Sure. (Photo: Hashgram)

As HBO drums up promotion of the upcoming season of Games of Thrones, the premium cable network is trying a different approach: cozying up with the digerati. (Historically, HBO has greeted the Internet much Night's Watch would approach a horde of White Walkers.)

Last week, the cabler held elaborate Games of Thrones-themed events in techie hotspots like Silicon Valley and Seattle--home base to Internet giants like Amazon, Google, Netflix prone to disrupting the archaic television distribution process.

The Los Angeles Times described the crowd at the party as a sea of t-shirts adorned with Twitter logos, with plenty of Google Glass to go around. That explains why we spied tech bigwigs, like AllThingsD co-executive editor Kara Swisher and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark in attendance.

So, why is HBO trading in the glitzy red carpet premieres for neckbeard laden shindigs? Uproxx hypothesizes it sees the “writing on the wall” since its subscriber growth rate has leveled. HBO wants to make a preemptive strike to protect its yearly $3 billion revenue before it emotionally collapses, Hannah Horvath style.

According to the LA Times, all that the hobnobbing with tech companies could help HBO secure better deals on their platforms.

Analysts say HBO was looking to strengthen its alliances with an emerging new distribution network and the social media companies that help spread the popularity of its original programming.

HBO’s glacial, but inevitable, decision to offer HBOGo as a standalone product could be a good first step if it come to an agreement with those pesky cable providers. Perhaps an autograph from Mr. Dinklage could smooth the way?

SMDH (Photo: Complex)

40 Sexist Stereotypes It was not a great week for women in tech. Between the Adria Richards fracas and Complex deciding the best way to contribute to the discourse was to throw up a slideshow of the "40 Hottest Women in Tech," it's almost as if the takeaway from Sheryl Sandberg's book was Lean In... with yer boobs. The good news is that in order for the gender disparity in tech to shrink, we need to have conversations like this--even if they turn ugly or mean-spirited or upsetting.

The reaction to Ms. Richards' questionable public shaming underscored the point she’d been trying to make all along: that the tech world is often a hostile, unfriendly place for women.

So we were heartened to see a resounding backlash to the Complex slideshow. If you're gonna objectify smart, accomplished, competent women, then lean the fuck out of the Internet, thank you very much.

On his Facebook, the author of the slideshow Luke Winkie wrote a mea culpa, claiming that he recognized the negative stereotypes a story like this would perpetuate  but, "it's hard to say no to $500."

(Screencap: Facebook)

In case you think bylines like these impress women (or exes), think again:

https://twitter.com/kttykatie/status/315173787459014656

Craig of Thrones HBO threw a party for its new season of Game of Thrones in San Francisco this week, and every tech reporter under the California sun was invited. AllThingsD's Kara Swisher posted this picture of Craig Newmark and Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, declaring Mr. Newmark the long lost son of Mr. Martin. Can't say we disagree.

(Photo: Instagram)

Meanwhile, HBO bigwigs get to try on Glass and we still haven't. Sigh.

(Photo: Instagram)

No Cats, No Peace Startups love office dogs. But where's the love for the official animal of the Internet, the noble cat? Betaworker Lauren Leto recently took to Twitter to plead with her colleague Paul Murphy, "Can we please get an office cat?" To support her case, she linked to AwesomeCatz.com. Mr. Murphy's response is sure to outrage the civilized world: "cats are gross.. and so is that site."

"Guys this is going to tear betaworks apart," responded Digg General Manager Jake Levine. Just imagine how rancorous the arguments over litter box responsibilities would get.

Won't Get Trolled Again We’re going to ignore this latest dispatch from King of the Trolls, Business Insider emperor Henry Blodget except to note that he finally figured out how to edit his crotch out of the shots! Proud of you, Hank.

The cause for celebration was two-fold. The first was showing off demos from its inaugural class of 20 girls, who represented all five boroughs and some disarmingly ambitious ideas. (We're still scratching our head at Cora Frederick's plan to use data mining and machine learning to classify tumors.) The second was to announce an audacious new goal: to train one million girls in computer science by 2020, starting with a national expansion outside New York City next year.

