Gothamist points out that the average sale price of an apartment in Manhattan is now one million dollars. Buyers eager to plop down serious amounts of cash to own a little piece of Manhattan real estate outnumber the supply of apartments for sale. The results are bidding wars and a staggering 57% of sales closing over the asking price. Couple this news with this week’s Time Out New York apartments special claiming that there are plenty of Manhattan rental deals to be had on the cheap, and it looks like a great time to rent.
April 2004
Monthly Archive
Thu 15 Apr 2004
Thu 15 Apr 2004
The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reports that Ben & Jerry’s and Penn State University will be installing their first “green” ice cream freezer in New York next week. Instead of environmentally harmful refrigerants, the new freezer uses sound waves for cooling. Roland Piquepaille has more details on his site.
via Boing Boing
Sat 10 Apr 2004
The UBS Art Gallery is presenting Subway Style: Architecture and Design in the New York City Subway through June 18th. If the pictures on Satan’s Laundromat are any indication, it looks like a great exhibition.
@ The UBS Art Gallery
1285 6th Avenue (51st & 52nd)
April 8 - June 18, 2004
(212) 713-2885
Thu 8 Apr 2004
New York City will be selling 100 sets of seats from Yankee stadium. These beauties will only set you back $1,500, that’s a few bucks less than three season tickets, and you get to keep the seat!
Seats can be paid for by cash or major credit cards. Customers can purchase the seats in person at the Lower Manhattan CityStore location or via telephone by calling 311 (212-NEW-YORK outside New York City).
The stanchions, seats, and seat backs are all original and were installed in Yankee Stadium in 1975 as part of the renovation of the left and right field boxes. They were removed in 1998/99 to accommodate new seats with padding. All of the seats are to be sold in sets of three.
Seat dimensions are Length: 71 ¾, Width: 27 ¾, & Weight: 142lbs.
All revenue from the sale will go to the City of New York General Fund, which funds all government activities, including health, safety, and municipal services.
These are a must have for any Yankee fan. Well, any Yankee fan with a bigger apartment than mine.
Wed 7 Apr 2004
When I first heard about dodgeball, I thought it was a using location based services:
“It’s like Friendster for your mobile phone.”
We got bored with Friendster too. That’s why we built dodgeball.social.
Tell us who your friends are, tell us where you are, and we’ll let you know when your friends are within 10 blocks of you.
Excited to finally use a location based application, I looked at dodgeball’s site for more information. As it turns out, the user needs to send a text message to the service indicating their current location. Dodgeball will then send back a list of any registered friends (or friends of friends) within a 10 block area. This only works in New York City at the moment, other cities will be added in the future.
Even though it doesn’t auto-magically know where you are, this is a pretty slick idea. Actually, the idea of friends and friends of friends knowing exactly where you are at all times might be a little creepy.
Unknowingly broadcasting one’s whereabouts could certainly lead to embarrassing situations, but if the user has control of when their location is used by a service, the possibilities are exciting. Aside from AT&T’s Find Friends service,* there does not seem to be much available in the way of location based services in the US. However, if the UK is any example, we can probably expect more services here soon.
* AT&T was acquired by Cingular and it appears that the Find Friends service no longer exists.
Sat 3 Apr 2004
Production for the sixteenth season of The Simpsons has been delayed. The show’s main actors, who are no longer under contract, have walked out and are demanding more money. Apparently they are holding out for $360,000 per episode, that’s a nice 188% increase over their current $125,000 per show.
Hopefully both sides can come to an agreement soon so we are not left Simpsonless in the fall.
Thu 1 Apr 2004
Slashdot has a review of Dating Design Patterns:
Many will attest that the API to the WOMEN platform is somewhat obscure, contradictory and poorly documented. However, if you talk to any randomly selected groups of men, you will discover that the problems they face (whether in Pickup or Relationship states) are fundamentally the same. If there’s a common set of problems, shouldn’t there be a common set of solutions? Moreover, doesn’t it bother you that programming geeks, who advocate code reusability and open-sourcing have not come up with reusable successful solutions for commonly occurring problems and have not documented them?
…no comment.