(Photo: @Tolar)

Bad education? CampInteractive and Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian are hosting an ed tech hackathon at General Assembly this weekend, inviting developers, students and ed tech influencers to tackle improve the classroom experience. Since gold stars are being offered for hacks that help engage students with “unusually compelling learning experiences," we'd like to suggest a K-hole of baby animal videos on YouTube—a learning experience of unknown depths.

Eternal sunshine of a spotless ... Facebook Tired of your ex and his new girlfriend/boyfriend’s endless stream of happy Facebook defaults? KillSwitch is a new app that erases fond memories of an ex-boo from your Facebook profile with a few swipes of the track pad. Scroll through your friends list, find your “target” and make them socially irrelevant as forever more (or at least until you get back together). Created by ClearHart Digital, it's perfect for all you singletons looking for a better way to spend Valentine's Day than drinking alone and meticulously un-tagging photos.

Shacking up Samsung is opening a New York City accelerator to support the development of software on their mobile devices and tablets—and perhaps in hopes that planting its flag in Chelsea is a step in overthrowing Apple claim as the hip marketer of mobile devices.

Making out at the movies Looking for a late, great V-Day idea? Moviepass says even bad movies are good for your relationship. One recent testimonial: “Even if my wife hated my guts after dragging her to Movie 43 last week, at least we were able to laugh it off afterwards. The worst films tend to bring us together more.” Nothing says romance like sitting last row in the near empty theater of a new rom-com.

Get with the TimesMachine The New York Times is launching a new advertising initiative that lets marketers incorporate articles from the Grey Lady's digital archive as a base. National Geographic is among the first advertising partner to take advantage of the plan, embedding archival articles into marketing for NatGeo's Killing Lincoln flick.

Too much information Annoyed at your friends for never having downloaded Foursquare? Let Foursquare help! Dennis Crowley's company has added a new feature that allows users to share maps, images, tips and venue locations with people who never wanted the advice in the first place. According to Foursquare's blog “When you Tweet, post to Facebook, email or text about a place with friends who don’t have Foursquare on their phones, they’ll be linked to a shiny new page showing all the most important info about it.” Grandpa will be happy to know which Lower East Side parlor your new tattoo is coming from.

Node regrets Node based platform service Nodejitsu is launching a "full expansion into the European market" with a partnership with Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica, according to a press release.

Sometimes WeWork And sometimes we do the Harlem Shake.

This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

First things first: Stop reading this and go watch "House of Cards" on Netflix. Yup, it's that good. You're welcome!

Back? Okay! Hope y'all survived the weekend #snow-pocalypse (a.k.a. Nemo) and had a blast sledding in the park, hurling snowballs at each other and making elaborate snow sculptures. Here's an awesome Vine mashup of the storm that my friends Kelsey and Steve made.

Now that you've had your winter fun, it's time to get ready for spring. And that can only mean one thing: internships! That's right. It's that time of the year again, when bright-eyed young kids will be running around your offices eager to learn the ropes, change the world, and...err... get you your early-morning fix of decaf-grande-mocha-soy lattes.  So, who's looking for interns? Everybody, that's who! Squarespace, Metamorphic Ventures, UrbanDaddy, HowAboutWe, ff Ventures, MoviePass, Birchbox, Artsicle, Learnvest and many, many more.

Want $40,000, four months of free office space and access to Esther Dyson, Jeff Stewart, David Pakman and John Frankel? Well, duh. You, my friend, need to apply to the awesome ERA Accelerator, pronto! Deadline is March 7.

Speaking of accelerators, DreamIt is holding a meet-and-greet event next Wednesday, where you'll get to meet some of their partners, alumni and heavy hitters. In more accelerator news, west coast pirate Dave McClure and his merry band of 500 Startuppers will be coming ashore this Friday to give us all a little taste of what they've been building at their Demo Day. And in still more accelerator news, The New York Times Company  is launching timeSpace, a new incubator initiative to bring entrepreneurs to their HQ for four months to refine and grow their businesses. They're looking for three to five early-stage companies focused on the media space with a product launched. Deadline is February 19.

