Typical for Art Basel, said the source, brushing off complaints. “Less so for tech startups :)” Too bad they missed Demi Moore’s highly gif-able turn on the dance floor next to Lenny Kravitz. Perhaps our partier will have better luck with Tumblr, which is hosting its own Art Basel extravaganza tonight.

(Photo: NYMag)

Ball So Hard Venture capitalists have certainly replaced i-bankers as the finance boyfriend of choice. But does that mean they have as much disposable income? Lerer Ventures and Thrillist cofounder Ben Lerer almost had us fooled on Instagram when he posted a receipt of a $50,000 tip on $251,769 bill at The Dutch, the Soho restaurant that boasts a $19 bagel. Mr. Lerer captioned the image, “dinner was good.” It wasn’t until the next day that he mocked friends for believing he would bro down like that. “dude, that wasn’t actually mine. hahaha. what kind of maniac do you think I am??,” he commented on the photo, adding, “whoevers bill that was is a psycho.”

Sorry, DABA girls. Might want to stick closer to Wall Street.

(Photo: Instagram)

Holiday Cheer There’s been much ado about 3D printed guns and drugs, but we fear there may have been one damning oversight when it comes to the adult industries touched by 3D printing technologies: where are all the sex toys? Luckily our fears were squashed when we saw MESA+ partner Jacob Brody tweet a photo from the 3DEA pop-up shop, a temporary holiday store featuring objects assembled by a Shapeways printer.

Though much merriment was made--the printer was making holiday ornaments for the store’s tree!--there was also a cordoned-off XXX section. “The sign actually says you need to be 18 years or older or accompanied by a guardian, which I think is super funny,” Mr. Brody said. Behold: it was a room of dildos, with one even molded into the shape of a fist. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

(Photo: Jacob Brody, Instagram)

The Lo Down The Hills’ Lo Bosworth is trying to shirk her MTV image and make a name for herself in New York’s startup scene, and rubbing shoulders with Randi Zuckerberg probably doesn’t hurt. Ms. Bosworth Instagrammed a photo of the two of them out for a fancy sushi dinner, along with former CNBC anchorwoman Nicole Lapin. Perhaps Ms. Zuckerberg wants to pick Lo’s brain as to who to cast for the Start-Ups reboot casting in New York?

(Photo: Instagram)

24-Hour Party People It seems Square CEO Jack Dorsey might want to rearrange his medicine cabinet. Earlier this week, just before before midnight California time, he announced to his 2.2 million Twitter followers: "I just mistook NyQuil for mouthwash. Goodnight!" What Mr. Dorsey was doing drinking what he thought was mouthwash is anyone's guess.

Does Not Compute Lots of us get annoying pings from sad, sexy bots just looking for companionship. Most of us just delete and block. Not Google Ventures partner Kevin Rose! He can't resist the chance for a little fun:

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.

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."

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.