Note To Self

Freelance nation. Micro-work. The gig economy. Call it what you like, it's growing. But can you really make a living taking one-off jobs from websites like TaskRabbit or Fiverr? Fast Company writer Sarah Kessler gave it a try for one month and told us her story. She discovered that the labor revolution these tech companies promise only serves a very particular kind of worker... one who appreciates inconsistent and sometimes weird jobs and prioritizes pants-free mornings over health insurance and the minimum wage.  Plus, New Tech City has been experimenting with hiring people via the gig economy. Let us know in the comments section below if you like any of the new logos we commissioned from a graphic designer on Fiverr, where everything costs about $5. Or, did we just get what we paid for? We also want to hear your story of working in for websites like these, especially if it's different than the examples we cite.

This post is by New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi. 

The Toyota Production System was developed to maximize efficiency on the auto production line, but some of its guiding principles — "just-in-time" and "built-in-quality" — can be applied to daily life as well.  Sure, the every day routines of individuals and families are vastly different from a manufacturing process where the similar tasks are repeated at a high frequency. People are not machines, and it's important to have space and time to adjust, connect, be spontaneous and enjoy the lighter moments in life all while accomplishing daily tasks. Here are five steps to follow as you try to manage your daily workload and make it more efficient. 1) Assess what needs to be improved. Ask yourself: What really needs improvement? What's causing confusion? What's wasting time and effort? 2) Sort, stabilize, sweep/shine, standardize and sustain. At Toyota, we call this "5S." It's a methodology for organization that can be applied to an area such as a work space to maximize effectiveness. 3) Consider bulletin boards f

The more we access the web from mobile devices, the more visual our communications seem to become. Smartphone cameras enable us to express ourselves through the photos and videos we spread around on apps like Instagram and SnapChat. Meanwhile, a growing fleet of messaging services like WhatsApp, WeChat and Line make it even easier to incorporate imagery in our casual communications. Hundreds of millions of people around the world are using them to speak to one another in emojis and digital sticker sets, a trend that has grabbed the attention of Silicon Valley tech giants like Facebook and Google. This week on New Tech City, we try to find out if these new visual communication tools are expanding how we can express ourselves and relate to one another. You'll hear from an illustrator who designs emojis and stickers about what he's trying to express when he draws a wombat taking a bath and drinking a glass of wine. We'll also introduce you to several people who are testing the limits of visual communication: Da

The Holstee Manifesto motivates a bewildering number of startups and tech companies—Google, AirBnb, Threadless, Zappos, TED and more all hang the poster on their walls. This week's New Tech City podcast tells the story of how a list of simple, earnest, some might say naive, mantras meant to guide three young men through their 20s, became a must-have for all manner of companies in the tech industry. You'll hear how the friendly guys behind Holstee started out with a plan to innovate on the standard T-shirt, but made an unexpected pivot toward inspirational wall hangings when their own list of mottos went viral on the internet. "Our focus now is creating art that encourages mindful living," says co-founder Michael Radparvar. To hear more about Holstee's unlikely journey and what the popularity of the Holstee Manifesto says about the tech sector, click on the audio or subscribe to the New Tech City podcast on iTunes. And if you have this poster up in your office, let us know why you chose these words to motivate

Log onto an online dating site and you are asking a machine for romantic assistance. That's cool, but you might as well understand how it works, right? There's an algorithm picking and choosing which profile to put in front of which users, and sometimes it works—roughly a third of marriages these days begin online—and other times it doesn't. On this week's New Tech City, host Manoush Zomorodi tracks down some smart people who are writing, and improving the matching systems of dating sites. Kenneth Cukier, data editor at The Economist, explains "you'd be a fool to try to do online dating without machine intelligence, without machine learning." So we get him to explain what that means.  Kang Zhao, professor of management sciences at the University of Iowa, is a very smart guy who has a plan to make sure the matches in front of you are people you'd actually like, and who will actually respond to your messages. "There are ways to improve [profiles] because the information you have in your profile is sometimes jus

Let's embrace the delete key, and imagine a world where all our e-clutter wasn't just auto archived by big corporations. When you send a someone a message on Snapchat, for instance, the recipient has just a few seconds to digest the content before it vanishes. The social media service popular with millenials flies in the face of the autosave function that has dominated computing since the 1980s. And that is precisely why it is booming in popularity. This week New Tech City explores whether it's time for an auto-delete revolution. Host Manoush Zomorodi talks to experts from a email folder's worth of extremely smart people with niche expertises to find out how clicking 'delete' more would affect our memories, the environment, our relationships, and more. Plus, a prolific college-age Snapchatter explains why he loves when the photos and videos he sends to his friends just disappear. Don't worry, this podcast won't self-destruct in five seconds. 