Applications to the 2013 TechCrunch NYC Disrupt Startup Battlefield are open. Deadline is February 22. TechCrunch is also holding a pitch-off competition + meetup tomorrow.

Congrats to the Drobe team for winning the Hearst Fashion Hackathon yesterday!

Don't forget, if you wanna help the city reinvent the payphone, submit your prototype idea by February 18. And if you wanna hang with Zac Posen 'n Dennis Crowley at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, I have an extra pass. Email me if interested.

AIPAC Technology Division is having its launch event on February 27 at Bloomberg HQ, featuring Dan Senor (co-author of Start-Up Nation: Story of Israel's Economic Miracle). AIPAC Tech's host committee includes Alan Patricof (Greycroft), Avi Fogel (NY Angels), Jordan Levy (SoftBank) and others.

Startup Bus (where you get on a bus with 30 strangers and hack your way across America) is going to SXSW. Here's your invite code. Got questions? Email Jon Gottfried, your StartupBus East Coast Conductor!

As you all know, red is my favorite color (gasp, surprise). And lately it's been everywhere, from the red carpet at the Grammys last night to the red roses many of you are getting on Valentine's Day and, of course, red is the color for Chinese New Year. To all my friends who celebrate, Gong Xi Fa Cai! (and hope you get lots of Red envelopes ;-))

And now let's see what's going down in the Alley this week...

On Deck Sports and Technology Conference
With rockstar list of speakers including Bob Bowman (MLB Advanced Media), Tiki Barber (former NFL), Alexis Ohanian (cofounder, Reddit), Ben Lerer (Lerer Ventures), Ryan Spoon (ESPN Digital Media) and others.
Tuesday (Feb. 12), 8 a.m. @ Bohemian National Hall, 321 E. 73rd Street

Cocktails & Conversation
85 Broads invites you for cocktails and conversation with Joanne Wilson (angel investor) & Rohini Dey (restaurateur).
Tuesday (Feb. 12), 6 p.m. @ Vermilion, 480 Lexington Avenue

TechCrunch NYC Meetup
60-second pitch-off competition for entrepreneurs looking to launch their product at the Disrupt conference in May. Plus there's beer. Enough said.
Tuesday (Feb. 12), 6 p.m. @ Santos Party House, 96 Lafayette Street

NY Enterprise Technology Meetup
Demos by Aerohive Networks, DataSift, MapR Technologies, Datadog and Videolicious.
Tuesday (Feb. 12), 6:30 p.m. @ Cooley, 1114 Avenue of the Americas

Startup Weekend Strategic Partnership Series
With Nancy Jo (VP Strategy & Biz Dev, Bravo Digital Media), Leora Schacter (VP Digital Strategy and Planning, Food Network) and Ryan Osbourne (VP Digital Innovations, NBC News).
Tuesday (Feb. 12), 7 p.m. @ General Assembly East, 902 Broadway, 4th Fl.

Digital Disruption: Media in Non-Profits
With William Baker (President Emeritus WNET / Channel 13 PBS), Don Undeen (Media Lab, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Suzy Gooch (Director, Metropolitan Opera).
Wednesday (Feb. 13), 6 p.m. @ McMahon Hall, 155 W. 60th Street, #109

NYC Real Estate Technology Startups Demos
With Efrem Weiss (PivotDesk), Oisin Hanrahan (Handybook) and Nate Friedman (Living There).
Wednesday (Feb 13), 6:30 p.m. @ TechStars NYC, 36 Cooper Square, 6th Fl.

