complexify

Stimulus funding accelerates NYC solar - via nycarra: Thanks in...

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 11:02:03 -0400

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..."

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:49:28 -0400

“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.”

- Jonah Lehrer on how creativity really works. (via explore-blog)

via nycedc: Announcing the 2012 NYC Venture Fellows! Developed...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:24:49 -0500

Warby Parker Co-founder Neil Blumenthal

Rent the Runway's Jennifer Fleiss

Paperless Post's Alexa Hirschfeld

charity: water Founder Scott Harrison

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

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:15:04 -0500

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? ...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:09:00 -0500

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...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:32:08 -0500

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

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:51:08 -0500

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: Albert Einstein - I have no special talents. I am only...

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:46:10 -0500

arig:

Albert Einstein - I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious

(via jaymug)

arig: Amazing. Philips just released a new iPad 2 app called...

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:44:10 -0500

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

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:30:49 -0400

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.

Wish this wasn’t so true. via austinkleon: Report: 90% Of...

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 17:52:26 -0400

Wish this wasn’t so true. via austinkleon:

Report: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles | The Onion

Oldie and a goodie.

"When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t..."

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:09:16 -0400

“When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.”

- Steve Jobs (via stewartmccoy)

Entrepreneurs from China, India and Europe were in NYC this...

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 12:13:00 -0400

Entrepreneurs from China, India and Europe were in NYC this month, meeting investors, mentors and potential partners, and also rowing on the Bronx River (via nycedc):

Another highlight of the week was a visit to Hunts Point to meet with Fellow Adam Green’s social venture, Rocking the Boat (see photos above). Fellows rowed on the Bronx River while learning about how Adam’s non-profit uses traditional boatbuilding techniques and on-water training to help young people in the South Bronx develop into empowered and responsible adults.

"We fly expensive semi-autonomous drones in the war on drugs and in Pakistan and Afghanistan - and..."

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:12:04 -0400

“We fly expensive semi-autonomous drones in the war on drugs and in Pakistan and Afghanistan - and shoot rockets from them. Where are the robots to fight the fire at Fukushima? Non-existant. A depressing sign of how deeply screwed up our priorities are at the moment.”

- Japan and Long Tail Risk - Continuations (via mikehudack)

"I think one of the difficulties of our present moment is that it’s difficult to pick a singular..."

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:50:15 -0400

“I think one of the difficulties of our present moment is that it’s difficult to pick a singular cause of any problem. Certainly fossil fuels are planetary disasters in the making but if you look at it, fossil fuel use is connected to all sorts of other things. In North America, it’s connected to land use; suburbs use a heck of a lot more energy and are responsible for more emissions than urban areas.”

- Alex Steffen author of Worldchanging II (via poptech)

Mapping “all the buzziest technologies in development...

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 14:27:32 -0500

Mapping “all the buzziest technologies in development today”, 25 years into the future, via Co.Design & poptech:

Infographic of the Day: The Next 25 Years in Emerging Tech | Co.Design

"I have always lived my life by making lists: lists of people to call, lists of ideas, lists of..."

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 20:01:50 -0500

“I have always lived my life by making lists: lists of people to call, lists of ideas, lists of companies to set up, lists of people who can make things happen. Each day I work through these lists, and that sequence of calls propels me forward.”

- Richard Branson (via entrepreneurwisdom)

From rachelsterne: This weekend Foursquare held its first hack...

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 12:33:47 -0500

From rachelsterne:

This weekend Foursquare held its first hack day at General Assembly, inviting developers to spend the day building new applications with the Foursquare API. The event produced several apps, and I spoke with NYC Big Apps developers there who are using NYC open data in conjunction with APIs like Foursquare. As TechCrunch said, “There’s something happening in New York City.”

General Assembly: Three Reasons to Love This City (and How They Inspire Us)

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:29:17 -0500

General Assembly: Three Reasons to Love This City (and How They Inspire Us):

Congrats to General Assembly on their launch, not to mention this thoughtful blog debut:

By Mimi

“Despite the crush and the noise, I never tire of plunging into the crowd. I love the crowd as I love the sea. Not to be engulfed or lost in it, but to sail on it like a solitary pirate, content to be carried by the current, yet strike out on my own the moment it breaks or…

Stu Wall's blog: Good people don’t belong at a startup

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:50:46 -0500

Stu Wall's blog: Good people don’t belong at a startup:

stuwall on why hiring “good enough” people is a mistake for startups:

Outstanding teams have a multiplier impact, particularly at early stages. These teams will get good product out to market sooner, iterate faster, power through storms and attract more great people. These teams are more likely to hit the bimodal outcome that doesn’t involve lighting stock certificates on fire.