Mr. Siegler. (Photo: LinkedIn)

The blogosphere is a brave new news world, but it's generally assumed that blogs that report the news adhere to basic journalistic standards—like not deliberately inserting bits of misinformation into their virtual pages. Right?

Former TechCrunch blogger MG Siegler took a dig at bloggers who rewrite others' reporting. "I used to love to plant one really weird bit of random information (sometimes even false) into stories to catch the rewrites," he tweeted earlier today. There's that TechCrunch swagger.

@marcoarment I used to love to plant one really weird bit of random information (sometimes even false) into stories to catch the rewrites.

— MG Siegler (@parislemon) July 5, 2012

The tweet was in response to developer Marco Arment's comment on the coverage resulting from his blog post about a bug in Apple's App Store. The story was first reported by The Verge, then re-reported by Mashable, and merely rewritten by Gizmodo and Betabeat. While rewrites are endemic in the blogosphere, deliberately misleading or confusing readers in order to play gotcha with your fellow news writers seems dicey. It's the same reason most major media outlets hate April Fool's Day—if you want your readers to trust you, it's risky to write anything untrue unless it's an obvious joke.

Mr. Siegler was on vacation in Paris and did not immediately respond to an email asking for comment. TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis did not immediately respond to an email, nor did former TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld. "I think he's mentioned doing it before. Innocuous stuff that would catch out anyone who claimed they had their own source. Frankly that harks back to the days when TC was a comparative ethical utopia against what it is today," the ever-available TechCrunch alum Paul Carr wrote in an email. "I think it was stuff like 'I'm hearing it'll have a six inch screen' as opposed to seven. Yeah, I wouldn't do it but, again, on the grand scheme of things..."

UPDATE: Ms. Tsotsis responded to Betabeat by email: "So I don't know which specific posts MG is referring to here, but I'm sure the 'random' pieces of information are more like typos or skews on a range of numbers (like a valuation being between $20m-$30m as opposed to $25m) versus outright, blatant intellectual dishonesty. MG cares too much about being right to pull stuff like that."

Mr. Siegler also responded in a post on his own blog.

LaToya Drake, an AOL communciations rep, declined to comment. "We don't comment on former employees, in particular, what they're tweeting," she said. But would it be against AOL's policy to include "random information" and, or "misinformation" in posts on TechCrunch? "We can't comment," she said, and pointed to AOL's terms of service, which includes this disclaimer: "For general information, discussion, and entertainment purposes only and we make no representations or guarantees about the truth, accuracy, or quality of any content."

For the record, inserting "random information (sometimes even false)" into posts is verboten at Betabeat. We surveyed a few tech blogs blogs. "Hell yes it would be against our policy," said Abraham Hyatt, managing editor at ReadWriteWeb. "We definitely don't publish false information in our posts! As to posting things just to catch out other blogs, that's not something ReadWriteWeb focuses on," echoed founder and editor-in-chief Richard MacManus. When asked if this was kosher at The Next Web, U.S. editor Brad McCarty responded "no." "Absolutely not," said Danny Schreiber, managing editor of Silicon Prairie News. When asked if publishing "random information (sometimes false)" would go against GigaOm's policy, executive editor Ernie Sander told Betabeat, "Yes, it would go against our policy -- and the person who did it would probably be fired." Editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky concurred that "Yes it would," be against The Verge's policy as well.

"Yes, that would absolutely be against our policy," said Dylan Tweney, executive editor of VentureBeat, "Our job is to 'seek truth and report it,' to quote the SPJ [Society of Professional Journalists] (which we do)."

"I can’t fathom what 'random information' is. The idea of putting false information in a post is also something I can’t fathom," New York Times technology editor Damon Darlin wrote in an email. "Planting false info in stories to catch non-linkers? Both unethical and pathetically petty," said Kara Swisher of AllThingsD.

(Image: audicus.com)

Audicus isn't the first company to sell hearing aids over the Internet, but it's aiming to be the most stylish. The New York-based startup launched a redesign last week with a mixed metaphor—"Audicus Brings a Fresh Breath to Hearing Aids"—and the ambitious goal of bringing cheap, attractive hearing aids to the masses.

