"NY Tech MeetUp, November 2006" by Flickr user sd

The next meetup is tonight (July 6th) at 7:oo pm at NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. Blip.tv Co-Founder Dina Kaplan will emcee the event, and new media expert Clay Shirky will share some of his wisdom. The meetup will also feature demos from the following innovative startups:

• StuffBuff lets you auction stuff anywhere
• Comixology is the leading digital comic store
• Jetsetter insider access to the places you want to go
• HotPotato share what you're doing with friends
• HowAboutWe puts the date on a pedestal
• BetterFly makes you a better person
• Frontal changes the way web apps are built

Over 800 people attend each of these meetups, so they are a great place to network with your peers and keep up with the industry. Of course, if you really want to keep track of the tech scene, NYC isn't the only city you need to monitor.

The Economist recently wrote about the success of tech startups throughout Europe.  Although Europe was slow to join the start-up bandwagon, they're working fast to make up for lost time. London in particular is currently building up a thriving startup community.

Next Monday a new working space and innovation center for tech startups called TechHub is opening in central London's "Silicon Roundabout" district. In the TechHub blog, they liken their philosophy on work and offices to the Seth Godin's ideas in his post "Goodbye to the Office." Basically, they believe that as long as you have a laptop and wifi, you don't need a physical office.

In fact, TechHub says that "having like-minded people around you who are working on other things, in different companies can be thought-provoking and incredibly useful in terms of new perspectives and ideas."

"Red lady" by stock.xchng user alicja_sto

This philosophy seems to be catching on, because TechHub has some pretty big supporters. Google just signed on as one of the first founding sponsors of TechHub, along with Pearson publishing company. Google's goal in supporting TechHub is to maintain "an affordable, buzzing and creative working environment" for aspiring tech businesses, according to Google Android Developer Advocate Reto Meier.

TechHub is catering to local London-based companies, as well as to international businesses. Their membership options include the TechHub Annual Membership, which lets you book a desk at TechHub whenever you're in the area for only £10 a day.

If TechHub is anything like Image Space Media's old home, TechSpace, it will be a great place for startups to develop and prosper!

The new Dell Latitude XFR D360 notebook *pictured above* is...

Resistant to shocks, could be operated at a temperature of 20 degrees Fahrenheit to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, resistant to water, exposure to dust, dirt, humidity and salt fog. In addition, this notebook also can still be operated in a place with an altitude of 15.000 feet.

That's incredible! Want to know how it can resist and withstand those elements?  Click here to visit TechiGeeks and find out more interesting information.

MMi is a web community of 500,000+ strong of folks who love modifying their iPhones. The site is filled with great conversations on all things iPhone and is easily navigable with section dedicated to news, reviews, forums, downloads, guides, gallery, the app store, and cydia apps.

I found the most recent post on MMi,  pretty cool . . .

US users will soon be able to use their iPhones to pay for things in real-world stores with the help of a new program from credit card giant Visa. The payWave system is already in use with contactless "chip" cards at thousands of locations in North America, which use Near Field Communications (NFC) technology to exchange payment information securely. Visa's program will require the use of a special hardware dongle, but clues have been emerging steadily for some time that Apple is keenly interested in using NFC to allow iPhones and iPads to replace a couple of cards in your wallet: your credit card and your ID.

Who needs a wallet, passport, ID, or computer anymore when you have an iPhone!

Click here to visit MMi and here to follow them on twitter!

Courtesy of Flickr user fidgetrainbowtree

Since we consider ourselves to be a part of the new wave of internet advertising and web monetization strategies, we try to stay abreast of internet advertising news at Image Space Media headquarters. That means spending a bit of time every day on our Google Readers, on Yammer, and on Twitter, reading the latest about tech startups, advertising, marketing... Anything that seems relevant to our work. And about once a week, we've been sharing what we've been reading with you all, at our What's Happening Around the Web tag.

So what's new this week?

In startup news...

Quora recently closed its first round of funding with a valuation estimated at $86 million. Quora is a new site (invite only!) that provides a question and answer service. It's success, however, is based on the fact that it goes beyond just Q&As by sparking discussions. As TechCrunch described Quora, "there’s a magic to Quora that has captured Silicon Valley’s imagination. Something about the quality of the people and the content. Real discussions break out on Quora all the time."

Michael Arrington from TechCrunch (who gave us some love last week!) sat down with Quora's founders and investor to chat about the startup. I found their concept of "reverse blogging" to be pretty interesting:

What makes Quora so special? Why are people raving about it?

I don’t think it’s any one thing, but it’s a bunch of little things. Part of it is the right audience. Instead of just Q&A, we think about this as blogging. Some people call it inverse blogging or reverse blogging. When you write a blog post, you write to your audience. When you write on TechCrunch, you know that these people are expecting techie news about startups.

When you come to a question page on Quora and it’s blank there are a bunch of people waiting for the answer. An expert will look at it and say “there’s an audience here and I know exactly what they want to hear. And I actually know about this stuff, or know enough to research and produce a really interesting piece of content, and it’s going to go to the perfectly targeted audience who opted in to hearing about this.”

