Katie Couric in Warby Parker. (Photo: Facebook.com)

Rose-Colored Glasses Warby Parker just released its annual report for 2012, and it's a pretty fun slideshow to click through. The glasses empire now has 113 full-time employes and 42 part-time employees. Of those bespectacled folks, 108 have company-sponsored gym memberships. In other Warby Parker health news, 2,507 pounds of salad were eaten in the office this year. Although there are not too many exact sales figures in the package (besides the fact that 296 monocles were sold this year) a diagram on the last page shows that sales from the first quarter of the year to the last one have nearly tripled. Warby Parker says it gave out 250,000 pairs of glasses this year, some of which went to victims of Hurricane Sandy.

G Train Still Lost Forever If you take the Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 trains, you already know what time your train is coming based on the large signs that tell you. In December, the MTA released an iOS app to tell you the subway times. But now the MTA is providing a web app, as well as a native iPhone app, so that you can know what time your train is coming before you get to the station. The web app is located at onthego.mta.info and has real-time updating data for all of your arrival times. Most importantly, the MTA has decided to release the data behind the app to developers. Let's hope someone whips up something cooler than this thing.

Fund This Office Kickstarter will soon be moving to into its new Greenpoint offices in the former home of the Eberhard Faber Pencil Co. Renovations to the space began in the summer, and renderings of the new office were released yesterday and then swiftly taken down. The gorgeous plans show that the former factory will contain a lot of rooms, including a theater, an art gallery, a lounge, a library, a green roof and a cafeteria. Oh yeah, and offices too--have to do work at some point.

Thinkers Posthumously Fill in the Rap Deets Rap Genius is speeding right along on its quest to become the Talmud of the Internet. John Wesley, back from the grave, now has an account to comment on the teachings of the bible. And none other than Samuel Johnson is reading between the lines on some of Shakespeare's juiciest bits. Now if we could only get Heidegger to fill us in on some 2 Chainz lyrics, we'd be all set.

Whistle While You Cowork An article published yesterday on FastCompany has some interesting stats on coworking. The piece says that "50% of all coworkers access their work space around the clock" and that "71% report a boost in creativity since joining a coworking space." Secret Clubhouse, the coworking space originally established by The Barbarian Group cofounder Rick Webb, gets highlighted in the article as well. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the space served as a functional workplace for employees from all over the city.

LinkedIn for the Klout Enthusiast A new jobs site launched today that takes your personal connections into account when matching you up with jobs. CareerSonar is a site that matches the employment history of your friends with every job available online and shows you which jobs you could be connected to. In the "it's who you know" world, this might make the most sense for looking for a job online.

Girl Put Your Records On(line) Accessing your medical records online is an impossibility right now, but the NYC-based New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) and Health 2.0 are trying to fix that. Yesterday, the two organizations launched the Patient Portal for New Yorkers Design Challenge. They are looking for designers and developers to create a prototype for a website for patients to access their medical records online. This seems like something important!

Jerseylicious Accelerator Wants You TechLaunch, New Jersey’s premier Technology Accelerator, is now accepting applications for its 2013 class. The program is slated to begin in May and will culminate in mid-September with a Demo Day at Montclair State University. The teams that make it past the selection process will join the class and will each receive up to $25,000 of seed capital.

Be an Average Boyfriend The Netflix for fancy flowers, H.Bloom, has recently announced the launch of a special Valentine's Day service its calling "H.Bloom Hero." It allows men to become "heroes" by scheduling flowers to be delivered to their loved ones on Valentine's Day. Not sure if that makes a guy a hero or just a subpar boyfriend, but we're all just taking what we can get at this point, right?

Better Gets Better Betterment, the personal investing startup that helps users manage stocks-and-bonds portfolios from an online dashboard, hit a milestone last week, topping $100 million in assets under management. That was cause to celebrate and also for a minor redesign. "We have a dashboard screen on the wall that shows our assets under management and how they grow each day,” said CEO Jon Stein in an email. “We've finally had to adjust the font because the number wouldn't fit anymore."

Hipster Becomes the Man AOL is switching things up a bit and poaching one of its mobile employees for its venture fun. Doug Ludlow, the former CEO of the AOL-acquired photosharing startup Hipster, is leaving AOL's mobile side to become the first innovation partner at AOL Ventures. The title is extremely unclear, but it's understood that Ludlow will be spending a bit more time back in New York and getting out of AOL Ventures' Palo Alto headquarters.

Because Tweetdeck Popups Suck Rapportive, the add-on that replaces Gmail's ads with information about your contacts, has just launched an early version of Twitter integration to its service. The update lets you follow, reply and retweet your contacts from within Gmail.  You can request early access to the feature here.

