The New York Tech Blog

If you think startup businesses are for grown-up adults who’ve been well into their late twenties and thirties, then you haven’t heard of 20 year-old Jessica Mah, who is currently building her own startup called inDinero.

inDinero is a software management tool that helps a business manage its finances and other activities. inDinero not only manages the business’s finances, it also helps keep track of where the money is being spent, and how much is going in. As a management tool, inDinero will help business owners spend less on unnecessary expenses and invest their money on more important things.

inDinero is not the first startup Jessica Mah has founded; it was, in fact, her third. The first startup she founded was at the age of 13. Skipping a few grade levels allowed her to enter college at the age of 15 in the University of California, Berkeley, where she took up Computer Science. It was also in Berkeley where she found her second startup called internshipIN.com.

Jessica is currently closing in on a deal with hot investors for inDinero, which includes Dave McClure from 500 Startups, Fritz Lanman from Microsoft, and Jawed Karim from YouTube. After a week, Jessica might be walking away from the deal with a big $1.5 million in her pocket as seed funding for inDinero. Some reports even tell of Jessica declining some investors. Looks like Jessica is one start-upper everyone wants to rub elbows with.

Though she’s not the only young entrepreneur who’s worked successfully from the ground up, Jessica Mah is a star in her own category in the startup business. A definite inspiration for young aspiring web upstarts all around.

via TechCrunch

New York City is fast becoming the newest home for many startups, and TechStars is taking notice. This year, TechStars will be expanding to the NYC, along with three previous cities it has touched: Colorado, Boston, and Seattle.

TechStars is a startup incubator that aims to turns good ideas to excellent ones, and eventually letting those ideas turn into businesses. Founded in 2006 in Boulder, Colorado, TechStars has already initiated 40 startups, and counting. Although TechStars only provides a small $6000 per founder for a three-month program, it does give out a lot of mentorship that will go a longer way than the 6K will.

The incubator is tapping into some NYC mentors who’ve tasted sweet victory from their own startups. Mentors will include Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai of Foursquare, David Karp of Founder, VC Fred Wilson, Chris Dixon of Hunch (who also happens to be a seed investor), Roger Ehrenberg of IA Ventures, CEO Howard Lindzon of StockTwits, CEO Avner Ronen of Boxee, President Jon Steinberg of BuzzFeed, and Justin Shaffer of Hot Potato.

Dave McClure of 500 Startups and Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC are also on the list of mentors, albeit living in California. Among these names, future startup will sure be in good hands.

TechStars thrive by collecting from each startup’s common stock a 6 percent equity stake, but doesn’t take any seats at BOD’s. CEO David Cohen and David Tisch are raising their expectations with ten NYC-based startups for their opening class.

via TechCrunch

If you’re part of the populace who are having a hard time reading online maps, even when it’s Google or Bing Maps, then the new UpNext just might be your solution to understand everything about them.

UpNext is a NYC-based, 4-person startup that utilizes 3D mapping to tour users around locations. UpNext calls their 3D-mapping system the Fluid Labelling System. With regular computer maps, what you get are virtual pushpins that move around lines and shapes. With UpNext, not only will you see the street lines and the roads, but you get to see the buildings as well. You can zoom in on the building to see other landmarks below it, turn the map around, and even change the profile and see the city on its side profile.

UpNext also features different types of searches, such as the Tap Search, in which you can tap into any building and see what’s inside it, and even a building directory. Category Search lets you find multiple locations under a certain category. If you’re looking under the category “Comedy Clubs”, the search will give you multiple results, and will update the results as you move around the UpNext maps.

Another great thing about the UpNext Fluid Labelling System is that it’s personalized. Users can check in on their friends through the Friend Finder: where they are, where they have been, and who they’re with. You can also check out Foursquare’s ratings of different places to give you the best experience in the city. Reviews and tips from other users are also available.

