BMW understands Manhattan food culture, clearly. And based on the speakers, they definitely grok its number one gripe … parking and traffic.

BMW has sunk over a $100 million into this investment fund, and we got a chance to see some of the startups they’ve supported.

Puneet Mehta from MyCityWay was on hand to tell us about his geo-based urban resource iPhone app, which received a few awards at NYC’s 2010 BigApps competition. This is a BigApps success story by several measures: reaching four million activations worldwide with their mobility service platform and receiving financing from BMW. Puneet’s team will now claim a few desks at i Ventures’ Morton Street space, where they’ll continue their development efforts.

The quirkiest part of this event was the discussion from the panel, which can only be described as a tribe of parking and traffic nerds. The consensus from this group was that technology in this space has not advanced since the automated gate. Wondering if these guys have seen Manhattan’s elevator-style garages, where the cars are stacked on top of each other? That has to count as an innovation.

Panelist Kurt Buechler, an exec from Steetline, which uses a small sensor to monitor parking, informed us that somewhere between 25 to 40% of all traffic in major cities is made up of cars prowling for empty spaces. You want more stats? Buechler said that the parking space market in the US is around $25 billion, and there are over 70,000 parking locations.

The Streetline sensor, which is the size of a small Manhattan pothole, signals a server when a parking space is empty, and that data is then distributed over the web. With their app, the parking consumer learns where the spaces are, and how much they cost. Steetline users can then make an instant reservation from their car.

Buecheler described motorists currently as “blind squirrels” scurrying around looking for spaces. Nice NYish metaphor. Sometimes I even feel like a parking pigeon, randomly pecking for a morsel.

A new way to crack the traffic puzzle came from Bill Schwebel, who is the marketing guy at Inrix. Inrix is based on crowdsourcing traffic and parking information to millions of GPS-equipped drivers.

Schwebel also supplied additional nerdly congestion data.

“The average commuter spends a week a year in traffic, and in mega-cities they spend two weeks a year in traffic,” Schwebel almost gleefully told the crowd. Inrix receives billions of geo data points from fleet vehicles, mobile gadgets, and now cars with built-in GPS.

Launched seven years ago with algorithms borrowed from Microsoft (apparently this was something Bill Gates and his former partner Paul Allen had worked on), Inrix supplies the state of the traffic in real-time to over 200 millions drivers worldwide, as well traditional media outlets for their traffic reports. Inrix also offers advice on how to get around these snarls.

And if traffic has a theoretician, it would be NYU’s Mitchel Moss, Director of the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy. Moss told this somewhat boisterous and noisy room of developers and startup founders–hey, wasn’t that Tred’s Grant Feek I saw–that cities are about movement and face-to-face meetings.

Since we’re not building new highway infrastructure the way we used, and that includes basic stuff like signs, Moss sees the smartphone as a kind of virtual infrastructure. People are using it as their go-to resource, instead of those moldy 20th-century curiosities, information kiosks and subway maps.

Moss has a depressing view of our public transportation departments. Fair enough, but some of those same issues of accuracy and reliability can also arise with our newer Internet models.

Perhaps that bit of Gates-Allen Microsoft code should be checked a little more closely for bugs and security. Just saying.

Wunderkit is one of a few startups that are reintroducing PIM applications, hybridizing them with a social media to create a hardier collaborative PIM. I received a beta-invite last week from the Wunderkit crew, and have been exploring this work-in-progress over the last few days.

In the last few years, personal information managers have not really been the stuff on which to base startups. Ever since Microsoft jammed Outlook onto everyone’s screen, PIM research and development went into permanent hibernation. Sure there was Mich Kapor’s ambitious (or some would say delusional) effort to reinvent the single-purpose PIM app with his Chandler project.

My virtual messy desk on Wunderkit

Kapor eventually took Chandler off his task list, and I think he open-sourced the thing.

A good rule of thumb is that consumers won’t think much about PIM functions as long as they’re embedded in everything–basically they’re free. PIMs are just a feature on their smartphone or other favorite app they use. And there is company called Google, that’s basically giving away PIMs in the Googley suite of office apps.

In more recent times, there’s been a resurgence of PIM software, which has been retrofitted to handle Internet-era tasks, like storing web-clips and organizing social connections. This latest re-invention of an old idea is now cloud-based, so you can access your stuff on any device. Evernote, for example, is nicely representative of this new type of PIM.

