BuzzFeed also Instagrammed a photo of Mr. Peretti donning said shirt and drinking what appears to be a beer. YOLO, we suppose.

(Photo: Instagram)

New Year, New Guilt On January 2, even as many attempted to turn over various new leaves for 2013, Anil Dash had to go and remind us all that despite our best Code Academy-inspired intentions, barely anyone actually learned to code last year. He tweeted, "So did anybody learn how to program after signing up for New Year's resolution lessons last year?" Judging by the @replies, there are quite a few people no closer to Javascript mastery than they were 12 months ago.

If you're looking for some other promises to break this year, Get Instinct and Greatist will want to teach you how to be healthier and play guitar.

Jammin' The improvisational warhorses of Phish played several shows at Madison Square Garden this week, including New Year's Eve--and it seems several local techies turned out. Among the attendees: Aviary cofounder Michael Galpert, IA Ventures' Ben Siscovick, and GroupMe cofounder Steve Martocci, who found this appropriately psychedelic photo on his camera the next day:

Trippy!

Missing in action was CrowdTap marketing director Ben Kessler, who took to Twitter to lament his absence: "Wish I caught Phish this run but I’m sooo tired. Maybe we’ll get some Hampton shows?" Nothing like being sunburnt and baked.

International Relations When last we checked in with Art.sy, a high-brow Pandora for fine art, the well-capitalized startup was hosting a beachside barbecue at Art Basel attended by Lenny Kravitz and a rompered, dancing Demi Moore. Things took a much darker tone today, however, when the company announced that it had permanently moved its URL from art.sy to artsy.net to avoid potential outages related to the civil war in Syria.

In a press release, Art.sy said, "The move comes following an outage with our art.sy domain, which was down for a period of 36 hours this week due to an issue with DNS servers in Syria." As has been widely reported, the authoritarian Syrian government is behind recurring Internet blackouts in an attempt to suppress activists.

In response to questions from Betabeat, a representative said all of Art.sy's servers were in the U.S., but added, “We also did not want a domain that could be construed in any way as supporting the Syrian government.” Why not the more logical Artsy.com? The site “was not available,” said the company spokesperson. Whoever is sitting on the domain must be asking a pretty penny, if  investment* from the likes of Wendi Deng, Eric Schmidt, and Jack Dorsey wasn’t enough to tempt them.

Art.sy also announced that it was "simplifying" its name to Artsy. Perhaps startup names with a dot.suffix are going the way of CamelCase as well?

Chapel Check-In It’s not just your high school friends updating their Facebook statuses to “Engaged" lately. Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley proposed on a dark stretch of beach to his longtime girlfriend Chelsa Skees this week. “She said yes!” he tweeted. And check out that rock:

(Photo: Business Insider)

*Disclosure

Ms. Bashir (Photo: by Kevin Abosch via Twitter/Ruzwana)

How does a pre-product startup raise $1.4 million from the likes of Jack Dorsey, Eric Schmidt and Khosla Ventures with just an idea? It helps if you've worked with the investors before. And if you're trying to bring a fragmented offline industry online, a particular hobbyhorse of Mr. Dorsey's, whose mobile payments company Square has done just that with mom and pop shops.

Peek CEO and founder Ruzwana Bashir first met Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Schmidt when she directed business development and marketing for Art.sy, another investment of theirs, she told Betabeat earlier this week.

Today, the former New Yorker is launching Peek, a San Franciso-based travel startup looking at a different slice of the market: booking activities like museum tickets, sporty jaunts, culinary tours, and seats at a film festival, starting with California and Hawaii.

The lush and user-friendly site shows hand-picked and vetted activities for each city in categories like Food & Wine, Arts & Culture, or Water Sports, in Hawaii. It aggregates reviews from a variety of travel sources, takes original photography, and builds relationships with the businesses featured on the site, so the information (like hours) is always updated. For that service, Peek takes a 15 to 30 percent commission of any booking you make online.

Ms. Bashir is one of the startup scene's sudden influx of female Harvard Business School CEOs--in fact, she used to work with her fellow alums in strategy and biz dev at Gilt Groupe--and thus comes armed with plenty of market research. More than $26 billion was spent on activities in the U.S. in 2009. But while 80 percent of travelers look for activities online, only 20 percent of those sales are made online. That's because many activities providers lack a website (Betabeat found this out the hard way when a friend recommended "migrant worker roller skating" in Shanghai).