The nonprofit organization, founded by former deputy public advocate Reshma Saujani and run by former Jumo managing director Kristen Titus, offers teenage girls an eight-week, full-time education in robotics, web design, and mobile development, with mentorship from engineers and executives at Twitter, Google, ZocDoc, Gilt Groupe, and more. In fact, Ms. Saujani noted last night, CEO Dick Costolo volunteered Twitter's first philanthropic donation to Girls Who Code, although she politely declined to specify the dollar amount.

On stage, Ms. Saujani pointed out that of the 8 million girls in high school right now, only 3,769 took the AP Computer Science exam. What's more, only 0.3 percent of female high school students decide to major or minor in computer science. But after this summer's session concluded, all 20 girls committed to studying computer science--a small, but integral step toward filling the 1.4 million tech jobs that expected to open up by the year 2020. "That pipeline begins in high school," she told the crowd gathered between the blank screens and buzzing monitors that make-up the floor of the stock exchange after hours.

Girls Who Code sponsors Jack Dorsey and Chris Hughes, who also supported Ms. Saujani's 2010 bid for a Congressional seat, weren't able to make it to the party. But plenty of founders and technologists flocked to the feel-good event, including Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, and General Assembly cofounder Matthew Brimer, just in from a conference in Dublin (one of the few cities without its own GA, judging by the startup's rapid expansion). Also in attendance were Foursquare's lead iPhone engineer Anoop Ranganath, Raptor Ventures VC William Peng, former ICM prodigy Kate Lee, New York City's chief digital officer Rachel Haot, Ms. Saujani's husband and LocalResponse founder Nihal Mehta, and Alex Taub, head of biz dev at Dwolla.

On stage, Twitter engineer Sara Haider and Twitter program manager Olivia Watkins, who closely mentored the girls, praised the program's many virtues. But nowhere was the upside more evident than in a speech from 15-year-old Julia Geist from Brooklyn, who recounted her transformation from the shy kid who liked physics into what Ms. Saujani called a "change agent" for her family of five siblings.

"I learned about Girls Who Code from my librarian, who noticed that I spent all of my days and much of my lunch time on the computer at the library," Ms. Geist told the beaming crowd. "I quickly learned everything from how to build mobile apps to becoming a master of user experience to building video games in Javascript." Ms. Geist is currently working on three separate freelance web development projects and teaching her dad how to code. "He is now working to become an IT professional to replace his substitute custodian job. My sisters are next on the list. Some say I’m a natural coder, but I say I’m lucky to have been a part of Girls Who Code."

For anyone inspired to donate after hearing Ms. Geist, or other equally as moving teenage technologists, there were Square devices on hand to swipe donations right from the NYSE.

Even without a horde of face-palming stock traders, the floor of the exchange is still an intoxicating milieu. Proximity to all those literal levers to the public markets were irresistible--and stern instructions from the guard not to push any elevator buttons didn't help. Mr. Newmark himself seemed tempted toward a little mischief, although he cautioned that anything untoward should only be performed with the benefit of a mask. "Did you see the Batman movie?" he explained, covering his mouth like the villainous Bain. Mr. Newmark was in the midst of this twice or thrice annual trips to New York. "I tend to stay near the K-Mart downtown and that’s where I shop," he said, admitting to a little anxiety about leaving his customer service post. "I’ve been offline for, what, two hours now? People will be nervous."

Luckily, we faired better than TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis, who got kicked out the NYSE for an offhand joke involving spilled liquids and Facebook stock manipulation.

The juxtaposition of tech and Wall Street was as symbiotic as we've ever seen it. A Credit Suisse exec eagerly passed Ms. Saujani his congratulations and business card. While waiting in the lobby, we chatted up a Goldman analyst (who has her own startup, natch). Surely, the release of Greg Smith's tell-all must be a startup recruiter's dream? Not so much, she said with a shrug, describing life inside the House of Lloyd yesterday as "pretty normal."

Towards the end of the presentations, Ms. Saujani pulled an Oprah, distributing presents from President Barack Obama to all the girls who joined her on stage. "We have signed letters for each of you! It’s better than One Direction and Justin Bieber, right? I think so too!" she said with pride. "I dunno, Bieber would've been good?" a fellow audience member quipped next to us. "Pandemonium in the stock exchange!"

