Dan Duray
"Here's my question," began Jack, a bald, bearded man who'd been the first to raise his hand at a packed question-and-answer session with Sasha Grey at Housing Works on Monday. Ms. Grey, a semi-retired porn star in a sheer black dress, was promoting Neü Sex, her new photo book and the latest bid in her campaign to break into the mainstream that began with her star turn in Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend... MORE >
"How many of you are stoned right now?" Michael Imperioli asked, taking the microphone at Symphony Space on Wednesday. A lone clap hung in the air as he donned a pair of reading glasses and began reciting from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: "Suddenly I felt guilty again... MORE >
The private jets made Robert De Niro nervous. The Salander-O'Reilly Gallery was putting on a show in Rome that included his father's paintings. The gallery's owner, Larry Salander, told him they'd fly to Italy in a private jet. Mr. De Niro wasn't sure whose jet it was -- he vaguely thought it belonged to Benucci, the Roman gallery hosting the event that would later claim ownership of his father's... MORE >
This far out from the Watson Jeopardy! game, the bar is pretty high for news related the match, but Ken Jennings stepped onto the Conde Nast-owned Reddit today for their "Ask Me Anything" feature and offered an unprecedented amount of frankness and wit in his answers. There are plenty of revelations about his pop culture absorption as well. The Mormon phenom started things early with his username, WatsonsBitch. "Lots of people think it's a Jeopardy... MORE >
Denise Oswald, former editorial director for indie publisher Soft Skull Press, has landed a new job as a senior editor at HarperCollins imprint It Books. The Observer broke the news that Soft Skull would close its two-person New York office late last year, leaving its operations in the hands of the Berkeley-based publisher Counterpoint, which acquired Soft Skull in... MORE >
At a small-business forum in Cleveland today, President Obama announced that AOL founder, LivingSocial venture capitalist and philanthropist Steve Case will join the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Mr. Case, who orchestrated his company's catastrophic merger with Time Warner, is already the president's "start-up czar" and chair of the Startup America entrepreneurial program. On the jobs panel, he joins Jeffrey Immelt and Paul Otellini, CEO of... MORE >
Readability, the subscription web service that allows readers to strip content down to its bare bones Instapaper-style, recently had its iOS app rejected from the Apple Store for infringing the new subscription rules. Or, as Gizmodo put it, "Readability App Becomes Victim of Apple's Dumb Subscription... MORE >
Faced with a host of online competition, restaurant reviews Bible Zagat relaunched its website today with a host of features to make it more accessible to those without a premium subscription. The upgrades include revamped member profiles complete with badges, new entry points to reviews through updated editors' blogs and lists and an overhauled search function that allows users to search by neighborhood or... MORE >
The Foursquare Hack Day at General Assembly on Saturday resulted in a more than a dozen playful programs built on top of the location-based service. One of the more creative efforts is called, 4 Square & 7 Years Ago, which sends users an email every morning reminding them of where they were one year ago to the... MORE >
IBM's Watson technology has nabbed a post-Jeopardy! gig with software company Nuance... MORE >
New York journalists take note! Google has digitized all copies of Spy magazine and lovingly placed them in a searchable archive, available for your perusal starting... MORE >
The minds behind The Social Network have taken a novel approach in their online "For Your Consideration" Oscar ads. They're giving away the script, right there in the... MORE >
The city's chief digital officer Rachel Sterne unveiled a Tumblr today that tracks the D.O.T.'s progress in filling potholes in the five boroughs. "The Daily Pothole" reports at the top of the page that 179,218 potholes have been repaired since July 1... MORE >
While publishers were still reeling over the details of Apple's new app store subscription service, Google this morning announced its long-expected competitor... MORE >
Just trust me. It's Kenneth Lerer's favorite line, and the 58-year-old general partner at Lerer Ventures and co-founder of the Huffington Post--"Kenny," as he's known to friends--employs it convincingly. Huffington Post senior editor Katharine Zaleski, one of the site's first employees and the home page editor until May of 2009, recalls the early days of the site, when it wouldn't be unusual to receive 20 phone calls a day from Mr. Lerer regarding the... MORE >