Perhaps the most compelling feature on the site is suggested itineraries called "Perfect Day." The startup, which is cofounded by CTO Oskar Bruening, a veteran of VMware and Symantec, has managed to lure a number of bold-faced names for the task, like Piers Morgan, Tory Burch, French Laundry chef Timothy Hollingsworth, and Jack Dorsey, whose "Perfect Day" background image (below) is a drawing he made of the Golden Gate bridge.

In a statement emailed to Betabeat, Mr. Schmidt said one of the trends reshaping this part of the travel industry is, "The UI: new technologies allow for amazing new visuals, much much better approaches for visual representations."

As travel lovers, we're excited to see some disruption in the space, although we remain skeptical as to how the concept will scale without significant investment in on the ground travel experts. After all, San Francisco and Hawaii are a little more developed and tourist-friendly than say Shanghai or even New York. But Ms. Bashir insisted the initial locations were chosen because they represent different types of challenges. "San Francisco is a big city with lots of stuff to do. Wine Country is more dispersed and Hawaii is a resort destination," she argued. "What we've learned has created a process that's extremely scaleable.

Peek plans on expanding to the East Coast and Mexico next year. Can we make a humble plea to have Jack Dorsey's "Perfect Day" in New York? Besides riding in Square cabs with Bloomberg, of course.

(internetweekny.com)

Unless you've gone off the grid, you probably already know that Internet Week 2012 launches on Monday. But with a dizzying number of events to attend, it's hard to figure out which ones are worth the time, effort and subway fare. Betabeat guest blogger Gary Sharma, something of an events truffle hound, already penned his personal list of recommendations. But consider this Betabeat's official to-do list: blogger tested, Betabeat approved.

The Art of Apps Gallery Opening
Monday, May 14th, 10am-6pm
138 Sullivan St.

Expect a lot of rounded edges and pixel talk at this gallery opening, featuring the designs of tech types like Path's Dave Morin, Jon Slimak of Piictu and Matias Corea of Behance. The exhibit will feature some of the best UI designs for apps on iPhone and iPad.

NYU ITP Spring 2012 Show
Monday, May 14th, 5pm-8pm
721 Broadway, 4th Floor

We write about ITP a lot (see the Listserve, the Descriptive Camera, and Kickstriker for some recent examples), mostly because the majority of projects produced by the students at NYU's interactive telecommunications program are actually really, really cool. ITP will unveil its best projects to the public in a two-day spring show on Monday 5/14 and Tuesday 5/15, and we think it's worth attending if only for the chance to see most of the most nimble young minds in the city at work.

Choosey Netizens Choose GIF: Analyzing an Animated Cultural Lexicon
Tuesday, May 15, 12pm-12:45pm
82 Mercer St.

We are huge fans of animated GIFs. In fact, we would probably devolve into communicating entirely through tiny moving pictures, if we could. Motherboard deputy editor Sean Yeaton will discuss how the GIF became its own cultural phenomenon.

Why Being a Good CEO has Nothing to Do With Being a Woman
Tuesday, May 15, 1pm-1:45pm
82 Mercer St.

If you haven't noticed, all of the full-time staff writers here at Betabeat possess two X chromosomes, so we're never ones to turn down a good panel about our fellow XX in tech. Featuring Birchbox cofounder Hayley Barna and Nestio CEO Caren Maio, in addition to some other talented lady founders, the discussion should offer some helpful advice on leading as a woman in the tech community.

TIME Inc.’s 10 Startups to Watch
Wednesday, May 16, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Top Secret

The list of TIME's 10 startups to watch reads like a week in Betabeat posts: NYC tech scene favs Code Academy, Art.sy, Fab.com and Side Tour are among the honorees. But the event is invite-only so be sure to get on the guest list if you want to attend.

WeWorkLabs Happy Hour
Wednesday, May 16, 5pm-8pm
175 Varick St., 4th Floor

First off: there will be free beer at this event. Plus, you'll get to check out the coworking space of WeWorkLabs, a NYC tech staple that seeks to foster collaboration between up-and-coming entrepreneurs. Check out some of the pitches from WeWorkLabs members and network with other like-minded techies.

hackNY Fundraiser
Wednesday, May 16, 7pm-9pm
foursquare HQ: 568 Broadway, 10th Floor

10gen will be providing drinks for a celebration of the hackNY community, an event to help raise funds "for the future tech innovators of New York City," and keep kids off Wall Street as the slogan goes. We had a pretty great time at the last hackNY fundraiser. But if nothing else, it's a chance to peep Foursquare's sweet office digs.

