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By The Editors 4/19 6:30pm

shameless rumormongering

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Rumor Roundup: Eric Schmidt Had a Long Talk With Julian Assange, Plus Randi Zuckerberg Went to Japan

Cold as Schmidt Here’s a little digital memento from AllThingsDigital’s D: Dive Into Mobile conference: This is what it looks like when, rather than answering your question, Google chairman Eric Schmidt slices to the proverbial bone.

Speaking of Mr. Schmidt, goodies from his upcoming book, The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business are beginning to trickle out. Today WikiLeaks released the transcript of a five-hour conversation between Mr. Schmidt and Julian Assange, used for the book. It opens with some really riveting stuff. Mr. Schmidt: “Well do you want us to start eating?” Mr. Assange: “Well, we can do both.” Guess there’s not much time for leisurely meals in the life of a WikiLeaker. Read More

By The Editors 4/05 6:05pm

shameless rumormongering

Jason_Calacanis

Rumor Roundup: Jason Calacanis Appoints Himself Obi-Wan to Michael Arrington’s Darth Vader

The Chat-rooming Classes Today, seemingly every tech reporter in the business tuned into Jason Calacanis‘s “This Week in Startups,” presumably in the hopes that Mr. Calacanis would tell all re: the allegations of abuse against Michael Arrington. But as familiar names chattered away in the chat room, Mr. Calacanis had little to say beyond comparing himself to Obi Wan. That would make Mr. Arrington Anakin Skywalker, of course; Mr. Calacanis said he taught him how to be powerful in media, and “I regret that.”

As for the allegations themselves, Mr. Calacanis was quick to say he wouldn’t be commenting on whether they were true, citing his lack of direct knowledge. (He did, however, openly discuss the time that Mr. Arrington called a PR honcho “the c-word,” thereby outing someone who’d never mentioned the incident publicly!) [Correction: Mr. Calacanis first mentioned the incident and the PR exec (Brooke Hammerling) by name in the comments of his Facebook post, prompting Ms. Hammerling to confirm the story, also in a Facebook comment.] All in all, it sounds like he (kinda sorta) regrets getting involved. He apparently thought writing a Facebook note wouldn’t go very far. “I thought that that would be a place where it just lived there,” he said. (Paging Randi Zuckerberg!) “I got a little P.T. Barnum in me and I feel like me commenting on all this stuff actually detracts from it,” he added. Read More

By The Editors 3/29 5:45pm

shameless rumormongering

gosling

Rumor Roundup: Ryan Gosling Loves His Warby Specs (Sent From My Night iPhone)

Morin needs a Mophie Path founder Dave Morin, he of Gosling Parker Economically conscious walking Internet meme Ryan Gosling was recently spotted looking dashing in his Warby Parker frames. The company humble-bragged about the royal sighting on its Facebook page earlier this week noting that the frame is the “Preston.” We share their exuberance. This is one piece Read More

By The Editors 3/01 4:45pm

shameless rumormongering

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Rumor Roundup: When Is Alexis Ohanian Gonna Run for Office Already?

Your Name Here A Silicon Valley source had the pleasure of dining near Path cofounder Dave Morin and his wife, Brit.co founder Brit Morin recently. Mr. Morin spoke about the future of Path while Ms. Morin, a DIY enthusiast, used crayons provide by the restaurant to doodle on the paper table cloth, said the source. There were rainbows, flowers and balloons, but our favorite was a drawing of the Brit.co logo, with “Morin” written underneath and an arrow pointed towards Ms. Morin (just in case the restaurant staff didn’t recognize her). That’s one way to disrupt advertising, we suppose. Our tipster was kind enough to snap a pic on their way out.

Happy Internet, Mr. President Twice this week in conversation with tech types, Betabeat was asked when Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian was running for office already. The 29-year-old credited with helping to defeat SOPA/PIPA already toured the country (in a bus once leased for John McCain’s  “Straight Talk Express”) running for president of the Internet. But with Sheryl Sandberg hot on his heels, isn’t it time to start campaigning for the real thing? Read More

By The Editors 1/23 3:25pm

XY in Tech

Sluttin' it up at CES.

Is That a Gadget in Your Pocket? Objectifying 25 Male Tech Writers

News of the first annual Objectify a Male Tech Writer Day swept across the web this morning following an article penned by one of the event’s founders, gaming and social media reporter Leigh Alexander. “From booth babes to harassment, snide comments to double standards, women have often had a hard time feeling comfortable around the tech industry,” she wrote. In order to demonstrate ”the absurdity of objectifying people you claim to agree with or support intellectually,” she’s encouraging female tech writers to give gendered compliments or make sexist proclamations to men about their work.