UpNext doesn’t only cover locations and landmarks, it also covers transportation as well. You can research the routes and stops of different public transportation modes, and even get alerts to let you catch your ride early.

The UpNext app is available for free. And, aside from NYC, the app also covers seven other cities: Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Portland, San Francisco, and Austin. The app can be used on an iPad or an iPhone. So far, there have been over 170,000 downloads of the apps, and counting. You might want to get a free download of the app if your city is included in coverage, lest the startup decides to program a beta version for a little fee.

via TechCrunch

“I like your mom, but why is she poking me?” If you’ve ever asked this question to your college roommate whose mom is your FaceBook contact, then you’ll be glad to hear that CollegeOnly will be free from poking moms.

NYC-based CollegeOnly is a social network that works like FaceBook only, as its name suggests, it’s exclusive for college students like the big FB once was. The social network was recently opened to the public last week.

CollegeOnly was founded by Josh Weinstein, who saw the need for the college demography to have its own social networking site, as compared to FaceBook which welcomes everyone to their network. CollegeOnly will allow students to upload pictures and post comments on their wall without having to ask, “what if my parents see this?”

College Only found funding support from companies like FirstMark Capital and Softbank. Other angel investors included IAC/Highline VP, David Kidder, David Tisch, and Peter Thiel, one of the co-founders of PayPal and an investor of FaceBook back in the day.

Obviously, CollegeOnly will not be open to the public and will remain exclusive for college students. So, if you find yourself graduating soon, get ready to be “expelled” from CollegeOnly.

Aside from CollegeOnly, Josh Weinstein had also founded other college-exclusive sites such as RandomDorm and GoodCrush, both of which helped seeded the capital for their newest sibling site, CollegeOnly. Expect CollegeOnly to have students pouring in on the site for the next few months.

Foursquare has recently grabbed the largest digital billboard in Times Square for their large-scale advertisement. The billboard display features multi-level and multi-angle screens that exhibit what users can do with Foursquare: “Check in, find your friends, unlock your city.”

Although Foursquare is very well-funded by many angel investors and supporting companies, it has never been able to afford this big an advertisement. But thanks to American Eagle, the brand that paid for and owns the ad space, Foursquare can now reach millions of New Yorkers to be aware of the social network.

With the large-scale advertisement, Foursquare also got the chance to even the score with its main competitor, Gowalla, also a location-based social network who was also featured in the large billboard this year.

The Foursquare advertisement was designed by the company’s own designer, Mari Sheibley. The ad also included an ad for American Eagle in smaller print. Interested users will find “specials” if they check in at American Eagle stores.

A second installment of the Foursquare ad might be in the works as we speak. With Foursquare already hitting the big three million user mark last weekend, it won’t be hard to increase the numbers up to another million with Times Square advertisements today and other ads that are coming soon.

• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-23: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-16: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-0… http://bit.ly/9MgtVo #

Did you ever have a friend who insists on taking pictures of your food before you take a bite and eat away the presentation on the plate with your fork? Then he’s probably a member of Foodspotting, the startup that lets people take pictures of food and share it with anyone. Whether you like it or, our love of food is what binds us all as human beings, and Foodspotting just pushed the right button in making that love for food turn into a full-fledged online community. Just recently launched this year in January, the startup has already stored in its service over 100,000 food pictures.

Foodspotting is not just about food, but about travelling and discovering the culture of a place through its food. Because of this, Foodspotting has just purchased the domains sightspotting.com and goodspotting.com, but it is keeping mum for a while as to what focus those domains will be. Looks like Foodspotters will have to be surprised.

The new domains were just a couple of high points for Foodspotting. Recently, the service also became available as an iPhone app in the name of Foodspotting 2.0. Partnerships with Zagat and the Travel Channel are formed to further make for growth and exposure. And now, angel investors have pooled in their money and have given $750,000 of funding capital.

Companies who joined the team of investors were Felicis Ventures of Aydin Senkut, 500 Startups of Dave McClure, High Line Venture Partners by Shana Fisher, 2020 Ventures and Zelkova Ventures.