QLabs (Photo: Foursquare)

Good news, Silicon Alley denizens. After much demand from fellow gossip-mongers, Betabeat has decided to resurrect your favorite recurring Friday feature. Welcome back to Rumor Roundup! Overheard a juicy tidbit about impending departures or imminent acquisitions? Dying to dish about startup blunders or frothy financing? Holler at your girls: tips@betabeat.com

THE SUN SOMETIMES SETS ON THE AOL EMPIRE Multiple sources have told Betabeat that AOL Ventures plans on shutting down QLabs--the press-shy experimental think tank in Soho located at 670 Broadway. "The time frame must be darn near immediate," one source told Betabeat, alluding to some urgency around winding down existing projects. "It's dead," said a source with indirect knowledge of the decision. "Their funding ran out," the second source added, speculating that the initiative had a set funding size, but "nothing yielded."

During a rare visit to QLabs in May, Betabeat discovered that the 4th floor space functioned as sort of the yin to AOL Ventures' investment yang--with both organizations trying to keep their corporate parent nimble.

QLabs hired a number of hackers who collectively decided on ideas to pursue. After some market research, the team, which operates non-hierarchically, churns out a prototype in six to eight weeks. If the minimum viable product fails to take off, it gets scrapped. The unspoken expectation, QLabs director Chris Danzig told Betabeat in May, was that it would produce a hit within two years, or roughly five months from now. “It’s very possible it could be a successful business with a few tweaks,” Mr. Danzig said back then. “But I’d much rather throw away something that has potential than burn away time on something that’s not working.”

In an email, Mr. Danzig said, "As a general policy we don't discuss the lab with the press (only the lab products)."

QLabs managed to get traction on at least two products, the incubator told us in May: Framey, which lets users post video comments on websites, and Brom.ly, an events recommendation service that pivoted into an events recommendation tool for the Huffington Post.

The recently launched HuffPost Labs, which operates like a startup for online news experiments within the Huffington Post, also works out of QLabs.  (Codecademy and Turntable.fm were working out of the spacious environs this spring.) But HuffPost Labs director Connor White Sullivan told us that the two incubator-like organizations are distinct. "We get our budget from HuffPost," he said of his budding four-person team. "All I can tell you is they're excellent engineers that built good products."

"As we refine our strategy, we have become more focused on our innovation agenda," an AOL spokesperson told Betabeat. "This was one component of a broader portfolio in AOL Ventures.”

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS A cadre of Silicon Alley citizens–including Onswipe CEO Jason Baptiste and CNET columnist Ben Parr–headed to Vegas two weeks ago for some end-of-summer partying and ended up having a meet cute with Ron Jeremy. Turns out that the notorious porn star likes hanging with the tech set. He showed up to the same mid-day party Mr. Baptiste and Mr. Parr were attending. "Ron Jeremy just came to our private party," one source told Betabeat. "He told us about his rap song with Lil' Wayne who the Hipset guys are close with.” Oh Mr. Carter, say it ain't so?

WWJD? Apparently some trolls have signed Instapaper founder and bombastic blogger Marco Arment up for an email newsletter he certainly didn't authorize. "Thanks to whichever of the trolls signed me up for all of these Jesus email newsletters yesterday," Mr. Arment tweeted. "Not a good week for liking other people." Following a very public spat, perhaps it was someone at The Verge?

SECRETS OF THE SOUL Whoever said ladyblogs are just for ladies clearly hasn't met NYU journalism professor Clay Shirky. Professor Shirky copped to enjoying advice columns on the women-focused site The Hairpin at a reading at HousingWorks Books. “My favorite bit of anonymity on the web is this thing that Edith Zimmerman runs on the Hairpin, called 'Imperfect Advice from Strangers,'" he said. "Which is the best name for an advice column, ever.”

(cbinsights.com)

News flash: it is not 1999 anymore, and it appears that corporate venture capitalists have adjusted accordingly. CB Insights released its Q1 Corporate Venture Capital Report yesterday, revealing that CVCs participated in just 84 deals totaling $1.09 billion, a record low for the past five quarters.

But while overall CVC funding is down 20 percent, funding for the Internet sector is up 30 percent, with CVC deals in that sector increasing for the third straight quarter.

Corporate venture capital refers to the direct investment of corporate funds into external startups—as opposed to corporate venturing, which involves internal innovation support. For example, AOL Ventures, the venture capital arm of AOL, which invested in TastemakerX last quarter, and Time Warner Investments, which made deals with Conviva and Bluefin Labs this spring.