Unlike Evernote, Wunderkit does not have a native app to install–it’s a pure Web creature. This does make for sluggish performance in the beta version I’ve been using. With these new cloud-dwelling PIMs, you have to get used to the idea of storing your personal database records in a large data center rather than keeping them on your MacBook.

But this does solve the problem of synchronization and the ability to access your stuff everywhere. Evernote, in the pro-version, charges extra ($45/year) to work off-line–that is, giving you the privilege of writing files to your laptop when there’s no Internet connection.

The more interesting and practical feature in both these apps is that you can share your notes, calendars, to-do lists, and in the case of Evernote, audio and photo files. That wasn’t the case with the first pre-Internet PIMs.

I can see Wunderkit being useful for teeny businesses that need to make their workflow completely transparent. Everyone can be up to speed without the need of having those “on-the-samp-page” meetings that are the bane of corporate life.

And that leads to my last thought on this topic, which is that as larger companies continue to flatten their hierarchies they’ll find that PIMs with sharing functions and social media hooks–i.e., Yammer, the corporate flavor of Twitter–are a good way to make sure everyone gets the memo without having it approved first by five vice presidents.

With my Tred alpha invite in hand, I was able to take a tour of this high-end service recently. Feek said that Tred will initially connect with Audi and BMW dealers in the New York metropolitan area. Visiting Tred’s site is perhaps as close as I’ll get to get to the non-virtual equivalent–buying a sporty number in a tweedy showroom in Westchester.

My favorite part of my visit was gazing at the high-def pictures, especially the 360-view of the interiors. I could almost smell the leather and feel the manual transmission stick.

Tred offers a 360-viewer for car interiors”

After checking my virtual banking account in Farmville, I decided on an Audi A3. Tred will eventually offer more makes, but for now it’s Audis in the alpha site, and presumably Beemers will be introduced in short order. I chose for my dream-mobile a “Brilliant Red” exterior, beige leather seats, and three packages, Cold Weather ($1400), Sports ($600), and Blue Tooth ($500).

I racked up an MSRP of $29,770.

NYC-based Tred has competitors in the form of carsdirect.com and cars.com. But neither quite performs the same market-making function, nor do they bespeak up-scale as well as Tred.

For comparison purposes, I payed a visit to cars.com and configured the same options, arriving at a slightly higher MSRP of $30,645. Maybe that has something to with a destination charge, which I didn’t see listed on Tred’s bill.

MSRP is not nearly as useful as dealer price, which is the wholesale cost. Cars.com provides that as well as a baseline “Smart Target Price”, which is a consumer’s negotiating price calculated, according to Cars.com, from market data and a “complex proprietary formula”.

In its alpha phase, Tred is still tweaking features, so I expect to more data points and useful stats. In any case, its major differentiator is delivering the car that you want. Presumably Tred’s well-feathered, type-A customers won’t mind paying a few bucks more for that convenience.

However, for popular models and choices–I swear I’ve seen a lot of red Audis on the road–the other sites serve a valuable service without forcing customers to fork over a down payment.

It’s clear that both the online blackouts, and local street-level protests in NYC had their effect.

If you’ve missed the past debate and want to catch up quickly–these issues are not dead–Ars Technica (of course) has the best single post I’ve read on the subject.

I was expecting a rigid toolbox in which non-tech types like myself could click their way to a respectable app. With memories of configuring ShoutEm and OnePager–both good choices for their small biz target market–I assumed that EachScape would be in the same genre.

Not quite. While it is possible to punch out an uninteresting mobile app with a few clicks, there’s much more to this app creator. EachScape looks a little like an Integrated Development Environment or IDE (see this video) but without all that messy code. After watching Collin show off its powers, I became pretty convinced EachScape was as capable as its more developer-oriented cousins.

Ludovic Collin’s iPhone with his EachScape app.

You don’t need to know a language or much HTML to perform some very clever tricks, including embedded video, telephony, data access (XML/JSON), ecommerce, and also fine control of the display. The grunt work is done by a user contributed library of components that are adjusted through a small panel of exposed fields.

I finally got it: EachScape is somewhere between a content management system, like WordPress, and a drag-and-drop IDE. But it is far slicker than WordPress, without those confusing templates, and not nearly as complicated as something like Eclipse for Java.

