MediaFile

Just what Grand Central needs: more people. And it’s a sure thing that there will be many, many more people making their way through the main concourse when an Apple store opens up in a place that is already synonymous with large, bustling crowds.

A 23,000 square feet Apple store in Grand Central on the mezzanine level, which is currently occupied by a restaurant, would be the company’s fifth in New York City. Apple has opened more than 300 retail locations since it launched its first one in Virginia a decade ago.

Apple’s decision to open stores was distinctly against the tide by going all bricks and mortar as the world was beating a path to the virtual door of such e-tailers as Amazon.com. It was especially gutsy, too, as it came during the early stages of the dotcom bust and before Apple had become a mainstream high-tech company. This was months before the iPod was released, when Apple was still a niche player with a respectably large fan base but no clear way to capture the hearts and minds of the 97% or thereabouts general public which lived the Windows universe.

Even though dotcom companies were vaporizing as quickly as they had fueled the now bursting bubble there was no serious talk that the Internet was a passing fad, or that the growth of online commerce would reverse. Still, stores are expensive propositions, and Apple did not skimp on staff or interior design.

Zagging while the world zigged worked. Just as Apple had launched a desktop computer against the inexorable tide of portables with the iMac, and just as Steve Jobs had, as Pixar founder, revitalized the animated movie business, Apple’s stores multiplied and became retail hubs that are — well, as busy as Grand Central Terminal.

For the third straight year, the National Hockey League hit all the right notes at its annual outdoor extravaganza at one of baseball’s most revered shrines: Fenway Park. The Boston Bruins fought back to beat the Philadelphia Flyers 2-1 in overtime in front of nearly 40,000 fans.

"It was neat," Boston defenseman Derek Morris said. "We were trying to yell and scream to each other, but you couldn't hear yourself it was so loud. It was amazing. We wanted to win that game for the fans. It's a fairy-tale ending. It was pretty special."

While backyard and frozen pond hockey are ubiquitous parts of the Canadian winter landscape, the NHL borrowed the concept from U.S. college hockey. The 2001 “Cold War game” between arch rivals University of Michigan and Michigan State University set the world record for the largest crowd at an ice hockey game at 74,544.

On the evening of Nov 2, about 70 people — new media upstarts and old media stalwarts, brand-name investors and top company executives — gathered at the Manhattan home of Strauss Zelnick to talk shop.

This was the third such gathering that Zelnick and his co-hosts organized, with the aim of bringing New York’s best media-focused minds under one roof to talk about the future of the business. In keeping the setting intimate and the number of invitations in the ballpark of about a hundred people, the organizers hope to turn the “New Media Dinner” into a recurring salon-of-sorts, where ideas, capital and expertise can mix and match.

In a half-hour chat before the guests started arriving, Zelnick and two of the co-hosts, drop.io founder Sam Lessin and Thrillist’s Ben Lerer explained to me how this all came about.

In his speech at the Shorty Awards — the first unofficial Oscars for Twitter users — on Wednesday night, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez marveled at the intermingling of new and old media. Then he told the smartly dressed audience that Tweeters are “my editors, my sources, my friends, my focus group. You’re the people who matter to me more than some of the people who are supposed to matter to me.”******All this from a site where everything starts with a simple question: “What are you doing?” As the audience kept an eye on the stage while typing furiously on their cellphones, event organizer Gregory Galant told us Twitter was about much more than “where you write about what you had for lunch.”***This seemed to be confirmed by by this so-very-novice-tweeter reporter’s straw poll of attendees, who were treated to an appearance by fellow-tweeter MC Hammer.******Whatever else it is, Twitter is definitely a commercial tool as well as a social platform. Many of the 26 winners even used their tweet-sized-140-words acceptance speeches for blatant promotion of ideas, blogs businesses or causes.******Rich Tucker, known as @cruisesource on twitter, won the travel award and used his short spot to plug something called the Sofresh Social Media Cruise.***Politics winner @justin_hart promoted a politician while Scott Zagarino @athletes4acure spoke out about prostate cancer when accepting the nonprofits prize.***Martin Sargent @martinsargent, won the weird category and took a dig at the platform itself. “What’s truly weird is that by receiving the $1,000 grant that accompanies this award, I’m 1,000 times more profitable than Twitter. Thank you.” Another contendor for the weird prize, @Matman showed up at the party in an outfit to promote WellComeMat.com******Then there was the mix of attendees, many of whom paid a $60 entrance fee, besides the reporters who gave the event pretty wide coverage.***Nora Abousteit, who runs an open source sewing pattern web site burdaStyle.com, said she depends so much on Twitter for media updates that she changed her cellphone number and service after discovering twitter didn’t work well on her old phone.***Liam, a bemused 26-year-old from Brooklyn went because he is friends with the organizers. “I don’t understand twitter at all. I don’t get it,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of social interaction being boiled down to a computer.”******But Claire Chang of San Francisco-based Psolenoid saw practical uses. Chang, who is developing a twitter application, tweeted that she was going from Times Square to the awards. A reply came in time to share a car with another tweeter. At the end of the night Claire was confidently tweeting for a ride back to the city.******Vonda LePage, communications director for ad agency Deutsche Inc, dabbles with allkinds of social media. New York Times David Pogue may see twitter being “What you make it” but LePage has definite notions about what Twitter means to her – sharing information for business. But you have to be sincere or people will stop following your tweets, “if you only use it for commercial purposes, you’ll be turned off,” she said. As for the idea of telling the world you’re drinking a coffee or upset about something, LePage said, “That’s Facebook.”******(Photos of @Matman and stage screen at Shorty awards/Sinead Carew)

This came as something of a surprise when we saw it.  New York City — not Silicon Valley — landed on the top of the list of the biggest U.S. technology industry workforces in 2006, according to a new study from the American Electronics Association (AeA), which bills itself as the “nation’s largest technology trade organization … dedicated solely to helping our members’ top line and bottom line.”

The media and finance capital of the world employed about 316,500 high-tech workers in 2006. The city added about 6,400 jobs from the prior year, making it the second fastest growing “cybercity” behind Seattle. The average New York City high-tech wage in 2006 was $91,500, or 46 percent higher than the average private sector job.

“The factors that have long made New York City a center of finance, culture and entertainment – a uniquely talented and diverse workforce, top academic institutions and a spirit of creativity not found anywhere else – are today making the City a center of technological innovation,” said Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. “The high-tech industry is a valuable and increasingly important part of the New York City economy, and its continued growth will foster New York’s evolution as a ‘cybercity’ and keep us ahead of the curve.”