The Webutante Ball
Wednesday, May 16th, 8pm-11:55pm
Marquee

Don't pretend like you don't want to see the digerati all dolled up. The Webutante Ball is in its 4th year, and it's not really getting any cooler, but there will be lots of drinks. The "prom committee" is packed with NYC tech allstars, like Ben Lerer, Dave Tisch, plus old school fameball Julia Allison.

Walkabout NYC
Friday, May 18th, 1pm-6pm
187 Lafayette St. 6th Floor

If you're a fan of the Roger Mag, or just an interior design nut, you'll probably want to take some time to hit up Walkabout NYC, an open house of startup offices around the city. The lineup includes Betaworks, Gilt Groupe, Tumblr and Facebook, among many others.

Future of Media Panel
Friday, May 18th, 1pm-2pm
20 Cooper Sq. at 5th st. (NYU's journalism HQ)

Oh look, another panel to discuss the future of an industry about which no one has the slightest clue. Yay. But! The lineup is packed with A-list names in both media and tech, including Buzzfeed's Jonah Peretti, Thrillist's Ben Lerer and Jezebel's Jessica Coen. As long as everyone's candid about the real state of things, we think it should prove pretty entertaining.

(Source: Warby Parker)

PERFECT TEN. Last Wednesday Time Inc. brought together editors from many of their news properties to bestow upon us the "10 NYC Startups to Watch." Only in the startup picking game since lat year's Internet Week, Time Inc. has already picked winners like GroupMe, which was purchased by Skype for a supposed $85 milion.

The startups that made the cut for 2012 are Adaptly, a social advertising platform; Art.sy, the Pandora of art; Codeacademy, an interactive self-paced tool to learn to code; Enterproid, a mobile platform to segregate work from personal information on a single mobile device; Fab—you already know what Fab does; Fancy Hands, a provider of virtual personal assistants; Loosecubes, a matchmaker for workers and workspaces SideTour; a community marketplace for booking and hosting adventures, Stamped; a five-star-only mobile rating app and Truth Art Beauty; an online platform where users can custom-create skincare blends.

FOUNDER POWER. This Friday Women 2.0 is hosting their New York Founder Friday at 16 East 34th Street. Featured founders Cheryl Yeoh of CityPockets and Eloise Bune of GraciousEloise will begin speaking at 7 p.m. but the event will kick off at 6 p.m. with an introduction by Matt Wolfrom of Makovsky and Company, the event's sponsor. Founder Friday is free, and open to people of all genders, unlike the LOL-inducing "Jews against the Internet" rally, which is $10 and closed to women. Unfortunately, Founder Friday is already at capacity. Add your name to the wait list and cross your fingers.

RALLY IN THE ALLEY. The Association for a Better New York Foundation and Mayor Bloomberg honored the city's technology leaders in Union Square last Thursday including Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley, Greycroft's Alan Patricof, ideeli CEO Paul Hurley and NYTM cofounder Dawn Barber. The Lew Rudin Founder's Award went to New York City deputy mayor for economic development Robert Steel.

MEDIUM MAYHEM. Shelby.tv sat squarely at the intersection of social media and video and last week they began making strides to kick to competition down the block. At The Next Web 2012, cofounder Reece Pacheco unveiled Shelby GT, currently operating in private beta. "Rolls," a tool for organization, curation and the sharing of videos by way of tweets, Facebook posts and other social platforms, make up the centerpiece of this latest social video iteration. Request a private beta invitation to the virtual viewing party here.

DESIGNBOX. Last week LayerVault, an online, unlimited storage space for design files, underwent a redesign adding color extraction and an ability to measure mockups. The "Github for designers" has also introduced "Wormhole," a way to search art files visually by highlighting different design components. That recent shell-out for CS5 might feel a little worse now.

CLOTHES BUY YOU. New York fashion ecommerce company Ruby Ribbon got a $3 million go ahead from Trinity Ventures to launch, sell and market a fashion line "exclusively through social commerce." The company plans to connect to customers on a highly personal level through a national network of stylists who will introduce customers to Ruby Ribbon products at private social functions and in their homes. Ruby Ribbon has been operating stealthily, without so much as a landing page, until today.

