Music Class Are you excited for the new Daft Punk album? Well, we'll tell you who's really excited, and that's Square CEO Jack Dorsey and VC Fred Wilson. "The new Daft Punk album is a knockout. Pure joy," Mr. Dorsey said in a micro-review of the album on Twitter. Mr. Wilson responded: "yup. I've had it in heavy rotation all week. It was even on in the coffeeshop today." Just an FYI in case, for some reason, you get stuck in a car with both of them sometime this summer.

Pleased as Punch Betabeat bumped into events maestro Gary Sharma last night at the Webutante Ball. He told us that, while making his Internet Week rounds, he'd recently found himself in an elevator with none other than newly rich-as-Croesus Tumblr founder David Karp. You'll no doubt be delighted to hear that, according to Mr. Sharma, the spindly motorcyclist looked pretty damn cheerful.

He might want to enjoy the fun while it lasts, though. Business Insider reports that HuffPo cofounder Arianna Huffington had some dour words of wisdom for Mr. Karp at the Webby Awards: "Soak it all in, because then come the lawsuits." Presumably she was referring to the legal action taken by her own site's unpaid contributors. Honey, you don't know the half of it--if you think the Huffington Post's bloggers are pissy, you've never dealt with a fan-fiction-writing, Homestuck-loving, social-justice-advocating, dyed-in-the-wool Tumblr user.

Or maybe he was just really chipper because he had advance warning he'd inexplicably be appearing as one of Business Insider's Sexiest Tech Execs Alive.

SMDH Important dispatch from the West Coast, courtesy of Eric Eldon: "late at night in silicon valley, grown men are sending stickers to each other."

Scobleized OG (that's Original Glasshole) Robert Scoble took a trip to NYC this week to visit his son, who's studying to become a police officer at the John Jay school of criminal justice. As it turns out, the NYPD were more interested in trying on Mr. Scoble's face computer than they were helping his son learn the tricks of the force. Writes Mr. Scoble on his Google Plus page:

So we're here looking at his school, finding him housing, learning the streets, and all that. Last night these two cops called me over and said "is that Google Glass?"

I was afraid I might get arrested. But they loved it.

He then went on to describe why cops will love being able to record video while chasing suspects, which makes us think he's never actually read anything about cops and recording devices.

Uber Blunder Betabeat received an email today from Uber SF stating that our Uber was en route. "That's strange," we thought, "We live in New York and didn't order an Uber." Turns out the whole thing was a mixup. In their excitement to dispatch an email about the price hikes during Memorial Day Weekend, Uber SF forgot to change the subject line of the email, and sent it out to customers with the subject "[Name], your Uber is en route." Rest assured your account hasn't been hacked; it was just a little PR mistake, according to a follow-up email:

Sorry about the confusion! No request has been made from your account. We were overly excited about our Memorial Day promotion, and should have put some more thought into that subject line. With this second email, we just want to clarify that everything is OK; a car will only be sent when you request it.

Phew. We can't afford an Uber at its normal rate, let alone during surge pricing.

Ab Fab Bradford Shellhammer, the chief design officer of Fab.com and curator of one of the most fabulous Instagram accounts ever, revealed more than a usual shirtless picture of himself this week. In the 'gram, Mr. Shellhammer appears to be wearing a pair of well-fitting boxers featuring some of pop culture's biggest flame-outs, like Britney Spears and Whitney Houston. It’s probably the tamest part of his Turks and Caicos haunt, judging by his other pictures. Anyway, where can we get a pair, Brad? You might know of a place.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Lazy Together Tesla, Uber and Equinox have officially achieved douche bag singularity. Until today, members in Los Angeles and New York can get to the gym for free on Uber with the promo code, you guessed it, “EQUINOX.” Those who request a car might even be picked up in a Tesla Model S, so if you were looking for someone at whom you can direct your scorn, just look for one of those ugly cars.