Join our host Manoush Zomorodi for a "digital detox" at the intersection of Buddhism and technology. Because, you see, Manoush is an addict. A Pinterest addict. Like many tech lovers who find it hard to unplug, she couldn't manage to power off her iPad during a recent home renovation project: "Just one more pin of Scandinavian kitchens or herringbone hardwood floors," she would plead with herself. The solution, she discovered, was what we're calling a "digital detox," a sort of juice-cleanse for the mind (minus the cayenne-lemonade). This week on New Tech City, you'll hear strategies and science from two experts about building a more purposeful approach to email and smartphones, on how to strengthen your IRL relationships and even rediscover the wonder of your neighborhood or town.  Priya Parker of Thrive Labs is a visioner who helps companies and leaders set goals and innovate in part by questioning the use of technology. You'll hear her tips for how to identify your core purpose and make sure tech is a tool

Chris is a musician who makes $100 a night by renting out a room in his apartment on Manhattan's West Side through Airbnb, the short-term home rental service. In other part of town, Ken is a landlord whose former tenant in a Nolita building he owns broke various laws by altering and renting out an apartment through Airbnb. The two men have no connection with one another and haven't met, but they're on opposite sides of the debate over the rental website; a debate that has the attention of New York's Attorney General. His office subpoenaed Airbnb last year as part of an investigation into whether some of the people renting out their apartments are evading taxes and violating housing codes. Airbnb is fighting back and pointing out how it's helping New Yorkers and benefiting the city's economy. This week New Tech City examines Airbnb's legal limbo and how it's affecting landlords and hosts alike. Plus, office buildings have digital locks, but the technology is just starting to go residential. One man who install

There are a lot of baby-faced CEOs in the tech sector. But how can someone who's never had a job be a great boss? We bring you three (and a half) personal stories about running companies at extremely young ages, or working for a 24 year-old boss—including the ego wrangling that comes with this flipped age dynamic. There comes a point when CEOs in their 20s have to hire employees in their 30s and 40s or older, especially for C-suite roles (even if the C-suite is starts out as a dumpy conference room). This week on New Tech City, you'll hear stories of young leaders learning to lead including Brian Wong, the 22-year-old head of Kiip, two founders that are even younger, and Arjun Dev Arora of Retargeter. Plus, what happens when an employee pushing 40 is asked to forgo her own hotel room and share a bed with her 24 year-old boss and coworker to save money. 

For the last two years in January, an enigmatic message has appeared on the internet from an unknown source signed "3301," sending thousands in search of answers to increasingly complicated puzzles and mysteries. But for whom, and to what end? Welcome to Cicada 3301, the "internet mystery that has the world baffled." To solve it, you need to know not only programming and encryption codes, but pre-Christian literature and Mayan numerology (it also helps to have friends around the world). This week New Tech City dives into the internet thriller made up of elaborate secrets and meets the people trying to solve the mystery. It’s a journey through obscure message boards that branches out across the internet and eventually around the globe. 

For this Christmas edition of New Tech City, a look back at two of our favorite segments from 2013. If you're like millions of other shoppers, you probably ordered at least a few gifts on the online retailer Amazon this holiday season. And even if your packages weren't delivered by drones, you won't want to miss my interview with Bloomberg Businessweek senior writer Brad Stone about his book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. And it's not just about how Bezos's ingenious (sometimes controversial) tactics for selling us everything under the sun, but also insights into the CEO's aspirations for space travel and the giant clock he's building in a remote part of the world. Plus, a look at the startup Nextdoor, it wants to be a kind of Facebook for neighborhoods. Will you be its friend?

Bitcoins. Bitcoins. Bitcoins. These days, you can’t swing a digital cat without reading a story about the digital currency that’s got tech and financial reporters all in a froth. It’s complicated (though h/t to Quartz and its explanation about how it all works) and at times, hard to figure out how to make it relevant to everyone else. That is until I heard two stories about bitcoin that make up this week’s New Tech City.  First, there’s Gina Fox, a self-described "old mom" from Rhinebeck, New York, who misplaced as many as 100 bitcoins. So you know, in real life dollars, that could be worth about $100,000.  Can she find them?  Then, the second story, bitcoin goes locally-sourced near the organic aisle at a Whole Foods (and not in Brooklyn…yet…). Where bitcoin dealers meet for some face to face trading.  Slightly odd considering it’s a virtual currency. 

The millenial generation has a reputation for selfies, oversharing and cat memes, but many faith leaders are flocking to platforms like Facebook and Twitter to attract more of these young people to the church. In this week's episode, reporter (and lapsed Catholic) Marielle Segarra visits several tech-savvy churches in and around New York City to see if worship via smartphone apps and social media can bring her back into the fold. Click on the audio to hear Segarra's personal journey and how one Long Island pastor tracks down parishioners away at college to make sure they are going to Mass.   Do you have any personal stories about technology and faith?  Leave a comment below or tweet us at @NewTechCity.

Workers of every age have to keep their tech smarts up to date to stay relevant in today's workplace. 

You love the planet and your gadgets, so how do you find a balance?

This week on New Tech City, we're crossing the digital divide. 

Games have power, so this week, we play a few that can motivate kids to learn more, whether they realize it or not. And we see how a test case of a new technology for football might help keep young heads safer (and smarter) from injury.

Andrew Rasiej, chairman of NY Tech Meetup, argues that tech talent can do more for kids and New York's tech sector, if talented programmers get more involved in the classroom.

Coders have a very specific way of working, it’s called Agile.  One family decided to apply it to their lives.  What if healthcare.gov had too?