Does writing a blog constitute work? That appears to be the position of the New York State Department of Labor, which recently declared a laid-off attorney ineligible for unemployment benefits because she was bringing in $1.30 a day from blog ads.

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Despite growing concerns about online privacy on social networks such as Facebook, marketers at the Social Data Summit in New York on Thursday professed enthusiasm for social media marketing.

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Here in New York, there’s no shortage of networking opportunities for entrepreneurs. The “city that never sleeps” is teeming with conferences, happy-hour meet-ups and business-plan competitions for start-ups.

That’s all great, says local venture capitalist Warren Lee, but what’s missing are straight-talk lectures by successful entrepreneurs giving practical advice about the grittier side of starting up a company.

“The start-up world sort of glamorizes how cool being an entrepreneur is,” Lee said. “But people are putting their lives on the line. They’re mortgaging the house and not talking to their wives or husbands because they’re working 100 hours a week. It’s not glamorous.”

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Video games and learning exercises form the core of a new public school curriculum

Games have long played a role in classrooms, but next month marks the launch of the first U.S. public school curriculum based entirely on game-inspired learning. Select sixth graders can look forward to playing video games such as “Little Big Planet” and “Civilization,” as well as non-digital games ranging from role-playing scenarios to board games and card games.

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New York police issued more than 7,400 tickets last week in a 24-hour crackdown on cellphone-using drivers.

The police’s goal was to cut down on cellphone use while behind the wheel in accordance with New York law, and in light of newly released research showing that texting while driving is particularly risky. Officers gave fair warning of its planned blitz, but studies have shown that New York drivers typically ignore the law.

Thursday was no different. While the NYPD reportedly gives about 580 tickets a day for drivers who ignore the cellphone ban, on August 24, they wrote 7,432 tickets at $130 a pop.

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Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that some New York coffee shops were pulling the plug on customers that park themselves at tables, open their laptops, and hang out for hours, buying perhaps only a single latte as their cafe rental fee.

While independent coffee shops that are struggling to make ends meet may see the need to flush out the low-revenue laptop users, the major chains are not so strapped.

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I’m trying to imagine how it happened. The point at which, perhaps three weeks ago, Jeff Pulver convened a meeting of the greatest minds in social media to thrash out the details of ‘140 Characters’ – his conference on Twitter and the “state of now” which kicked off yesterday in New York.

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As he kicked off the Wired Business Conference on Monday, Wired magazine’s editor in chief, Chris Anderson, started talking about Jell-O.

Anderson was explaining the thesis of his forthcoming book, “Free,” about the realities of making a profit and building a business in an environment rife with digital goods that can be replicated at almost no cost.

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Silicon Valley may be the place to be for Internet start-ups, but New York is the birthplace of cool, an attribute that comes in handy for launching some tech companies.

“The quintessential thing about New York that makes it different than Silicon Valley is that people here are much more focused on the idea than the technology that is the plumbing for the idea,” said Steven Brill, the founder of Court TV and airport-security-pass firm Verified Identity Pass.

During a panel session focused on digital-media investing in New York, Mr. Brill, a co-founder too of media start-up Journalism Online, called the New York “the best place in the world” to find people who are willing to take a chance. “You have a city with the mentality that is receptive to completely new ideas,” he said.

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Who knew that swine flu could also infect Twitter? Yet this is what appears to have happened in the last 24 hours, with thousands of Twitter users turning to their favorite service to query each other about this nascent and potentially lethal threat as well as to share news and latest developments from Mexico, Texas, Kansas and New York (you can check most recent Twitter updates on the subject by searching for “swine flu” and “#swineflu”).

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In 1987, a teenage girl in suburban New York was discovered dazed and wrapped in a garbage bag, smeared with feces, with racial epithets scrawled on her torso. She had been attacked by half a dozen white men, then left in that state on the grounds of an apartment building. As the court case against her accused assailants proceeded, it became clear that she’d actually faked the attack, in order not to be punished for running away from home. Though the event initially triggered enormous moral outrage, evidence that it didn’t actually happen didn’t quell that outrage.

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“Controlling the stream” is not just one of the major life-challenges facing elderly gentlemen; it is the center of industrial competition on the realtime social network that we once termed “Web 2.0.” Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, gave a speech yesterday before a group of advertising executives in New York in which she argued, as the Wall Street Journal reported, that “banner and text ads are old news.”

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Last summer, well after Twitter had become the buzz of the New York and San Francisco Web crowds but months before its current moment at the apogee of Internet hype, I visited the start-up at its hip South of Market offices and wrote a feature on the company in Fortune. Its title, “The true meaning of Twitter,” now feels like a quaint moment in time when the very definition of the company’s name, let alone how you use its product, needed explaining.

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Twitter may not have figured out a way to turn a profit yet, but that hasn’t stopped its users from monetizing the site.

Sponsored tweets are becoming more popular. Brands are recruiting well-known Twitterers to spread the word about a specific product or service. For example, Marcelo Tas, a Brazilian television personality, signed a deal with Telefonica (TAR) to help pitch its new Internet and phone service.

But marketers aren’t just looking for celebrities with hundreds of thousands of followers. They are also going after Web personalities with a more targeted following.

Enter Melanie Notkin, the 40-year-old New York entrepreneur behind the site SavvyAuntie.com. She has built a community of what she calls PANKs (Professional Aunt, No Kids). She offers advice on things like gifts an aunt could buy her niece or nephew.

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