NYC Startups Offer Each Other Power, Internet After Sandy

Following Hurricane Sandy, members of the New York startup community have extended offers of help fellow entrepreneurs and other residents of the tri-state area caught without power and Internet by the storm.

Social discovery startup Mirror Media, based out of Lower Manhattan’s Flatiron neighborhood, opened its offices Wednesday to entrepreneurs seeking power, Internet and workspace.

“As a startup founder and CEO, I understand how important it is to be productive. Each day is critical in the life of a startup,” said Mirror’s Daniel Mattio. “We have the available space to help New York entrepreneurs who may not have power in their homes or current workspaces. It’s the least we can do to help out fellow entrepreneurs in the New York area.”

Providing much-sought charging stations, Moxy is offering free cellphone charging and Wi-Fi to New Yorkers in need. Chase Bank invited Moxy to set up shop inside of one of its branches, to create a hub for lower Manhattan residents, who are still without power.

SEE ALSO: 7 Ways to Help Victims of Superstorm Sandy Online

Zaarly launched a virtual marketplace where people from around the country can purchase local services for New Yorkers, such as a basement cleaning, cooked meals or room painting. The startup is donating all proceeds toward the American Red Cross.

“People were asking if you know anyone in New York who needs help,” Bo Fishback, CEO of the San Francisco-based company told Mashable. “We spent a year and a half building a platform for the most talented and skilled people in New York, so we reached out to our sellers and many said they were able and ready to help out.”

AirBnB, which matches travelers with accommodations, is waiving fees on all properties in the areas affected by the hurricane. The startup was inspired when one seller offered her rooms for free to victims of the storm.

The New York Tech Meetup created a Google Doc where small businesses, non-profits, schools or government entities can ask for technology assistances following the devastation. The group will try to match requests with volunteers able to help.

Have you heard of any other startups helping in the wake of the storm? Let us know in the comments.

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"No traffic on the FDR today. This was all under water the night before. It's amazing how a storm like Sandy can completely shut down an entire city."

Via WanderingtheWorld

South Ferry Station, Manhattan

A submerged escalator at the South Ferry subway station in Lower Manhattan. Via MTA

"Bleeker Street Pizza: OPEN- The electricity was still out, but they were making pizza anyway, with the help of their gas-fired oven and a few spelunker head lamps."

Via Nick Sherman

East Village at Avenue C, Manhattan White Hall subway station in NYC

A tree uprooted in Long Island, New York. Via nikki_skye

"Main St. After Hurricane Sandy" Via DumboNYC

"Jane's carousel is basically an island now. Poor horses." Via andjelicaaa

Red Cross Digital Command Center

"President Obama visits the American Red Cross Digital Command Center following Hurricane Sandy"

Via Dell

"Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Long, Jr., the Adjutant General of Virginia, visits Soldiers from the 2nd Squadron, 183rd Cavalry Regiment Oct. 30 in Portsmouth, Va. "

Via Virginia Guard Public Affairs

Piscataway Township, New Jersey

"Spc. Anthony Monte along with Soldiers from the 50th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, New Jersey Army National Guard, mobilized for Hurricane Sandy provide assistance to displaced residents at an emergency shelter at the Werblin Recreation Center, Piscataway Township, N.J., Oct. 29, 2012."Via U.S. Army

Damaged Space Shuttle Enterprise

"Virginia National Guard Soldiers trudged through high water and cut trees to clear a path for two rescue missions that transported seven adults and one child to safety at two locations on Cattail Road in the Mears, Va. area Oct. 30." Via The National Gaurd

A car that has been smashed by a tree in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Via CSondi

Image courtesy of Flickr, Peter Kaminski

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DIY Videoscribing and Other Awesome Techniques to Enhance Your Videos

I recently published a new video that includes some experimental video techniques that I’ve never used before.

After a post with that video embedded in it went live, within 24 hours I received over 100 emails from people asking how they could recreate the same effects.

Apparently, the effects made my videos look a lot more professional and it helped hold people’s attention, which is exactly what I was going for.

To help answer all the questions that were asked, I’ll go over each of the following for you today:

How to get a blurred background in your videos.How to add pop-up text to your videos.How to get an awesome intro / bumper for your videos.How to DIY videoscribe (the sped up recording of writing or drawings that sync with your audio).