According to Audicus, only 25 percent of Americans with hearing loss use hearing aids due to the fact that they're embarrassing and expensive. "Audicus addresses both these issues. It makes hearing aids cool and discreet, while bringing down the price by up to 80% through its novel online model. As such, it aims to take on a dusty industry that has been slow in innovating, and in the process make hearing technology far more accessible," says a press release.

Audicus offers its "designer hearing aids" in three price tiers, starting at $399 per ear. The offer includes free shipping, a free battery pack and a 45-day money-back guarantee. Customers upload their hearing test results and get the device in the mail, similar to Warby Parker (although there is no one-for-one charitable element).

Audicus, which buys its hearing aids from European suppliers, says its direct web-based sales model lets it reduce prices by 75 percent.

But bring on the haters. A hearing aid patient wrote a post on the science and climate blog Watts Up With That? after an excerpt from the Audicus marketing materials hit Slashdot.

"Over on Slashdot, there’s a post that caught my eye because it is so simplistic and so wrong," WUWT editor Anthony Watts, who wears two hearing aids, writes before launching into a methodical breakdown of the complexity involved in properly fitting a hearing aid. He goes so far as to suggest basic hearing aids can further erode a patient's hearing.

So for those who think mass production techniques used on iPods would work just fine for making a delicately balanced instrument that must fit in your ear, please think again. As a hearing aid user since 1969, do I think the price tag of the special hearing aids today are worth the price compared to the simple linear amplifiers I used to have to deal with? Absolutely.

A fair critique, or the whimperings of someone entrenched in an industry being "disrupted"?

Audicus was founded by Patrick Freuler, an MIT engineering grad who worked at McKinsey and Bain Capital and founded a startup in Brazil. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but it had its own defenders in the WUWT comments: "If hearing aids were sold in a way that was competive, you would be surprised how quickly the price would decrease and the utility would increase," wrote a user under the handle Wayne. "Competition is non-existant in the hearing aid field! It’s the difference between a Volkswagon and a Lexus. Both will get you where you’re going."

UPDATE: Mr. Freuler responded to Mr. Watts in an email to Betabeat:

1. Manufacturing cost
The argument that hearing aids are expensive to manufacture (especially due to "the use of Germanium that only a handful of companies use") is a weak one. With the evolution in digital technology over the last 3-5 years, we have seen devices that are far more complex than a hearing aid (such as for instance, an iPhone or iPad) - but cost up to 6x less. We recently explored this analysis (you can see it here: "Why Does a Hearing Aid Cost Six Times More Than an iPad?" ), where we quote official data (% production cost) from the German Competition Commission. You can also see similar data by looking at any annual report from the Big 5 hearing aid manufacturers (I am happy to point you to that, if you wish).

2. Cost due to custom-molding
It is true that traditionally in the canal hearing aids had to be custom molded, involving a laborious process. Audicus' products makes this process obsolete, which is were part of our core innovation lies in. We provide replaceable silicone sleeves that come in different sizes and shapes, depending on the user's ear canal, and are thus fully adjustable (see an example here: http://bit.ly/MmzdHL). This approach gives the user full control over the physical fit and drastically reduces the cost and time to get to a customized design (given the "replaceability").

3. Cost due to high return rate
We ran a pilot test during a number of months before launching our new site and found that our return rates were 3x lower that the industry average.
Part of the reason why return rates in the industry tend to be so high, is indirectly driven by the high price tag of $1000s of dollars. Given that traditional retail is required by law to offer a return period of 30-45 days, many people who see a "great" improvement, but not a "perfect" improvement are more likely to return such a costly device (i.e. "my life is a lot better, but not "$7000s-dollars-worth" better"). This effect is far reduced in our case, since we reduce prices by an order of magnitude.

As for how Audicus keeps its prices low, he said the savings come from eliminating costs associated with middlemen such as audiologists, who demand a high markup. "At Audicus, we believe in "un-bundling": many of the traditional services can be addressed in an efficient/non-clinical way (eg. programming) or through DYI (except the testing, for which we strongly encourage a first assessment at a clinic, similar to contact lenses/Warby Parker)," Mr. Freuler wrote. "We can offer such prices because our cost and operating structure is completely different from traditional clinics."

Audicus's core product is hearing aids but it does offer a PSA (Personal Sound Amplifier) as well.

(http://omgblackpeople.wordpress.com/)

Is social media segregated? A new report by the BBC suggests it may be. "The Internet mirrors and magnifies everyday life. All of the divisions that exist in every day life, including those by race and class, actually re-emerge online," Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd said.

