The New York Observer » Leon Neyfakh

At the Yale Club, Historians Toast New Encyclopedia of New York City and No-Show Nick Paumgarten Is Cursed

"We divided it up into categories," said the historian Kenneth T. Jackson on Tuesday night. "Dance, the Bronx, skyscrapers -- we had maybe 40 or 50 different categories, and we found somebody who was an expert on each one."Mr. Jackson was talking about New York. Dividing it up into categories was how he went about Read More

Bringing Some Sizzle to the Dial-Up King

After work on Thursday, Nov. 18, about 100 software engineers walked through the front doors of 770 Broadway near Astor Place and made their way up to the sixth-floor offices of AOL. The group, mostly young men, were specialists in machine learning, a discipline related to artificial intelligence that involves writing algorithms that improve over Read More

Eleven O’Clock’s Children: Salman Rushdie’s Pals Come Out to Party and Hit the Sack Early

Salman Rushdie has the most bonkers friend group of any author in New York. At his book party on Monday night at the Bowery Hotel, there was a Bono for every Orhan Pamuk, and an Isabella Rossellini for every Phillip Glass.

According to the flap copy--sorry, Mr. Rushdie, it's on our nightstand!--the Booker Prize winner's new Read More

Don’t Blow It! New York Tech’s Top Investors Have Bubble Trouble on the Brain

Is the tech industry in a bubble? Influential and well-informed leaders in the field have started to worry, and are speaking out unequivocally about reckless investors, rising valuations and the misuse of technical talent resulting from the abundance of eager, loaded tech hobbyists who are throwing money at bad ideas.

"We're in a boom right Read More

David Rosenthal Puts on His Penguin Suit

The problem with losing your job when you're a high-level executive in contemporary book publishing is that your options are basically to become a literary agent or do something vague and most likely super-boring involving e-books. So one could have forgiven David Rosenthal for feeling a little gloomy this past summer after being fired abruptly Read More

Indie Publisher Soft Skull Press Closes Its Doors In New York

Soft Skull Press, the indie publisher that was rescued from financial ruin when it was acquired by the Berkeley-based publisher Counterpoint in 2007, became a West Coast outfit on Friday after 17 years in New York with the closing of its office in the Flatiron District. Both of its full-time staffers, editorial director Denise Oswald Read More

David Karp Made a Hilarious Joke About The Social Network At the New Yorker Panel This Morning

At this morning's New Yorker breakfast event on social networking at the Bryant Park Grill, Ken Auletta asked his panelists what they thought of The Social Network.

Internet guru Clay Shirky said curtly that he hadn't seen it, striking a tone that suggested he is proud of this, like it's a cool and surprising fact Read More

David Karp Explains How Companies Can Win Points With Tumblr Users By Boosting Their Self Esteem

Speaking on a New Yorker-sponsored panel on social media at the Bryant Park Grill this morning, Tumblr founder David Karp explained how companies can use his blogging platform to promote themselves. As with most things Tumblr-related, it turns out the key is feelings. Here's what he said:

Where I think advertising can surface in a network Read More

As Y Combinator Ramps Up NY Presence, Rival Start-Up Incubator TechStars Claims Home Court Advantage

Eager young techies began showing up two hours early for a Y Combinator pizza party Q&A held on a recent Tuesday night at an office in the Flatiron District. By the time the guys who'd been sent to speak on behalf of the celebrated start-up incubator got started with their presentation, there were more than Read More

He Wants to Shake Your Hand: First Round Capital’s Man in Manhattan

Charlie O'Donnell has the figure of a Ninja Turtle, a shiny head and long, dark lashes. At 31 years old, he is the finest networker in the city's tech scene and the "entrepreneur-in-residence" at the New York office of First Round Capital, a Philadelphia-based venture firm that takes pride in placing its bets on embryonic, Read More

Why ‘Idea Guys’ Need To Step Their Game Up If They Want Developers To Work For Them

At the HackNY Hackathon last weekend, we talked to Akiva Bamberger, a master's student at Columbia, about the relative connotations of all the different words that are used to describe people who write code.

Here's the breakdown Mr. Bamberger offered:

"‘Developer' is good. ‘Programmer' is bad. ‘Engineer' is bad. ‘Engineer' and ‘programmer' both say, ‘I want Read More

Salon 2.0: Baby Hackers Gorge on Twizzlers and Red Bull, Coding Till the Sun Comes Up

When he's in front of people, Ian Jennings Jablonowski, the 20-year-old hacker from New Brunswick, stands over his laptop like a DJ at a club, feet planted far apart and further out than they need to be, back hunched, arms stretched out. He talks fast and has piercings in both ears and in his lip. Read More

It Ain’t Me, Babe! Aaron Sorkin Defends Social Network Against Misogyny Charges

Aaron Sorkin has written an "explanation/apology" intended for anyone who was offended by his depiction of women in The Social Network. The note came in the form of a comment Sorkin posted on TV writer Ken Levine's blog, after one of Levine's readers wrote a post about how Sorkin had "failed women" with the movie because Read More

Novelist Jennifer Egan Versus Hunch Co-Founder Chris Dixon On the Subject of Targeted Online Advertising

When The Observer talked to Chris Dixon earlier this week about technophobes and what the tech industry can do to allay their fears about the future, the Hunch co-founder emphasized his belief that every tool can be used negatively and positively. He brought up targeted online advertising as an example: sure, he said, the Read More

Good Nerd, Bad Nerd

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network as a maladjusted misanthrope who talks like a robot and is better at communicating with his computer than he is with other humans. He is awkward, uncomfortable and helplessly off-putting when forced to deal with anyone who is not like Read More