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It’s starting to seem like everyone who got their start in Silicon Valley is putting down an anchor in New York City. Earlier this year Facebook set up an engineering office in Manhattan, then this week Alexia Tsotsis made her move to the Big Apple (miss you!) Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?

The latest techie to head east is Polyvore, the website that lets people create collages of apparel and accessories using images from any online store. Polyvore today is announcing the opening of its first-ever New York office, in SoHo. The NYC office has a staff of eight to start, while Polyvore’s 40 other employees and its executive team headed up by CEO Jess Lee will remain headquartered in Mountain View, California.

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued a personal welcome to Polvyore, which is pretty cool:

“By opening an office here, Polyvore is joining the growing group of tech companies who recognize that the benefits of being in New York City are irresistible, regardless of where a startup began.”

Polyvore’s setting up an office in Manhattan makes a ton of sense, since as hard as the San Francisco Bay Area may try, NYC is still the fashion headquarters of the United States (and arguably the world.) I know that Lee and one of her co-founders Pasha Sadri have found themselves spending more and more time in New York as Polyvore has grown, so now they will have somewhere to hang their hats when in town. In a statement, Sadri said: “We’ve come a long way since Polyvore was five people in my living room. Polyvore has always been at the intersection of technology and style, so being in close proximity to the fashion powerhouses of New York was a natural next step.”

And speaking of Polyvore’s growth, the company is also announcing today that it has hit 17 million unique visitors per month. That’s a nice bump up from the last time we checked in with the company in May, when it had 15 million uniques. Here is a video interview from then, in which Lee and Sadri discuss how embracing “the Pinterest effect” has helped them grow the business:

Photo credit of Polyvore NYC office: Patrick Butler

For the past few months I’ve been on the hunt for a new apartment, and I’ve learned something very important. A relatively high percentage of the listings searchable on Craigslist, StreetEasy, etc. are expired. Brokers leave up listings for apartments that were rented a long time ago to generate leads, and as I’m personally struggling through the mess of it now, I find it despicable.

But a new startup has just launched here in NYC that aims to connect an owner with a renter in a transparent, verified way. RentalEngine, which has just entered public beta, allows users to search all of the major listings sites in one interface.

The difference between this, and say a Nestio, however, is that RentalEngine’s system filters out listings that may have missing or false information, or may have already expired.

Vacancy is nearly guaranteed.
The site also offers management features, which allows you to store the listing, enter notes on it, and rate various features of the building and the unit.

This not only helps RentalEngine understand what you’re looking for, but it lets you collaborate with roommates, significant others, etc. RentalEngine will also notify you through email if a listing fitting your requirements becomes available.

The company has raised $150,000 in funding thus far, and the site was seeing approximately 100 unique visits/day before launching into public beta.

Click to view slideshow.

There are many ways a Vodka brand could try to get your attention in NYC – flashy billboards, taxi signs, hot chicks sampling in bars… let us (not) count the ways.

Ooooor, they could do something way cooler like Ultimat Vodka and send window washers dressed in suits up to office windows on Friday afternoons holding up signs encouraging workers to stop working, head on outside and grab a drink.

And the brilliance doesn’t stop there, because when they get outside, there’s actually complimentary drinks for them to enjoy.

Fantastic!

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The name “Vooza” has emerged on the tech scene in recent weeks with some pretty entertaining videos that do straight-faced impressions of the worst of today’s buzzy startup culture (check out their latest one, which is embedded above.) While Vooza itself probably isn’t for real as a company — as Wired UK has pointed out, its supposed CEO Matt Stillman is a dead ringer for NYC stand-up comic Matt Ruby — its knack for making hilariously catchy videos is, having caught the attention of the likes of Dennis Crowley and David Karp.

So it’s interesting to see Vooza teaming up with Switch Video, the totally legit company that makes animated product pitch videos for startups. Vooza and Switch are running a contest to give away a free “explainer” video.

It doesn’t seem like this is actually what Vooza is looking to do full-time (I’m thinking it’s more just a very clever publicity tool for Ruby’s show biz career) but this could be a pretty sweet one-time deal for someone looking to launch a startup or product. I mean, there’s nothing worse than a startup video that aims to be funny but falls flat — and the people behind Vooza do have what it takes to make stuff that’s actually humorous.

The contest runs in three pretty straightforward rounds:

1. In round one, interested people can sign up with their names and contact information, and spread the fact that they entered via Twitter or Facebook.
2. Then there’s round two. “In this round we find out who really has what it takes to leverage the power of video,” Vooza says with a wink (I think.) This is where people fill out a more detailed application about why they should win.
3. In round three, Vooza and Switch will pick the ten top entries and put them up for a public vote. The voting will start August 22nd and end at noon Pacific Time August 29th. “At the end of the day, the epic startup rockstars with the most votes wins,” Vooza says with tongue planted in cheek (I think.)

Anyway, it seems like a fun summer fling, and should produce a pretty interesting video at the end of it all. Check out more details here.

For basketball fans, and basketball stars wanna be. Epic new commercial directed by Matthijs Van Heijningen for Jordan brand.

The agency is Wieden + Kennedy NYC.

Daniel, the Google Maps Community Manager, posted in the Google Maps Help thread that they’ve updated Google Maps/Transit to include a data feed

Daniel, the Google Maps Community Manager, posted in the Google Maps Help thread that they’ve updated Google Maps/Transit to include a data feed from the MTA where they can post alerts of planned outages for NYC subways directly on Google Maps.

Here is a picture:

Daniel explained that Google Maps for Android or desktop, you will now see whether “any planned service changes are expected to affect that station at the time.” “In addition, the relevant alerts will be included in the step-by-step transit directions pointing you wherever youâre going,” he added.

Google has a more detailed explanation on the Google blog.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.