While watching non-programmer Collin create a RSS-feed viewer, I focused on EachScape’s built-in iPhone emulation. He was able to drop components into a virtual screen, and then we all gazed in wonder as it rendered this as a kind of wire-frame.

Web-designers, who are really the intended power user, would have no trouble getting EachScape to really shine.

Unlike WordPress (don’t mean to pick on it), designers have access to, as we like to say in tech marketing, a “rich set of device events and actions.” Again, no coding at all. So what you can do with this? How about automatically triggering Shazam when a user watches a video.

EachScape produces native code–IOS,Android–or if you prefer HTML5. There are allowances for different device forms, so that a different view can come up for an iPad versus an iPhone. With device independent layouts, of course, the key is always in the design, and that’s something a HTML-savvy user can tweak for ultimate flexibility.

Why haven’t we heard more about EachScape in the tech press? This product is used by the pros. Their list of clients is heavily weighted towards media players (A&E, NBC, CBS, Time Out, CNet), who are, in very un-startup fashion, actually paying for a license. So think of this as something like ShoutEm for the 1%.

However, all is not lost for the remainder. Collins told us that a lite version of EachScape is in the works, which would allow hackers and developers who don’t have the budget to play and then pay when they’re ready.

I have seen and tried both of these apps before. Goggles, the image identifier and Sudoko solver, is a neat, nerdy piece of work. Voice Search may have been cool in its day, but it’s a Siri wannabe at this point.

To be fair, with AI and speech rec researchers such as Johan Schalkwyk working on Voice Search, Google may have a chance to match and perhaps best Apple’s voice software in certain areas.

Theo Jansen’s wind-based creature, forged by Shapeway’s 3D printers.

This NY Tech Council gathering, though, was stolen by a Dutch-based 3D printing company called Shapeways, which has recently opened up shop in Manhattan.

Unlike Brooklyn-based Makerbot, which sells the actual laser-blasting printer, Shapeways lets designers and artisans upload 3D files (STL, OBJ, VRML) to their cloud-based printing facility. They can then carve out ideas into metals, ceramics, glass, as well as plastic.

Shapeways tries to produce an item within 2 – 3 weeks after submission, and will accept volume orders. With its just-in-time manufacturing and low marginal costs, Shapeways encourages an artisanal design approach for niche markets.

For regular consumers, there’s also an on-line marketplace of products from their large creative community. Beautiful and intricate pieces of jewelry as well as practical items, especially gadget cases, are all for sale.

And hobbyists and those looking to create a unique gift, can work with their web-based Creators to modify an existing template. Using this slick and simple app, I’m currently hacking out a custom espresso cup–for a niche market of one.

Peter Weijmarshausen, Shapeways CEO, sees his company as returning manufacturing to its pre-Industrial craft roots: “Product designers with a cool idea don’t have to look for manufacturers, don’t have to look for retail, don’t have to look for loans to afford this manufacturing, but can send the computer product design to Shapeways and start selling it.”

To get a sense of the energetic and somewhat whimsical spirit driving Shapeways, Weijmarshausen showed attendees a miniature ambulating creature designed by Dutch artist Theo Jansen. Jansen’s original strandbeests are elephant-size contraptions that walk along the beach propelled by sea breezes.

The Shapeways product (see above) appears to be a scaled down version with the same level of mind-bending complexity.

For those so inclined, a Shapeway’s strandbeast ($50) can be exploring your desktop.

Google’s browser-based Street View has had limited 3D touring capability for a few historically-oriented locations–the Roman Forum, Baths of Diocletian, and other UNESCO world heritage areas–that are based on videos from their fleet of camera cars. Virtual travelers–vravelers?–have lots of control as they navigate past palazzos and fountains.

Boudhanath Stupa in 3rd Planet

3rd planet is taking the virtualization concept one step further with plans to digitize global tourism into 100% virtual 3-D models. They’ll also be adding hotspots that will let viewers bring up notes and other tidbits on relevant history, architecture, art, etc.

3rd Planet can become an armchair journey without all the the street grime and the occasional citizen not playing along.

So far they’ve brought religiously significant parts of Katmandu into their cyberscape. On my stroll around Boudhanath Stupa–btw, there’s less ad hoc steering capability than Street View–I learned that its ethereal 36-meter high dome or khumba symbolizes water and the yellow patterns represent lotus leaves.

