The Funky Apple | A New York City Blog

Who said the web was good for nothing but chatroulette and foursquare?

NYC’s Public Advocate, Bill de Blasio, is launching a new website that aims to publicly shame all of the city’s worst slumlords.

The site, which will be updated regularly, lets surfers type in an address and see all of the slum lords around them. They can also nominate landlords for consideration.

So if you live in a building that has more cockroaches than people, or if you can’t walk up the stairs without tripping over feces, crack-heads, or both, then hit up the link and let Bill know you feel. The site is set to go live today.

Source: NY Daily News

This might be what it takes to get me to set foot inside of an American Eagle.

From July 21st to August 3, American Eagle will be giving away free smartphones to people who try on their jeans. Of course, the phones come with a new two-year service plan, but you expected that, didn’t you? Of course you did.

The phones are of the Android variety, like the Droid on Verizon, the HTC Aria on AT&T and the Samsung Intercept on Sprint. But hey, beggers don’t choose. [Pulsejfk]

Listen, we know you’re not reading this right now. We’re sitting here, slaving away behind computers, trying to bring you the latest news, events and deals in New York City, and you’re out waiting in line to buy an iPhone 4.

It’s cool, whatever, we can take it. You should probably know that the iPhone 4 drops its signal the moment you hold it in your left hand, but whatever, you’re not reading this, so you don’t know that.

So in reality, we can pretty much say whatever we want, huh? Read the rest of this entry »

Check this out. This is at an AT&T store here in New York. These people are waiting in line to pre-order the phone. That’s right. Not to take the phone home, but to pre-order it. Which means they’ll have to come back and wait in line next week.

You guys know you can do that online, right? [Gizmodo via Business Insider]

If you’re still on the fence as to whether or not Twitter is useful, this kinda has to put it over the edge.

This is Tweetzi Local. It looks like Craigslist. It acts like Craigslist. Except there’s one huge difference: it’s powered through twitter. So all of the postings? They’re all tweets.

Take a second to wrap your head around that. Guess the twitter bird can’t be that useless if it can help you get a job, right? What are we most excited about? The missed connections section, naturally. [Everything NYC]

So hey, do you consider yourself to be the type of person who likes to be up on the latest news? Do you consider yourself to be an ambulance chaser? Do you just like men and women in uniform?

Well, if you answered yes to any of those questions, then twitter is your best friend. Just follow @nycscanner and watch as the breaking murder/robbery/accident/fire reports stream into your feed, you horribly sick person you.

Getting around on the subway can be a pain, especially if you’re from out of town. Thankfully there’s no shortage of smartphone subway map and navigation apps. Today we’ll pit three against each other to determine a winner: iTrans NYC on the iPhone/iPod Touch, TMaps NY on the Palm Pre/Pixi and Google Maps on everything. Who wins? Read on to find out! Read the rest of this entry »