Note to Self

David Joerg has a problem and he knows it. Until a few months ago his nights would go something like this: He'd put his daughters to bed. He'd wait for his wife to fall asleep at a reasonable hour. And then he'd submit to his craving. "I'd fire up the computer, grab a sleeve of crackers and a fresh tub of Nutella, play video games," and anything else online. Over and over and over until dawn was creeping up on him. He was getting three hours of sleep or less some nights. "I would just be destroyed the next day and just limping through like a zombie." This is David's tech addiction. But he's beaten it. Part of the solution involved creating a special program for his computer that would outsmart him in his moment of weakness. You can request a copy of the program for yourself from David here. Also in this episode, a reprise of a great Radio Rookies piece about how teens are "vamping" all night long, forgoing sleep to chat and click and post online from their beds. It's like an infinite sleepover that wreaks havoc on morning classes. Stories of tech addiction on this week's New Tech City. If you like this episode, why not subscribe to our podcast here, and follow us on Twitter here.

There's a neighborhood in Austin, Texas where the refrigerators tell stories. The roofs are paved in solar panels. There are more electric cars per capita here in the Muëller community than in any residential neighborhood in America. It's a kind of paradise and it could drive you nuts. It's also the future happening right now. Even when she's out, Kathy Sokolic can tell when her husband gets home or leaves because the light switches leave a trail. In their house, every carbon footprint gets tracked as part of the Pecan Street Research Project. It's preparation for America's energy future. Seven hundred otherwise-normal homes have been wired to track how people really use energy when they have things like solar panels, smart thermostats and electric cars, lots of electric cars. The thing is, in the process of gathering all that information, the people who live here now are awash in data about themselves and that changes how they behave. Hear their story in this week's New Tech City. If you like this episode, why not subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, or listen to past episodes in the green player on the right. Or follow us on Twitter. EXTRAS: Here's the chart mentioned in the podcast where Sokolic spotted her refrigerator behaving oddly and took action! VIDEO: Peek inside the homes of Muëller.

This episode of the New Tech City podcast explores how technology has changed sleep through the ages, specifically through artificial light. Hear historian Roger Ekirch and psychiatrist Thomas Wehr explain how they each discovered the natural segmented sleep pattern our bodies want. And why we don't sleep that way because of modern technology. Plus, we learn what actually happens to our brains when someone actually does return to the ancient way of sleeping: "People would sometimes say they felt a kind of crystal clear consciousness when they were awake that was not familiar to them. And it made me wonder if any of us knows what it’s really like to be awake — fully awake,” Wehr says. Even though technology is the problem, it can also be the solution. "You have people that are using their phones as alarm clocks, people who are checking their phones all night long... And every time you get that hit of light, it’s like a hit of espresso, and we’d like to fix that for everybody,” says Lorna Herf, co-creator of the app f.lux. She and her husband have an app and a plan. The revelations in this episode might be a wake-up call. You’ll sleep better after listening to this one. If you liked this episode, why not subscribe to New Tech City on iTunes and follow us on Twitter.

Sure, you read Amazon reviews before you buy. Maybe you even take the time to rate those sneakers (“moderate arch support”) that you ordered from Zappos. But did you know a lot of companies are rating YOU? You probably have a few rankings and scores being kept about you right now. This week is Part 2 of New Tech City’s exploration into the dark side of rankings in a Reputation Economy. (Here's part 1 if you missed it.) Host Manoush Zomorodi investigates how she got slapped with a bad Uber rating she wasn't even supposed to know about. But that’s just the beginning. Just as the Fair Credit Report Act regulated the use of personal information in private businesses in 1970, privacy advocates and now the White House are calling for laws that regulate opaque consumer scoring that’s extracted from petabytes of data. This is happening at banks, in car services, in marketing and more. As data privacy consultant Robert Gellman asks, “Now everybody is scoring everybody all the time on all kinds of characteristics. Do we all have to live according to a certain model in order to be treated properly in this economy?” All this data may lead to a new brand of “digital redlining,” where some customers get treated better than others based on algorithmic decisions. Data discrimination could solve or replace old style racism. We ask what should or shouldn’t be done about secret consumer scores on this week’s New Tech City. If you want more stories like this one, subscribe to the podcast, follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook.

