The last time we told you what Exec was up to, it was running a campaign for charity in which you could “rent” a startup founder to ask them any questions that your heart desired. It was a great way to let people know that the service exists as well as a nice bit of social good.

The company that lets you hire people to run errands and perform tasks for you has something else up its sleeve and it’s pretty cool. Starting tonight at AT&T Park, the home of the San Francisco Giants, you’ll be able to use Exec’s app to hire someone to grab beers and a hot dog for you without having to leave your seat.

It’s a pretty genius promotion and a perfect example of how Exec can be used. When I talked to Exec founder Justin Kan last week, he told me that the retention for Exec users is phenomenal and the average customer rating for the services they receive is 4.9.

To hire an Exec to grab you stuff at the ballpark, simply use its iPhone app and tag your request with #gogiants. Make sure to tell them where you’re sitting along with what you want. The standard rate to hire an Exec is $25 an hour, with the minimum time being 45 minutes. If you’re with a big group of friends or family at the game, it’s completely worth it in my opinion.

Here are the upcoming Giants games where you can expect to find Execs:

Monday 5/14 Giants vs Rockies at 7:15pm
Tuesday 5/15 Giants vs Rockies at 7:15pm
Wednesday 5/16 Giants vs Cardinals at 7:15pm
Thursday 5/17 Giants vs Cardinals at 12:45pm
Friday 5/18 Giants vs Athletics at 7:15pm
Saturday 5/19 Giants vs Athletics at 1:05pm
Sunday 5/20 Giants vs Athletics at 1:05pm

Exec has been used for all types of things, including a situation where one good samaritan found some immigration documents that clearly had an owner. The fellow figured out who they belonged to and then hired Exec to return them to their rightful owner.

The service is only available in San Francisco right now, but Kan tells me that the company gets requests to come to new cities every single day. It plans to expand outside of San Francisco as well as launch an Android app in the near future.

➤ Exec for iOS

In this day and age it’s easy to get swept up in all of the innovation and disruption that is happening thanks to technology, but at the end of the day, Silicon Valley is not immune to the law.

We found that out today when the SF Chronicle reported that Airbnb and other room-renting services owe the city of San Francisco a hotel tax on each transaction that visitors follow through with.

Before you start in with the “every time we get something awesome, “the man” has to keep us down”, the report actually makes sense and San Francisco’s claims are extremely appropriate in this case. The hotel tax that was introduced in San Francisco in 1961 as a way for visitors to support the efforts of the city to keep the streets clean and staffed by police. The city is a hotbed for out-of-towners and it’s only fair that they do their fair share to keep residents safe.

Its that very hotel tax that is now being invoked when it comes to Airbnb and similar “house-share” services. Is someone’s home a hotel? Not really, but if a tourist in inhabiting the city, even if only for a few days, I think the city has a point that they should pay the same tax as a visitor in a hotel.

Airbnb doesn’t agree, and issued the following response:

Laws like San Francisco’s hotel tax, adopted in 1961, “were written long before the Internet or any of these activities were conceived. Innovative new models that allow San Franciscans to generate additional income should be addressed by innovative laws and policies – not stifled by 40-year-old regulations.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of innovation and not a fan of big government getting involved in ruining our fun and profit potential. However, the city of San Francisco has taxpayers to take care of first and foremost, and this is one of the ways that it does it.

Under the “transient occupancy tax”, rooms that are over $30 a night or $100 a week, must tack on a 15% tax. While this tax is referred to as the “hotel tax”, it covers all rooms that are available to outsiders. That might have been part of the confusion, as we don’t commonly refer to rooms available on Airbnb as hotel rooms. Policy and legislative manager for city, Greg Kato, made it clear that this isn’t a backhanded attempt to steal money away from consumers or innovative companies:

We’re not changing the law. We’re simply explaining existing law.

As geeks, we tend to rally against any legal issues that get in the way of our favorite companies. An example was Uber, previously called Uber Cab, which had to drop the “cab” from their name due to pressure from the city. If Uber referred to itself as a cab service, it would have had to of paid the same taxes and follow the same rules that cab companies do. Luckily for Uber, the change was minimal and was made quickly.

For companies like Airbnb, this is something that they’re going to have to face. According to the law, the companies will have to add the 15% tax to each transaction and forward it directly to the city. That sounds like an accounting nightmare to me, but at the end of the day the law is the law, and when the money is going to making our streets safer, it’s hard to argue with.

It might not always be this way, as San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has a great working relationship with the companies based in the city. He hopes to update these laws, but until then, they might have to pay up.

The event will be held at the Yerba Buena Center on Howard street in San Francisco, and the sign on the side of the building is nearly complete.

Take a look at the wonderful Apple logo surrounded by extremely vibrant reds, yellows, blues, and greens:

As of right now, there is no writing on the sign to explicitly confirm what the event will be about, but we’ll keep an eye on it for you.

