Good morning, All,

Since we’re often asked if we focus exclusively on New York (answer: no, or at least not intentially), we went and took a look at the SOS readership statistics. Well, it’s true that we’re based here, but it seems we have members who are regularly following the newsletter – and everyone’s progress – from: Norway, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, China, Egypt, Israel, Viet Nam, Thailand, Costa Rica, Turkey, India, United Arab Emirates, Australia, Argentina, Chile, Spain, Morocco, Portugal, Canada, the United Kingdom, Denmark, France, Switzerland, the US, and New York, which let’s face it, is basically its own planet.  We are gobsmacked – and humbled – and would love to hear from some of you to get your points of view on what’s going on in technology in your part of the world – literally. We also wanted to take a moment to say danke, dorro arigato, thank you, merci – and we’ve just exhausted our knowledge of the major food groups. Apologies if we’ve left you out. And since you’re all here, wherever you are, you might want to look into: http://www.angelinvestmentnetwork.net/ – they’re global. And hope this helps!

Don’t know what the final numbers were regarding the masses who watched the Royal Wedding on Friday  – on line or on the tube. We saw reports of from 275 million to 2 billion. Which is a pretty big spread, and two comments on this subject:
1.     A nod to old media: no matter how far technology has come to date, and yes between facebook friends and twitter, it was an exponentially larger and a much more immediate shared experience than the last RW, and no matter on which screen you were watching – terrestrial television or online – remember: it was being delivered to you via broadcast television. Game not over yet.
2.     In terms of viewership, don’t know where they got those numbers from, but in light of all that came out last week about privacy and tracking wouldn’t it have been a lot easier – and more exact – had it been tracked by GOOG or Apple or some combination of the two? End of line.

And finally, while the Royal Wedding was televised, the demise of Osama bin Laden was tweeted: http://bit.ly/iSdkew. And this on the day that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange called Facebook the most appalling spy machine that has ever been invented http://tnw.to/182sQ. Someone is always watching – and/or reporting.

Deadlines:

The inaugural User Experience Awards contest @ UserExperienceAwards.com is actively seeking submissions and the deadline is May 15^th. It’s free to enter, and the Grand Prize winner receives $1000 and press. There are also three other prizes of $500. All user experience professionals, startups, agencies, established companies and students are encouraged to submit. For more information and to enter your submission: http://userexperienceawards.com/

The User Experience Awards aim to showcase the value and importance of user experience in creating successful digital products and services. Great user experience is often an essential differentiator in the product or service offering and THE critical component that drives user satisfaction and engagement.

The awards are being co-hosted in NYC by the NYC chapters of the Interaction Design Association (NYC IxDA), the Usability Professionals’ Association (NYC UPA), Computer Human Interaction (NYC CHI) NYC-CHI, and NYC IA Meetup. The contest is open to anyone, with a juried awards ceremony  featuring 8 UX experts that will be held on the first day of the 2011 NYC Internet Week. This inaugural event is sponsored by Razorfish, Parsons School of Design, Oxford Technology Ventures, Ultralight Startups and Harvest Software.

NYC TechStars deadline for the summer program is coming up.  Early application deadline is also May 15th. Apply here: http://www.techstars.org/apply/

Finally, Hacking Education: A Contest for Developers and Data Crunchers. Ten years ago, a teacher in the Bronx launched DonorsChoose.org. Since then, more than 165,000 teachers at 43,000 public schools have posted over 300,000 classroom project requests, inspiring $80,000,000 in giving from 400,000 donors. We’ve opened up that data, and invite you to make discoveries and build apps that improve education in America. Help to shape your school system’s budget by revealing what teachers really need. Build the first mobile app for hyper-local education philanthropy. We’ve got a list of suggestions to help get you thinking. We hope to build a community of developers and data crunchers, so we’re launching a contest! Deadline is June 30^th, and more information is here: http://www.donorschoose.org/hacking-education

Streaming Media East comes to NYC May 10-11, and if you’d like a free exhibit hall pass, now’s the time to sign up for it. http://bit.ly/exN3Zj

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Numbers are especially important in an industry based on them, and this week we have  number of articles for your edification:

How To Hustle The AngelList in 10 Easy Steps. The AngelList platform has been improving, giving startups new ways to reach investors with every push. This is about using those tools : http://b.qr.ae/ewbQOm

The Ten Commandments of Collaboration. Collaboration is not just about sharing and communicating, but also knowing how to best distribute, manage and monitor your resources and ideas.  Here’s a handy list for you – and we do love our lists, don’t we?  http://bit.ly/gmrT3j

20 Blogs Every Entrepreneur Should Read. Starting your own company is one of the hardest things you can do – so it’s invaluable to get advice from other people who’ve been there, done that: http://read.bi/kTsGGz

Seven Keys to Capturing the Attention of the Bloggers/Media: http://bit.ly/h0FbDy

Ten Entrepreneurial Rules for Building Massive Companies, from Reid Hoffman, who did manage to build one: http://bit.ly/dMzkoE

21 Tips To Get Your Tweet On: http://bit.ly/ermpDn

11 Excellent iPad Apps for Meetings & Presentations. Always helpful: http://on.mash.to/fZEfCG

10 Ideas For Those Critical Early Startup Sales. Closing your initial sales at a startup is one of the most challenging parts of building a company. Many startups die before they ever close a deal. Here are ten principles one entrepreneur learned:http://bit.ly/iktlGf

Finally, and not so much a chuckle as a huh???, we leave you with a Quora question: What is the all-time greatest failed Internet startup? Yes, boo.com blew through $188 million in six months. Six months, Gracie??? It was the First Wave, when startups were spending like drunken sailors, and investors weren’t saying…boo.  An interesting read; numbers included.  http://b.qr.ae/mPaVOR Spend those dollars wisely and since it’s not just the cash that you need, not to worry: help is on the way…