Semiconductor maker AMD let myself and some other writers-slash-bloggers mess around with its technology last night at Greenhouse in Manhattan.

Reductively, AMD’s VISION technology is what powers the upgrades in performance and useability Microsoft has been touting in its advertising for Windows 7. The chips support new video formats like Blu-Ray, touch-screen monitors, multiple-monitor setups, and other neat consumer technologies.

The new Dell Inspiron Zino HD, a small computer that runs AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processors and could compete with Apple’s Mac Mini, was on display as well. One of the reps there told me that the product would start shipping next week and that pricing, sans monitor, keyboard, et cetera, begins at around $250, while the Mac Mini starts at $600. These “mini” computers look like useful consumer products, and the shivering masses might be most turned on by the fact that the Dell Zino comes with interchangeable covers so that OMG YOU CAN CHANGE ITS COLOR!, but either way, they’re good for your living room, not hardcore computing.

Organizers also put the AMD Fusion Media Explorer, a free multimedia search engine and browser for Windows-based computers, on display. AMD’s blog has a post about that product and what it aims to do, along with video from one of the developers.

Besides airplane-quality coffee, every New York City bodega I’ve ever been in have a few other things in common: power-hungry refrigeration, grills that are always hot, and shelves stocked with food delivered to the city from who-knows where in gas-guzzling trucks that belch pollution. Though they’ll all make you a sinful fat-person breakfast sandwich*, they’re not doing much for the environment.

Which is why last night’s opening for an environmentally friendly deli raised eyebrows. BoHo Bodega, situated for the next week or so at 220 LaFayette in SoHo, isn’t your typical convenience store. Besides being constructed out of recycled material – the lights (pictured) were giant cans of tomatoes in a previous life – the pop-up shop sells products made with a light environmental toll**.

Like any deli in Manhattan, the place filled up quickly last night. But unlike any deli in Manhattan, last night it housed a deejay and featured a four-song opera performance (???) along with models wearing what I’m going to call creative headwear.

During its week-long life cycle, the bodega will also advocate a green lifestyle by organizing events. Tonight, farmers’ market program Greenmarket will be on-site to talk about sustainable agriculture. Friday will feature a talk about recycling in New York and, oddly, a CD release party. There are other events, too, before they (presumably) tear the thing down on Sunday. Photo opp!

Blog ReadyMade actually talked to Mia Sakai, part of the duo that created the awesome spectacle, so go there for the specifics. Agent16’s Jenean Chapman, writer Allison Kade, and Paint The Town Red’s Matt Caldecutt marveled with me.

Precious Things, a series by artist Amanda Dolan, opened at Ward-Nasse Gallery last night. Lest you think all art today reflects the everything-sucks economy, consider that most of her pieces feature bright pinks and blues, and that she paints portraits of happy-looking dogs, then be convinced otherwise.

But I did find “In Utero” (pictured) terrifying.

One prominent piece on display was a flower pot fashioned out of the detached legs of a mannequin that Dolan told me she found discarded on a street corner. A headline that read “You’re to blame,” which Dolan said she ripped from a “sleazy self-help article” in a women’s magazine, was cast into the mannequin’s leg.

Another piece, “When Doves Cry,” caught my attention.

Dolan’s art is on display at the gallery until the end of October.

Paint The Town Red has photos of the opening. (Updated later: More photos.)

Delightfully, Microsoft turned Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory into a loud frathouse tonight. Bloggers and actual journalists got to check out some of the company’s new consumer products, from cell phones and video games to cars equipped with Microsoft’s Sync software.

The HTC Pure, which was given away to guests along with Zune HD music players, is an impressive touch-screen mobile that runs the new-to-me Windows Mobile 6.5 OS and has a 5-megapixel autofocus camera. Digression: If you’ve seen the HTC Touch Diamond2, you’ve already seen this phone as it’s recently been renamed as the Pure. Anyways, the camera is the best I’ve ever seen on a cell phone and should make the device useful as mobile apps grow more photo-intensive. iPhone users, take note: It runs a version of Windows Media Player. Draw your own conclusion.

DJ Tiësto performed a two-hour set that amounted to a private show for the 70-or-so guests who stuck around, and some were more enthusiastic about it than others. The organizers weren’t messing around, though: If memory serves, a wall of 16 full-range speakers and six subwoofers kept the main room nice and loud, ensuring the evening didn’t digress to the comparatively unhip activity of networking.

I ran into Paint The Town Red editor Matt Caldecutt, Agent16’s Jenean Chapman, Carrot Creative’s Katy Kelley, Didit’s Elliot Ronen, NYC Recession Diary blogger Katharine Ricci, ridiculously busy blogger Nichelle Stephens, and others. Naturally, Caldecutt is more name-droppy than that, so read his coverage.

