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Startups January 26, 2021

Moynihan Hall job links big wins for red-hot TiniFiber

By GREGORY ZELLER // An East Farmingdale startup that dares to dream small has added another high-wiring act to its already-impressive list. With miles (and miles and miles) of its armored plenum fiber-optic cables snaking through the new-and-improved LaGuardia Airport, TiniFiber is now running its patented “micro-armored” fiber-optics through Penn Station’s Moynihan Train Hall, a newly christened, 255,000-square-foot concourse servicing Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road passengers. Adding a city block’s worth of ultra-high-definition digital…

Voices January 8, 2021

Hot start, icy pivot: A pizza man’s pandemic, on wheels

By KATE FULLAM // While large-scale manufacturers like General Mills produced huge mounds of Totino’s Pizza Rolls to feed homebound masses during the pandemic, a Long Island-based wood-fired frozen pizza business was growing also – in the kitchen, and the parking lot, of the East End Food Institute. Homeslice Pizza sold thousands of frozen pies as COVID-19 spread across the region, delivering directly to clients quarantined at home across the Hamptons. Many of these were…

Startups October 20, 2020

What’s your story? Podcast producers, fans are all ears

By GREGORY ZELLER // In a world where podcasts – now 1.5 million globally, featuring some 34 million episodes – are Short Attention Span Theater’s undisputed main attraction, the challenge is clear for entrepreneurs and other bootstrappers eager to get in the game: Record them cheaply, engineer them professionally, promote them well. Enter the Huntington-based Communication Strategy Group , a circa-2005 multimedia agency that broke into the podcast business about 18 months ago with its…

Health September 1, 2020

Northwell, Mount Sinai hospitals put their hearts in it

By GREGORY ZELLER // Long Island hearts are in very good hands – literally, when necessary. Two of the region’s busiest healthcare systems, operating some of Long Island’s most active hospitals, have earned high praise for their cardiac operations, ranging from emergency surgeries to postoperative discharge protocols. First up are a pair of Northwell Health facilities – Manhasset’s Sandra Atlas Bass Heart Hospital and Bay Shore’s Southside Hospital – commended in a fresh New York State…

Transportation January 6, 2020

New LIRR tracks mark ambitious ‘Empire Station’ plan

By GREGORY ZELLER // Governor Andrew Cuomo’s annual “budget proposal” tour rolled on Monday, with a whopper of a plan for Long Island commuters. Billed as “the 30th proposal” of the governor’s annual State of the State multibillion-dollar masterplan, the Empire Station Complex – unveiled by Cuomo during a speech before the nonprofit Association for a Better New York – would create a modern transit hub on Manhattan’s West Side. The plan centers on the…

Technology December 3, 2018

Microscopic imaging for any science? You better ThINC

By GREGORY ZELLER // Stony Brook University is living large at one of the smallest ideas it ever had. If you’re a multinational fragrance company based on Long Island, or a marine scientist studying trace elements in North Shore shellfish populations, or a civil engineer trying to mitigate South Shore coastal erosion in an era of climate change-charged superstorms, you’re likely familiar with SBU’s Thermonuclear & Imaging Nanoscale Characterization Laboratory. Others probably don’t give ThINC…

Beverages August 30, 2018

Long Ireland keeps those Irish eyes (and lips) smiling

By JIM McCUNE // For years, best friends Greg Martin and Dan Burke worked together as mechanical technicians for a local home-heating oil company, often getting through their grueling days by imagining their dream jobs. Rock star, ice-cream taster and even firefighter didn’t seem realistic. But they also talked a lot about brewing beer. In 2004, Greg and Dan brewed their first beer on Dan’s kitchen stove in Shoreham – an IPA, Burke recalls. “It…

Startups November 9, 2017

A co-working facility for mom and pop, literally

By GREGORY ZELLER // From Albany’s corridors of power to the local co-working facility’s unassuming cubicle, there’s plenty of support for the little guy. Entrepreneurs can leverage the overhead-cutting benefits of a shared-office environment, the tax-cutting delights of a Startup NY-type incentives program and a dozen other concerted efforts designed specifically to boost their startups. But these socioeconomic engines largely stall when it comes to one fairly common truth about risk-taking business-starters: They’re often thirtysomething…

IT September 14, 2016

Scheduling app schedules Apple debut

By GREGORY ZELLER // This time next month, there’ll be no excuse for forgetting to pick up junior after school. At least for iPhone users. Inventor Gregory Wagner, CEO of Woodbury-based Aeonic Ventures LLC, is about to flip the switch on The Moiety App, a mobile-scheduling tool designed specifically for separated co-parents but useful for any dynamic social group. The app is wrapping up its final beta run and will launch in the Apple Store…

Education, Invention June 24, 2016

Giving high school inventors the business

By GREGORY ZELLER // A sensor-filled table to assist the autistic, an innovative method to save subway stations from storm-surge flooding … no doubt about it, these students were thinking big. Creative teams from Commack High School’s groundbreaking Science Research Program brought their brains, and their hearts, to this week’s meeting of the Suffolk County Inventors and Entrepreneurs Club. The annual visit gave the young thinkers a chance to showcase their next-level ideas and inventions,…

Economic Development June 2, 2016

Startups Shine At SBU Incubator Showcase

By GREGORY ZELLER // Stony Brook University’s impressive economic-development ecosystem took a home run trot Thursday during the university’s first-ever Business Incubator Showcase, held at the Center for Excellence in Wireless Information Technology. Uniting more than 40 startup and early-stage companies stemming from CEWIT and SBU’s Center for Biotechnology, Long Island High Technology Incubator, Advanced Energy Center, Clean Energy Business Incubator Program and Business Incubator at Calverton, the showcase – which attracted special guests including…

IT March 8, 2016

A demand for Nomorobo-styled call blocking

By GREGORY ZELLER // U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer’s call for telecommunications carriers to make robocall-blocking technologies available free to landline and cellphone customers could be trajectory-changing news for Nomorobo, the Port Jefferson startup that does just what the senator is asking for. In his weekend demand for mandatory robocall-blocking services, Schumer cited statistics from the Consumers Union, a national nonprofit that advocates on several cornerstone issues including telecommunications, regarding violations of the federal “Do Not…

Education April 27, 2015

DEBRIEF: Nada Anid, NYIT

Dean of the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences and an expert in commercial-academic partnerships, emerging technologies, sustainability and STEM education on the K-12 level, Dr. Nada Anid is a key shepherd of Long Island’s innovation economy. As the first female dean in the history of NYIT’s engineering and computing sciences program, Anid has strong viewpoints on the importance of introducing female students to traditionally male-dominated fields. And as a true believer in the economic power…