By JOHN KOMINICKI // New Hyde Park resident Mary Putre is on the waiting list for “Shark Tank,” the insanely popular TV show on which entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a group of cranky investors. They say it could take another year or so to get her on camera. That’s not because her product – a snow shovel to which icy sludge will not stick – is a potential victim of climate change. The wait reflects…
Have an extra $7 you can’t figure out what to do with? You could help launch the first manmade star. That’s the smallest Kickstarter donation level for Mayak, a giant reflector some renegade Russian scientists hope to put into orbit this summer, making it the brightest object in the night sky. Um, Kickstarter? Yes. These are private, nongovernment scientists who have spent two years designing, building and stratosphere-testing the device, which Roscosmos, the Russian NASA,…
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s promise of millions of dollars in new infrastructure projects for Long Island is a lot like getting socks and underwear for your birthday. They’re useful, but a bit of a letdown when you’re hoping for a new bike. And the governor has certainly been handing out Schwinn Phantoms in other parts of the state. $4 billion overhauls of LaGuardia and JFK airports. $1 billion to spruce up the Javits Center. Hundreds of…
By JOHN KOMINICKI // Marvin Minsky, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence whose work helped create the personal computer and the Internet, died in Boston over the weekend at the age of 88. The son of a noted NYC ophthalmologist, Minsky attended a string of private science and prep schools, then Harvard and Princeton, before settling in as a professor at MIT. There, with colleague John McCarthy, Minsky founded the school’s Artificial Intelligence…
By JOHN KOMINICKI Getting an apartment on Long Island is a lot like ordering a lobster. Well, except one of them doesn’t have mushy green stuff inside. (And if it does, I suggest you don’t rent it.) No, I’m referring to the concept of “market price,” which is usually what the menu says next to the lobster entrée. It’s restaurant-speak for “We plan to charge you the most we possibly can.” And so it goes…
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly consumer price index today, showing a modest 0.2 percent increase, the first rise in three months and pretty much in line with what economists expected. That’s called a ho-hum headline. Luckily, the back story is far more interesting. The BLS compiles the index by surveying prices on more than 80,000 products and services, including everything from food and housing costs to health care and transportation, even “other”…
Cutting the ribbon on a new shopping center used to be an elected official’s dream photo-op. Today, it’s unveiling a septic system install. That’s real progress on a couple of fronts. First, there is scientific evidence that suggests Long Island will actually sink if anybody builds another shopping center here. More importantly, it shows that sewage has finally taken its rightful place, front and center, in the minds of local pols. And about time. The region’s…
San Francisco voters took to the polls Tuesday for what was billed as a referendum on technology, specifically how techsters have ruined the city by driving up apartment prices, turning private homes into Airbnb hotspots and popularizing yoga pants. And then there’s the $4 toast. Available at the Mill, a self-dubbed “coffee and bread” place on Divisadero Street at Alamo Park, the toast has come to symbolize what has been called “the epic wave of…
By JOHN KOMINICKI // A lot of young Long Islanders complain about not having a cool place to live, but my twentysomething daughter is not one of them. She already has a cool place: Her bedroom in my house. She thought it was cool when she was 12, anyway. I’ll try to get an update the next time she emerges. (My wife and I haven’t dared go in there since 1999.) There are, in truth, many…
By JOHN KOMINICKI // Long Island has always taken great pride in being its own place – as the Cradle of Aviation, as a World War II manufacturing hub and America’s first suburb. Over the years it’s bragged about its oysters and potatoes, about building the Apollo moon lander and producing wines so good the locals couldn’t afford them. For the most part, we still can’t. Most recently, Long Island has focused on becoming the nation’s…
By J.L. KOMINICKI Yay. We’re first at something. Low-paying jobs in the hospitality sector. OK, that’s not quite the message Gov. Andrew Cuomo was putting out ahead of the July 4 weekend, but you don’t have to squint hard to find the ugly truth in his latest press release. What he wanted us to read was that New York posted a record $100 billion in tourism-related economic activity last year and retained its position, ahead…
By J.L. KOMINICKI // Can you build a $500 million brand on flash alone? If you’re Justin Bieber, apparently so. Otherwise you need a product, and a pretty good one at that. Still, flash can give you a powerful head start, as we’re learning from the incredible success of Dollar Shave Club, the California-based men’s grooming platform that completed a $75 million raise this week, a short nine months after closing on a $50 million…
By J.L. KOMINICKI Those of us trying to scale a business got a free lesson from McDonald’s this week on the dangers of getting too big to pivot. I know, I know, we should all have such problems. But the tighter your niche, the quicker the potential of getting to a size at which market changes become a very big deal. Which is where Mickey D’s has found itself. McDonald’s, as you know, was built…
By J.L. Kominicki // You’ve probably heard Long Island is having trouble hanging onto its young people, particularly those in the coveted 18 to 34 cohort, the age group most likely to take the jobs we don’t want at wages we couldn’t possibly survive on. Well, unless we were also still living at home. The youth decline is variously called “brain drain” or “birth dearth,” depending on whether you believe our bright young people are leaving…
By JOHN L. KOMINICKI // The state’s economic development arm hit Long Island this week with what wags are calling the Start-Up NY Damage Control Tour. And there’s plenty to prehend. In an unwelcome audit released last month, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli chided the program for spending millions of dollars on advertising while producing scant new jobs. The media quickly piled on, led by withering NY Post coverage and Crain’s coronation of Empire State Development…