This past weekend was Music Hack Day San Francisco, which was the third in the city and the twentieth overall globally since 2009. There were over 200 developers in attendance hacking away on cool projects that could help change the future of music distribution and delivery.

While sitting through sixty-one demos, there were quite a few projects that stood out to me as things that could definitely get legs if there was enough interest in the project. While these developers were coding for prizes and fun, some of them actually were on to something.

One of the projects that I enjoyed the most is called “Musaic“, developed by Ian Mckellar. Using Rdio’s API, the site randomly shows album art comprised of other album art in a mosaic. By clicking the tiles, that album will open up:

I’ve found this to be a fun way to look at album artwork as well as discover new artists, since clicking the pixels within will open up a new album in its full-size glory. You can click around for the better part of an hour discovering different albums embedded within the artwork.

The only thing that’s missing is a player and links for the actual albums on Rdio. Perhaps Mckellar will take some more time with the project and add some of these enhancements.

Musaic was definitely a crowd pleaser at the hack day, drawing “oooh’s” and “ahhh’s” from the audience. It’s definitely worth taking a look and is one of the strongest hacks from the event. Throughout the day I’ll be sharing more of the goodies that I saw over the weekend.

➤ Musaic

Check out some awesome music hacks and apps from the recent Midem Hack Day.

Gideon Yu has had quite an illustrious career in technology, having been the former CFO at Facebook and before that, YouTube. Yu led the negotiations for the $1.65B sale of the latter company to Google. Last year, he decided to take the leap to sports and joined the San Franisco 49ers as the Chief Strategy Officer.

In less than a year, Yu has gotten a promotion and it’s a big one. Today, the 49ers announced that Gideon Yu is now the President and Co-Owner of the team.

Here’s what Niners CEO Jed York had to say about Yu’s promotion:

Gideon brings us a truly unique set of experiences and talents, and he will be a guiding force in our drive to continue the winning tradition of this franchise. He’s both a visionary and the ‘go-to’ guy who can lead us through the enormous opportunities ahead such as, the stadium construction, expansion of our brand and its businesses, and positioning the franchise for the future. We have more to do now than ever before, and Gideon is the right person to get the job done.

The San Francisco 49ers became the toast of Silicon Valley again after a stellar year that saw its head coach Jim Harbaugh win NFL’s “Coach of the Year” award in his first season at the helm.

Unfortunately for those of us in downtown San Francisco, Yu is working hard on a Santa Clara stadium project, taking the 49ers further away from its core fanbase.

It would be easy to argue that 2011 was the year of mobile photography. At the top of the app list facilitating this trend is Instagram, sporting over 15 million users. With the simple premise of taking a photo of something around you, throwing an artistic filter on it, dropping it into a stream, and beaming it to Twitter and Facebook, the app has built a gigantic community around itself.

Today, Instagram posted its first in a series of 2011 review posts, listing the top locations that people shared with their photos.

The top 15 locations showed heavy usage on the West coast, California specifically, with top spots being Disneyland, AT&T Park, and airports in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Here is the complete list of the top 15 locations people Instagram’d in 2011:

1. Disneyland
2. Suvarnabhumi International Airport (BKK)
3. AT&T Park
4. San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
5. Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
6. Hong Kong International Airport (HKG)
7. MoMA – Museum of Modern Art
8. Golden Gate Bridge
9. Metropolitan Museum of Art
10. Parque do Ibirapuera
11. Siam Paragon
12. Mission Dolores Park
13. Terminal 21
14. LACMA – Los Angeles County Museum of Art
15. Times Square

While it’s not mandatory to post your location with an Instagram photo, I think it’s safe to say that major metropolitan areas and landmarks are the most photographed on the platform. It’ll be interesting to see where Instagram goes in 2012, will filters be enough for its hungry user base? So far, so good.

This is a ridiculously cool and unique usage of Google Maps’ API. Developer Brad Thompson aims to launch a platform where you can not only see what city blocks looked like in the past, but you can view what businesses inhabited the city long before you lived there. That platform is Pastmapper.

Putting old city listings and directories on top of the Google Maps API, Thompson gives an old world a new life, thanks to technology.

Here’s how Thompson explains Pastmapper:

For quick access to realtime information, (photographs, Tweets, business listings, weather, voting results, etc.), online maps are incredibly powerful tools. The more realtime the information is, the more valuable it is, and maps are in a constant state of being updated to keep up with the world. These tools are generally suited for answering a question that begins ‘What is happening?” or “What just happened?”. A few amazing examples of current data on maps are Eric Fischer’s racial distribution maps, the Oakland Crimespotting map by Stamen Design and the New York Times Hurricane Tracker.

But what if your real interest is what happened further back in the past? Online maps today simply add layers of information onto today’s map. Pastmapper is a first step towards answering ‘What was here?’ or ‘Whatever happened to..?’, by delivering a map, not just a data layer, that takes a fourth-dimensional view.