PURCHASEST. Ever come across something on Pinterest that you wanted to buy? Well now you can! Sort of. The Fancy wants to treat your eyeballs like a lady while and your wallet like... well pretty much how everyone else treats your wallet. "Everything you see on the site is for sale, or can be for sale, in a function that operates like Groupon in reverse," a press release said. "If someone posts something that develops a huge following -- merchants can come online to sell that item and meet the demand." Fancy just hit half a million users and has big name backers like Square's Jack Dorsey and Facebook's Chris Hughes.

WARBY DARKER. Online prescription eyewear retailer Warby Parker just launched a new line of snazzy prescription sunglasses. At $120 they're a little pricier than their non-polarized counterparts.

COMMUTE. Spotify is on the hunt for a senior product manager with at least five years of experience to drive user revenue. App management platform Appboy wants to add a developer to its small team to provide the server backend for mobile client SDKs and the developer dashboard.

Art.sy screenshot. March 23, 2012

Betabeat signed up for Art.sy on January 24, 2011. "Right now we're in closed beta, but we look forward to launching in Spring 2011. And because of your early interest, you'll be the first to know when invites become available," we were told. But it must have been a struggle to get the app running and populated with artwork, because we didn't receive an invite until March 2012. (Wired got a sneak peek in November.)

At any rate, as of two weeks ago, we're in. Art.sy is an art shopping catalog, comprised of works from 2,400 artists from more than 200 galleries, museums and private collections, something like 13,549 works. Not all are for sale. The site includes high resolution images of the artwork and blurbs about the movements and artists; "American artist Alexander Calder changed the course of modern art by developing an innovative method of sculpting, bending and twisting wire."

For each painting, sculpture, installation or film, you're shown some basic information and given the option to see more information, save the work, or follow the artist. If the work is for sale, you're given the option to "view in room" or "request more info," which means Art.sy will connect you to the gallery. If the work is not for sale, you're able to page through to the owner's website.

The core of Art.sy is the Art Genome Project—a deeply-researched, hand-built recommendation engine often called "Pandora for art." Art.sy came up with a list of 800 characteristics, or "genes," of art—"Cinematic;" "Group Portrait;" "Technique: Documentary Photography;" "Content: Private or Personal Spaces"—and assigns each piece between 30 and 40 genes, with a rating of how strongly the particular gene applies to the particular piece. Art.sy uses these genes to power the "For You" section, which shows a small collage of works in categories. You can help Art.sy with a "taste test," in which Art.sy shows you works and asks you to pick a favorite.

The Good

Art.sy doesn't ask anything of you. It doesn't want me to fill out a profile. It's dead simple and it looks pretty. There is no app for users, but it loads quickly (most of the time). I have already selected two desktop backgrounds from its offerings and learned about Alexander Calder. I feel more sophisticated already.

Casual collectors who buy in the lower ranges of zeros—the work on Art.sy ranges from $150 to $1.5 million—find the site useful for discovering artists they like. Dan Gellert, an audio engineer in Los Angeles who has a collection of about 40 artworks and is a self-described "gallery rat," told Betabeat he discovered the service in a news article and got hooked. "If I don't feel like doing anything else I'll just browse around," he said. He also enjoys reading the descriptions of the movements. "I don't know much about most of them," he said. "The big ones, of course—minimalism and impressionism, I know more about. But there's a whole lot of them."

This all reinforces Art.sy's pitch: helping the more pedestrian art appreciators among us find their way to artists like Sherin Guirguis, a young Egyptian artist whose abstract paintings resemble fractals and eyeballs.

"I was communicating with a gallery in China," Mr. Gellert said. "Communicating through Art.sy. I would never have any reason to know about this gallery in China, except for this connection."

It also seemed to strike a chord with members of the design community.

The Room for Improvement

The first obvious thing: not enough art. Art.sy's well-connected investors have helped it secure partnerships with Gagosian and other prominent galleries, but much of the art world is still wary of the cutely-named startup. The second thing: users don't all agree on the category system for the artworks. There are also still a few bugs: a salmon banner proclaiming a 503 error popped up for Betabeat when we checked in on the site today. Small. Solvable.