More details, via the Twitter hashtag, are here.

Image: Microsoft’s Consumer Open House, courtesy of Microsoft

Here’s the sked for Advertising Week. (Image via.)

Today, any startup at all with a clear idea of how it will make money and grow seems worth talking about. So here’s one: Blazetrak, a site meant to connect emerging talent to existing talent. It’s set to launch Sept. 15, and I was fortunate enough to be invited to its preview party last night in Chelsea.

When he worked at a small record company, said co-founder Nate Casey, demo CDs would pile up, so the company started charging a fee for talent looking to submit the demo, figuring that would lower the volume. It ended up doing the opposite, he said: more demos started coming in, and the company developed a new stream of revenue that, I presume, could pay for the time it took to actually listen to the demos.

That’s the genesis behind Blazetrak, which now counts Grammy Award winning artist Big Boi as one of its first clients. “When Blazetrak met with [Outkast’s] Big Boi,“ said Casey, “he had a box of CDs, a CD player, and a shredder.” I imagine that’s about as efficient as it sounds—but Blazetrak is going to be streamlining this process

Reductively, Blazetrak works like this: A aspiring musician with a demo but no real industry connections signs up for a profile and chooses the Blazetrak professional client they want to have listen to the demo. The user pays for this service (the professional, not Blazetrak, set the rates), and in return get guaranteed feedback in 30 days. If this feedback is favorable, they can post it to their profile so other users can see it.

The industry types – and Blazetrak intends to forge partnerships with a lot of labels and well-known musicians – also get to post notices on what they need. Backup singer? Breakdancer? Beatboxer? Emerging talent can use the site to audition for work, and professionals can find talent quickly without using an intermediary.

The artists that use Blazetrak get paid for their time. So for example, if having Big Boi listen to your demo song and give feedback costs $300 (hypothetically speaking), Mr. Patterson himself gets 65 percent of the revenue, $195, and Blazetrak takes the rest of the cut. Payments are made through a PayPal-like interface; there’s no monthly or recurring fee to use the site.

“It’s important to realize that we’re not trying to create a community here. These are private profiles,” said Casey. The site also has a counter that lets users see where they are in the reviewers’ queues, so they know when to expect to see the feedback.

Casey said that future plans include groups pages for A&R teams, record companies, and big brands. Alyson Campbell, Blazetrak’s press contact, told me that the site won’t be limited to the music industry at all. She envisions extending it to other industries like fashion, entertainment, and business. Users are going to like the idea of guaranteed feedback from professionals they admire and respect in multiple industries who are virtually unattainable by other means, she said.

Since I wouldn’t dream of committing actual journalism here, I’ll now give a shout to a few familiar faces I saw at the preview party: Paint The Town Red’s Matt Caldecutt, Mediapost’s Kelly Samardak, Mashable’s Brett Petersel, New York Tech Meetup’s Nate Westheimer, publicist Tiffany Winbush, and Branded Evolution’s Dave Ford. Casey’s co-founders at Blazetrak are Corey Stanford and Ron Harrison.

And here’s the elevator speech:

Introduction to Blazetrak from Blazetrak on Vimeo.

Update: NYConvergence, Mediapost, The Hollywood Reporter, and Billboard have write-ups too.

Mashable’s “Future of the New York Blogosphere” last night at 92YTribeca really was worth going all the way downtown for. (See my coverage here, and additional write-ups here and here.)

But, here’s what I didn’t hear but would have liked to, in a blogger-friendly listicle:

Any references to Tumblr being an “echo chamber,” or views about the ethics of seemingly-arbitrary censorship.

How the easiest way to get an upward spike in web traffic is to write a screed about how loathsome publicists are. That’s because they’re more likely than anyone else to send your post around to friends and colleagues, usually prefaced with a bunch of expletives! See this type of linkbait here, here, and here.

Why most bloggers and journalists alike either 1) Don’t seem to understand, or 2) Choose to ignore, the basics of how valuation works.

John Shankman, regional sales manager at Federated Media, asked a question that the responding panelist, I thought, needlessly dismissed as trivial. Shankman wanted to know if marketers or corporate communications units – people who aren’t reporters or editors – can use new media to effectively publish stuff about themselves.

Responding, Bryan Keefer, director of products for The Daily Beast, brought up something about audiences responding to authenticity.

My attempts to read in between the lines lead me to interpret that response as such: Social platforms are off-limits because marketers don’t know how to be transparent. Except for, uhh, that they aren’t off-limits to anyone. No one needs a license to blog, and when companies feel their messages aren’t being covered well or understood correctly, marketers will use social platforms to circumvent the Fourth Estate. Ideally, they’ll do so with an eye toward transparency and full disclosure of their reasons for blogging.