On a different note, you maaaay have noticed recently that the health care reform bill passed the United States Congress. Whether or not you support the bill, now that it has passed it means the times they are a-changin' in the way businesses provide health insurance for their employees. But what does it mean for small startups? ReadWriteWeb has a channel specifically for entrepreneurs and startups called ReadWriteStart, and they recently detailed the programs, laws, and providers dealing with new health care policies that are relevant to new start-ups. If this applies to you or your company, check it out.

In marketing/advertising news...

We've all seen the "Windows 7 was my idea" ads... want to hear from the creative mind behind them?

CNET News' Ina Fried spoke with David Webster, Microsoft's chief marketing strategist, about the inspiration behind these ads and the process of naming Bing, Microsoft's search engine. Up next for Webster is designing the advertising for Office 2010, which will center around the surprising range of uses that Office programs can have. Here's a (topical!) example: "One friend of Webster does his Passover seder in PowerPoint with embedded sound clips from Charlton Heston in 'The Ten Commandments.'" I for one am interested to see how Webster incorporates his friend's story in the advertising for Office 2010.

Lastly, a big question on everyone's mind since Twitter first stepped on the scene is - how will the giant make their money? paidContent.org systematically reviews Twitter's possible revenue sources, from advertising to e-commerce to mobile deals. What will their advertising scheme look like? We know what it won't look like: Twitter execs agree with our opinion of banner ads (that audiences are blind to them!), saying that “traditional web banner advertising isn’t interesting to us." Word up, Twitter execs.

So that's what we've been reading this week. What about you?

In just a few short weeks we'll be heading down to the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. If you're unfamiliar with the event, the annual festival brings together the technology glitterati for five days of panels, showcases, meetups, and parties. Its a great place to connect with industry leaders, learn about new trends in the digital community, and hear about spunky startups -- like us!

We are thrilled to be launching our technology at SXSW! We will exhibiting at the trade show (word on the street we'll have a photobooth on the premise) so if you're attending, be sure to block off time in your schedule to grab a beer and a hot dog at our booth!

We'll also be live tweeting @imagespacemedia and updating our blog during the event. See you there!

Illusion 360 showcases different types of unique art, design, technology, and video. “Our goal is to combine various art forms into one site, showcasing an eclectic group of talented individuals, thus making use of the uniqueness on the Internet and providing a resourceful guide for all readers.”-Scene360 Team

Click here to visit Illusion 360's blog.

Luckily, CNET has made things easier for you (and us) this year with their aptly titled 2009 Ultimate Holiday Tech Guide. Whether you're looking for the best gaming consoles or the newest smartphones, CNET has you covered. For the budget-conscious, CNET's Cheapskate blog is spotlighting 100 days of crazy-low holiday deals. And, in an awesome feature, CNET's editors have compiled their favorite gadget gifts for this holiday season. They love the Apple MacBook Pro, Amazon's Kindle, and the Sony PlayStation 3 Slim.

If you're understandably more interested in receiving than giving, CNET allows you to make your own wish list and browse other people's lists to see what tech lovers are wishing for this holiday season. What's your dream holiday gift?

Haven't registered with Image Space Media yet? Here's an example of what you will see in your Image Manager. Our technology allows you to turn the in-picture advertisements on images on or off and to provide relevant search keywords for each of your pictures. To get started with Image Space, CLICK HERE.

So we haven’t posted in a week or so, and it’s not because we’ve been away.  Quite the contrary! The team has been doing extensive work on updating some “under the hood” type stuff regarding our overlay technology. In the last couple of months, we’ve been taking in feedback from our publisher clients and we’ve been going down that punch list the entire month of August. The result is a revamped javascript library that fixes or increases functionality or usability.

We are happy that we have such an active publisher base and appreciate the patience and participation of each and every one of you!

Here are a few significant updates that are worth mentioning.

“X” marks the spot – There were a few requests asking for the ability to  close an ad in case the user did not want to see it every time on rollover.  We understand that ads are not for everyone, so we built in the ability to close an ad. If a user initiates this close, he will not see an ad on that image again on that pageview.

Top Down Overlay – Some publishers noted that large images with the bottom of the image “below the fold” were not maximized. If the bottom of the image was off the screen, users would not notice it. So we also updated our positioning algorithm to take this into account. That is why you may have  noticed the overlay rolling from the top down in certain instances. This is by design.

Dynamic Alignment – A small subset of publishers were affected by alignment issues with our ad overlay. That was mainly because other non-image space javascript augmented certain properties on the page after our overlay was initially created. To resolve this, we dynamically calculate positioning on every mouseover so our algorithm is always using the most current page and image properties.

Under the hood – There were other technical changes. Namely, we rewrote the  entire javascript library to be more flexible and more secure. We won’t bore you with the details, but rest assured we continue to take in feedback and love to hear from you guys!

In the coming weeks, we’ll be working on and releasing additional updates with the javascript, as well as some tweaks for our publisher panel and how we match categories. All the updates are focused on helping the publisher get better and more valuable ads, and help advertisers purchase more logically.

Stay tuned!

The Image Space Media team

Gadgetynews.com
A great site for reviews of the latest tech gadgets

Tech Wapline
The freshest news on mobile and technology products

Technically Personal
Tips, tricks, reviews and tutorials on Firefox, Web 2.0, online TV, gadgets, and more

Technoscrap
This website is all about latest technologies, software, and gadgets

Theme My iPhone
Your source for free iPhone Wallpapers