothing wrong with any of them, there are perfectly good reasons why we may choose to keep them secret from coworkers, neighbors, or anyone else.”

But they offer specific reasons for activists, “outsiders,” and minorities, among other subgroups.
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NY-based MediaWhiz has merged their AuctionAds product into their newer ShoppingAds product. This makes sense and I knew it was coming as soon as ShoppingAds launched several months ago. It makes sense because now publishers can show more than just eBay ads as was the case with AuctionAds. Check out our previous AuctionAds coverage.

From the blog announcement: ShoppingAds is a hybrid product that serves both CPA (cost per action) ads provided by eBay and CPC (cost per click) ads provided by our shopping comparison engine partners. The other significant change is the ability for you to become a Premium Publisher. By becoming a premium publisher you will have the opportunity to be paid on a CPC (cost per click) basis for all your US and Canadian traffic while you can monetize your international traffic on a CPA (cost per action) basis. Standard publisher’s traffic will be monetized 100% on a CPA basis.

From what I've seen using ShoppingAds on some of my sites, the key is to get others to signup as you earn a percentage of their created revenue as well. The one thing I've mentioned a bunch of times is that they need to add a link to signup inside of the widget. This would drive more signups I believe.

Here's a live widget from ShoppingAds:

Gomobo

Gomobo was one of the slickest presentations I have seen at a Tech Meetup. Typically the products are presented by techies that cant talk, but Gomobo's founder was slick, fast, and got to the point. I am not saying the product is earth shaking (its not) but it does serve a need. Basically its a service where you can text in your order to a bunch of restaurants via a cell phone. Not that deep. But very nicely done.

Tagiton

I think, I'm smart, I think I'm smart, I know I'm smart, I know I'm smart!

Unfortunately I am not smart enough to understand what Tagiton does. But then again I barely get Facebook which they say they are kinda like, but based around your email contacts. Oh well.

Gilt Group

Luxury brand name stuff sold at sample sale prices online, sold by a hot chick. Nuff said.

Ok well not quite nuff said. It appear they have a few sales a week of specific items. So initially they won't have a great breadth of stuff. They organize the sales themselves, take all the pictures of the merchandise etc. Obviously there is a market here. But I doubt they will ever sell anything I care about as I suspect it will be totally female focused.

Blockles

Tetris + talk. A slick app written in flash. I'd love to know more about the framework they use. He said it was homegrown, and given that they wrote is app in 15 days, I bet there is some opportunity for these guys to leverage their brand with their development framework like the 37signals guys do by making rails available open source, or by maybe even selling it.

Tablexchange

They allow people to sell their highly coveted reservations. I'm not sure this will work but interesting idea. Scott asked who thought this was genius, who thought it was evil, and who thought both. I think the evil crowd won but I'm not sure.

Anyway, I asked if they had Rao's in the system. No one got it so I will explain here. Rao's is the hardest reservation in New York to get. Essentially if you don't know someone you're not getting in. They have eight tables and the regulars have life long standing reservations. Calling five years advance will not help you. One of the regulars has to give you their table. Anyway the place is, as I understand it, kinda mobbed up, and someone was murdered there a few years ago so maybe you just wanna go to Fairway and just buy a bottle of their pasta sauce instead.

US First

This is basically a promotional site for Dean Kamen's FIRST robotics competition for super smart high school kids. They build robots which fight each other. This is a very worthy cause but does not present well at a meetup. Perhaps they could have brought a robot!

Tonight was the January 2008 edition of the NY Tech Meetup. Six companies took to the stage, my comments and videos are below. I am quite disappointed that neither leader Scott nor his assistant replied either here on CN or in the mailing list to the ideas I raised. Oh well I guess. I've decided to provide my raw notes and immediate feedback on each startup that presented.

GoMobo

GoMobo lets you place an order for a fastfood joint you like online or by text message so that you can avoid the line and go directly to the pickup point. It's a good idea, and the demo looked good but will it really save that much time? I just know that when I get to Dunkin Donuts to pick up the coffee that I just ordered, that they won't have it ready, it will be in the wrong place, etc. They currently have 200 locations in NYC in the system and are in 8 other cities. Establishments are reporting a 5% uptick in incremental revenue. I am not sure it's incremental since I would go to the place anyway and wait on line. This demo left me wanting to learn more, I will try to get a real interview with the team later this week.

TagItOn

I can't comment on TagItOn because I have no idea what it does. The demo left me wondering what it is, does and why it's alive. It's not tags for content, I guess it's like "tag you're it". Apparently you can friend people in different degrees and then do things with them. Other than that, your guess is as good as mine. They really need to work on this demo before they show it ever again.

Gilt Groupe

You should know Gilt by now, they've had numerous posts on Silicon Alley Insider :) Founder Alexis Maybank presented the app by basically showing a bunch of half-naked women in lingerie and I guess they are all at sale prices (no, not the women). It's all short-term sales of clothing and accessories from top designers. Basically online closeout sales. Site is kind of ugly. They have 3-4 sales a week and are adding mens clothing soon. Unfortunately Scott ended their demo at the 3:30 mark so I don't have many more comments about it. Seems like it could work pretty well. Perhaps my stylish friend Patricia could provide more insight into Gilt Groupe.

Blockles

iminlikewithyou sure gets a lot of love from the Tech Meetup - perhaps the most I've seen to-date. They presented several months ago and "got away" with a flash demo and tonight they got to pimp both iminlikewithyou and their new game Tetris Blockles. I wish I could remember the name of the game that was the same as this back in 2000. I think it was on AOL but Blockles is basically a multi-player tetris. It's very good looking. You get gems which give you superpowers and you can screw with your opponents. It's not a new concept at all, but the iminlikewithyou crowd will eat it up like a hot Krispy Kreme. Dude from the service says current average time on site is 45 mins per day per player. Dude uses a lot of curse words for cheap crowd cheers.

TableXchange

Here's the idea. You have a reservation at your favorite top-of-the-line, you ain't getting it if you ain't Jason Calacanis kind of place. But you can't make it. Rather than call the place and tell them you can't make it, you can slap your reservation up on TableXchange and make money on it! This Hannah Montana! The audience immediately asked why you couldn't just make reservations all over town and put them on the site. I already signed up an offshore team to start making reservations in the morning. I think the idea is a good one, the execution will be the downfall of the app. It just sets itself up for abuse.

US First

Not really sure how to explain USFirst but it's a site that helps kids get the most out of technology. They put on various competitions -- the one they showed us was from the Georgia Dome with 27,000 kids and robot technology. The group was founded by the guy who developed the Segway. Check out the video to get more about the company. They are looking for people to participate - either in time or financially.

10ton Co-Founders Matthew Semel and Chris Chang discuss their company's goal of providing creative, engaging, and entertaining online video content ranging from client based spots created directly for advertisers to original, stand alone videos such as their viral success www.getengagedquickly.com. In addition to production capabilities, 10ton.tv also offers site users an online community forum to discuss and learn useful tips to creating successful online video content.

What we learned about 10Ton:

• Dedicated to making creative, entertaining and engaging online video
• Created the viral video "Get Engaged Quickly" to advertise 10Ton's capabilities
• Look to position themselves as experts in the online video production field