It's getting risky out there in the comment section. This week on New Tech City we bring you a cautionary tale of e-commerce, fine print, and the drastic measures some online retailers will take to protect their reputations, even at the expense of consumers. In part two of our podcast, we explore how a court case over bad Yelp reviews might affect much wider online free speech. It gets extreme. It gets ugly. And it's going to keep happening as the reputation economy keeps growing. The issue is this: Retailers get nailed by a bad review. Sometimes it's honest, sometimes it's exaggerated, and sometimes the bad review is flat out false and defamatory. But either way, it hurts business. So retailers are trying various ways to stop the reviews from happening: from unfounded financial fees, to extreme copyright claims about the very right to post a review about an experience, to totally justifiable defamation lawsuits. This is part 1, the thrills and dangers of rating a company, of a two part series. Part 2, the secret ratings companies keep on customers, is here. If you like these kinds of stories, why not subscribe to the podcast or follow us on Twitter.

The traditional job interview is obsolete. That is, when compared to an all-knowing video game that peers into the psyche of every candidate. Some companies are adding specially-designed video games to their hiring processes. When a job applicant plays one of the games — like the one we test out in this episode, Balloon Brigade — algorithms monitor the "micro-behaviors" within the gameplay to build a detailed, data-driven portrait of his or her strengths and weaknesses. "This phenomenon, if it does continue to take hold, will really significantly change the way people are hired, the way people are promoted, and to some extent, the way they see themselves," says the Atlantic's Don Peck, who wrote about these new-fangled hiring practices in the excellent article, "They're Watching You at Work." Good hiring is an art, but it's turning into a science replete with video games, intelligence tests and personality quizzes that can know you better than your boss, and maybe better than yourself. But... will this lead to a darker kind of professional determinism, or to a new breed of biased hiring? On this week's New Tech City, we find out. We get inside these new data-driven hiring practices so you know what to expect. We test out the video games and assessments for ourselves — to some shock and indignation. We hear from the people who make the games. And we show you what it is going to be like when you apply for your next job (so you can start studying). If you like this episode, why not subscribe to hear more podcasts like this one. Or follow us on Twitter for more frequent updates.

For the first time ever, Google has let a journalist into the secretive Google X labs where an eccentric team of big thinkers is hatching plans for the technology of tomorrow. We're talking about hoverboards, a space elevator and floating Wi-Fi hot spots for the developing world. The company talks a big game about chasing these "moonshot" ideas that could improve billions of lives. It's fanciful, it's ambitious, and it's a whole lot like AT&T's Bell Labs of a half-century ago. That iconic corporate research program brought us inventions — from the transistor to the computer coding language C — that form the backbone of just about every electronic device we touch. So we ask, can Google possibly pick up the torch? Well, maybe so. In this episode, we consider if the conditions are right for the dawn of a new golden age of corporate invention. To help us along, researchers at Google X open up about their process, we consult archival tape from AT&T, and chat with Fast Company's Jon Gertner, the first journalist to visit Google X and author of the "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation." For more Google X inside info, check out Jon's story in Fast Company or watch the video below that follows the X team through a day in the life of a wild idea. And if you like this New Tech City episode, why not subscribe to the podcast, or follow us on Twitter.

Forget Facebook or Twitter. With the inadvertent help of Chinese government censorship, an app called WeChat has taken over the lives of Chinese-Americans. It's part family lifeline, part public square, part dating site and it could be a model for the evolution of social networks. This week on New Tech City, hear what's so special about WeChat as we journey through the hilarious story of a vexed husband trying to understand what makes this app so addictive and pervasive in Chinese-American circles. There's annoying patriotic sausages, smokey hot ladies, and a global tech ethnographer all mixed together. Good times.

Shhhh...don’t tell the kids, but grown-ups are mostly just making up the rules as they go along, especially when it comes to technology and child rearing. This week on New Tech City, we give you a chance to sit and consider where YOU stand on screen-time, video games, and social media for our next generation. Four experts with radically different points of view, ranging from banning all devices, to full digital immersion, present their arguments. Plus we hear parents’ deepest fears and what the kids themselves think is the right way to help them grow up healthy and confident in the digital age. There is a happy balance between technology adoption, addiction. Join us as we try to find it. In this show we mention two past stories we've covered. Find more about how and why to build Minecraft computer with your kids and that summer camp experiment with cell phones.