When a new site pops up, the race of early adopters can determine the demographic of users for years. Pinterest is 70 percent female and 79 percent white, according to the BBC. By contrast, black and Latino users are overrepresented on Twitter versus the general population.

Ms. Boyd theorized that there was an exodus of users from Myspace to Facebook similar to white flight to the suburbs when the U.S. desegregated schools. Facebook, the vanilla of social media sites, was approaching the makeup of the U.S. population at the time of an analysis done in 2009. That was the year that white users stopped being overrepresented and black and Latino users stopped being underrepresented.

According to Quantcast, Wordpress users are disproportionately Asian. Reddit users are a bit less African American than the rest of the web. Tumblr has a higher-than-average portion of Asian users and African American users. Foursquare.com is super Asian. Twenty-eight percent of online African-Americans use Twitter, and 13 percent do so every day, according to research from Pew.

Perhaps some of the more racially-niche sites will go mainstream and take hold among different communities. But even when sites are relatively integrated, users still largely interacting with other users who look like themselves. This trend is aggravated due to web 2.0's emphasis on finding people you already know. Does that make you feel a little creepy?

A billboard for Pebble designed and booked on ADstruc in just 10 days. (Photo: adstruc.com)

ADstruc is a New York-based platform for buying and selling outdoor advertising, kind of like an AdWords for the meatspace. Betabeat named the company one of its 10 Disruptive New York Startups back in early 2011, but we haven't heard much of the company (aside from an unfounded fundraising rumor) in recent months.

However, ADstruc has been busy. The company was behind this crowdfunded billboard in the home district of SOPA sponsor Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), which was coordinated by Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian's company Breadpig. ADstruc also hooked up the infamous Pebble, the highest-grossing Kickstarter project ever, with a big billboard on the 101 in Silicon Valley.

The company has also ventured further into interactive display advertising with projects like this billboard for Bleacher Report, which streamed news about specific sports teams based on tweets from locals.

ADstruc's billboard booking service replaces a paper-and-Excel system used by advertisers and billboard owners. (Photo: adstruc.com)

"Things couldn't be better - we've hit our stride in our industry and are working on some major agency/tech integrations," CEO and cofounder John Laramie told Betabeat in an email. "We are now working with over 800 companies and have national coverage."

ADstruc, headquartered in Soho, is up to 12 employees and is hiring designers.

(Photo: Twitter.com/iamweswilson)

Today a group of academics, entrepreneurs and other interested parties published something they call the "Declaration of Internet Freedom" prompted by recent attempts to legislate the series of tubes. The Declaration has the virtue of brevity with just five points: expression, access, openness, innovation and privacy. It also boasts a long list of name-brand supporters including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Cheezburger network, the Harry Potter Alliance, TechStars and the NY Tech Meetup.

"Our goal is to spark a global discussion among Internet users and communities about the Internet and our role in it," Sascha Meinrath and Craig Aaron of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute and Free Press wrote in a manifesto published by Slate today.

It's funny to see things like Declarations and Bills of Rights being written with the Internet in mind, because people have long referred to the network as if it were a nation-state. Never mind that the Internet's users and communities include governments, household appliances, hedge funds and citizens of developing countries; Americans who work and play in the knowledge economy have long been guilty of the fallacy of grouping Internet users into one constituency, one group of united interests, one hivemind. The Internet hates rich people. The Web killed SOPA. The Internet rallied to help a verbally-abused bus monitor. 

This trope of referring to the Nation of Internet manifests in many ways. Sometimes, something good or bad will happen that provokes a significant number of people to publicly react using the Internet, and this is referred to as "breaking the Internet." Or remember the anthropological analysis of "black people Twitter," in which a few bloggers stumbled across another group of people using a part of the Internet in a totally different way?

When Rachel Sterne was named Chief Digital Officer of New York City, the announcement created "something of a stir on the Internet" according to the New York Times. In this case, "the Internet" referred to a few dozen people using Twitter in New York on that day, who mentioned the words "Rachel Sterne" enough to crack the local trending topics.

