Besides disaster assistance, FEMA also oversees the creation of flood maps, which are then used to set building codes and flood insurance rates. Superstorm Sandy struck as FEMA was updating those maps, and now some homeowners looking to rebuild face an expensive choice.

New York will have to wait until 2016 for Wi-Fi in all underground subway stations — putting it years behind other American cities like San Francisco, Boston and Chicago as well as international cities like Singapore and Hong Kong.

In the world of business and tech, “mobile revolution” and “app economy” are the buzzwords of the moment. The meaning behind the hype: In a smartphone world, money will be made by those creating the programs that make smartphones smart: apps. For those who want to get in on the act, the good news is there are a record number of books, classes and websites to help you every step of the way. But the hype also clouds a very simple truth: It’s a lot easier to get started than it is to finish. Good luck.

Beth Rice lives with her husband in a one-bedroom rental on the 11th floor of a luxury high-rise in the financial district. So while much of Manhattan begins to return to business as usual after the storm, Rice and her husband spent last week holed up in a 90-square-foot Midtown hotel room for $165 a night.

All the major cell phone carriers here in New York say their networks are having issues due to Sandy

As the New York City tech sector continues to grow, so too have the number of meetups, happy hours, demos and networking events – somewhere in the ballpark of hundreds a month are held throughout the city.

In a time when the concern about growing income inequality has found outlets in the Occupy Wall Street protests and made its way onto the presidential campaign trail, this community doesn’t have to worry about the wage gap between its residents: Country Knolls, New York —  the place with the greatest income equality in the nation.

Texting a friend about dinner plans. Browsing websites at work. Checking email from home. Traveling with a smart phone. These are a few sources of ever-increasing sets of personal data released into the world and collected by companies on a daily basis, often unbeknownst to the individual. And the demand has never been greater.

New York City has aspirations to become the No. 1 technology hub in the country. But if the city wants to edge out Silicon Valley as the home of tech sector start-ups, it needs to boost the bandwidth of a limited resource — its broadband.

The vocabulary of the internet includes words like “digital universe,” “cyberspace” and, now, the “cloud.” Most people think of the internet as nebulous, but — in New York City, at least — the internet’s infrastructure is a lot closer than it sounds. It's hiding in plain sight in the city’s old telecommunications buildings.

If New York City used a bidding system to issue food truck permits — much like it does for taxi medallions or park concessions — the city could add $37 million to its coffers.

It used to be that the only people who still used pagers were doctors and drug dealers. But any fan of Law & Order knows that drug dealers moved on to disposable cell phones long ago. Years after most people switched from pagers to cell phones, doctors kept beepers — but that may soon change. 

Twenty-six bus operations that transported more than 1,800 passengers a day along Interstate 95 between New York and Florida have been closed for safety violations in what federal officials say is the government's largest single safety crackdown of the motor coach industry.

This year's mild winter could come back to bite New Yorkers this spring and summer – literally. The city is in the midst of mosquito breeding season.

Rare is the New Yorker who can resist glancing at the magazine or book of the person next to them on the subway or in the park. But with an increasing number of people getting their magazines and books in digitized form, sneaking a peek has become much more difficult.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday that the U.S. is mortgaging its future by not allowing immigrants to work in the country.