Thanks to the startup scene's growth spurt, New York City has not been short on well-intentioned initiatives to right the ratio and close the gap for tech talent. Girls Who Code seems to get many of the basics right: The organization reaches out underserved students, who defy the pattern-recognition that plagues the tech industry and its financiers. It also addresses the problem early, and offers sustained training with a practical bent toward employment.

"I wish I had majored in computer science," Ms. Saujani told Betabeat in a trading booth after the speeches. "I wish I could go home and build a mobile app on immigration and undocumented students--build an app on 'Stop and Frisk.' But I’m also taking lessons from the girls and I don’t think it’s too late for me to learn how to code either." Girls Who Code, she said, is an example of the type of initiatives she wants to spearhead in her campaign to become Public Advocate in 2013. "I was talking at some of the community colleges, like if you can teach 15-year-old girls how to code, you can teach adults how to code. And there are so many jobs that are open," she said, noting the 50,000 new jobs added in mobile development.

During the program, Ms. Saujani added, visits to Gilt Groupe and ZocDoc piqued the girls' interest. "I think a lot of them thought initally, I want to be a doctor and didn’t realize the connection between healthcare and technology, and medicine and technology."

On our way out, we asked Ms. Guest, who received her first job offer after the Girls Who Code graduation at Google's Chelsea outpost, where she'd like to work. While Google, Gilt Groupe, and Twitter feel "like a second home," she said, "My dream is to start my own company." Oh man, just wait 'til Peter Thiel hears about her!

U mad? (Photo: Idea Mensch)

Remember the good old days, when Craigslist was a granola-crunchy, free-wheeling sort of place, filled with back alley studio sublets and questionable masseuses and sweaty old men with foot fetishes? Ah, those were the times.

But now the little Craigslist that we all love and rely on so much has grown into a corporate overlord, moving to squash a tiny startup focused on continuing to innovate on the local listings concept. Oh Craig Newmark, why hath thou forsaken us?

GigaOm reports that, following Padmapper's "dickish" decision to continue to include Craigslist apartment listings on its visual mapping tool (despite a cease-and-desist letter), Craigslist is sue Padmapper and its API provider 3Taps. Not exactly an "embrace the free Internet" move there, Craigslist.

Writes GigaOm:

In a complaint filed in San Francisco, Craigslist is accusing PadMapper and “one stop data shop” 3Taps of a slew of infractions, including copyright and trademark violations, and is demanding the court issue a preliminary injunction to stop them from using its listings.

Dare we say that this move makes Craigslist look vaguely...assholish? Perhaps PadMapper wouldn't be so successful at visually mapping Craigslist data if Craigslist itself didn't have a UI that looks like it was built by a drunk college freshman during Geocities' heyday. And most sections are so overrun with spam that it's impossible to navigate through detritus to find apartments that actually exist. As DigitalTrends put it (via GigaOm), "Your interface is an exercise in torture."

So there you have it. Craigslist's UI = waterboarding.

Considering PadMapper founder Eric DeMenthon's sizable cojones in the startup sparring arena, we suggest making some popcorn and cozying up to watch the next round unfold.

Ms. Clegg (right) and Ms. Kimball

Foursquare's Naveen Selvadurai, Craiglist's Craig Newmark, dotcom doyenne Esther Dyson and Nassim "I see black swans" Taleb walked into a Chelsea loft. No, it's not a lead-up to some joke about how Wall Street is drowning the tech bubble. It was the scene of a dinner party hosted by Takeout, a budding consultancy that sloughs off the dated McKinsey model--train an army of MBAs to travel around the country consulting--for a fresh look more appropriate for the digital age.

Why ask an MBA to tell you how to fix your company when you can hire someone who runs their own? Hey, it could have saved Conde Nast somewhere in the six figures. Just imagine how their troubled iPad editions would look if they'd tapped the brains behind New York's tech scene to figure out the internet instead.

