By Foster Kamer 2/14 6:54pm

LINSANITY

jeremy-lin-nasty-ass-behind-the-line-swag-for-days-son-600x402

What It’s Like To Play On The Same Team as Jeremy Lin (Or: Linsanity Has Finally Reached Quora)

The timeline of New York Knicks overnight superstar Jeremy Lin on social networks probably goes something like:

1. Twitter (“Who’s this Jeremy Lin guy?“)
2. Facebook (“Look at this Jeremy Lin guy.“)
3. Foursquare (“I’m watching this Jeremy Lin guy right now.“)
4. Tumblr (“Fuck Yeah This Jeremy Lin Guy Dot Tumblr Dot Com.“)
5. Reddit (“Here is everything about this Jeremy Lin guy that will be reported by news outlets in no less than two weeks.“)

And then:

6. Quora (“What is it like to play basketball with Jeremy Lin?“)

Well, not only has the question been asked, but it now has an answer, and it’s basically set Quora on fire. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 2/14 3:28pm

Love in the Time of Algorithms

vday3

Scroll Kit Lets You Make Customizable Valentines for Your Secret Crush

Scroll Kit, the latest brainchild from the Bushwick-based team of Cody Brown and Kate Ray, demoed their new product at last week’s New York Tech Meetup to an admiring crowd. As Mr. Brown’s elevator pitch goes, the publishing tool lets anyone “make magazine-style layouts for the web and iPad without knowing how to code.”

Now that they’ve got your attention, they decided to have some fun with it, by putting the DIY back in Valentine’s Day love notes. Read More

By Guest Post 2/14 3:00pm

Love in the Time of Algorithms

Mr. Furmansky.

Why Dating Sites Lie About Algorithms, As Told By a Dating Site CEO

Many current online dating sites have found an ingenious way of defending their price points or differentiating themselves from competitors: The Hidden Algorithm, The Secret Matchmaking Analytics, or the Dr. [Insert Foreign-sounding Name]‘s Guaranteed Personality Test. From a marketing perspective, the concept is brilliant – a claim that can neither be proven nor disproven. Yet in reality, these algorithms do not add any measurable probability of success. Does the fact that Person A likes fishing and Person B likes sushi mean they are meant to be? Or is this just a matter of statistically insignificant correlation rather than Read More

By Rick Webb 2/14 2:01pm

Caught In The Webb

Mr. Webb.

Friends Investing in Friends: When It Comes to Startups, Is the Fix Already In?

There’s this age-old debate in startupland: whether it’s an insider’s game or not. This debate probably rages most in the comments of sites like TechCrunch, Business Insider and here at Betabeat. There are tons of people who are interested in tech, and aspire to have a startup, and read these sites, like any proper student of an industry should. And they see the same names, over and over. They see the same companies funded over and over. It’s not hard to read the headlines of tech blogs for a year and think to yourself that it’s a bunch of friends funding each other, pimping each other, and scratching each other’s backs. Read More

By Foster Kamer 2/14 1:39pm

Funtimes at Foxconn

foxconn

Finally: Apple and Foxconn to Participate in Fair Labor Audit

Was it the segment on The Daily Show, one of the iTunes store’s bestselling TV shows? Or the eye-opening investigative report from the New York Times, prominently featured in every other Apple commercial? Or that episode of one of the most downloaded podcasts/radio shows in the country, This American Life? Or—after weeks of silence—Apple’s most famous fanboy, David Pogue, finally weighing in?

Whatever it was, Apple is now blessing and participating in the Fair Labor Association’s “unprecedented” inspection of Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer whose negligence towards human rights has been opened to the world in recent months. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 2/14 1:19pm

Cordcutting

How I Live-Streamed Your Mother

Aereo Picks Up $20.5 M. for a Thumbnail-Sized HD Antenna to Stream Local TV in NYC

A magical thing happened at IAC’s headquarters this morning. A startup called Aereo displayed the most compelling argument for cord-cutting we’ve heard in awhile. It came in the form of a thumbnail-sized HD antenna. Sign up with Aereo and users get the right to license their own antenna, which are stored in a local warehouse. Then, log on via any web-enabled device (smartphones, iPads, even AppleTV) and ta-da, members can access major networks like CBS, NBC, FOX, ABC, CW, and PBS, as well as other local channels. Better yet, you also have the ability store up to 40 hours of programming on their remote DVR.

“No cords or cable required,” the company’s press release says pointedly. The service is limited to New York City right now, but only costs $12 a month. Throw in a Netflix account, Hulu, and you’re probably good to go. Happy Valentine’s Day, Dying Cable Industry!

Aereo (formerly called Bamboom Labs) also anounced a $20.5 million series A round led by IAC. Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 2/14 1:02pm

Bugs

(twitter.com/#!/awelfle)

Timehop Picks Worst Day of the Year to Send Duplicate Emails


Timehop, the app that shows you where you were a year ago today, just blasted out as many as four copies of its daily email to users. Problem? It’s Valentine’s Day, arguably the best holiday for making yourself feel bad (except for maybe Earth Day). While some users were reminded of being showered with candy and kisses, others spent V-Day last year watching Watson on Jeopardy or being sober. ”Timehop REALLY Wants You to Remember Your Last V-Day. (Hope It Was a Good One!)” How About We’s dating life blogger Michelle L. Dozois wrote. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 2/14 12:30pm

Lease of the Week

Something's a-brewing at 622 Broadway.

Take-Two Interactive Throws Another Coin in the Slot at 622 Broadway

When Take-Two Interactive, the video game giants behind such popular and violently lurid titles as Grand Theft Auto and  Max Payne, had a few years remaining on its lease at 622 Broadway, the landlord, Yuco Management, found itself in a curious position.

Should Yuco Management aggressively market the 69,000 square feet of space Take-Two had called its own since 2002, thereby losing its anchor tenant? Or should it do anything it could to keep Take-Two, which had in some ways branded 622 Broadway as a distinctly hip and colorful office building, especially with its endless parade of behooded video game designers and executives?

“It’s the unique building where people don’t wear suits and ties and ride bicycles to work with their dogs,” said William Cohen, an executive vice president and principal at Newmark Knight Frank, who was hired alongside colleague Mark Weiss by Yuco Management to help decide the next best move. “I’m not kidding,”

Read More

By Adrianne Jeffries 2/14 11:47am

Fresh Capital

Dr. Kent. (nyu.edu/object/andrewkent.html)

Spin Transfer Tech Spins Out of PE-Backed Startup Factory Into a $36 M. A Round

Where do startups come from? Today in Silicon Alley, they seem to come from engineers and disillusioned i-bankers. But Spin Transfer Technology, which just scored a whopping $36 million round, took a different track thanks to what is essentially a private equity-funded startup factory.

Allied Minds is a Boston-based, private equity-funded “innovation company” that discovers early-stage technology being developed at American universities and labs and then forms, funds, manages and builds startups around said technology. In September of 2007, representatives from Allied Minds visited NYU to check out research in magnetism by professor Andrew Kent, an award-winning physicist and serial inventor who was working on a “spin transfer” technology that could improve computer memory.

Allied Minds’s slogan should be something like, “We take your tech and make it into money.” Once AM determined the invention was legit, it cobbled together Spin Transfer Technology the way a record label might put together a new boy band. Read More