It’ll be open 24 hours during the week (while only staying open from 11am-7pm on Sundays, for some reason) and it’ll have concerts. Concerts already lined up include Lamb of God, Peter Erskine and Friends and Anthrax. Oh, and Bon Jovi will be there on opening day. Awesome? [Racked, Thanks, Ponies]

There are four separate 3′x4′ panels that represent Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx. When they’re combined, you’ve got one gorgeous piece of wall art.

I wouldn’t try and take it on a road trip though. [Dude Craft via Neatorama]

It’s part of a test program on the L line, where they installed boards telling people when the next train would arrive last year. This is just the next step. If it goes well, presumably, they’ll expand it to other lines as well. Like the Q! Bring it to the Q, MTA! Please! [Gothamist; pic via Kate Heffernan]

OK, so we don’t know for sure that they stole those traffic cones, but it’s not like there’s a Traffic Cone Supply Shop at every corner. Either way, the folks at EFGH came up with this pavilion which can be constructed from the ground up in less than six hours using only a very small team, a bunch of traffic cones and a metal frame. We don’t really know how great the acoustics are, but who cares about that when they can hold a concert under a giant, neon orange hedgehog? [YouTube via Core77]

In fact, this festival sounds downright awesome. Originally designed as a study on the “geographic environment of behaviour” in 2003, the event has morphed over the years into an “art and technology fest”, said David Darts, the curatorial director for this year’s event, in an interview with the New York Times.

Case in point, the aforementioned golf game, played with iPhones, GPS and plenty of pre-round stretching, is called Gigaputt. NYC avenues are the “fairways”, the sidewalks are greens, and a series of 18 local bars serve as the holes. Much like a Wiimote with MotionPlus and Tiger Woods 10, players “swing” their iPhones and the on board accelerometer, coupled with custom software, drives the ball forward.

The fish tech, called Fish ‘n microChips (get it?), is the work of NYU professor Natalie Jeremijenko. An array of LED-equipped buoys line the East River, where they monitor water quality and also flash whenever a fish (or body) wash by.

The chess game, also played with mobile phones, is an eight by eight block grid mapped out by photojournalist Sharilyn Neidhardt. Human pieces are controlled by two chess master overlords from afar, much like the staff at Gizmodo.

Tech overload? Yes, please. [New York Times]

Due to certain materials used in consumer electronics (especially in batteries and displays), gadgets are some of the most toxic consumer items out there, capable of leaking dangerous chemicals into the ground if they’re not properly disposed of. New York, and 13 other states, have thus passed laws to create specific, stronger rules for these products. Unfortunately, in NYC, that means the members of CEA would have to go door to door to pick up products like televisions and monitors, at their own expense.

CEA is claiming that this pick-up service would clog the city’s streets with smoke-belching trucks, which is bad for traffic and bad for the environment, and that the laws are unfair to electronics manufacturers. A spokesman claimed that it’s “an unreasonable and unsustainable burden on manufacturers.”

The CEA’s argument isn’t totally unfounded—it certainly would be a financial concern, even if we’re not sure their environmental point about trucking is all that accurate. But the fact remains that somebody’s got to take care of this stuff: It’s either the state of New York, that needs to spend far more money extracting these gadgets from the trash, or the manufacturers that create the harmful products in the first place. And the fact remains that many other states and countries (Japan, South Korea) have enacted similar laws. So we’re siding with New York on this one: We think it’s worth a little trouble to get these products conscientiously recycled.

Wall Street Journal

The NYC Metro Cuff is an ” über urban matte metal cuff” capable of guiding you a la treasure map through NYC’s intricate train system. No one will take you for a tourist as you compulsively check your “watch,” studying the embossed map fervently while inching away from yet another passenger who dually loves garlic and despises deodorant. Order yours for $US25 shipped. [design hype via Gearfuse]

So it’s not exactly “real time,” but it’s fairly close, according to BusinessGreen. The amount of greenhouse gases, now thrown in our faces by this giant glowing billboard, is rising by about 800 tonnes per second, which doesn’t mean much to me but certainly sounds like a large number. You can also download a widget in case you don’t walk by the billboard itself too often but still want to see a big number slowly increasing. [Treehugger]

The Commission is asking for suggestions from New Yorkers, and while some of them are interesting and useful, some are pretty silly. Integration of the Metrocard, NYC’s debit-card-like protocol for the subway system, would be in the former category. Some kind of navigation system would also be welcome, since in my experience, actually knowing their way around the city doesn’t seem to be a requirement for getting a job as an NYC cabbie.

In the “silly” category, we’re putting iPod integration and Wi-Fi: We can’t see anybody really wanting to whip out a laptop and do some browsing while in the back of a cab. But the suggestion getting the most attention is the idea to block mobile phone reception in the front seat, which of course is designed to stop cabbies from yacking away on the phone instead of, you know, driving.

Cabbies insist that this is unfair. “Sometimes you have an emergency,” one cabdriver said. “You have a family in the home. Sometimes you have something wrong and go back home [sic].” The Taxi and Limousine Commission has stated they would make provisions for emergency calls, which would quell that argument.

New Yorkers can still make suggestions at the Commission’s website. [WCBS TV, image via Gearlog]