My girlfriend and I stayed at her beach house on Long Island for a few days. It was nice to enjoy time in the sun, on the beautiful beach at Smith Point. I 
generally fight wind, sand and ocean spray while trying to read the newspaper there. After leafing through the NY Times (my favorite), I read the NY Daily News (hers).
During this trip I zeroed in on the following NY tech-related stories in the News. Please see excerpts below in italics; visit the links to get the full articles::
A "Nerd Bus" to Connect High-Tech Hubs
New York’s senior senator is calling for a “Nerd Bus” that would link up high tech hubs in Brooklyn and Queens with Roosevelt Island — and help some of the city’s brightest bulbs get around town.
“New York is seeing a major tech boom, with Brooklyn and Long Island City leading the way,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said. “And now the new Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island is going to be a game changer that further cements New York’s position as a leader in tech.
In a letter to the MTA, Schumer asked that transit officials consider “connecting these two new proposed bus routes” and looking into extending into Long Island City and Roosevelt Island once the Cornell campus construction is completed. The city's tech sector employed 120,000 as of 2010, up 30% from 2005, according the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC).
The Bloomberg administration, which is pushing to pump up the city's tech economy, is working to fill the talent gap. Last week, it gave $15 million in financial help to Columbia University to help expand its engineering school.
That's on top of $100 million awarded to Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to help fund an engineering campus on Roosevelt Island. NYU's also adding a tech outpost in Downtown Brooklyn.
In all, the three projects are expected to more than double the city's existing number of full time graduate engineering students.
Columbia University Joins Movement to Make NY a Center of High Tech Innovation
It started with Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to offer land on Roosevelt Island and $100 million in infrastructure to whoever had the best idea for a genius-magnet graduate school.
Cornell, with an Israeli partner, won. But the city didn’t give up on the runners-up .
Next came NYU, leading an international consortium to build a Center for Urban Science and Progress in downtown Brooklyn. Then there was the New York Genome Center, which signed a lease on a Tribeca building .
Now, we welcome Columbia to the party. It’s plunking down at least $80 million — along with $15 million in city money — for an institute that will develop groundbreaking social media technologies, design environmentally friendly infrastructure — even think through how to make financial markets work better.
