Tomorrow night -- on Tuesday, September 1st -- the NY Tech Meetup will feature 4 presentations of technology and research which originated at New York and Columbia Universities' computer science departments.

It's about time the University and Commercial tech communities did something together. This is why you should RSVP for it now:

The "NY tech community" as most of our 10,000 members consider it, is largely comprised of people in the commercial world. We are entrepreneurs, investors, service providers, and technologist-employees in companies large and small.

For the most part, in the commercial world, we do an amazing job at solving tech's medium-sized and important problems. If you're lucky enough to work a small handful of our member startups and you work on something like Health Care, you're among the few working on a super-sized problem and massively important.

However, for the most of us in the private, commercial space, we're at our best when giving you the ability to find what bars your friends are in or edit images in browsers or even serve advertisements in effective manners.

Great stuff. Innovative stuff. But that's not always where revolutionary technology comes from.

Universities are hugely important pieces of a technology ecosystem because they often produce revolutionary technology (TCP/IP, Apache, Mosaic, Google), and thus should be cornerstones of our communities.

However, in New York City, we fail at integrating our University and Commercial technology communities.

Until now. Tomorrow night we're showing off 4 amazing demos from some innovative teams located at NYU and Columbia University. You'll learn about "Musically Intelligent Machines," "Teaching Robots to See" and much, much more.

So come out and celebrate this great research happening in our back-yard.

It's important.

The ClickZ Network is the largest resource of interactive marketing news, information, commentary, advice, opinion, research, and reference in the world, online or off. Clickz Expert Christine Beardsell address whether it better to target your Web shows and what's the best way to measure digital video success in her latest interview with For Your Imagination's CEO and co-founder Paul Kontonis in "Exploring Brand Content Video". The interview provides insight into For Your Imagination's proven branded entertainment methodology. Christine is the Vice President and Group Creative Director of Digitas's brand content group, The Third Act,  has an amazing ability to weave media, tech, and channel smarts to inform deep interactive experiences and you follow her on twitter.com/beardsell. Thanks Christine!

NYConvergence ORIGINAL

Blazetrak, set to launch in September, offered a sneak preview of their new service last night at the office of AMP3PR located in Manhattan's Flatiron District neighborhood.

The service, founded by Corey Stanford, Ronald A. Harrison, Nathaniel Casey, and McKinley Joyner III, plans to offer users direct access to the "world's top professionals in the areas of music, screen/stage, fashion/design, sports, business," and other areas.  Stanford is based in the company's NYC office.

The demo which the founders provided was of a fictional young woman interested in having feedback on a song which she had written.  Using Blazetrak, "she" was able to upload the song for a fee paid by credit card to be reviewed by record producer Big Boi and receive both written and video feedback from him within 30 days.  Big Boi, as it turns out, is actually signed up to offer users feedback when the service goes live.  He and other professional participants receive payment for reviewing user-submitted materials such as this "artist"'s song.  

Andrew Graham | MediaPost's Just An Online Minute

Lions, Tigers, and Spyware on Phones, Oh My!

Mobile spyware is the focus of the tech media’s latest frenzy. It started when a hacker discovered that the Pre sends back location data about users to Palm.  Next, a blogger ‘discovered’ that certain iPhone apps also phone home.  The frenzy came to a head when ReadWriteWeb published Dear iPhone Users: Your Apps are Spying on You.

(from www.flickr.com/photos/gerlos/3119891607/)

This article focused on the NYC-based iPhone Analytics company Pinch Media. The issue? Pinch Media’s software allows developers to learn a lot about their users: Apps with geolocation features can return information about the location of their users. Apps using Facebook Connect can even return demographic information (gender and age) about their users.

Of course, there’s no personally identifiable information here. It’s all aggregate anonymous information — and this has been Pinch Media’s response to the issue. Tracking anonymous information for benign purposes is analytics — not spyware. At the end of the day, developers simply don’t know all that much about their individual users. It’s not like they can identify them by name, right? RIGHT?

Well, um, on that note… we know the full name and location of each and every Android user with our app.

How?!  Did we build in some sneaky spyware into Exit Strategy NYC?

Nope.  Google tells us. This information is part of the Google checkout process behind android app purchases.  Each app download contains the full name of the user:

Clicking on the order number reveals a more detailed page containing the billing city and zip code of the user:

Creepy?  Absolutely.  A google/facebook/linkedin search can reveal incredibly detailed information about every android user with our app. Furthermore, this information is pushed on us — I certainly didn’t choose to see this detail about our users!

Seeing this level of user information displayed was extremely alarming at first. But when you think about it, it’s really not that surprising. Google Android purchases are processed through Google Checkout — the same system that applies to e-commerce transactions.  Certainly I would need to know my customers’ personal information if I were shipping a physical product.  Should digital purchases be any different?

Users of the open-source platform for viewing personal media will now be able to access more than 60,000 Magnify Web video channels through an application which Magnify has created for the platform according to a press release received from the company.  Also a NYC-based startup, Magnify's technology powers community and niche video Web sites for publishers.

 Mediabistro provides opportunities to meet, share resources, become informed of job opportunities and interesting projects and news, improve career skills, and showcase creative work and on Wednesday, August 19, 2009, they will be presenting the "Producing Online Entertainment Content" panel and dicussion. Tribeca Cinemas, 54 Varick Street in New York City, will play host to the panel of experts moderated Manoush Zomorodi and featuring Heather Gold of the Heather Gold Show, Adam Eland of Bright Red Pixels, Colin Moore of IFC.com, Dina Kaplan of blip.tv, Diane de Cordova of NextNewNetworks and Paul Kontonis of For Your Imagination. This panel discussion will focus on the growing business of the digital studio, the tools you need to produce for new media, and how to develop programming to attract ad dollars and syndicate across media platforms. For more information and to register visit mediabistro.com.

Founded by Outright and Network Solutions, The Unintentional Entrepreneur delivers much needed resources for business growth and success to small businesses, including an online resource of articles, trips and guides for new business owners. For Your Imagination will be host to the New York meeting on August 13th, register at http://ueny.eventbrite.com. We look forward to seeing you there!