I also have a fun little blooper video that I shot with my son for you at the end of this post too

Let’s get to it…

I’ve re-embedded the video for you below and timestamped the various techniques I was using, for your reference. You can see everything within the first 21 seconds:

(or you can watch this video on YouTube by clicking here)

0:05 – Pop-up Text0:14 – Video Bumper0:21 – Videoscribing

If the background is blurred (also known as “bokeh”) but you’re in focus, it adds a very professional feel to your videos.

Unfortunately, if you’re using a basic flip cam or handheld digital camera for your videos, you won’t be able to get this effect.

The secret is in the lens of the camera that you use, so you’re going to need a DSLR camera and an appropriate lens to get the aesthetic qualities of a blurred background in your videos.

A good DSLR camera isn’t cheap, and neither is the specific kind of lens you need to get this effect (the stock lenses usually won’t work as well), but if you’re going to be shooting professional videos for your business, it could be well worth the investment.

I’m using a Canon Rebel T3i DSLR camera ($499.00) and a Canon EF 50mm f1.4 ($379.00) lens in my most recent videos.

I won’t get into the technical details of how this kind of lens (with a larger apature) works, but the most important thing to do is make sure that when you equip this lens, that you are in focus. The lens will take care of the rest.

With the Canon, you can flip the lcd screen out and around so you can look at yourself when recording, which is really nice. Move the arrows on the back of the cam until the white focus box is where your face will be – then unless you have someone to push record for you, use a remote, like this one, and you’re set.

Pop-up text are words that appear on the screen at the same time you say those words and it’s a very powerful way to engage your audience and really emphasize those important points of your video.

Do it too much, and it lessens the impact – so use this technique wisely.

Here’s a video explaining two methods you can use to create pop-up text on your videos:

(click here to watch just the video intro on YouTube)

My biggest request was about how I added the cool little bumper, or SPI branded animation at the beginning of my video:

(click here to watch just the video intro on YouTube)

I wish I was talented enough to say that I created it on my own, but I’m definitely not!

This is all thanks to SplashEO (affiliate link), a relatively new company that was created by my good friend Gideon Shalwick who I believe is the master of online video. If you need professional looking bumpers and other cool things to enhance your videos, SplashEO is definitely my favorite resource.

I don’t know why it took 53 videos to finally consider using an intro like this, but I’m very happy with the response.

Videoscribing is eye-candy for video viewers.

My first experience with this was in 2010 when a viral video hit my Facebook feed – a lecture called The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

The content was pretty interesting, but what was special was what was shown in the video as this lecture was being spoken.

I’ve embedded the video for you below, but I warn you – it’s hard to stop watching once you start:

(click here to watch just the video intro on YouTube)

The sped up writing and drawing is just really really cool, and definitely keeps my attention the entire time.

I’m not an artist like the professionals who make these videos for a living, but I improvised a DIY way to get the same effect using my electronic white board technique.

I break it down for you in the video below:

(click here to watch just the video intro on YouTube)

And finally, as promised, I created a quick blooper video of some funny moments that my son and I had together. Good times!

(click here to watch just the video intro on YouTube)

I hope you enjoy these video marketing tips (and the bloopers), and have an awesome day!

Cheers!

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Peter Thiel’s Mithril and Two Other Stories You Need to Know

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. Today, we’re looking at three particularly interesting stories.

Peter Thiel Launches Mithril Fund

Angel investor Peter Thiel, best known for his early investment in Facebook, has launched Mithril Capital Management, a late-stage fund with $402 million to spend.

Named after the legendary metal mithril from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the fund will focus on fast-growing tech companies that haven’t yet gone public.

Microsoft Kept Surface a Secret From Its Partners

Microsoft has developed its tablet, Surface, under a veil of secrecy, and not even the company’s PC partners were informed about it, Reuters reports citing people with knowledge of the matter.

Microsoft’s partners such as Acer and Asustek have only heard about Surface a couple of days before the actual announcement this week. “No senior executives heard about the news last week. We’re quite surprised,” said an Acer executive.

Google Maps to Get Waterway Routes for England and Wales

Google will soon add waterway travel routes for England and Wales, the BBC reports.

