Proving the maxim that "rumors are always true," the MTA has announced that Grand Central Station will indeed get a 23,000-square-foot Apple store, so weary travelers can gum up the display iPads with their greasy Shake Shack fingers and yell at nerds who have the power to void their service warranties. According to the Post, the store will be Apple's largest in the world, and takes the place of the Métrazur in the terminal's north and northeast balconies. Fans of the restaurant should take heart that the Chirping Chicken is going nowhere. more ›

Skype, the Internet communications company, is being bought by Microsoft for $8.5 billion. The software giant says, "The acquisition will increase the accessibility of real-time video and voice communications, bringing benefits to both consumers and enterprise users and generating significant new business and revenue opportunities." Of course, Wired notes that this is "the second time Skype has been bought out; after being started in 2003, it was purchasd by eBay in 2005 for $3.1 billion. eBay then sold the majority of its stake in 2009 to a private investment group for $1.2 billion less than it paid." more ›

Because not all money-saving ideas can be found via an online suggestion box, Mayor Bloomberg announced that the city was entering a "first of its kind" partnership with technology giant Microsoft: The deal "will consolidate the City's dozens of individual license agreements into a single one and will provide more than 100,000 City employees with state-of-the-art computing power." In other words, the city can save $50 million over the next five years by not having separate license agreements for all its agencies. more ›

Just after Apple turned sour on New York (and vice versa) over the city's green apple logo, Microsoft is primed to plug into the retail racket with their very own outlet. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: person under a train fatality at Lafayette and Classon Aves. in Brooklyn, another person under a train at 53rd St. and 5th Ave. in Manhattan, and yet another person under a train at Lincoln Ave. and N. Railroad on Staten Island.
  
• The giant apple will be popping up every time a Mets player hits a home run at the new Citi Field ballpark.
  
• If you work at one the top law firms in the country, surrounded by female colleagues who have graduated from the same prestigious law schools you have, it's probably a terrible idea to run a web site where others can rank them by their "hotness."
  
• StreetsBlog has an interesting claymation short demonstrating the concept of raised crosswalks acting as a sort of speed bump. Drivers may not care about running down pedestrians, but no one wants to bottom out his or her car, so at least they'll slow down.
  
• NY State is opening a probe to determine whether the costs of last year's massive steam pipe explosion will be passed on to Con Ed customers. We're 99% certain of the answer already, but won't spoil the surprise.
  
• A former aide to Gov. Pataki agreed to pay a fine of $15,000 for attempting to get the state to appropriate funds to a go-nowhere plan for a women's museum in lower Manhattan.
  
• It's still mid-winter, but it's never too early to start contemplating the fate of the Red Hook ball field vendors.
  
• Shrugging off offers from Microsoft to buy the company, Yahoo! management is now entertaining a possible deal with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which already has a Internet foothold with its ownership of MySpace.
  

Giving business analysts something to talk about besides the economy, Microsoft has made an unsolicited $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo!. The offer is at $31/share, which is 62% more than Yahoo's closing price. more ›

The fourth annual DigitalLife event kicks off today at the Javits Center. Featuring over 200 exhibitors, it is easily the best preview of digital gadgetry coming to life in the fall quarter. Today saw new product releases from Palm (with the Centro - a $99 Treo follow up targeted to new smart phone users exclusive to Sprint), iRobot (new cleaning robots!) , Gateway (a sleek new all-in-one called "One"), and Microsoft (Extenders for Windows Media Center). more ›

Cops seized 160,000 pairs of counterfeit Nike shoes from six locations in Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island after conducting a multi-year investigation to disrupt pirated merchandise. The New York Sun reports that it was one of the largest busts of counterfeit goods in US history and one of four recent successful operations that targeted purveyors of fake Microsoft, Motorola, and Nike products. The haul of bogus shoes was reportedly worth $7.1 million. more ›

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is many things. He's the head of the largest public school system in the country, he's a lawyer (he was a former Assistant Attorney General - biggest case: going after Microsoft) and he's a businessman (he was chairman and CEO of Bertelsmann). But who knew he was someone who should appear on The Colbert Report? more ›

A report being released tomorrow by the Industrial Assistance Corporation (IAC) titled "Buried Treasure: New York's Hidden Tech Sector" asserts that New York City rivals cities like Seattle and areas like Silicon Valley as the largest technology center in the country. The study counted the number of tech workers in the city, at branches of corporations like IBM, Microsoft, Google, and the research and development departments of medical centers in the city. The IAC report actually considered all of the "New York Metropolitan Statistical Area," which includes southern New York State and northern New Jersey. The Associated Press story says that IAC found 620,000 tech workers in that area, more than twice the number found in Silicon Valley. more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a motorcycle jacking at 230th Place and 148th Ave. in Queens, shots fired at police at Gates and Nostrand Aves. in Brooklyn, and multiple pedestrians struck at Coney Island and Ditmas Aves. in Brooklyn.
• State and city politicians broke ground in the Bronx yesterday on a new Metro-North station stop at the under-construction Yankee Stadium. It's hoped that the transit option will cut down on auto traffic from upstate fans driving to games.
• The FDNY's officers (e.g., lieutenants, supervisors) will get a 4% pay increase retroactive to March 20th, and annual increases of 4% each year for the next three years. It nets out to a 17% salary increase.
• A tip led police to the arrest of two women in the brutal 2003 killing of a 91-year-old woman in a robbery that gained them a gold chain snatched from the woman's neck and a stack of bath towels.
• Long Island animal-cruelty authorities are offering a $20,000 reward in an effort to find out who tied a two-year-old dog to a tree, doused it with gasoline, then lit it on fire and left it to die.
• The Nautica New York City Triathlon is tomorrow and there will be significant traffic disruptions on the West Side and Henry Hudson Highways and 72nd St. NY1 has the details.
• It's Saturday, so Canada's Globe and Mail takes a look at which city has the better 24-hour, never-sleeps nightlife, London or New York.
• If Jay-Z's mom bought him a computer with Microsoft Excel when he was little, instead of a boombox.
• There's still some time to get to Coney Island to catch the headliners of today's Siren Festival. Here's the schedule.
• Helmet-cam video of a NYC bike messenger on the talk show "Ellen".