Though the actual Objectify a Male Tech Writer Day isn’t until February 1st, Betabeat–comprised primarily of female writers–could hardly contain ourselves. Here are 25 gendered comments for 25 of our favorite male tech writers. Read More

By The Editors 11/14/12 11:30am

Insurgents

(Illustration: Robert Grossman)

Meet Betabeat’s 2012 Tech Insurgents

Jack Dorsey, cofounder of Twitter and Square, recently tried to disabuse the tech industry of its infatuation with the word ‘disruption.’ “We don’t want ‘disruption,’ where we just move things around. We want a direction. We want a purpose,” he said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, humbly suggesting the biannual conference change its name. But it’s more than just semantics. The tech sector’s claim to produce world-changing products and services often gets drowned out in a chorus of me-too companies solving problems no one ever complained about. The umpteenth nightlife-recommendations tool or empty real-time dating app can obscure the whirr of a nascent robotics sector in Manhattan or a futuristic, even revolutionary, experiment in manufacturing in Queens. Read More

By The Editors 7/04/12 10:00am

Disrupt This

Get it? Disruptive? (Photo: flickr.com/californiawatch)

9 Things Betabeat Wishes Startups Would Disrupt

We receive a lot of pitches touting “disruptive” technologies. Healthcare, education, banking–name an old-line industry and someone is attempting to yank the rug out from underneath it.

Well, we’ve got a few pressing requests we’d like addressed. Namely:

1. Dry cleaning: It’s expensive, toxic, inconvenient, and it makes your clothes smell funny. Fix it.

2. Transcription: Whoever invents actual functional voice-to-text transcription will get more press coverage than he can possibly cope with. Trust. Read More

By The Editors 6/27/12 9:39am

Betabeat Recommends

100 Photos

Paul Ford

The 100 Most Entertaining Tech Twitterers

As bloggers, we spend a fair bit of time on Twitter, watching the tech talk flow forth, a never-ending river of gossip and congratulations and insidery chit-chat. Unfortunately, we’ve noticed that since everyone realized social media can be a tool for, ugh, “brand building,” folks have become a little guarded, a little too chipper, and far too self-promotional.  Founding a company is, apparently, the kind of career that turns a thrill-seeking 20-something too wild for Wall Street into the kind of person that uses the jargon-stuffed platitudes best left to @FakeGrimlock (no. 6 on our list). You are square. And you are putting us to sleep.

But there are still a few crazy diamonds shining on out there, handy with a quip, ready to leap feet-first into a fight, and generous with the #realtalk. We’ve therefore rounded up a 100 of them for your enjoyment.

As for the rest of you? Step up your game, pronto.

Here is a Twitter list with all 100 users, for your easy-following pleasure. Read More

By The Editors 6/21/12 2:40pm

Look At Me Now

23 Photos

Spontaneously (Summer 2011)

TechStars NYC: Where Are They Now?

We feel a little guilty. We’ve been fickle and easily distracted. Last year, the first two TechStars NYC classes were all we could talk about. But when their programs ended, we kind of forgot about them and directed our attention to the newest TechStars NYC class. Shame on us!

But back in the day, those first 23 companies were all the rage. Like shiny new toys, they were exciting and fascinating. There was even a reality television show about them. So even though their three-month, highly-competitive startup accelerator program has ended, these companies are still around. They didn’t just vanish into thin air. (Well, some of them did).

But all of this begs the question, where are these companies now? How have they fared in the big, bad world? Did they flop? Or surpass expectations?

We didn’t know, so we decided to find out. And it turns out that we weren’t the only ones who were curious about what these companies have been up to. Read More

By The Editors 12/30/11 2:08pm

Prognostications

Soon, there will be no results when we search "wallet" in Google images. (whatsinyourbagnyc.tumblr.com)

Creepy Facebook, No More Wallets, and NYC Tech Rising: Predictions for the Internet in 2012

Predictions! What do New York techies think will happen to the internet-centric economy in 2012? We asked some smart founders, VCs and members of the startup ecosystem where they think tech, the internet and the New York tech scene are headed in 2012 (assuming the world doesn’t end either due to the apocalypse or SOPA, that is). Without further ado! Read More