To map the routes, Google has teamed up with the Canal and River Trust, a charity organization which will be in charge of England and Wales’ water network from July. As a result, Google Maps will be updated with 2,000 miles of canal and river paths.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, mattjeacock

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Auction yer roof! And other ways of streamlining distributed energy

By David Roberts

I’ve been referring somewhat vaguely to “a future that makes sense” in posts recently. It’s something I hope to flesh out over the next year or so. One thing I want to do is lay out some broad principles that would distinguish a FTMS from a continuation of the status quo (which would definitely not make sense).

One of those broad principles involves a shift from centralized hubs of production or decisionmaking to distributed, loosely networked local nodes. I’ll probably write a long, wanky thought piece on this at some point — there’s a lot to say — but for now I just want to point to a great example of the challenges of distribution and how they’re being overcome.

Let’s focus on distribution in energy, though I think the benefits are generalizable. Distributed energy — whether it’s rooftop panels, solar farms in the 2-20MW range, small wind farms, small hydro, geothermal, cogeneration and other waste-heat capture, district heating and cooling, or small biomass generators — has certain advantages over equivalent power from large coal or nuclear plants. It saves on capital costs; it can be built (and financed) in increments, over time, rather than in one big chunk; power sources can be located on marginal or already developed land, closer to loads, saving on transmission costs and inefficiencies; it disperses the economic benefits and political influence of power generation more broadly and equitably.

But with a rise in distributed energy comes a sharp rise in transaction costs. With a coal plant, you’ve got one company, one construction project, one piece of land, and one set of permits. With equivalent distributed energy, you have thousands upon thousands of decisions and negotiations and contracts and permits and other human interactions. Every one of them is a potential source of friction.

For distributed energy to gain competitive advantage, it has to bring down these transaction costs. It can’t match central generation in sheer muscle (or raw dollar-per-mWh, without social costs factored in). It can, however, double down on its intrinsic advantages: nimbleness, flexibility, and speed. That means reducing friction.

Note that reducing the friction of human interactions is not primarily a job for engineers. Information technology will be a revolutionary tool for reducing transaction costs, but the prime movers will be innovators in what we might call social technology — new means of matching consumers with producers, new models of project finance, new ways of structuring and regulating utilities, new methods of assessing market value, that kind of thing. These are problems of organization, economics, and governance, to be solved by social entrepreneurs, not tech nerds. (No offense to tech nerds.)

All of which is a windy preamble to saying: look at this cool thing!

It’s about a new company called Gridbid, which is trying to solve one of these social-technology problems, namely how to connect consumers who want high-quality solar panels and installations with solar companies able to provide them. Thomas Kinshanko, CEO of parent company Habitat Enterprises, told Fast Company:

After speaking with over 100 players in the solar market, we found that solar installers were paying way too much in business development costs (sometimes up to 20% of total project cost) and building and home owners were struggling to find and select high quality, affordable solar installers.

What Gridbid does is auction rooftops. Fill out a short form and the company will assess your roof’s solar potential and estimate your monthly savings. Local installers then bid on the project and you select the best deal. Voila. Transaction costs reduced.

Gridbid seems to be off to a cracking start. It claims to have auctioned more than $300,000 in rooftop solar in its first week online. I have no idea whether the company will succeed or whether rooftop auctions will prove to be an enduring social innovation. But I feel certain that we’ll see dozens of such companies, models, and innovations in coming years, dedicated to easing transactional friction in distributed energy markets. (Another great model, which has taken off lately, is solar leasing. I should probably do a post on that.)

I have argued before that bottom-up distributed energy, not top-down centralized “clean coal” or nuclear generation, is best matched to America’s unique strengths. We’re a post-industrial economy now, best at research, innovation, and developing smart new IT-based services. That’s just what distributed energy markets need!

So why not own this space? It would make a lot of sense.

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Auction yer roof! And other ways of streamlining distributed energy

By David Roberts

I’ve been referring somewhat vaguely to “a future that makes sense” in posts recently. It’s something I hope to flesh out over the next year or so. One thing I want to do is lay out some broad principles that would distinguish a FTMS from a continuation of the status quo (which would definitely not make sense).

One of those broad principles involves a shift from centralized hubs of production or decisionmaking to distributed, loosely networked local nodes. I’ll probably write a long, wanky thought piece on this at some point — there’s a lot to say — but for now I just want to point to a great example of the challenges of distribution and how they’re being overcome.

