New Year's Eve in New York City: The Countdown

As preparations for the festivities in New York's Times Square get underway for New Year’s Eve, it’s time to start some planning of your own—especially if you plan to join the hordes ringing in the New Year in the heart of New York City.
First off, why not put your resolutions to paper (you do have resolutions, right?)--and add to the confetti that will rain down in Times Square at the same time. Write down a resolution, a hope, a wish, whatever you like--on a piece of confetti--and add it to the Wishing Wall at the Times Square Information Center (7th Avenue between 46th and 47th Streets.) All the confetti will be gathered on Thursday to add to the growing pile of midnight-ready pieces of paper. (You can also submit it online at timessquarenyc.org; it will be printed out and added to the pile. Some New Year’s wishes from last year can be viewed on line.)
While you’re at it, save on that bottle of champagne by checking out the new “Clink Clink” iphone app. Waterford helped design this virtual celebration, which lets two people toast in the New Year with pictures of Waterford champagne flutes and cocktail glasses on the screens. (No alcohol is allowed in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, so you can get your toast in--and have a clear head when you leave as well.)
So get ready--and start counting down to the countdown!

Coolest iphone App Yet? It Might Be The Museum of the Phantom City

This is New York, so you can go on pretty much any kind of walking or bus tour in the city you can dream up, from "Sex and the City” venues to lower east side foods. But a tour of places that never were?
Welcome to the very cool new iphone app “Museum of the Phantom City.”
The app examines 50 architectural sites in New York that never got off the drawing board, from Buckminster Fuller’s plan for a “Mini Earth”—a miniature globe suspended by cables across from the United Nations Building—to a heliport on top of Bryant Park that could have doubled as an air raid shelter. A number of the proposals from the mid-twentieth century, in fact, show unease over the Cold War and potential attacks.
Got some time on your hands? You can walk around the city and actually check out the sites where the projects would have been, if you want, using your phone like a museum audioguide of sorts.
The plan was developed by Irene Cheng and Brett Snyder, founders of a design studio, in conjunction with The Van Alen Institute, a nonprofit architectural institute.
Don’t have an iphone or can’t borrow one? Check out phantomcity.org.
So are these things-that-never-were a missed-the-boat alternative future? Lost opportunities? Monstrosities that are better relegated to the drawing board?
Whatever they are, this intersection of architecture and technology is whole lot more interesting than apps for finding the nearest deli.