Up until the mid 1980s, women flocked to computer science in droves. Then they dwindled away like the dinosaurs. Now, only about 12 percent of computer science majors are women and they hold just one in four "computer workers."* It's bad, but not bleak. We bring you tales of success from technology's gender gap on this week’s New Tech City from the president of a college that quadrupled its female CS majors to a woman whose invisible friend named Ruby helps her code. You see, girls are attracted to what you can do with computer programming and the stories the code can tell. But that's not what most classes have taught. We bring you the story of the shift. Plus, inspiration from the first computer programmer ever, who just happened to be a woman and the daughter of a very famous literary figure. Solutions, stories, and why rolling back tech's gender gap could make all the difference to the future of the U.S. economy. Yes, it's that big of a deal. *A previous version of this post stated the incorrect percentage.

Freelance nation. Micro-work. The gig economy. Call it what you like, it's growing. But can you really make a living taking one-off jobs from websites like TaskRabbit or Fiverr? Fast Company writer Sarah Kessler gave it a try for one month and told us her story. She discovered that the labor revolution these tech companies promise only serves a very particular kind of worker... one who appreciates inconsistent and sometimes weird jobs and prioritizes pants-free mornings over health insurance and the minimum wage. Plus, New Tech City has been experimenting with hiring people via the gig economy. Let us know in the comments section below if you like any of the new logos we commissioned from a graphic designer on Fiverr, where everything costs about $5. Or, did we just get what we paid for? We also want to hear your story of working in for websites like these, especially if it's different than the examples we cite.

This post is by New Tech City host Manoush Zomorodi.

The Toyota Production System was developed to maximize efficiency on the auto production line, but some of its guiding principles — "just-in-time" and "built-in-quality" — can be applied to daily life as well. Sure, the every day routines of individuals and families are vastly different from a manufacturing process where the similar tasks are repeated at a high frequency. People are not machines, and it's important to have space and time to adjust, connect, be spontaneous and enjoy the lighter moments in life all while accomplishing daily tasks. Here are five steps to follow as you try to manage your daily workload and make it more efficient. 1) Assess what needs to be improved. Ask yourself: What really needs improvement? What's causing confusion? What's wasting time and effort? 2) Sort, stabilize, sweep/shine, standardize and sustain. At Toyota, we call this "5S." It's a methodology for organization that can be applied to an area such as a work space to maximize effectiveness. 3) Consider bulletin boards for yourself or your family where you can map out tasks in a clear, visual way. (See how New Tech City applied it to podcast production here.) 4) Analyze your habits and routines. Use and improve them to make them smoother and apply "built-in-quality" and "continuous flow." That means taking an inventory of what tools you need to do a task like laundry, dishes, or washing your car and then listing out a sequence of events to follow. So here's how it could work in action with a simple example. "Built-in Quality" Applied to Cleaning Your Home Look for a process or routine that your family does on an ongoing basis. Take a look at the chore closely so it can be executed more effectively. Take cleaning the family room as an example. 1. How often should it be cleaned? 2. What cleaning supplies are needed? 3. What parts can adults do? What parts can the kids do? Make a list of what needs to get done that's broken down into these parts. 4. How long should it take? This is helpful to know to understand whether your ahead or behind in achieving your goal of completing the task. 5. Once the job is done, ask yourself: Was the job completed to your satisfaction? Why or why not? Achieving efficiency is a process, not a simple fix. It takes iteration, awareness and constant adjustment to find the right flow. Hear more about applying Toyota's principles of efficiency to daily life and, in particular, Manoush Zomorodi's daily work routine in the latest New Tech City podcast.