Takeout, a reference to "taking out" the status quo (and not,  say,  Seamless deliveries), started in London in 2007, but recently ramped up its efforts in New York. By next month, it expects 75 percent of its business to be based out of its New York office. Microsoft, Gilt Groupe's Jetsetter, and iVillage are already clients, along with a few other big players that prefer not to be named. But the proof is in the pounds.

For a project with The Central Office of Information in the UK, Takeout brought in two young company founders--Moo.com's Richard Moross and Moshi Monsters' Michael Acton-Smith--to help government employees think like a start-up. The end result were ideas like "g-bay" (eBay for governments) that auctioned off unused goods and resources to other departments or the public, as well as a text messaging service that nudged citizens about paying fines and court appearances. All told, the projected saving amounted to roughly £1 billion pounds. "I wanted the intellect without the rubbish," Alex Butler, the COI's Transformational Strategy Director, emailed Betabeat. "This wasn't a project about charts and fancy words."

As for the Chelsea loft with all those bold-faced names, that belongs to Takeout's founder, Judith Clegg, a former consultant and entrepreneur voted Top 100 Digital Powerbrokers by Wired UK. Jess Kimball, a former speechwriter for futurist Faith Popcorn (the woman the New York Times' once called the "Nostradamus of marketing"), was recently brought in to head up Takeout's New York operations.

Mr. Selvaduari and the like were gathered there for a pro bono assignment that Ms. Kimball was only at liberty to describe as a project for a senior British policy staffer. In that case, it was just a one-night assignment. But that's exactly the point, explains Ms. Kimball. By leveraging "a consortium of the smartest entrepreneurs, academics, artists, journalists, and former executives around" rather than career consultants, Takeout's clients get access to thinkers who have no interest in a full-time gig.

"One of the things we've learned about smart people," she added, "is that they tend to have so many more interests than what they picked for their career. The current economy knows how to capitalize on then, figuring out how to use people's strengths." Through Takeout's associate network, some experts only work with the company a few days a year. "We're able to offer more flexibility and intellectually interesting projects," said Ms. Clegg. Experts are paid a fee, but Takeout is also putting in place an equity share program that gives their network a pro-rata share in the business.

As the operation expands in New York, Ms. Kimball says she wants to put the call out to all brainiacs--"basement tinkerers, big dreamers, weekend experts"--that Takeout is hiring. And if the start-up fever should infect McKinsey-types who want to leave the corporate box, Ms. Kimball sounds open to that as well. When Betabeat told her we'd mentioned the company to an MBA friend, she quickly emailed back, "Oh, fantastic! We love recovering consultants."

Photo Credit: Mediashift

It was after work at an East Village bar, and everybody wanted to pitch to Craig Newmark.

The founder of Craigslist, was one of the more famous names at a happy hour thrown by MediaShift, a PBS-affiliated blog. The mixer was the unofficial kick-off for the WE Media Conference with the theme “This Time it’s Personal”.

As Vampire Weekend segued into Iron & Wine, Mr. Newmark spent the evening catching up with people and politely responding to pitches by app-happy entrepreneurs – something he says he has gotten used to.

“It does happen a great deal. When I see something I understand and looks good I try to get the word out,” said Mr. Newmark.

However, Mr. Newmark was more eager to talk about the site he launched in March, CraigConnects, which is a Craigslist for non-profit causes. Among the seven categories of non-profits he supports on the site, one of the most notable is “journalistic integrity.”

Many in the newspaper business who view Craigslist as one of the main factors contributing to the demise of print may be surprised by the high value Mr. Newmark says he places in news.

“A democracy relies on a vigorous press to survive. I know what I want to pay for, and in conversation and writing I find the common denominator is that people are interested in paying for news that they can trust,” said Mr. Newmark.

Those who don’t buy Craig Newmark as newspaper champion may be less surprised to learn that he is a big fan of Arianna Huffington.

“Huffington Post was doing important work before but with the merger – well, I have a lot of confidence in Arianna,” said Mr. Newmark. “I do some blogging for Huffington Post, but writing is hard so I generally leave it to professionals.”

As for the question of whether Craigslist killed the newspaper business, Mr. Newmark pointed to other problems in the industry.

“I’m not in the news business but what people in the news business tell me is that newspapers have had much bigger problems than us,” he said. So much for journalistic integrity.