I attended the New York Tech Meetup for the first time Tuesday night 4/4. This meetup is “show and tell” of new technology for “geeks, investors, entrepreneurs, hackers, anyone that wants to see or show something interesting”. In a nutshell it’s a get together and networking event for tech folks.

I was one of many first-timers there. Given the meetup is limited to 200 people (apparently due to space considerations) the organizer said a lot of regulars were ticked to have been squeezed out.

Anyway, early in the organizer described the presentation format as “Gong Show”. That characterization might be a little strong, but there’s a five minute limit for each presentation (followed by five minutes for questions) and the crowd is definitely critical. I like the format.

There were seven presenters this time. The technologies and products shown were diverse and the presentation approaches varied from from professional and polished to rough and technical.

Here’s my take on each. I’m going totally from memory; next time I will try to take notes so I can provide more (and more accurate) detail. Presentations are listed in the order presented on the meetup agenda, which is not the order in which the presentations actually happened (again, my lack of notes is hampering me).

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Andrew Rasiej, FON

FON is a really interesting service. FON provides a technical framework and business model for connecting folks’ individual Wi-Fi hotspots.

The basic idea is everyone opens their Wi-Fi router to everyone else and in exchange for doing that we all get free, ubiquitous Wi-Fi. Those who cannot or will not share their Wi-Fi can connect to the FON network for $2.00 per day (paid by the day, I think), which is a steal, assuming the network has coverage where you are. Even the broadband providers get a cut, which Andrew said has made them FON supporters.

I think this is a really neat concept, but there are a lot of practical, technical, and business hurdles. (Where’s the coverage? Personally, I’m on the fourth floor of an Upper West Side building and I’m within range of 10 access points as I write this–no one here needs my access point. What about EVDO and HSDPA?)

I’m nowhere near an expert on wireless technologies, but I’m a bit skeptical about this approach. Still, it’s pretty interesting, and I’ll look into it more closely before I commit to EVDO or HSDPA.

Jim Coffman, BlogAmp

This service was not presented particularly well. Based on the bread crumbs in the presentation and a later review of the BlogAmp site it appears to be a Flash-based MP3 player that can play files hosted anywhere, including BlogAmp’s hosting service. One value-add is playback statistics, which is useful but of course can be gleaned using standard Web logs.

Given the weakness of the presentation and the fact any reasonably technical person can download and integrate into their site a free Flash-based MP3 player from SourceForge (like I did about six months ago for a project) I don’t find this service particularly compelling. Maybe I’m missing something.

Tom Kane, Commontales

I’m going to cop out and just link to the Commontales FAQ page to describe it. I sorta got it from the presentation and sorta get it now. Apparently it’s a place to post stories and pictures and build upon them. Supposedly the stuff posted will remain there forever.

I like the concept, but I’m not sure yet on the execution, and given it’s a startup I’m skeptical stuff will be there forever. Maybe I’m missing something on this one, too.

At the very least it needs a better sales pitch. I don’t think I was the only skeptical one in the audience.

Patrick Fitzsimmons, ZipApp

The meetup agenda described this as “building a browser based Excel/Access, allows users to turn their spreadsheets or Access DBs into an online web app” and that overview works for me.

The presenter was talking really quickly as he tried to demonstrate every cool feature of the app in five minutes. There were a bunch of features that were definitely cool, though the coolness was largely due to the fact they were implemented in a browser (using AJAX, of course).

The service is interesting, but there were a lot of valid questions about the target market and eventual competitive threats from Microsoft (via Live services and products such as SharePoint) and the like.

The audience applauded and then lightened up a bit when Patrick confessed he’s a college student who wants to turn this into a business when he graduates.

I’m not sure about the service as it currently stands, but Patrick will be a guy to watch.

Breck, Alias-i

LingPipe is a natural language processing component implemented in Java. I don’t know much about natural language processing, but my sense from the crowd’s response was this software was not particularly unique. It’s open source and free for non-commercial uses. I didn’t get a clear picture of who the customers were.

Mark Hurst, GooTodo

This is one case where I was much more impressed with the presenter and his presentation than I was with the product.

As presented the product is a simple online to-do list that distinguishes itself by being able to convert email forwarded to it into to-do list items. In my book this is a neat feature, but it’s one that could be easily copied by any of the other to-do list services such as Ta-da Lists. Outlook already does what is effectively the same thing–to convert an email message to a task you just drag it to the tasks folder or shortcut.

