Stimulus funding accelerates NYC solar - via nycarra:
Thanks in part to ARRA funding, solar energy capacity in New York City has increased 800 percent since 2007, with many more solar installations in the “pipeline.” This increase parallels the quadrupling of solar installation companies now doing business in NYC, demonstrating the economic benefits of enabling the solar market in this city of a million rooftops.
Six years ago, NYC had just one megawatt of installed solar power, and the local solar market faced extensive technical, administrative and policy barriers. A collaborative partnership, led by the City University of New York (CUNY), was formed that includes the Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability and the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Together they are implementing a plan to systematically remove those barriers in order to support large-scale solar energy market growth. The partners have secured three consecutive U.S. Department of Energy grants, including an ARRA grant, that led to the development of five NYC Solar Empowerment Zones, NYC Solar Ombudsman, and the world’s largest LiDAR based map: the NYC Solar Map. The map utilizes 15 billion points of data to estimate the solar energy potential for every building in NYC. Since its launch in June of 2011, the map has received over 150,000 hits, serving as an interactive tool for New Yorkers by educating them about the costs, benefits, and payback periods of investing in solar installations for their properties.
Creativity shouldn’t be seen as something otherworldly. It shouldn’t be thought of as a process reserved for artists and inventors and other “creative types.” The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse built into its operating system, hard-wired into its most essential programming code. At any given moment, the brain is automatically forming new associations, continually connecting an everyday x to an unexpected y.
via nycedc:
Announcing the 2012 NYC Venture Fellows!
Developed by NYCEDC and Fordham, NYC Venture Fellows promotes emerging business leaders and encourages international entrepreneurs to start or expand their operations in New York City. The program connects fellows with mentors who are investors, serial entrepreneurs, CEOS, and operational managers from New York City and abroad.
The 2012 class of NYC Venture Fellows include:
- DonorsChoose Co-founder and Chief Executive Charles Best
- BaseKit Co-founder and CTO Simon Best
- Medivo, Inc. Co-founder and CEO Sundeep Bhan
- EnNatura Technology Ventures Co-founder and CEO Sidhartha Kumar Bhimania
- Warby Parker Co-founder and co-CEO Neil Blumenthal
- H.Bloom Co-founder and CEO Bryan Burkhart
- MBA & Company Founder and MD Daniel Callaghan
- hoopCHINA.com Co-founder and CEO Shawn Cheng
- Catchafire Founder and CEO Rachael Chong
- Rent the Runway Co-founder and President Jennifer Fleiss
- Totsy.com Co-founder and CEO Guillaume Gauthereau
- Warby Parker Co-founder and co-CEO Dave Gilboa
- charity: water Founder and CEO Scott Harrison
- Paperless Post Co-founder Alexa Hirschfeld
- Miniwiz Founder and MD Arthur Huang
- Rent the Runway Co-founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman
- Lot18 Co-founder and President Philip James
- Student Competitions Co-founder, Chairman and CFO Robert Lyngman
- AHAlife.com Founder and CEO Shauna Mei
- The IOU Project Founder and Creative Director Kavita Parmar
- MakerBot Industries Co-founder and CEO Bre Pettis
- BillGuard Founder and CEO Yaron Samid
- Papayamobile Co-founder and CEO Si Shen
- South Pole Carbon Asset Management Ltd. Co-founder and CEO Christoph Sutter
- LanguageMate Founder and CEO Bill Tan
- soleRebels Co-founder and MD Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu
- Yipit Co-founder and CEO Vinicius Vacanti
- LearnVest Founder and CEO Alexa von Tobel
Read more about these NYC Venture Fellows in our press release, and find out more about the program on our website.
NYCEDC: Hacking Green Data
Starts this Friday night in NYC - via nycedc:
Go green with the Cleanweb Hackathon this weekend, where developers will hack together apps using energy and environmental data. The event kicks off Friday night with an icebreaker at the New York Academy of the Sciences, continues Saturday with an all-day, all-night hackathon at NYU…
Beautiful cartography - via wnycradiolab:
Know what these are? Go ahead, guess.
Give up? They’re topographical maps of the moon, created in a collaboration between NASA and the US Geological Survey. I can’t get over how crazy beautiful they are. There are more here, super hi-res.
(via io9, thanks to Olga Abramson for the tip)
Made in Brooklyn: introducing Brooklyn Bridge Ventures and some of the borough’s awesome innovators - via arig:
Made in Brooklyn
Charlie O’Donnell’s short video about what’s going on in Brooklyn
Save the planet, one line of code at a time
Cleanweb Hackathon via challengepostblog:
Want to change the world this coming weekend? Sign up for the Cleanweb Hackathon, which takes place Jan. 20–22 in NYC. Participants will build apps that tackle sustainability issues and resource constraints (issues related to energy, food, waste, water, and so on).
arig:
Amazing.
Philips just released a new iPad 2 app called Vital Signs Camera that uses the camera to measure your heart and breathing rate. It detects subtle beat-to-beat changes in the color of your face to measure your heart rate.
We’re slowly living in the future.
(via jayparkinsonmd)
Obituary: the bookcase
As much as I love my Kindle, I wonder how technology will replace the humble (or not so humble) bookcase’s other functions. Via motivatr:
Yet there’s no replacement yet for the expression one can make with a bookcase. Showing off what books you read tells the world your interests, politics, philosophy and even religion. It’s acceptable for any houseguest to peruse your bookcase and even yank out a few books, while snooping around your Kindle or iPad at length would be intrusive.
