People flocked to the March NY Tech Meetup on Tuesday, despite the snowy weather. 
Skirball Hall at NYU was packed to capacity, as it tends to be for these events.
All seemed excited and ready to see the evening’s demos. The night had a real feel-good, do good vibe, as it showed off the diversity of NY tech, and the hack of the night was for a social cause.
The following is a recap of the demos:
KYN
Kids from Camp Interactive in the Bronx showed Know Your Neighbor (KYN, pronounced “kin”), which helps apartment dwellers do just that – and report problems.
MY-T
A group from Coalition for Queens showed My Translator. It is an app that helps you connect with translators.
This service for B2B marketers serves up personalized ads, to boost website conversions.
The best known of the night, Lyft helps you get (and offer) car rides.
Their Whisper service solves the communication rift for K-12 schools. It is like the school paper come alive and online, and provides a Web destination and messaging hub for each school’s news and bulletins.
Investa_Gator
This was the hack of the night. Eric Schles showed his program, which uses semantic tech to mine online ads, and detect and report sex trafficking.
Like a StubHub for short term apartment rentals in NYC. Canada has a similar short term rental system with DelSuites.
The presenters revealed the startling fact that many air travelers are entitled to monetary compensation for being inconvenienced when flights are delayed or canceled. Their program mines your email for such instances, handles the claim, and gets you your refunds.
They say that they are proud to be hated by the leading airlines.
This website helps you find affordable art that matches your tastes. It uses a network of art advisers, and provides recommendations.
Peloton Cycle (show above)
A real cool hardware-based startup. They invented an indoor exercise bike that is truly wired, a miracle of cycle engineering and computer tech. It brings boutique fitness into the home, literally – live and recorded classes are streamed to the touchscreen to aid your workout. The display shows all kinds of data to help you track and meet your workout goals.
It is really tough to pick favorites, as so many cool and truly useful demos were shown. I think AirHelp is my top pick for “need to have and try this immediately.” I would love to have the Peloton bike, even though my workout is usually running, not biking (my birthday is coming up in two weeks, hint hint).
ListenLoop was the outlier as it is about B2B marketing tech; but we do lots of work in the space, and I could readily appreciate its benefits.
My girlfriend, who is an art nut (hi Sine!), will want to check out Kollecto.
Great thorough summary. I will check out these links.