When journalism professor Jeff Howe proposed everyone on the Internet read the same book, "the Internet" referred to Twitter users, and really just to those who would have any interest in participating in the process of democratically selecting a book and then reading and discussing it together online. When he writes, "Hey Internet," he really means, "hey you, person reading this, because it is on the Internet and therefore you are probably on the Internet, very likely in a room full of other people who look like you who are also on the Internet; and also the other people you assume are using the Internet in similar ways and whom you can therefore identify with."

Often, "hey Internet" just refers to Jonah Peretti's "Bored at Work Network," which encompasses the People on Reddit and People on Twitter and Tumblr who direct much of the meta "talking about the Internet on the Internet" conversation. Sometimes, as in Aaron Sorkin's "hey, Internet girl," it refers to people who started using the Internet at a young, impressionistic age.

Nothing against reductivist headlines, and we're certainly guilty of employing them here. But despite its power to unite people in remote locations, the Internet does not do things. Very tiny and loud fractions of Internet users will sometimes do things. Yes, lots of people contributed when Matthew Inman, creator of The Oatmeal, started raising money for charity online in response to a legal threat from a boneheaded lawyer. More than 14,000 people contributed money, actually. That's a lot of people! More than 3,000 text comments were left on The Oatmeal's blog post alone, and countless people wrote text comments about it on other various web sites. But that group is not "the Internet."

That's not to say that the Declaration of Internet Freedom doesn't represent the interests of most people who use the Internet. It probably does. Its creators bent over backwards to be inclusive and leave specific policy to be determined.

But this "hey Internet" synecdoche is getting out of control.

Mr. Dotcom. (commons.wikimedia.orgAndreas_Bohnenstengel)

When did digital crimes get so badass? Accused criminals Kim Dotcom, Richard O'Dwyer and Julian Assange all built their empires on the web, and the U.S. government wants them to fly to American soil and pay the price. Which is funny, because traditionally, most extraditions to the U.S. were related to narcotics.

One side effect of being in American crosshairs? Insane popularity--almost premature martyrship--on the Internet. The people love Mr. Dotcom's outsized personality, Mr. O'Dwyer's precociousness, and Mr. Assange's rebelliousness. While we usually celebrate Internet entrepreneurs for giving us things like Facebook and Netflix, these three have made it to the next level by appealing to our sense of justice and our fondness for free music.

Every new development lends credence to the Internet outlaws. Mr. Dotcom seems to be winning his case in New Zealand, but the government there has declined to investigate accusations that the U.S. flubbed its raid of the Dotcom mansion. Mr. O'Dwyer netted the endorsement of the normally apolitical Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (who is not wanted by any governments at the moment) and a petition on his behalf has garnered 200,000 signatures.

The case of Mr. Assange, the "cyberpunk revolutionary" who the U.S. is reportedly seeking to extradite for prosecution under the Espionage Act, is a bit stickier. Accusations of rape and assault in Sweden coupled with a stunt at the Ecuadorian embassy and his stiff performance as an anchor on Russia Today have failed to earn him many fans. However, his fan base remains strong. "Free Julian" T-shirt, anyone?

(Photo: Flickr/victoriapeckham)

Nasdaq and Facebook are in a fight. [Dealbook]

Twitter and its developers are also in a fight. [Aaron White]

The fight between Apple and a Taiwanese firm that trademarked the term "iPad" is over with a $60 million settlement. [AP]

But the dispute between Apple and Samsung continues. [Digital Trends]

Amazon Web Services, which hosts as much as 1 percent of the Internet, had an outage Saturday. [Wired]

Then the extra atomic "leap second" wreaked havoc on sites like Reddit, Yelp, Gawker and Foursquare. [BuzzFeed]

"If these names mean nothing to you, trust me: these are famous, successful YouTubers." [New York Times]

Painted battery. (Photo: Rice University)

Sometimes we get swept up in the breathless reports about RIM shares, Twitter ads, the relative sizes of Pinterest and Tumblr, and other such minor tech news items that some might call "incremental," and so we forget that insane shit is happening with science. We're not even talking about Google's sky divers. For example:

Texas: Some students invented a spray-on rechargeable battery.

Texas: Some other students hacked into a flying drone's GPS.

California: Google's take on the modern personal digital assistant a.k.a. Google Now can all but read your mind.

California: A new telescope will be able to predict asteroids 50 to 100 years in advance.

California: Enzymes from mutant sponges are evolving semiconductors.

Boston: Researchers have invented microparticles that, when injected into the bloodstream, replace the need to breathe.

