Justin Timberlake doppelganger and Napster cofounder Sean Parker has just about had enough with the backlash to his lavish wedding. In addition to fielding “death threats” from “eco terrorists” on his Facebook page, The Guardian reports that passersby have begun literally spitting on Mr. Parker and his bride. Read More
Just yesterday, Betabeat was considering the brief, bizarre rein of McAfee Antivirus founder and bath salts enthusiast John McAfee. How brightly he shone in those brilliant months last winter when he was on the run in South America for allegedly murdering someone in Belize. There was the tampon disguise and the one that probably made him look like a murderer; and of course, that time Vice magazine called us all suckers before accidentally revealing Mr. McAfee’s secret location through iPhone photo metadata. Read More
Girls already run the world, so the next logical step is for us to dominate the entire universe. The Daily News reports that on the eve of the 30th anniversary of Sally Ride’s space launch, NASA has chosen eight new astronauts to report for duty at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and four of them are women. Read More
Advertising is a simple business.
A publisher creates inventory, whether it’s in a newspaper, over the airwaves, by the side of the road or online. They sell part of that inventory to companies who want to get their products and brand names in front of an audience.
Though it seems like a simple equation, there are a lot of ways it could go wrong, especially in the dizzying world of online ads.
A post on the blog Arabcrunch.com went viral this morning, hitting the front pages of both Reddit and Hacker News. The post stated that Facebook had begun blocking logins from users attempting to access it from the anonymized browser TOR. For activists and political dissidents who use the Internet to communicate with the outside world in countries where doing so is a crime, being unable to login to Facebook using TOR posed a huge problem. Read More
It’s almost impossible to get a straight dude who plays video games horny these days. Walk by him in a short skirt that’s practically begging to be creepshotted and he’ll politely avert his gaze. Use your girl voice to talk to him on Xbox Live and he’ll compliment you on your impressive gameplay skills and immediately want to engage you in a conversation about the latest issue of Bust magazine. Luckily, developers of Wicked Paradise, an adult virtual reality game for the Oculus Rift headset, are working to solve this important problem. Read More
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the NSA leak debacle, it’s that if everyone in the world would just learn how to code already, it never would have happened–or at least the news wouldn’t have been such a shocking revelation. Read More
Ready for their close up This week was the week NYC techies flocked to the TV circuit for their 15 minutes. Betaworks CEO John Borthwick took to CNBC’s Power Lunch for a segment about the hugely popular iPhone game Dots, an app built within the tech non-incubator by designer Patrick Moberg. Digg general manager Jake Levine Read More
After the Oxford American Dictionary deemed “GIF” the 2012 word of the year and officially adopted friendzone into its ranks, you’d be forgiven for feeling like they’re starting to cater to the Internet savvy among us. That sneaky suspicion about pandering will probably only get worse with the news that the Oxford English Dictionary has officially amended the definition of the word “tweet” to incorporate its web meaning. Read More
Poor handsome, successful millionaire Sean Parker. Not only is he doomed to forever be confused with Justin Timberlake’s obnoxiously bro-ish portrayal of him in The Social Network, but he’s also been forced to cancel his honeymoon following the deafening backlash caused by his fantasy forest wedding. Can’t a super rich guy catch a break around here? Read More