Individual angels like Dave Morin of Path, Steve Lee of Google Latitude, Derek Dukes of Dipity, and Dan Martell of Flowtown were also generous enough to give funding.

With Foodspotting on a high, it won’t be a surprise to see them everywhere very soon. Check out Foodspotting and find the good eats wherever you go.

via TechCrunch

If you’re still doubting the success that is called Tumblr, then doubt no more: Tumblr has just broken the record with more than a billion posts, and still going for more.

Before crossing over the billions-posts mark, the microblogging (they prefer the term tumblelogging) site has already been piling up huge numbers: over 6 million users, 1.5 billion pageviews each month, and 4.5 million new posts a day. No wonder those numbers racked up to a billion posts

The hilarious thing about Tumblr’s billion-posts record was that the counter was only set to count up to 999,999,999 posts, and when the counter was broken, the Tumblr knew it was rocketing off to a new level.

Tumblr was founded in 2007 by New Yorker David Karp, who actually used his own money to fund the blogging platform. Tumblr came out at the time Facebook was making waves as the most popular online community site, but Tumblr made its way to the top.

In 2009, Tumblr had its own Tumblr iPhone app developed by Jeff Rock, and in March 2010, Tumblr became available through Blackberry smart phones through a Mobelux app.

The winning feature of Tumblr was its easy-to-use interface and sign up process, making 75,000 bloggers switch to the blogging platform when it came out. Today, Tumblr has now more than 7 million users, and counting.  It seems Tumblr is going nowhere but up.

via TechCrunch

NYC-based AnyClip has recently experienced a change in leadership as former CEO Aaron Cohen is now replaced by Art Levitt.

Art Levitt was the former CEO of Fandango, a company that gives moviegoers easier access to the movies they want. He has also been the CEO of Menupages.com. In 2009, Cohen became part of AnyClip, and is presently one of the partners at Jerusalem Venture Partners, AnyClip’s lead investor.

Levitt only holds a temporary position as CEO but will soon appoint someone to become the permanent CEO of AnyClip. AnyClip is a video search engine that’s allows users to search for “any clip of any movie, and time.”

AnyClip has yet to become a popular and preferred search service as compared to the phenomenal YouTube. Dealings and agreements with Hollywood studios should be looked into to expand the company’s movie database and content.

Speculations as to the reasons for Aaron Cohen’s departure are varied, such as a disagreement with investors regarding the company’s expenditures, a management disagreement, or for more ‘personal reasons’. Whatever the reason might be, AnyClip is hopeful to gain some improvements with a few changes, even if it means changing the big man on the top. Art Levitt should also be a step ahead to forefront AnyClip’s attempt to make it big, especially with the Hollywood studios.

via Business Insider

In an effort to make the city greener, Park Avenue became the temporary homes for 3 Dumpster Pools of the Macro Sea. As stated in the name, the Dumpster Pools were made from unused dumpsters during the Summer Streets Fair in the NYC early this August.

The Dumpster Pools made its quiet appearance last year in Brooklyn. The Bloomberg Administration loved the idea so much that they commissioned Macro Sea, the company behind the idea, to create an improved version of them for all the people to swim in and enjoy. The Dumpster Pools got a much needed face-lift, from its “guerilla” look to a much more sophisticated one, donning a vibrant red color, and the logo of Macro Sea displayed for everyone onlooker to see.

The Dumpster pools were only 4.6 feet deep, but for safety precautions lifeguards were still stationed to oversee the children. Colorful plastic lifesavers were also available for everyone who can’t swim well. The Dumpster Pools at the park Avenue opened as early as 7AM, so early birds got to take a dip,with less of the crowd and more space to swim through the waters. Last Saturday was the last day the Dumpster Pools were open, and they were disassembled for next year’s affair.

This gave a whole new meaning to dumpster diving, doesn’t it?

via Inhabitat