Japan: The world's thinnest computer screen is an iridescent soap bubble.

Puerto Rico: Starting tomorrow, National Geographic will be collecting tweets to beam into space in the general direction of Sagittarius.

New Jersey: The Army has built a giant gun that shoots lightning.

Earth: On Saturday, atomic clocks will be adding a "leap second."

Mr. Waxman. (Photo: Twitter)

Would you answer this mysteriously vague job listing? "Hackers seek hackers in NYC for absurdly fun + challenging startup" is the title of this ad for a Y Combinator startup that claims to already be funded by "some of the best investors in the world" and is now seeking "social hackers." The ad, a repeat of a listing posted back in April, is at the top of the Hacker News forum.

Clues:

1. The startup is in the winter 2012 batch of Y Combinator.

2. "We're leading the online-to-offline revolution."

3. "We're relatively far along"

4. "We make money. We're a real business, not a charity."

5. "Both of the co-founders are technical and have previous startup experience (including at other YC startups and an app that scaled to billions of impressions per month)."

6. "We're in New York, but if you're not we can chat about getting you here to the greatest city on earth."

7. "We're all frequent users of our product, as it should be"

8. "Our ultimate goal is to end loneliness and to create some amazing stories along the way."

9. "Users have already created thousands of these stories (offline) through our product."

10. "We were fortunate enough to go to good schools (like MIT, Princeton, and Yale)"

Who could it be? 

Very few of the current batch of YC startups have anything to do with the offline world: There are two crowdfunding platforms, a slew of ec0mmerce something-or-others, several content platforms, a dose of cloud computing and a few "entertainment" plays. "Communications" is also a popular category. Flutter and Sonalight are hands-free thingies. TiKl, which sounded potentially social, is a walkie-talkie app.

Sources suggested one candidate might be Grouper, which calls itself a "social club." Grouper is a New York-based startup that sets people up on group dates based on their Facebook profiles. (You may remember Grouper's original cofounder Jerry Guo, who resigned after Betabeat revealed him to be a serial fabricator.)

Since then, Grouper's star has risen all the way to Paul Graham's graces. Grouper emphasizes it's for people who want to get online to get offline. It's been up and running since September. It costs $20 to go on a Grouper outing. Cofounders Michael Waxman and Tom Brown are both engineers; Mr. Waxman went to Yale and Mr. Brown went to MIT. They're in New York. Mr. Waxman found a girlfriend using the app. Plus, the wording in the April posting is similar to the wording on Grouper's similarly details-bereft jobs page: "Send us your Github profile and/or Dribbble profile at social.hackers.nyc@gmail.com" vs. "Amazing hackers and designers please send your Github and/or Dribbble URL's to jobs@joingrouper.com."

Further evidence? The listing, like Grouper's public statements, makes no mention of dating. "We never even like to use the ‘d’ word," Mr. Waxman told Tech Cocktail. Hey, "absurdly fun + challenging startup" does sound better than "Facebook dating app."

Mr. Waxman declined to confirm or deny via Twitter.

(Image: apple.com)

Flickr just released its quarterly stats report, which reveals a few fun facts. Did you know that there are now 7.2 billion photos on Flickr, with users uploading 2,500 new photos a minute? Did you know that there are 228,207,499 Creative Commons-licensed photos on Flickr?

Most interesting, though, were the stats about camera choices among Flickr's community. The most popular camera is the iPhone 4, followed by the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, followed by the iPhone 4S, followed by the Canon EOS Rebel T2I and Nikon D90.

That's a lot of play for the iPhone 4's 5-megapixel camera and the iPhone 4S's 8-megapixel camera on a site that attracts a lot of professional photographers as well as amateurs who take themselves pretty seriously.

Most popular cameras in the Flickr community over the last year.

Usage this year: iPhone 4.

Usage this year: iPhone 4S.

Usage this year: Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

Flickr users spent the last three months shooting the solar eclipse on May 20, baseball games, and festivals—all complicated subjects. (They also shot flowers and the Golden Gate Bridge, which are better at holding still for the camera.)

Is the iPhone's quality up there with digital single-lens reflex cameras made by Nikon and Canon? Or is the iPhone's popularity with Flickr users simply because it's mobile, and the best camera is always the camera you have on you? Flickr notes that cameraphones are actually underrepresented on Flickr, which sometimes cannot automatically detect which model was used.