Visas for Startups: A Panel on Immigration Policy and Entrepreneurship
With Jeremy Robbins (Director, Office of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg), Michael Wildes (Wildes & Weinberg), Owen Davis (NYC Seed), Cyrus Mehta and moderated by Professor Jonathan Askin (Brooklyn Law).
Wednesday (Feb. 13), 7 p.m. @ Geraldo's Cafe at Brooklyn Law, 205 State St, 1st Fl., Feil Hall, Brooklyn

One Of A Kind Party
Open Bar / Clothes Donation by StartupThreads, Amicus, AlleyNYC & Coalition for Queens.
Wednesday (Feb. 13), 8 p.m. @ 1Oak, 453 W. 17th Street

Decoded Fashion - Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week
Keynotes by Zac Posen (fashion designer) and Dennis Crowley (Founder & CEO, Foursquare), as well as the fashion hackathon finale. The top three ideas will be presented on the runway and the winning app will be launched by the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
Thursday (Feb. 14), 9 a.m. @ Lincoln Center, 33 W. 60th Street

Columbia Business School 19th Annual PE/VC Conference
Keynote by Steve Case (chairman & CEO, Revolution and cofounder, America Online)
Friday (Feb. 15), 9 a.m. @ Alfred Lerner Hall at Columbia University, 2920 Broadway

HackInteractive
An education-themed, code-for-a-cause hackathon. Amazing prizes, access to awesome APIs, and delicious food. Hack the weekend to benefit CampInteractive’s programming. Hosted by Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian.
Saturday (Feb. 16), 9 a.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Fl.

More events on the horizon...
Social Media Week NY 2013 on Feb. 18 @ Metropolitan Pavilion
NY Tech for Local Business Meetups Social Media Week event: SoLoCo on Feb. 18 @ Wix Lounge
NYTECH Presents: Killer Strategies from the Worlds Greatest Innovators on Feb. 19 @ Morgan Stanley
Business Design & Tech Transforming The World on Feb. 19 @ Centre For Social Innovation Pop-Up Space
Funding the Best in Global Innovation II on Feb. 20 @ SNR Denton
Get To Know DreamIt - NYC on Feb 20. @ Bulls Head Tavern
NJ Tech Meetup 33 on Feb. 21 @ Howe Center
Unleash the Beast: How to Hack a Hackathon Save the World and Make Your Parents Proud on Feb. 21 @ Internet Media Labs
Fireside Chat with Kickstarter Cofounder Charles Adler on Feb. 21 @ Meetup HQ
Analytics Roundtable on Feb. 26 @ SNR Denton
AIPAC Technology Division: Launch Event w/ Dan Senor on Feb. 27 @ Bloomberg Tower
2nd Annual NYU Entrepreneurs Festival on Mar. 1 @ Tisch Hall
NYC EDU Startup Weekend on Mar. 1 @ Alley NYC

Until next week. Stay thirsty social, my friends! ;)

(Photo: Best Buy)

Blame Michael Phelps fever for our oversight, but we seem to have missed a milestone in Silicon Alley's rise to celebrity status. This past weekend, "Breaking Bad" viewers were treated to the visage of Dennis Crowley, staring back at them from a Best Buy commercial. Best Buy released two different thirty second spots starring the Foursquare cofounder, one of which is also running during the Olympics.

Mr. Crowley, the de facto poster boy for New York's tech scene, doesn't shy away from the limelight. There was last year's print ad for Gap (alongside the defoundered Naveen Selvadurai), as well as his upcoming debut in Vanity Fair. "Have a SAG card yet?," Deep Focus CEO Ian Schafer quipped on Twitter. 

All the signifiers of a proper techie are on display, including Mr. Crowley's glow-in-the-dark, lime green Nooka watch, for those who prefer to read time in a 12 dot display, as well as a Nike+ FuelBand, for all your self-quantifying needs.

The commercials, first reported by AllThingsD, are part of Best Buy's "College Innovator" campaign. In one, Mr. Crowley talks about how innovation in smartphones enabled services like Foursquare. In the other, he plugs Best Buy's contest awarding four students a cut of its $100,000 fund to support "the next big technology-based innovation."