Mr. Costolo (Photo: About.me)

Last week, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo reportedly quit as director of the company's U.K. arm. The news comes just days after government regulators forced TweetDeck to dissolve following accounting issues. [Sky News]

Bloomberg is apologizing to its clients after allegations that reporters snooped on client terminals to see their Seamless orders or whatever. [CNN Money]

JackThreads' recent push into international waters, like Australia and the U.K., is doing well for the company's bottom line as sales overseas now make up 10 percent of its business. [AllThingsD]

Facebook Home is missing features that Android users love (widgets, docks, oh my!) because all of the developers use iPhones. The lack of "droidfooding" is causing them to scramble to add those features to turn around Home's slow downloads. [TechCrunch]

Here's a groovy map that shows you where in the world Wikipedia is being edited right now. [Ars Technica]

Elon Musk and David Sacks have left Mark Zuckerberg's political action group over growing concerns over the support of certain politicians. [AllThingsD]

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!

(Original Photo: Wikipedia)

In a recent New York Times profile of Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, a rather interesting piece of information surfaced about Twitter and Square cofounder Jack Dorsey. The Times wrote that Mr. Dorsey's role at Twitter was diminished "after employees complained that he was difficult to work with and repeatedly changed his mind about product directions."

Understandably, the office gossip led to some confusion over his current role. To clear up any misunderstanding, Mr. Dorsey took to his Tumblr today to defend his work schedule, proclaiming that he's had a backseat role at Twitter (he's currently a chairman) since January:

"In Spring of 2011, Dick asked me to take an operational role overseeing product, design, and brand. Our shared goal was to get those organizations back under him as soon as possible, simply because it was the right thing to do for the company. We moved all of my reports back under him in January of this year after leadership was firmly in place. This allowed me to focus on refining our brand and logo, to work more with Dick and the leadership team on our direction forward, and ultimately return the majority of my time to Square, where I’m CEO. I’m back to going to Twitter on Tuesday afternoons, something I started before taking the interim operational role."

Of course, saying that the move was executed because "it was the right thing to do for the company" conveniently glosses over what was reported in the Times: mainly, that Twitter employees did not really enjoy having Mr. Dorsey as their manager. (But his jeans are hand sewn, people! Does that mean NOTHING to you?)

Mr. Dorsey further explained the company's silence on the issue. "We haven’t talked about this publicly because it’s not what people using Twitter every day care about." Hey now, tech reporters are Twitter users too.

As Square continues to dominate ($3.25B valuation, anyone?), we have to believe Mr. Dorsey has bigger things to worry about than his former Twitter underlings.

Oh goodie, it's Monday. (Photo: Cat Food Breath)

Microsoft "accidentally" sent a DMCA takedown notice to Google, asking them to remove pages from TechCrunch, the BBC, Wikipedia and the U.S. Government. Psst... no one cares that much about Windows 8. [TorrentFreak]

Companies are using patents to stifle innovation and the Times is ON IT. [New York Times]

Is EBay staging a pivot? [TechCrunch]

Whoa, you can raise money for a company without Kickstarter? Mind blown. [TechCrunch]

Jack Dorsey apparently got pushed to a backseat role at Twitter because he's "difficult" to work with. [SiliconBeat]

Speaking of Twitter, who knew CEO Dick Costolo used to be a standup comedian? [New York Times]

(Photo: Instagram/Eliza Dushku)

What were Twitter employees doing yesterday while you were frantically refreshing and trying to decipher out what "<%= reason %>" means? Palling around with scifi celebrities.

Eliza Dushku, Joss Whedon's favorite bad girl, stopped by the company's headquarters on Market Street yesterday with her boyfriend, retired NBA star Rick Fox, prompting theories about overloading servers with her hotness.

Perhaps it was part of Twitter's plans to focus on catering to influencers over getting into the content business. As CEO Dick Costolo, who somehow found time to briefly meet with the actress, recently told the New York Times, Twitter has employees dedicated to working with celebrities, politicians, athletes, and media companies, which helps attracts ads.