Where Art.sy runs into real trouble is with the underlying model. Now that they've seen the product, galleries are complaining that they would rather put their current offerings online in one batch at Art.sy and have customers browse through them there, one source familiar with the art world told Betabeat, and that Art.sy doesn't seem to understand the business of art. "I feel like this web site combines the worst parts of a Google image search (a complete lack of organization coupled with a wholly superficial and associative way of making connections—'color similarity' (?)) with a dangerous glossing over of the subject matter therein ("arguably Minimalism's roots lie in Russian Collectivism") that results in nothing but a meaningless bombardment of images," the source said in an email. "Beyond that, the work that is for sale is mostly minor. In short: it was a dumb idea with a lot of funding and I still don't get the point."

Fine art is usually sold via an art advisor, a high-end interior decorator—or a speculator, depending on your aims. Mr. Gellert's wife, a former American painting expert at Christie's auction house, pointed out to him that "it's been shown pretty much up until now that real art, real fine art above $10,000, doesn't really sell on the Internet, or hasn't in an important way." Though he's been connected to a few galleries, Mr. Gellert has yet to make a purchase. "There is something about buying a piece of fine art for a whole lot of money in front of you as opposed to on a screen," he said.

And another bites the dust. And another one bites the dust.

Rupe's first weeks on Twitter were a little awkward, but the training wheels are off: Here he is shilling for wife Wendi Murdoch's high-profile tech investment, Art.Sy, and more recently, pumping up the art market as "ablaze" for her.

Now, he's going after his enemies: specifically, other conglomerates like Google and people like President Barack Obama.

Watch the old battle-axe in action:

Now, why would a guy like Rupe go after Google? So he can wash their mouths with SOPA, which the Obama administration started to lean against over the weekend.

Rupert Murdoch has a ton of intellectual property interests to protect: film, television, movies, awful news networks, Joe Buck, and so forth. SOPA—or the Stop Online Piracy Act—aims to give the government power to shut down anyone accused of aiding and abetting online piracy. Google indexes the results of people who sometimes host pirated content. To hold them responsible for it would be like, for example, holding Big Pharma responsible for making products that people can turn into meth whenever they choose to do so. But the government doesn't do that, so why would they ever do it to The Entire Internet?

[Hint: Has to do with lobbying money. Lots of it.]

What's Murdoch's appeal to the public for his side of the SOPA argument?

Ah, "risky filmmaking." Which FOX is definitely known for. Either way, here's to Rupe's continued adventures on the microblogging platform. This should remain as patently interesting as it's been.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Jellyfish Eyes - Black 4. Untitled, Takashi Murakami

Art.sy's doors are still closed to Betabeat, as we signed up for an invite in... May, perhaps? It was a while ago. The startup has had plenty of press since then, as well as a semi-public launch at the Art Basel visual art fair in Switzerland over the summer. The product remains in closely-held beta, however. But some details slipped out in an article in December's issue of Wired, the latest in Art.sy's extremely successful press run.

If you type in the word “Wednesday,” for example, the auto-complete function might suggest the work Adelyn, Ash Wednesday, a photograph by American photographer Alec Soth, who is known for his stark images of modern America, particularly portraiture. Ash Wednesdaydepicts a tattooed woman with bright red hair and an ash cross on her forehead, all framed by gray gloom and a metal fence. Below, Art.sy recommends other works by Soth: prints of a woman at a supermarket counter, of a trailer, of the facade of a red, white, and blue pawn shop.

Using Ash Wednesday as a starting point, the software then presents other, genetically similar works. Since Soth’s image carries a strong gene for “contemporary photographic portraiture,” Art.sy suggests pieces by Sally Mann and Bill Jacobson, two American photographers also known for their melancholic portraits. Art.sy also spots a strong “documentation of social life” gene for Ash Wednesday, and so it returns a few results for another American photographer, Brian Ulrich, known for his work on consumer culture, and for Jean Pigozzi, an Italian millionaire who has found great acclaim photographing his friends.

Adelyn, Ash Wednesday also carries the “contemporary” and “realism” genes, which help to suggest some more works. Finally, since all of the artworks have been analyzed by computer vision software as well as a team of human experts, Art.sy is able to recommend other art—not just photography but work in any medium—that employs a similar color palette. One of these turns out to be a painting of a Parisian scene done in 1900 by American artist Everett Shinn.