The ultimate goal behind this startup is to provide a convenient resource for on-the-ground sightseers. You’ll get both an instant big picture of your surroundings along with selected points of interests to zoom into. Skimming through their web site, it appears they have plans to allow users to customize their maps with hotels, shopping, and news, which then would be a potential source of ad revenue.

The 3D rendering can run on a browser with their downloadable plugin–it worked nicely on Firefox- and there’s also a native app available for higher performance. For kicks, I tried 3rd Planet on my iPad, which, along with other tablets, would be the logical platform.

No luck yet– the Safari plug-in wouldn’t load.

In theory, with a good connection and deeper 3rd Planet content, you could probably get away with one less Rick Steves’ guide in your sojournings.

There were fewer spinning gears and pulleys, squishy finger puppets, whirring propellers, and swinging light bulbs.

Sure there was Magnetron (Michael Colombo), a reworking of Edison’s recording cylinder using recycled cassette tapes, In Rotation’s (Ann Chen, Claire Mitchel) gear-intensive plate-based music maker, Strings (Johann Diedrick et. al.) for allowing the tone deaf to stroke pretty notes on electrically conducting fuzzy wires, and many other projects that required some minimal digital–of the finger pressing type–control of a device.

But this past show accelerated towards the purely virtual, thanks in part to in some cases virtuosic use of Microsoft’s Kinect. One such example of this was Imagine Nothing (Angela Bond et. al.), which lets even non-dancers like myself direct Kinect’s infra-red eye to project beautiful swirls of color as I flailed my arms.

Also surprising were the number of projects that, as startup entrepreneurs would say, “addresses a real-world problem.”

There was Databetes 7729, which visualized Doug Kanter’s blood sugar levels. And DIY Health Reel, assembled by several ITP students, had the ultimate self-help goal of aiding neurotics and health-conscious souls to improve their lives. Their therapeutic tool is based on a camera worn around the neck that snaps pictures every 30 seconds as your trek through your day. I’m not brave enough for this.

And before I forget, Matt Richardson’s Fade Away project existed somewhere in a unique territory east of the virtual, west of the real, and north of the practical. He directed a laser gun to fire out a Twitter stream on a phosphorescent screen.

Oh, the Wooden Mirror, which using louvered wood tiles to create shadowy pixels and greeted me and other visitors at the Spring Show? It was in the shop for repairs. In its place was a flat-screen, virtual “Fake Wooden Mirror’ that simulated the original.

In time for the holidays, SkanzJr’s coded bracelets let tweens quickly exchange favorite foods, videos, TV shows, sports teams, actors, and other preferences that loom large in the minds of children (and some adults as well).

Sharing this-or-that with SkanzJr

All that’s needed is a smartphone (Android, iPhone, Blackberry, or iPod), which most kids have anyway, to scan codes of those in their play-date cohort.

As with the adult version, preference information and mobile device home page layout is configured using the Skanz web site. For the record, in demoing SkanzJr my account indicates a like of waffles, thin-crust pizzas, and Dr. Who (the original).

Children’s identity is protected on the site–no personal information is revealed–and part of the registration process requires a parent’s email so annoying authority figures can be notified when the account is registered and updates are made for new features.

SkanzJr bands retail for $9.99 and can be found at Lesters, Denny’s, Learning Express, and also online.

Pictures help for these kinds of problems.

Yesterday, this startup announced they’ve made the transition to a public beta. I know … another Q&A site. But what differentiates HN is their posse of expert advice givers, called the ‘Fab 50’, who can step in to offer their wisdom.

The 50 are heavily weighed towards fashion and fitness–fashion designer Marc Bouwer, supermodel Emme, and “image guru” Montgomery Frazier. And they’ve got the relationship expertise covered with the likes of Lou Paget, “world renouned sex educator, the inimitable Savvy Auntie,, and “manhood advocate” Tom Matlack.

The Honestly community is active, and I was able to get my question about kitchen contracting answered: the consensus, by a 3-1 margin, is that a 30% down payment is fair for a major renovation.

And wouldn’t you know it, Montgomery Frazier chipped in and added his gravitas by noting 30% is standard for kitchen work. Which is completely true, after having checked with my own expert network.

Thank you, Mr. Frazier.