“We call them V.I.T.’s internally, Very Important Tweeters. It’s cute; we’re all about being adorable and cute,” he said.

Ms. Dusku used the microblogging service to broadcast her trip and thank Mr. Costolo:

*@dickc we didn't want to interrupt too much today, but that was a SYCK HQ visit & we'd #love to c u tonight @THRIVEGulu#SF#dickc @twitter

— Eliza Dushku (@elizadushku) July 26, 2012

But posted a photo of the office via Instagram. Guess no one told her how they feel about that.

Annnd WHAT, mothafuckas? (Photo: About.me)

Let the games begin, my friends. Due to API restrictions, Twitter is no longer allowing Instagram app users to use the “Find Your Friends” feature to connect with their friends on Twitter. But Instagram doesn’t seem too bogged down by the news--possibly because it's busy celebrating reaching 80 million users today.

The “Find Your Friends” feature is still available on other apps, including The Fancy and Foursquare. However, The Fancy only boast around one million users and Foursquare around 10 million, a fraction of the milestone Instagram reached today.

Given Instagram’s ever-expanding user base, Twitter may be unable to withstand the data pull from the “Find Your Friends” feature. Or, as TechCrunch speculates, it could be a conniving attack on Facebook’s latest pet. With Zuck set to acquire Instagram for $1 billion, Twitter may be pulling a few tricks against its competitors. (Dick Costolo's probably cackling in his office right now.)

But this whole mafia-esque scenario does get a little incestuous – Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey (now CEO of Square) is also an investor in Instagram. Would he really be willing to kill his baby in the battle for social media dominance? Maybe so, if they can't keep his site running without any bugs.

Meanwhile, Instagram seems content to toast over reaching its 80 million users and four billion photos shared benchmark, just three months after releasing its Android application. And Kevin Systrom told VentureBeat that they have “some pretty fun things in the pipeline.”

Betabeat has reached out to Twitter and Instagram and will update you when we hear more about this thrilling social networking drama.

FullContact's CEO Bart Lorang: unable to unplug. (Photo: FullContact)

Here are alleged "engineering samples" of the iPad Mini. [Apple Insider]

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is in L.A. bragging that the company has a "truckload of money." How...dickish. [Los Angeles Times]

Working at a startup is prettttty sweet. FullContact is now doing paid paid vacations, giving employees $7,500 each for their vacations. Sigh. [FullContact, via Hacker News]

Amazon is officially testing a smartphone. [Wall Street Journal]

Here's a preview of some cool stuff that's slated to hit Comic-Con. [Wired]

Mr. Costolo (Photo: About.me)

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo revealed to the Financial Times yesterday that the company is preparing to roll out new efforts to curtail the proliferation of "hate speech" on the microblogging service. "How do you make sure you are both emboldening people to speak politically but making it OK to be on the platform and not endure all this hate speech?" he pondered to the FT.

Twitter's primary conundrum lies in the fact that the service has been used as a tool of political expression in countries with strict speech and cyber laws. But, like most corners of the Internet that allow for anonymity, it's also been an impressively vitriolic vehicle for hate speech. Have you ever read Julia "I want to roll around in Silicon Valley" Allison's @ replies? Not pretty.

According to the FT:

One technical approach Twitter is considering would hide from users’ page of replies any tweets directed at them by individuals who are not seen as “authoritative”, because they have no followers, no biographical information and no profile picture.

That seems more like a way to impede spam bots than hate speech bombthrowers, but it seems to be about as far as Twitter is willing to go when it comes to anti-cyberbullying actions. The FT says that Mr. Costolo "became visibly emotional as he described his frustration in tackling the problem of 'horrifying' abuse while maintaining the company’s mantra that 'tweets must flow'." Hm, maybe we need to check Mr. Costolo's @ replies.