CB Insights analyzed data on the activity of over 200 corporate venture capital arms, concluding that corporate deal and funding volume continue to fall. CVCs participated in only 11 percent of all venture deals for the first quarter. CVC funding in the mobile and telecom sector fell 45 percent from last quarter, although CB insights expects to see an increase in Q2’12. Corporate funding for the green sector is also at a five quarter low.

The report found that when CVCs do invest, they tend to be involved in larger deals. According to CB Insights, CVCs spent, on average, $5.5 million more per deal than traditional VCs in Q1 2012.

CVCs were also found to be later stage investors—only 32 percent of all CVC deals were early stage investments in Q1 2012—as well as frequent co-investors. The average CVC deal in Q1 had 4.3 investors, and over 90 percent of CVC deals involved at least one co-investor.

Findings revealed that CVC activity in New York and Massachusetts has fallen for the fourth consecutive quarter, with Texas nearly overtaking New York for the third place spot. California remains in the lead, having received 60 percent of national corporate funding in Q1.

“CVCs are not partying like it’s 1999,” concluded CB Insights CEO and co-founder Anand Sanwal.

Mr. Cunningham.

Appssavvy, the New York-based "adtivity" network, announced a $7.1 million series A this morning from its seed investors including Scott Kurnit, Howard Lindzon, The New York Times and True Ventures. Rather than serving up ads when a page loads, Appssavvy delivers ads when users perform an activity: click on a thing, update a status, buy a virtual shot of Jaeger, complete a level, "like" something.

"Activity-based advertising we believe will be the emerging digital advertising category that paid search and behavioral targeting were a few years ago, and which video is today," Chris Cunningham, co-founder and CEO, told PEHub.

Creating new places for advertising inventory and serving up ads in a way that's harder to ignore? You can understand why Aol Ventures, venture arm of a desperate media company, also joined Appssavvy's latest round. Appssavvy, which started in 2008, made its biggest inroads with in-game advertising in Facebook applications before later moving on to more creative venues for ads.

The company has grown to more than 60 and has a stack of nontechnical openings listed. The plan is to use the funding to build partnerships, build out the platform, and expand internationally.

As Mr. Cunningham said earlier this year, in an interview with one of its investers (spoiler, it was the NYT), Appssavvy is crushing it.

For whatever reason, crush just feels like the essence of what we’re going to do. We’re going to crush the competition. The next thing you know, you hear another person saying crush. And then they’ll sign off “crush” on e-mail. And then you go into a meeting and three people will be talking about crushing it. It’s literally part of our culture right now. It’s funny how this one word has literally just carried through everything we do.

MIXED MESSAGES. A couple weeks ago, Betabeat noticed that Skillshare founder Mike Karnjanaprakorn was out in San Francisco for the launch of Skillshare in that city. Had he picked up some cash while he was out there, we wondered? Skillshare raised $550,000 in January, which was made public in May, so the company certainly could have sustained its five employees on that--especially with MK's militant lean start-up mindset and the bit of cash it's getting from the website. So when Mr. Karnj said he hadn't raised a new round, we said 'Oh okay.' But then we kept hearing, over the transom, that Skillshare has raised a fresh round. And they're trying to fill up their sweet Soho office with a backend developer, community team and founder apprentice. Any insights? Drop us a tip.

#UNDERSHARING. "Now that I'm forced to use new Twitter I will be using Twitter much less," declared Hashable CEO and Betabeat frenemy Mike Yavonditte, known for purveying plethoras of pithy proclamations in the form of #tweets. RIP, a source intimated sarcastically, he will be missed! But it appears Mr. Yavonditte has gotten acclimated to his new environs: 15 tweets today.

A/S/L. Michael Galpert's iPhone decided to go from being jailbroken to just broken, pulling a factory reset in the middle of updating to iTunes, and the Aviary CEO co-founder no longer had anyone's number the night of his big party. Hilarity ensues! "Not having anyone's numbers in my phone is turning out to be the best game evar," he said on Twttr, to which Barbarian Group's Colin James Nagy replied, "Everyone prank Galpert!"

Q AND NOT U. In the course of Aol's attempts to hip-ify, Aol Ventures's Q Labs has become a super-cushy gig. Hackers reportedly get high salaries and excellent terms--"six figures and 20 percent equity, or something like that"--says our source, to hack on projects in a gorgeous space at AOL Ventures in Noho/East Village. Caveat: We hear the wifi sucks, and incubate-ees have to work off Verizon MiFis. Got a Q Labs story? Email us!