The more we access the web from mobile devices, the more visual our communications seem to become. Smartphone cameras enable us to express ourselves through the photos and videos we spread around on apps like Instagram and SnapChat. Meanwhile, a growing fleet of messaging services like WhatsApp, WeChat and Line make it even easier to incorporate imagery in our casual communications. Hundreds of millions of people around the world are using them to speak to one another in emojis and digital sticker sets, a trend that has grabbed the attention of Silicon Valley tech giants like Facebook and Google. This week on New Tech City, we try to find out if these new visual communication tools are expanding how we can express ourselves and relate to one another. You'll hear from an illustrator who designs emojis and stickers about what he's trying to express when he draws a wombat taking a bath and drinking a glass of wine. We'll also introduce you to several people who are testing the limits of visual communication: Data engineer Fred Benenson who oversaw a translation of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick into emojis, i.e. Emoji Dick; Computational linguist Richard Sproat who explains the history of graphical languages in the plainest English imaginable, including the fascinating story of Charles Bliss's Blissymbolics; And you'll join us on the endearing journey of New Tech City's own Alex Goldmark and his girlfriend as they banish text from their text message diet and try to communicate with only emojis and digital stickers (no words). It gets pretty intimate, and confusing. (Image translation) Alex: I'm going home. Liza: I'm with a friend and she's had a death in the family, don't come to drinks with us. Alex: ? I'm gonna drink with other people instead.

The Holstee Manifesto motivates a bewildering number of startups and tech companies—Google, AirBnb, Threadless, Zappos, TED and more all hang the poster on their walls. This week's New Tech City podcast tells the story of how a list of simple, earnest, some might say naive, mantras meant to guide three young men through their 20s, became a must-have for all manner of companies in the tech industry. You'll hear how the friendly guys behind Holstee started out with a plan to innovate on the standard T-shirt, but made an unexpected pivot toward inspirational wall hangings when their own list of mottos went viral on the internet. "Our focus now is creating art that encourages mindful living," says co-founder Michael Radparvar. To hear more about Holstee's unlikely journey and what the popularity of the Holstee Manifesto says about the tech sector, click on the audio or subscribe to the New Tech City podcast on iTunes. And if you have this poster up in your office, let us know why you chose these words to motivate you? Or if you don't buy into this manifesto, why not? As you'll hear the audio, we don't expect everyone to eat this up, but many many people have. Special thanks to all the staff of WNYC lending their voices to the audio incarnation of Holstee Manifesto poster at the end of the podcast.

Log onto an online dating site and you are asking a machine for romantic assistance. That's cool, but you might as well understand how it works, right? There's an algorithm picking and choosing which profile to put in front of which users, and sometimes it works—roughly a third of marriages these days begin online—and other times it doesn't. On this week's New Tech City, host Manoush Zomorodi tracks down some smart people who are writing, and improving the matching systems of dating sites. Kenneth Cukier, data editor at The Economist, explains "you'd be a fool to try to do online dating without machine intelligence, without machine learning." So we get him to explain what that means. Kang Zhao, professor of management sciences at the University of Iowa, is a very smart guy who has a plan to make sure the matches in front of you are people you'd actually like, and who will actually respond to your messages. "There are ways to improve [profiles] because the information you have in your profile is sometimes just too much." And then we put all this to someone responsible for a whole lot of online meetings, VP of matching for eHarmony, Steve Carter, who says a few unexpected things, including that dating sites only work if you shake up your rigid mindset and embrace the real life, offline magic of face-to-face dating.

Let's embrace the delete key, and imagine a world where all our e-clutter wasn't just auto archived by big corporations. When you send a someone a message on Snapchat, for instance, the recipient has just a few seconds to digest the content before it vanishes. The social media service popular with millenials flies in the face of the autosave function that has dominated computing since the 1980s. And that is precisely why it is booming in popularity. This week New Tech City explores whether it's time for an auto-delete revolution. Host Manoush Zomorodi talks to experts from a email folder's worth of extremely smart people with niche expertises to find out how clicking 'delete' more would affect our memories, the environment, our relationships, and more. Plus, a prolific college-age Snapchatter explains why he loves when the photos and videos he sends to his friends just disappear. Don't worry, this podcast won't self-destruct in five seconds.