San Francisco in 1853

The first map released on Pastmapper is San Francisco in 1853. You can click around on the markers to get information about the businesses that were there during that time. Everything from bakeries to liquor stores are shown in an extremely condensed portion of San Francisco. If you click the button to see the map in 2011, you’ll see how many streets and detail have been added to the city since the 19th century.

The project is fascinating and hopefully Thompson continues to add more cities, as the power of publicly available information can help recreate experiences long before there was a Google Maps API to build on top of.

➤ Pastmapper

Today at the Twitter press event, which was held at Twitter’s new office on Market Street in San Francisco, we were shown some interesting new designs for the service, but the most interesting new look unveiled was that of the new office.

Twitter currently employs 700 people, but will have the capability to house thousands in the new office at 1355 Market St. in downtown San Francisco when it moves in next summer. The building used to house a furniture mart, and feels very much like a warehouse. Sure, there isn’t any furniture yet, but the open space feel should remain even when its employees move in.

It was built in 1933, the same year as another San Francisco landmark. The Golden Gate bridge. Pretty historical, indeed.

Here is where the new Twitter cafeteria will be, which is bigger than most startup offices alone.

Check out this wing on the 9th floor of the new office…it’s massive!

Twitter, which has said that it is to become more involved in the San Francisco community, is making a huge statement with the new centrally located office. While Facebook and Google have maintained ownership of the valley outside of downtown San Francisco, Twitter is staking its claim and staying put, in a big big way.

The Instagram API has brought us all new ways to interact with the service, and new apps utilizing its platform are popping up almost daily.

If you want to play games using Instagram photos you have Instamory, and if you want to create calendars out of photos, you have Calendagram.

Photo discovery using the iPad became awesome with Instamap. Now you can find photos around you or by city with Instalook for iOS. The app costs $.99 cents and if you’re an Instagram junkie, this is a must have.

Instagram is adding 1.5 new users per second, so there’s a lot of activity that we’re missing.

What’s hot in Berlin?

What Instagram lacks in discovery features, third-party developers have picked up the slack with apps like Instalook. It’s extremely well done and once you log in with your Instagram account, the discovery happens immediately.

Once you let the app grab your location, a mini map is populated by red pins notating the location where recent geotagged Instagram photos have been taken. Regardless of whether you follow the person or not, the photos will display. This is something that Instagram is lacking, having only the “popular” section within its own app.

You can swipe through a list of people on the top of Instalook, or the actual photos along the bottom. You basically have three ways to discover on this screen, unless you’d rather check photos out by city. If you tap the star in the top left, you’ll be shown the most geotagged cities on Instagram. Upon tapping them, you’ll be shown the screen you were just on, but populated with activity in that city.

From Instalook, you can comment and “like” photos, but unfortunately the app doesn’t let you follow new people. When you try to follow someone, visit their profile, or attempt to take a photo, it sends you directly to the Instagram app itself. That’s understandable because these are more than likely not actions supported in the Instagram API.

Grab Instalook to see what’s around you, and you’ll find yourself inspired by what others are taking photos of. It’s nice to get out of your own stream for a while and see what everyone else is doing on the platform.

Instalook

This week Flavorpill, a New York City born cultural media outlet, celebrates its 10th birthday by launching a revolutionary email newsletter, that “thinks.” The newsletter, in fact, learns and changes week to week based on your click throughs.

“As Flavorpill turns 10 years old, we’re evolving our offering to become smarter and more personalized. We’ve come a long way from our beginnings as a text-only email list in NYC, and we now publish content from editors in eight cities around the country and in London, as well as event listings entered by hundreds of the top venues in all our markets — feeding both our Flavorwire blog and our Flavorpill cultural guide. The new, personalized mailer now offers every one of our more than one million monthly readers a fully customized publication, and represents a significant step in Flavorpill’s evolution towards a dynamic, multi-channel arts and culture guide” — Mark Mangan, Flavorpill, Co -Founder

Each new newsletter is like a custom email for subscribers. Using technology developed by Sailthru, a startup powering email for the likes of the HuffPo and AOL, the new mailer not only lets users set their personalization preferences but also “gets smarter” the more it’s used, learning from users’ click through habits. In effect, future newsletters will become more personalized to users’ preferences.

“Flavorpill is reshaping the face of email. They are pushing their communication and our technology far beyond that of anything we’ve seen to date. They stand to revolutionize the ways brands and users communicate, creating a true one-to-one conversation.”– Neil Capel, Sailthru, CEO

The new Flavorpill mailer will feature two main editorial picks – one feature article and one event listing. It will also include multiple features and event picks recommended for every reader individually; the ability to update personal settings, including events from any of the Flavorpill cities, which includes NYC, LA, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, Las Vegas, London, with Dallas and Seattle coming soon; categories and subcategories of interest, and frequency down to the day. In short, the newsletter is a smarter, more personalized way to make sure you’re never bored again.

Check out our review of the Flavorpill iPhone app here.