In a blockbuster show of billionaires believing in public health, Bill Gates and Mayor Bloomberg will spend $500 million on anti-smoking initiatives around the world. Five million people die from tobacco-related illnesses each year. Mayor Bloomberg, a former smoker who has helped implement a smoking ban in NYC's restaurants and bars in 2003. The $500 million number comes from the $125 million he gave to the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use in 2005, his......

What is it about Frank Gehry? When The Boston Globe reported this week that the architect (and a construction firm) is being sued by MIT, news organizations from Kansas City to Dublin reported the story. Does Gehry have a building in KC, too? Apparently, not, but he raised controversy there over an arena bid. Sound familiar?! The university filed a negligence and breach of contract suit, alleging design flaws in the $300 million Stata Center......

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

At the Nokia Theater in Time Square last night, Microsoft officially launched Vista and Office 2007 to the US masses. It was here in New York City, twenty-four years ago, that the software behemoth first announced their commitment to a GUI interface. Last night, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer rattled off stats and spiel in a setting where even the escalator bolts were Vista branded! The much often-delayed and joked-about OS comes with 1.5......

It's a new step in outdoor advertising: Have a big billboard, then wire dancers to get all Microsofty over it! We heard that there would be a special billboard today outside the Terminal Building on 11th Ave between 27th and 28th Streets, but we didn't know it was going to be this...well, Cirque du Soleil. The sixteen dancers were charged to "move across the exterior walls...to form the images of the Windows Vista and......

Paul Dinin dropped out of high school his senior year to make gobs of money working with computers. Later, Paul helped launch Consumption Junction, a site renowned for its collection of graphically shocking videos, a position that has allowed him to travel the world. He's survived Katrina, shot grenade launchers, fallen into canals, and thrown parties for Philippine Orphans. Welcome to the world of Paul Dinin. Tell me about your senior year of high school.......

So maybe Bloomberg isn't running for President? Or is that just what he wants us to think? Either way, Hizzoner is reportedly about to buy an historic townhouse on 78th and Madison to house his philanthropic ambitions. The property, designed by Stanford White for old New York biggie Stuyvesant Fish (son of NY Governor, Senator and US Secretary of State Hamilton Fish) in 1897, is going for $50M according to the listing on Sotheby's......

There is a lot to be said about Warren Buffett's announcement that most of his billions-of-dollars fortune will be given to charities, with particular focus on giving about $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And we hope his actions, as well as those of the Gateses, reverbate through billionaire and millionaire circles, because giving back to the world that made them rich makes sense - tax incentives or no. For instance,......

San Francisco is proud host of a new reality show called "How to Get the Guy" that's unfortunately not a descendant of Will and Grace, Queer Eye, The L Word, American Idol etc. Also a biodefence lab is coming to the East Bay and SFist teaches wine pairing. Getting on the wrong train sucks. Getting on the wrong train and becoming the victim of what will later be described as a "stabbing spree" really sucks.......

Yesterday, during the trial of suspected subway bomb plotter Shahawar Matin Siraj continues, prosecutors played tapes of Siraj talking to the police's informant. Siraj explained why Bill Gates had to be killed, perhaps they should get uranium from Area 51 (though he says Area 52), and that various bridges had to be destroyed because they impact the economy. Here's a tidbit of the tapes, from the NY Times:Speaking to his driver, he derides a passing......

Phillyist notes a fistfight between local pols that leaves one man down for the count. Jehovah's Witnesses get a Philly contributor out of bed, things get a little geeky with a film festival and geeky gets taken to a whole new galaxy when they talk with the Dragon Queen of the Dark Kingdom. Shanghaist gets all excited this week over a new nightclub in the city unfortunately named "Snatch" and Mike Tyson is scheduled to......

Forget city policy for a moment - people want to know if playing solitaire while being paid on the city's dime is a fire-able offense. And yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg admitted that the city employee up in the Albany office was really fired because the Mayor saw solitaire up on his computer. Edward Greenwood, victim of the Mayor's "all work, no play" ethic and Microsoft, told the Times he has no "real animosity towards the guy.......

- Some families of September 11 victims want to block the building of Santiago Calatrava's PATH Transit Hub at Ground Zero - The NYPD is offering $12,000 for information leading to an arrest in the murder of Chinese food delivery man Fahua Chen, raising the total to $13,000; his daughter was also granted a visa to come to the U.S. - The Washington Square redesign has been nixed - Bill Gates visited Columbia University, showing......

The stories coming out of the courthouse where lawyers are trying to select jurors for John Gotti Jr.'s trial continue to be amazing. Apparently, the potential jurors have been less than smart, with Judge Scheindlin saying about one juror, "He wasn't the brightest bulb." And then Gotti's lawyer said, "We've had that a lot." There there was the juror, a "self-taught criminologist," who collected gangster memorabilia - he got bumped. Judge Scheindlin has been upset......

The Gates have finished their popular run in Central Park, delighting visitors from around the world as well as around the corner. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, whose roof was open to the public to see The Gates, was reportedly overwhelmed with visitors (even more so than the holidays!) and there was spillover into other museums and neighborhoods in the city, leading vendors and store owners, whose businesses were up anywhere from 50-100%, to......

The Gates delivered this past weekend: Rave reviews (well, as rave as you're gonna get in this town - here's one semi-pan from Newsday) from all corners (Post, Daily News, NY Times). And, happily, business is New York Region > Park Visitors See Saffron, and Businesses See Green" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/nyregion/14gates.html">brisk for most everyone, from hot dog vendors to hotels, just as the city had hoped. However, there may be some casualties in the wonder that......

Everyone is excited, rightly so, about the donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to NYC public schools: $51.2 million to open 67 small high schools. Large failing high schools would be turned into smaller theme-based schools so students will get more personalized attention, an effort to curb the dropout rate as well as failures to meet the state's student standards. It seems some were more amused by other factors: - The sight of......

PowerPoint, the bane of many an office wonk's existence ("I can animate this slide with builds and sound effects - just give me an hour") gets reinterpreted by David Byrne in his new book and DVD, David Byrne: E.E.E.I. (Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information). Unlike office wonks, David Byrne gets to look at PP with new eyes and use it in funny, "artistic" ways, like using an outline of Dan Rather's head (unless you work......

Authorities have arrested one computer hacker who sent out of a version of the Blaster virus two weeks ago. (Since most people including Gothamist are getting still getting crap from the Sobig virus, the Blaster virus is the one that shut down your Windows-run computer within one minute of starting it.) The perpetrator is an 18 year old Minnesotan who took the virus and rewrote it, sending a new version, "Blaster.B," to 7,000 computers. This......

Every so often, news will pop up about various geniuses being autistic, based on books and essays about their behavior. Cambridge professor Simon Baron Cohenbelieve that Albert Einstein and Sir Issac Newton had Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism, which seems to explain their eccentricities and problems with socializing. There have been thoughts that Bill Gates is autistic, inspired by his rocking in chairs, his odd tics. "People with Asperger syndrome are often of......

I don't think I am a business road warrior, someone who can jump from plane to plane and make each hotel room his/her own home. Airports make me a little crazy, since I tend to have too many bags to keep track of and going anywhere, bathroom, newsstand, becomes a funny challenge. ("Ha, that girl has a laptop, messenger bag, pull carry-on luggage, winter coat, and bottle of water - and she thinks she's going......

Bill Gates has a pretty nice house. The whole computer monitors on the wall idea inspired me to create the 15" LCD picture frame I'm working on. Looking at this house, I can't help but feel that my project is pathetically small-scale. More details: some pictures of the Gates estate, paper-toys model of the house, house details.........