Join our host Manoush Zomorodi for a "digital detox" at the intersection of Buddhism and technology. Because, you see, Manoush is an addict. A Pinterest addict. Like many tech lovers who find it hard to unplug, she couldn't manage to power off her iPad during a recent home renovation project: "Just one more pin of Scandinavian kitchens or herringbone hardwood floors," she would plead with herself. The solution, she discovered, was what we're calling a "digital detox," a sort of juice-cleanse for the mind (minus the cayenne-lemonade). This week on New Tech City, you'll hear strategies and science from two experts about building a more purposeful approach to email and smartphones, on how to strengthen your IRL relationships and even rediscover the wonder of your neighborhood or town. Priya Parker of Thrive Labs is a visioner who helps companies and leaders set goals and innovate in part by questioning the use of technology. You'll hear her tips for how to identify your core purpose and make sure tech is a tool — not an impediment — as you work to stay true to that purpose. You'll also hear from Vincent Horn, co-founder of Buddhist Geeks, a podcast/company/conference that seeks to bridge the gap between spiritual practice and technology. Stay to the end of our podcast for a special mini-meditation session led by Horn. Alternately, if you have just one minute, this video is a fun motivational pitch for attempting to take control of your digital vices. Some music in this episode provided by Podington Bear from the Sound of Picture Production Library. Find a soundtrack for your own project at soundofpicture.com.

Chris is a musician who makes $100 a night by renting out a room in his apartment on Manhattan's West Side through Airbnb, the short-term home rental service. In other part of town, Ken is a landlord whose former tenant in a Nolita building he owns broke various laws by altering and renting out an apartment through Airbnb. The two men have no connection with one another and haven't met, but they're on opposite sides of the debate over the rental website; a debate that has the attention of New York's Attorney General. His office subpoenaed Airbnb last year as part of an investigation into whether some of the people renting out their apartments are evading taxes and violating housing codes. Airbnb is fighting back and pointing out how it's helping New Yorkers and benefiting the city's economy. This week New Tech City examines Airbnb's legal limbo and how it's affecting landlords and hosts alike. Plus, office buildings have digital locks, but the technology is just starting to go residential. One man who installed the high-tech locks at his home in Connecticut and the results: Good (unless your battery explodes).

There are a lot of baby-faced CEOs in the tech sector. But how can someone who's never had a job be a great boss? We bring you three (and a half) personal stories about running companies at extremely young ages, or working for a 24 year-old boss—including the ego wrangling that comes with this flipped age dynamic. There comes a point when CEOs in their 20s have to hire employees in their 30s and 40s or older, especially for C-suite roles (even if the C-suite is starts out as a dumpy conference room). This week on New Tech City, you'll hear stories of young leaders learning to lead including Brian Wong, the 22-year-old head of Kiip, two founders that are even younger, and Arjun Dev Arora of Retargeter. Plus, what happens when an employee pushing 40 is asked to forgo her own hotel room and share a bed with her 24 year-old boss and coworker to save money.

For the last two years in January, an enigmatic message has appeared on the internet from an unknown source signed "3301," sending thousands in search of answers to increasingly complicated puzzles and mysteries. But for whom, and to what end? Welcome to Cicada 3301, the "internet mystery that has the world baffled." To solve it, you need to know not only programming and encryption codes, but pre-Christian literature and Mayan numerology (it also helps to have friends around the world). This week New Tech City dives into the internet thriller made up of elaborate secrets and meets the people trying to solve the mystery. It’s a journey through obscure message boards that branches out across the internet and eventually around the globe.

For this Christmas edition of New Tech City, a look back at two of our favorite segments from 2013. If you're like millions of other shoppers, you probably ordered at least a few gifts on the online retailer Amazon this holiday season. And even if your packages weren't delivered by drones, you won't want to miss my interview with Bloomberg Businessweek senior writer Brad Stone about his book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. And it's not just about how Bezos's ingenious (sometimes controversial) tactics for selling us everything under the sun, but also insights into the CEO's aspirations for space travel and the giant clock he's building in a remote part of the world. Plus, a look at the startup Nextdoor, it wants to be a kind of Facebook for neighborhoods. Will you be its friend?

Bitcoins. Bitcoins. Bitcoins. These days, you can’t swing a digital cat without reading a story about the digital currency that’s got tech and financial reporters all in a froth. It’s complicated (though h/t to Quartz and its explanation about how it all works) and at times, hard to figure out how to make it relevant to everyone else. That is until I heard two stories about bitcoin that make up this week’s New Tech City. First, there’s Gina Fox, a self-described "old mom" from Rhinebeck, New York, who misplaced as many as 100 bitcoins. So you know, in real life dollars, that could be worth about $100,000. Can she find them? Then, the second story, bitcoin goes locally-sourced near the organic aisle at a Whole Foods (and not in Brooklyn…yet…). Where bitcoin dealers meet for some face to face trading. Slightly odd considering it’s a virtual currency.