Foursquare's Erin Gleason told AllThingsD that the spot was partly to "introduce the all-new foursquare to a large audience," but there's also a philanthropic component. Mr. Crowley is donating his (undisclosed) fee to CampInteractive, a non-profit that provides technology education to underprivileged students. Mr. Crowley, Ms. Gleason, and other Foursquare employees are all involved with the initiative.

As for Best Buy's interest in a CEO whose three-year old startup just launched its first revenue product last week, perhaps it's best to employ Mr. Crowley's advice from the commercial, "Avoid the haters."

The 20 Girls Who Code participants working out of AppNexus's Flatiron office (Photo: girlswhocode.tumblr.com)

“Maliyah, step away from the mouse!” called Ashley Gavin, a software engineer at the MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and instructor at the Girls Who Code summer program. Maliyah Greene, the recipient of Ms. Gavin's reprimand, reluctantly tore herself away from Photoshop to come and talk to Betabeat. We were sitting in AppNexus’s Flatiron office, watching her fellow Girls Who Code students work on virtually tagging brick walls with their names. “It’s not as hard as I thought it would be,” Ms. Greene smiled.

She is one of 20 high school girls who gave up summer vacation to learn about app development, robotics, web design and other topics at Girls Who Code, a summer computer-engineering program for girls.

Though this is its first summer in existence, Girls Who Code already boasts executives from Gilt Groupe, Twitter and General Electric on its board and has been working with AppNexus and other New York startups throughout the summer.

Girls Who Code isn't the only high-profile effort to make coding more female-friendly. Other programs have also received financial backing from fellow startups. Earlier this year, New York City-based Hacker School, a freeform three-month coding workshop for adults, announced a partnership with Etsy, Yammer and 37Signals that would provide 18 grants to women who wanted to attend the program. Girl Develop It, a group that arranges coding workshops for women around the country, has also hosted meet-ups at the offices of Etsy, Twitter and Google. With few women pursuing programming careers, this move is an act of survival for many companies, who hope to increase the size of the talent pool--and maybe even grow revenue by leveraging an XX-perspective on innovation.

Indeed, labor conditions have made tech executives, in a word, desperate. As the Girls Who Code website points out, projections suggest that by 2018, there will only be enough computer science graduates in the U.S. to fill 29 percent of related job openings. Vaughan Smith, Facebook’s director of corporate development, told The New York Times that each engineer was worth $500,000 up to $1 million. And in an industry where the majority of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Etsy users are women, a female programmer could help companies to develop features that better fit that demographic's needs.

One of Hacker School’s backers, 37Signals, does not currently have any female programmers on staff. Hardly uncommon in the business world, where only 18 of the Fortune 500 companies are run by women. As we've noted, the gender gap among the top venture capital firms is even more abysmal.

“It’s self-serving in that sense: showing women that they can be successful ... means that we’re going to have many, many more really qualified engineers down the road,” said AppNexus co-founder and CEO Brian O’Kelley, adding that some female workers in the office were even inspired by the Girls Who Code students to learn more about computer programming. “It’s really just shown our employees, if a bunch of young women can learn to code, you can too. It’s really empowering.”

Of course, this all hinges on whether the students and women who enroll in these programs will choose to pursue a career in computer-related fields. While Ms. Greene is only a sophomore in high school, she said would like to look into studying graphic design in the future, and another student, Diana Navarro, said she is considering majoring in computer science. However, other Girls Who Code members are not so sure.

“I don’t know. I’m not very good at it currently,” said Lucie Pierre-Louis, a rising junior. Maria Gonzalez, a rising senior looking to go to University of Chicago, said she really wants to study business but might consider a minor in computer science.

“It seems like the number of the girls have family pressures not to remain in engineering and sciences,” said Alexis Maybank, the founder and CSO of Gilt Groupe and a board member of Girls Who Code. When they visited the Gilt offices, many of the Girls Who Code students asked Gilt Groupe's female engineering interns: “What do your parents think about it?”

Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of the programming language PHP who now works at Etsy, visiting Hacker School (Photo: twitter.com)

If Hacker School's previous co-ed classes are any indication, the program could directly benefit Silicon Alley's startups. Five out of the six original Hacker School students later found a job in programming, and other graduates work at companies such as OkCupid, Betaworks and Tumblr. Startups including Bit.ly, Quora and Pinterest also pay Hacker School to recruit talent to their business.

“I just hope that by helping we can increase the possibility that there will be some great female programmers out there who we might be happy to consider for jobs if they were to apply,” said 37Signals co-founder Jason Fried.

Other companies are motivated to fund these type of programs as a way to balance the scales.

“I think Etsy genuinely supports the cause of what we're doing in terms of a new type of programming education and one that's much more inclusive of women. They were very clear that they would be happy and see this as a success even if they didn't hire any graduates,” said Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock, a Hacker School cofounder.

Despite the increased support from the tech community, Sara Chipps, the co-founder of Girl Develop It, noted that this new breed of non-profit female-oriented educational programs sometimes has a more difficult time getting funded than their less gender-specific counterparts. She declined to comment on whether this was the case with Girl Develop It, but she did say similar initiatives have gotten stuck in the funding phase.

Ms. Chipps said she thinks this problem arises because “organizations that usually donate to nonprofits really don't have an understanding of what we're doing because it really hasn't been done before.”

She pointed to the difficulty Black Girls Code, a program that aims to educate female minority students in programming, faced when trying to raise $18,500 through IndieGoGo. While more than 400 individuals contributed to the campaign, the program only received about five donations over $150. Within 33 hours of closing, the campaign had only raised $12,477. The project eventually raised more than $21,000, but only after two local companies--RailsBridge and Blazing Cloud--agreed to match up to $2,000 of donations.

Black Girls Code had a harder time raising than similar IndieGoGo campaigns run by more general developer education programs. Another, non-gender-specific coding program, CodeNow, also launched a campaign this summer to raise $15,000 for their summer coding program. Unlike Black Girls Code, nearly 20 people contributed more than $150 to the campaign, including multiple $1,000 donations. CampInteractive, a technology education program for underprivileged youth, was able to meet their $20,000 through a lucrative partnership with Nokia, who matched $10,000 in donated funds.

Kimberly Bryant, the founder of Black Girls Code, said she initiated the IndieGoGo campaign because her program wasn't raising sufficient funding through traditional methods, pointing to an "issue of cluster."

"Corporations are saying that they want to increase the diversity across the technology and STEM fields, but kind of only focusing on a couple of organizations to funnel their dollars to," she told Betabeat.

However, Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Code who has close ties to the tech industry, said she did not have difficulty raising adequate funding for the program. Similarly, Hacker School was able to raise more grant money for women than expected. After admitting 23 women into the program, three more than initially planned, Hacker School realized more participants were requesting grants than the 10 they initially bargained for. Thus Etsy reached out to 37Signals and Yammer to provide funding for eight additional grants, bringing the total to 18. (Five women attended without scholarship money.)

Etsy has also allowed Hacker School to operate out of its Brooklyn office, a situation that Mr. Bergson-Shilcock said has proven very beneficial for the program’s participants. Working in Etsy’s office has provided “a lot of cross-pollination and mingling,” he said, noting that Etsy employees and Hacker School students have had a lot of time to interact during the twice-weekly companywide lunch called Eatsy.

Ms. Saujani said their partnership with tech companies has helped her students get a better, less stereotypical vision of what it is like to work in the tech industry. After touring Google’s plush New York office (which includes a tricked-out bistro, rooftop garden and gaming room), “One of the girls said, 'If this is work, I'm going to work everyday,’” Ms. Saujani recalled. The girls have also worked with a series of speakers and will eventually choose one of these speakers as their mentor.

“There's really this community of people that are coming around these girls and lifting them up and helping them,” Ms. Saujani said. “We're already changing the cultural stereotypes of what a computer scientist looks like or feels like or sounds like. And it's powerful.”