He emphasized the popular “less is more” approach to feature implementation in selling the benefits of GoTodo. I agree in principle with minimalism, but I personally consider things such as RSS feeds to be a basic requirement for a lot of services nowadays, including to-do lists. RSS feeds are one of things I like about Ta-da Lists–I keep a copy of my personal to-do list on my personalized Google home page. In general I think the “no features is a feature” argument is being stretched a bit thin at this point and this is a good example.

Definitely an impressive individual and a good salesperson, but I’m not sold on the service.

Some other guy, an apparently interesting virus analysis service with a seemingly solid business case

This presenter and presentation were not listed on the agenda, which is a shame because the service presented seemed very interesting. Maybe the omission was intentional; he may want to stay off the radar for now.

In a nutshell the service supposedly will allow analysts to digitally photograph microscope samples and send them to an Internet service that will analyze them. In my mind this is an automated, Internet-based first-level lab analysis.

My description isn’t doing the service justice. I will try to find out more about this and will post a follow up if I do.

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I plan to attend the NY Tech Meetup regularly, at least for the next few months. Though the presentations were mixed the people impressed me and I want to connect with other tech folks in the city, which is something I haven’t done as much as I wished I had in the other cities where I’ve lived. Hopefully there will be room for more than 200 people in the near future, because there’s a lot of interest.

It’s been a good week, a little crazy in places:

• I got back from Asheville at about 1:30 Tuesday morning.
• Tuesday night I hit the NY Tech Meetup. Interesting.
• Wednesday Apple announced Boot Camp. I’ve been wanting to ramble on it ever since.
• Wednesday night I did the New York Flyers group run. It was a better-than-usual night. Good company.
• Thursday was a low-key night. I rode my bike for the first time in a couple weeks.
• Today I went to Bryant Park after work and chilled for a while. Very therapeutic. I ran into my neighbor on the train and found out she’s the new sales head for Fast Company. I’m getting ready to run out and see Inside Man.
• My friend Jen will be visiting this weekend. She’s bringing her daughter Grace and her husband Richard.

Most of this stuff I’ll blog about later, I just want to get in a brain dump now.

This is the most beautiful morning I’ve ever experienced in New York. I took extra time to take the B train so I could walk through Bryant Park. Incredible. I really wanted to blow off work. I’ll hopefully get out of work early and sit in the park and read for a while.

I’ve never been in New York between March and July, so I haven’t experienced spring here. Reliable sources tell me the best is yet to come.

I found myself wishing I had my camera. Since I didn’t, I think this picture and this other picture (both are probably later in the day) are an accurate representation of the park on a day like this.

I discovered Upcoming.org yesterday and immediately set about looking for events and entering my own.

Like any good social networking site Upcoming.org provides code snippets (they call them “Upcoming Badges”) that allow you to list your stuff on your own site. Like my other favorites (del.icio.us, Flickr) this one started independently and was purchased by Yahoo! (I use Flickr for all the photos on this site; I haven’t integrated my del.icio.us link list yet.)

So, my event calendar is now listed on the right. The first 10 events are listed; clicking the More link will transport you to Upcoming.org to see the full list in all its glory.

I was pretty psyched about the first event (2/27) on today’s list, but I was feeling sick after work, so I ended up at home on the couch adding the event calendar to my sidebar and writing this post. Not a complete waste of time, but it would have been nice to get out. At least there’s other stuff on the calendar this week.

Man, 26.9 inches of snow in Central Park. What a great day to live in New York.

There were sights everywhere. I took 46 pictures and felt like I missed everything.

The snow was pretty faint yesterday when it was getting dark and was coming down solidly by the time I was headed home later that night. When I woke up the city was covered. People were sledding down my street until about noon.

Turns out this was the heaviest snowfall ever. The previous record amount was 26.6 inches. Interestingly it was set in 1947, the year my parents were born.

My parents and I visited Ellis Island last weekend.

My grandfather Michael (Mike) Barich was born in Yugoslavia and immigrated to America in 1933.

He’s listed on the Wall of Honor (you can search for him or anyone else on the Wall of Honor on the site).

The view from his name is beautiful. Here are some pics.

My old friend Mike visited last weekend and we hit a variety of places around the city.

A quick belated recap:

Isola
This was my second visit in the last few weeks. Mike had the Gnocchi ai Funghi Selvalici and enjoyed it. I had the Pizza Margherita (no artichokes), which is quickly becoming a standard for me.

Prohibition
Despite the cool name and exterior decor this is the lamest New York bar I’ve visited. I was really surprised.