Let’s focus on distribution in energy, though I think the benefits are generalizable. Distributed energy — whether it’s rooftop panels, solar farms in the 2-20MW range, small wind farms, small hydro, geothermal, cogeneration and other waste-heat capture, district heating and cooling, or small biomass generators — has certain advantages over equivalent power from large coal or nuclear plants. It saves on capital costs; it can be built (and financed) in increments, over time, rather than in one big chunk; power sources can be located on marginal or already developed land, closer to loads, saving on transmission costs and inefficiencies; it disperses the economic benefits and political influence of power generation more broadly and equitably.

But with a rise in distributed energy comes a sharp rise in transaction costs. With a coal plant, you’ve got one company, one construction project, one piece of land, and one set of permits. With equivalent distributed energy, you have thousands upon thousands of decisions and negotiations and contracts and permits and other human interactions. Every one of them is a potential source of friction.

For distributed energy to gain competitive advantage, it has to bring down these transaction costs. It can’t match central generation in sheer muscle (or raw dollar-per-mWh, without social costs factored in). It can, however, double down on its intrinsic advantages: nimbleness, flexibility, and speed. That means reducing friction.

Note that reducing the friction of human interactions is not primarily a job for engineers. Information technology will be a revolutionary tool for reducing transaction costs, but the prime movers will be innovators in what we might call social technology — new means of matching consumers with producers, new models of project finance, new ways of structuring and regulating utilities, new methods of assessing market value, that kind of thing. These are problems of organization, economics, and governance, to be solved by social entrepreneurs, not tech nerds. (No offense to tech nerds.)

All of which is a windy preamble to saying: look at this cool thing!

It’s about a new company called Gridbid, which is trying to solve one of these social-technology problems, namely how to connect consumers who want high-quality solar panels and installations with solar companies able to provide them. Thomas Kinshanko, CEO of parent company Habitat Enterprises, told Fast Company:

After speaking with over 100 players in the solar market, we found that solar installers were paying way too much in business development costs (sometimes up to 20% of total project cost) and building and home owners were struggling to find and select high quality, affordable solar installers.

What Gridbid does is auction rooftops. Fill out a short form and the company will assess your roof’s solar potential and estimate your monthly savings. Local installers then bid on the project and you select the best deal. Voila. Transaction costs reduced.

Gridbid seems to be off to a cracking start. It claims to have auctioned more than $300,000 in rooftop solar in its first week online. I have no idea whether the company will succeed or whether rooftop auctions will prove to be an enduring social innovation. But I feel certain that we’ll see dozens of such companies, models, and innovations in coming years, dedicated to easing transactional friction in distributed energy markets. (Another great model, which has taken off lately, is solar leasing. I should probably do a post on that.)

I have argued before that bottom-up distributed energy, not top-down centralized “clean coal” or nuclear generation, is best matched to America’s unique strengths. We’re a post-industrial economy now, best at research, innovation, and developing smart new IT-based services. That’s just what distributed energy markets need!

So why not own this space? It would make a lot of sense.

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Facebook Timeline: because there is more space for any other competitor in the social network's Zuckerberg

I waited a week before writing this post. A week in which I started to use Facebook with the same curiosity and interest when I created my profile in June 2007.

Zuckerberg has done it again. The introduction of the Timeline is not only the natural evolution of the old profiles, but most of all, is the perfect platform for the digital transposition of its life on social networks that, in recent years, had the merit of having irreversibly changed our habits and the way we interact online.

The concept of the Timeline, to be true, is not an invention of Palo Alto. In the recent past have tried to introduce it, without success, other social networks in complete anonymity. With Facebook will go differently.

Just imagine the possibilities from this time onwards. Facebook was already a hub of information which collected the daily life of millions of people. With the introduction of the Timeline becomes the historical memory of humanity. It's an idea fascinating as impressive. A huge backup of life of millions of people online.

Suddenly Google +, which I always used in parallel and for which I spent all my recent post positive comments, it has become obsolete and very unattractive, distant geological era from its unrivalled competitor. And so, aside from Twitter, is for everyone else.

There is no more space for anyone. Facebook won

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