Google Maps has upped its considerable offering to include "Street View," which offers views of the certain locations at the street-level imagery. The areas where you can see images are noted by blue lines on the map (click the "Street View" button). Manhattan is pretty covered and downtown Brooklyn is covered, but the Bronx, Queens and State Island views are pretty much limited by major roads. Below is 1 Centre Street; you can't get an image of City Hall, because the blue line doesn't go into City Hall Park. Here's what Eastern Parkway at the Brooklyn Library looks like and this is the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. more ›

will survey the panorama of “typography, graphic design and global visual culture” that has evolved since Max Miedinger unveiled the bedevilingly sleek Helvetica typeface fifty years ago. more ›

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! more ›

With the unseasonably mild weather we've been having, it's a great week to check out the sculptures nestled in Madison Square Park's outdoor gallery before they are taken down after the holidays. The four large scultpures, created by internationally renown Ursula von Rydingsvard, are abstract works primarily expanding upon her established vessel theme. Or, in less erudite terms, the odd-shaped wood and plastic-looking forms make for a really good excuse to take an extended lunch break in the name of Art. more ›

Port Authority 9:45am, by Travis Ruse. more ›

Last night, Microsoft Zune threw another launch party to celebrate the release of the portable mp3 player (Gothamist reviewed the device earlier this week). The location was secret up until yesterday morning, but once it was announced, we got a whole lot more interested in checking the party out. Why? It was also the official opening of the brand new LES venue, The Box. We were supercurious to see what this place was gonna be like, so we headed down last night to scout out the scene. more ›

After giving Apple's iPod a five year lead, Microsoft is finally set to officially launch its comeback response in the form of Zune. But is it too late to eat into Apple's market share? We spent a few hours with the device last week, here are our findings. more ›

Good news for all those that love mapping features as Microsoft added Virtual Earth 3-D to their Live Search today. The bad news? You have to be using Windows Internet Explorer 6 or 7 and install software (that takes a long time to install). We assume that Virtual Earth doesn't work on Macs. Maps are currently viewable in 2-D through any browser. The bad news is that the program is such a memory hog that we almost don't want to use it. At least the 2-D stuff looks nice. more ›

think. It just made us wonder: if it were up to the -ist-a-verse, what would we be voting for? more ›

MUSIC: Love is All takes over the Knitting Factory tonight with not one, but two shows. The early show is with Cause Co-Motion! and Devastations, the later one with Cause Co-Motion! and Tyvek. Choose wisely. Or you could always watch Jared Leo bring his emo wrath upon bloggers, his band plays Roseland tonight. more ›

The comedian we always thought of as a "Mac guy", Demetri Martin, is playing Town Hall on October 27th (buy tickets here), and for some reason - he is also doing a series of "webisodes" for Microsoft. more ›

There's no line in the photo because THERE'S NO SHAKE SHACK. Click on the image above for a bigger version.Seems like Microsoft needs to update their shit because we all know that SHAKE SHACK IS THE BIGGEST THING TO HAPPEN TO BURGERS EVER!!! more ›

- Robert DeNiro is donating his collection of movie scripts, notes, costumes, etc. to the University of Texas at Austin - Bobby, NYC wanted your glasses from Bullwinkle & Rocky, anyway (though the guns from Taxi Driver...) more ›

DCist helps us make more sense of the world this week. Posts like this concert review are the reason for Scott Stapp. DCist also enumerates the reasons for playing ultimate frisbee, Condi’s tight buns, their love of a local convenience store, and their jealousy of a person in Seattle calling the city. more ›

- And we wish good luck to Charles Maikish - he's in charge of Ground Zero rebuilding construction more ›

- Response times to maintenance complaints in public housing increased but were generally within targetsDo you like how with even the bad news, the city tries to spin it? Like with the on-time graduation rate going down by 1%, the city makes sure to say that the kids who didn't graduate are still enrolled or are doing a fifth year (see the NY Times article about this). Anyway, overall, the Mayor was positive, saying, "The early results contained in this report indicate that our agencies are continuing the excellent record of achievement seen over the past four years, including advances in education, public safety, quality of life, and the health and welfare of New Yorkers." Gothamist will spend the weekend sifting through the PDFs of the report and see if there are any gems. We'll leave you with a report that crime is higher in 2006 versus the same period in 2005 but the NYPD thinks it's just a blip. more ›

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. He's the boss, so if this is the way he wants it handled, there's nothing I can do about it. But am I happy about it? No." more ›

way to tell the story. Edward Greenwood (husband and father of one) was paid $30,000 to do aministrative work says that after Bloomberg had visited the offices last year, his boss had mentioned (though not to Greenwood) that the billionaire mayor was upset at seeing solitaire on a computer screen. While Greenwood says he did have that Microsoft Office necessity up, he insists that he was "running around" doing work. Office workers know that rule number one of the office computer is "Outlook is king!" - keep that up at all times. This is why disgruntled office workers turn to writing books about their annoying bosses - having a Word document open looks less suspicious. We bet the Mayor's office will make sure things like iTunes, AIM, and any non-government Internet surfing will remain off limits very soon! more ›