The millenial generation has a reputation for selfies, oversharing and cat memes, but many faith leaders are flocking to platforms like Facebook and Twitter to attract more of these young people to the church. In this week's episode, reporter (and lapsed Catholic) Marielle Segarra visits several tech-savvy churches in and around New York City to see if worship via smartphone apps and social media can bring her back into the fold. Click on the audio to hear Segarra's personal journey and how one Long Island pastor tracks down parishioners away at college to make sure they are going to Mass. Do you have any personal stories about technology and faith? Leave a comment below or tweet us at @NewTechCity.

Workers of every age have to keep their tech smarts up to date to stay relevant in today's workplace.

You love the planet and your gadgets, so how do you find a balance?

This week on New Tech City, we're crossing the digital divide.

Games have power, so this week, we play a few that can motivate kids to learn more, whether they realize it or not. And we see how a test case of a new technology for football might help keep young heads safer (and smarter) from injury.

Andrew Rasiej, chairman of NY Tech Meetup, argues that tech talent can do more for kids and New York's tech sector, if talented programmers get more involved in the classroom.

Coders have a very specific way of working, it’s called Agile. One family decided to apply it to their lives. What if healthcare.gov had too?

The tiny Baltic nation of Estonia puts the United States to shame when it comes to electronic voting (not to mention marinated eel served cold and teaching little kids to code.)

This week New Tech City looks at New York's internet connectivity a year after Sandy knocked out communications for so many New Yorkers.

He wants to find in a cheaper way to get to outer space. He’s building a clock that ticks once a year, moves its "century hand" once every hundred years and chimes once a millennium. Oh, and he’s also the CEO of the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon. He is Jeff Bezos.

No heavy subject matter this week. Instead, we're diving into two subcultures that have been transformed by tech: Coffee and cigarettes. If you've never heard of a burr grinder or cartomizer, this podcast is for you.

More and more micro-entrepreneurs are using online services like Etsy, Kickstarter, Uber and Lyft to create their own jobs. Welcome to the new DIY economy.

The recent revelation that companies like Google and Facebook routinely hand over data about users' digital communications to the National Security Agency has many Americans wondering whether everything they do online is being tracked by the government.

As Twitter's lawyers prepare to take the company public, they aired some of the company's financial dirty laundry in a regulatory filing this week, confirming that the social media service continues to lose money.

Two groups of people that shy away from many technologies — Amish and Mennonites — are actually on the cutting edge when it comes to genetics.

It’s Obamacare-time!

Mayor Bloomberg likes to take credit for transforming New York City into the second biggest technology economy in the country. Does he deserve it?

This week New Tech City takes you into the bodegas, laundromats and back alleys of New York's black market for stolen cell phones.

Scientists in New York City are at the center of President Obama's brain research initiative, a $100 million effort to better understand the inner workings of the human noggin.

When it comes to finding just the right sized office space, New York City's tech companies are turning to subleases because they are not ready to sign five to 10 year leases favored by the city's landlords.

Simple experiences, like borrowing a ladder from a neighbor or just taking a long solitary hike, are being altered by tech.

Experiments in the life sciences, taxi technology and bike sharing are helping regular people do DIY scientific research and transform the way they get around.

Biographers have relied on handwritten letters for centuries, but more and more, they're using emails, texts and online chats to tell the story of a person's life.

In the smart home of the future, your milk jug will tell you when your milk has gone sour, your plants will text you when they need watering and with solar panels on your roof, you may not even need to be connected to the power grid.

Some e-retailers are shifting their strategies and deciding to open brick-and-mortar stores, hoping to lure customers who might not be comfortable purchasing a pair of shorts or eyeglasses without first trying them on.

New York City is a leading center for neuroscience research, so you'd think it would stand to benefit from President Obama's new $100 million initiative to map the human brain. Well, not so fast.