I can’t bring myself to link to it.

I’d say it was the lamest bar I’ve ever visited, period, but I recall having been dragged to piano bars in Wisconsin.

Kinsale
Good as far as sports bars go, though I’m not a sports bar fan. The flat-screen TV to person ratio was about 3:1.

Fred’s
Not cheap, but probably the best Cobb salad I’ll ever have. Mike and Laura enjoyed their dishes (neither of which I can recall) as well. The atmosphere is okay and the multitude of dog pictures is neat.

I’ll definitely go back.

Flor De Mayo
A Chinese/Cuban place I’ve visited few times. I always enjoy it. I’m a simpleton, so I had pork fried rice and won-ton soup (Flor De Mayo’s has some of the best of each of these).

Mike had the Pollo a La Brasa (Puruvian Special Chicken), which is a Flor De Mayo signature dish. He enjoyed it a lot.

Some cafe I can’t remember
It’s around 84th. I’ll check and update this post.

Le Petit Cafe
A smallish place in SOHO. I had a simple pasta dish; Mike had a Caesar salad. Both were fine; neither were life-changing. A good afternoon stop.

Maz Mezcal
Good food. The crowd was 30-plus and kinda family-oriented. The wait staff sang happy birthday to a customer at a nearby table, which made me feel like I was at Chi-Chi’s or another lame chain. Not a bad joint, but I won’t be returning.

Sarabeth’s
I finally made it in after having tried three other times over the last year (I’ve never been willing to wait an hour). The food (breakfast) and service were excellent. I’ll definitely be back, but I still won’t wait an hour.

The first couple days of this week have been busy. I hit Fashion 40 for the first time last night. Cool atmosphere, listenable dance music, a particularly strong Bombay Sapphire and Tonic (or maybe I just didn’t eat enough yesterday).

I saw a Daily Show taping tonight. Jon Stewart answers audience questions before the taping, which is really cool. The guest was Albert Brooks, who was promoting his new movie Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. The clip they’ll show tonight was pretty funny, though the opinions on IMDB were mixed.

Afterwards Dave and I hit John’s Pizzeria (pizza with sausage, mushrooms, and olives–good as always).

I’ve now spent over two hours at the SOHO Apple Store. I came to attend their “Digital Photography with Adobe Photoshop CS Pro” workshop (the seminar actually covers CS2).

The seminar was somewhat useful if you haven’t used Photoshop much, but it didn’t cover anything I wasn’t at least moderately familiar with having read the first few chapters of Deke McClelland’s Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One. Still, if you’re new to Photoshop or are trying to figure out if you want to drop $500-plus on it the seminar is free and is worth an hour of your time.

My attention went in and out due to the Apple Store’s free Wi-Fi. I browsed the Web through the next seminar, which was about Aperture. As cool as Aperture looks (Apple’s stuff always looks cool), I thought this week’s Yahoo! Go and Google Video announcements were much more interesting.

The above is not an apples-to-apples comparison, obviously, but I’m much more interested in “network-level” innovation than I am in yet another desktop app. I’m much more interested in Flickr than I am in Aperture, Photoshop Album, iPhoto, or any of the like. The cool thing is that via the Flickr API you can integrate Flickr with any of these apps. I hope Apple does some of this type of integration proactively to keep the desktop apps relevant. As much as I like iPhoto, my Mac isn’t the only computer I use, and Apple online services aren’t the only ones I use, either.

This isn’t to say Apple doesn’t innovate outside of consumer electronics or the desktop, though they don’t do any services that personally interest me. (I use the iTunes music store, but I don’t even have an iPod. That’s a story for another day.) Apple obviously deserves points for iTunes’ impact, but I’d like to seem them do something that has a larger scale impact.

It will be interesting to see what Apple produces at Macworld SF this week. I hope to see at least 1) some sort of Intel Mac Media Center and 2) a compelling new network service, something as interesting the VOD service that’s been rumored.

Okay, I just looked up and I’m apparently halfway through “iPod and iTunes Workshop.” I’m outta here.

My friend Celeb Sighter 1 (she’s also known as Amy) ran into Lisa Gastineau of The Gastineau Girls at the New Year’s gathering we attended at Jean-Luc. I hadn’t heard of them, but I’m not really in the loop on reality television, so I’m probably in the minority. Apparently Lisa is very nice (she even shared her maki).

The cameras weren’t with them, but apparently they were going to be in tow for a party elsewhere later in the evening.

Here’s the picture proof.