Zynga Makes It Rain in the East Village

Just a few days after the city of San Francisco hit Zynga with charges of vandalism, the social gaming giant brought its ad campaign to NY.

Fake dollars promoting the new version of Mafia Wars were spotted outside the St. Mark's bookshop by East Village Feed.

Zynga has pointed the finger at Davis Elin, the advertising firm it hired for the project. But the city of SF says it plans to pursue both parties to recoup the cost of the cleanup.

Angry New Yorkers are demanding Zynga clean up this mess. But hey, it could have been worse. As part of the Mafia Wars promotion, rapper Snoop Dog blew up an 4-ton armored car in the Las Vegas desert last week.

West Coast Wants Dave Winer Back. NYC Says Too Bad

Om Malik, founder of the popular tech blog GigaOm, was hanging out with fellow blog star Robert Scoble yesterday.

"I'm sitting with @Scobleizer checking pix of his kids and missing @davewiner," he wrote.

NY VC kingping Fred Wilson responded, "Your loss is our gain."

That's because Dave Winer - an ur-internet star heavily involved in the beginning of blogging, RSS and podcasting - is back on the east coast for a stint as a visiting professor at NYU. "For me and the students of Studio 20 this is a major 'get', as the bookers for TV shows like to say," wrote NYU's Jay Rosen.

Winer has long been a believer in new media. Back in 2002, Winer made a $2000 bet with Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of NYT Digital, that in five years time, web blogs would outrank big name sites like the NYT when it came to top news stories. Winer donated the loot to the World Wide Web Consortium, natch.

Explaining his move, Winer wrote that, "NYU and Manhattan are going to be very interesting places in the coming months and years, in exactly the areas I'm interested in."

P.S. - Check out this amazing website about Winer's bet with Nisenholtz.

Study Finds Silicon Alley Centered On Gramercy

It's always fun to nit pick over neighborhoods. With all the talk of a Silicon Alley surge floating around, analytical firm CB Insights decided to nail down some numbers and see where the deals were getting done.

According to their study of 124 tech deals done this summer with a combined value of $821 million, Gramercy is the beating heart of Silicon Alley. It more than doubled the activity of the East Village and Soho.

You can mouse around this interactive map below to see where the money is.

Powered by Tableau

Josh Weinstein's CollegeOnly is Social Networking For Horny Students

Josh Weinstein, a web entrepreneur born and based in NYC, seems to have really enjoyed his time at college.

Like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Weinstein got his start building viral sites for his campus. At Princeton, his first big success was the matchmaking site GoodCrush.

But unlike Zuck, who dropped out of Harvard, Weinstein keeps coming back for more. "Excited for Princeton mini summer camp this weekend" he tweeted recently.

Earlier this year, Weinstein rode the Chatroullete wave, introducing a college only version, Random Dorm.

Now this Manhattanite, his LinkedIn page lists him as an alum of both Dalton and Stuyvesant, is creating a social network exclusively for the university set, CollegeOnly.

None of Weinsteins earlier project caught on in a big way, but they did increase his profile. For CollegeOnly he secured the backing of Peter Thiel, one of the earliest investors in Facebook.

The idea is to recapture some of the horny, free wheeling magic that made social networking great, before it opened up to everyone.

"I think people will like it because they don't want to post their photos for their employers, parents and high school siblings to see," Weinstein told the NYT.

Ahh the goood old days, when only our peers could see us puking behind the Romance Languages department.

Apple Goes Acoustic - What's the Big Secret for New iTunes?

Apple titillated the tech press yesterday with the announcement of...wait for it...a big announcement! Yup, Sept. 1 Apple will say something, so lets get this hype machine rolling.

The invite to the presser came with a picture of a acoustic guitar bearing the Apple logo. Ok, Steve Jobs is no J.J. Abrams, but the clue was enough to go on.

Peter Kafka of All Things D tapped his music industry sources and confirmed that Apple has yet to work out a deal with the major labels for anything truly earth shattering, like a version of iTunes that streams your music from the cloud.

Instead, Kafka speculates that the new iTunes will go social, making it easier to share your taste with your friends, just not the songs themselves.

This seems like a pretty boring development. Nobody needs Apple's help to socialize with their friends.

So Observer Tech would like to make its own announcement. Apple, in full stealth mode, recently added a new feature to its iDisk online storage that lets iPhone users upload and stream music from the cloud.

Give it a whirl and let us know how you like it in the comments. Just don't mention anything to the record labels.

Gilt Without The Guilt. Flash Sale Site Introduces Health and Wellness Deals

Brooklyn based Gilt Groupe is having its first ever sale on health and wellness items today. This seems like a no brainer. The site already offers deals on designer clothes and fancy food, how hard could it be to make these same customers self-conscious about their weight?

According to the company's press release, "Some studies show that folks who work out regularly are more successful on the job and have longer lasting personal relationships." Deeper relationships, one assumes, lead to deeper discounts.

The flash sales site, which now counts 3.4 million members, has been rapidly expanding its offerings. Gilt City, which is still in beta right now, features local deals on Broadway shows and day spas.

Will folks be as interested in run of the mill items like yoga mats and tennis shoes as they are in designer clothing and luxury outings? Listen for the sound of furious mousing clicking at noon, when the health and wellness sale kicks off.