Artists, too, are assigned genetic makeups. A search on Art.sy for “Jeff Koons,” an American known widely for his giant reproductions of balloon animals, shows that he displays strong “contemporary pop” tendencies. This makes him similar to Takashi Murakami, a younger Japanese artist, and—when married with Koons’ strong gene for “provocative”—leads Art.sy to also recommend works from Ai Weiwei, the famous Chinese dissident and artist. Koons’ focus on consumerism and pop culture suggests that he was inspired by the midcentury pop art movement, particularly artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Tom Wesselmann.

All that computation is thanks to Art.sy's 550 art "genes," which are set out in basically a spreadsheet, according to Wired. Artworks are rated on each gene with a number between 1 and 100. Cool! But we're eager to see it. "Honestly, they need to just get on with it. I've never heard of such a press kick for a company that hasn't done anything yet with an idea that is, at best, half-baked," said a source familiar with the art industry. Indeed, the pre-launch startup has had coverage in TechCrunch, New York, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Observer. But we know why Art.sy is happy to bask in the media's sunshine: CEO Carter Cleveland is one of the smoothest hustlers we ever saw when it comes to recruiting.

Daniel Doubrovkine

"I knew that I chose not to inform my boss and CEO about such a minor project being open sourced. I feared that the announcement or the source code included confidential information about our business or an incompatible license. I was convinced that I missed something very big and important and dreaded the consequences for my team and my job." That's what was going through the mind of Art.sy's head of engineering Daniel Doubrovkine after receiving an email from CEO Carter Cleveland with the subject line, "Immediate action required (RE: Our latest open source project)."

He needn't have feared. "The Engineering team just open sourced an awesome tool called Heroku-Bartender," Mr. Cleveland enthusiastically wrote. "I want everyone to check it out and read through the comments. Open source is a great way for us to establish engineering credibility while contributing to the community-at-large. Thank you and congratulations to Engineering."

Mr. Doubrovkine shared this story in a post on opensource.com, "Thinking open source: How startups destroy a culture of fear," about the open source generation, in which he compared his young hacker days of pirating expensive software with the wonderland of free open source tools available now. He also gave a nod to Mr. Cleveland: "It’s about Carter and his relentless work that creates a culture of trust and general awesomeness at Art.sy."

The newest player is Artspace, which just launched with $1.2 million in funding. It's the brainchild of Catherine Levene, who worked at the email list Daily Candy before it sold to Comcast for $125 million.

Levene hopes the site will be half educational space, half online gallery. The business will be a weekly private sale for members in the model of Gilt Groupe.

It's a little tough to say who the target market will be. Artspace is partnering with big names like The Guggenheim, but says its going after folks who typically shop for art at  retail stores like Home Depot and Crate and Barrel.

The recently launched Artsicle, out of Dogpatch labs, offers rentals on relatively unknown artists, making it an easier choice for first time buyers just dipping their toes in the market.

On the other side of the spectrum, Art.sy is going after the high end customers, bringing on Larry Gagosian as an advisor and scrapping its initial plans to pursue young customers.

Who's got the best business model? It's all in the eye of the beholder (investor).

Art.sy, which is officed in the trendy new coworking space at General Assembly, is offering a three month unpaid internship with the possibility of full-time employment.

"I am looking for an EXTREMELY intelligent, hungry, organized, and passionate individual with beautifully efficient writing skills, and humility to boot. I want to be able to throw random complex tasks at them, knowing they will ‘just figure it out' and surprise me with the quality of their results," founder Carter Cleveland wrote on his blog.

The intern will learn how to hire, manage the creation of a web app, recruit and work with engineers, and "breathe the rarefied air of the art world."

Additionally, Mr. Cleveland writes, the networking will be "insane." The intern will sit next to Mr. Cleveland at General Assembly and be present for meetings with investors and partners.

"I am so jealous that I never had an opportunity like this when I was younger," Mr. Cleveland wrote. "And I will be personally invested in making sure this person becomes a shooting star in the tech world."

The posting resulted in a mini-debate on Twitter. "Unpaid internships seem really disrespectful," Foursquare's Jorge Ortiz said of the opportunity. Foursquare's Harry Heymann seconded, and investor Chris Dixon, who had tweeted a link to the posting, said "I strongly prefer paying interns." Jeremy Fisher of Dinevore pointed out that unpaid internships are limited to people who can afford to work for free.

That wasn't the intention, Mr. Cleveland responded, noting that many applications were from students in business school.

Besides, General Assembly will have its own barista soon, so Art.sy's intern won't even have to make coffee.

Check out pictures of General Assembly here.

Disclosure.