(Photo: Flickr)

Peter Gabriel to Sledgehammer music industry Cuesongs, Peter Gabriels’ song rights company, is planning on the "genesis" of a new way of legal music listening by a partnership with Audiosocket, a music licensing and technology business here in the US. The Brit’s company, which includes music from Dido, Groove Armada and Ziggy Marley, plans to license its artists to Audiosocket, whose customers include systems like Vimeo. They hope that it will give legitimate access to music fans while simultaneously paying artists. Here’s hoping it will bring the stop-motion awesomeness of his 1987 video back into fashion.

BitPay gets bitpaid The rise of Bitcoin continues. BitPay, the online payment system for booming digital currency Bitcoin, has garnered $2 million in its first round of seed funding. The investment, led by Founders Fund, includes three founders of PayPal, the system’s real-life monetary analogue. CEO Tony Gallippi states that they pushed forward raising capital due to the interest from Founders Fund.

eBay gets Friendly again eBay has officially opened applications for their Friends of eBay co-working space. The initiative provides free office space and resources at the company’s Chelsea office, with a May 27th deadline for applying. After initial successes with a collection of startups in January, the benevolent company is keen to keep encouraging younger companies that were just like itself once upon a time. The eBay family in NYC now includes little siblings Hunch and Svpply.

Brooklyn does the robot As part of the all-encompassing World Science Festival, MetroTech Commons is being transformed into "Innovation Square" on June 2. The square will feature "robots that fly and robots that save lives, cocktails made with a super evaporator, interactive video games, 3-D printed wares and amazing live performances by Blue Man Group Tech-Guru Bill Swartz among others." So basically expect a bunch of drunk humanoid machines running amok while listening to some whimsical percussion.

Times presses play The New York Times has debuted a new music section, allowing readers to listen to one track each off newly released albums. The first two batches focus on international newcomers like Willy Moon and Alpine, indie darlings like CocoRosie along with recently released classic recordings from Tony Bennett and Dave Brubeck. The site hopes that the provision of exclusive tracks and slick page design will give it an edge over similar outlets.

The suite life New online hotel search engine TheSuitest.com tells us it is nearly ready to launch. The site, that allows users to compare 4 –star hotels on more features than just availability, location and pricing, is the brainchild of Jeremy Murphy, a former quantitative finance analyst/portfolio risk manager, and Mike Aucoin, a former software developer for Microsoft. They have yet to comment on whether or not their site might be confused with an upmarket tailor’s.

Only models look this good in Glass. (Photo: Google)

Did you carefully compose your #IfIHadGlass entry with an eye to auctioning your loot on Ebay for a fat profit? Bad news. Google strictly forbids you from doing any such thing. Try it, and the company reserves the right to deactivate them. 

Wired reports that Google Glass's terms of service stipulate that:

“you may not resell, loan, transfer, or give your device to any other person. If you resell, loan, transfer, or give your device to any other person without Google’s authorization, Google reserves the right to deactivate the device, and neither you nor the unauthorized person using the device will be entitled to any refund, product support, or product warranty.”

The draconian rule has already inspired one enterprising explorer to yank a Glass listing from Ebay--after bidding reached $95,300.

Hey, at least this’ll prevent the emergence of a class of Super Glassholes willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money for early access to a shiny new toy.

It's not easy being a computer programmer in Silicon Valley. Even with slides, buffets, and any other number of ridiculous amenities, the tech business can be a stressful and even physically painful endeavor (you try typing for twenty hours straight). But for many of America’s best coders, the remedy to stress is manifesting in a way bosses would probably rather not know about: they gettin hiiiiiiiigh, brah! San Jose, which is home to over 100 medical marijuana dispensaries, is seeing a noticeable uptick in the number of customers who work in tech, according to a report from Businessweek.

Nearly 40 percent of customers at Palliative Health, a medical marijuana distributor, work in the tech industry, and although most tech companies do not allow marijuana usage or possession on their campuses, some employees are skirting this rule. They use products like MedMar Healing Center's "Veda Chews", a marijuana infused chocolate toffee which delivers the pain relief effects of marijuana without the psychoactive effects. MedMar says that at least 15 percent of its clients work in the tech industry.

It only takes a “recommendation” from a doctor for a patient to obtain medical marijuana, and it can be used for arthritis, migraines or "any other illness for which marijuana provides relief,” according to the initial 1996 California medical marijuana law. Apparently arthritis and migraines are pretty common maladies among programmers.

While it is commonly used by many employees in the Valley, tech companies are apparently pretty hesitant to start employing mandatory drug testing, for fear of losing too many employees. “The Silicon Valley data support recent news reports citing some employers who say they are having a hard time finding candidates that can pass the preemployment drug test,”  Barry Sample, director of science and technology for Quest Diagnostics Employer Solutions, told Businessweek.

Maybe all Marissa Meyer needs is to let her employees light a little chronic to increase productivity.

HMMMM. (Photo: screencap)

Guess we finally have an honest answer to the question posed by #IfIHadGlass. The Next Web reports that this very minute over at Ebay, bidding is climbing steadily upward on a product listing for what purports to be a pair of the futuristic specs. Someone who claims he was chosen as "an early adapter for Google's upcoming release" says he'll sell his pair (unopened and in the color of your choice) to the highest bidder.

The price has already skyrocketed from $1,500 to $15,900, proving once and for all that some people have far more money than patience or common sense.

Come on, folks: Do you really want to pull the hardware equivalent of buying a tragically busted knock-off wedding dress? This is basic stuff, like how you shouldn't spend $200 on an "iPad" at a gas station that's actually just a mirror.

The product listing promises, in determinedly lower case fashion:

i will be personally attending and picking up my pair in either Los Angeles, or New York at Google's Project Glass launch event, which will take place some time after Feburary 27th. as for what colors will actually be available, will vary, if i am offered a choice, I will choose the color of your choice (see listing picture for variants). my cost to buy my glasses is $1,500 (USD), so obviously thats where ive started the auction at. Project Glass will be shipped with Insurance at my expence, and signature upon delivery, so please use an address you can accept delivery in person.

If you're tempted, it's worth taking a moment to ask yourself whether this is really a chance you want to take, lest you open your package to find a plastic widget glued to some fashion frames from Claire's. Most glaringly, the #IfIHadGlass contest isn't due to end until sometime today, so we're pretty sure there's no winners yet.

We've reached out to the seller, one "bla7kcat," and will update if we receive any more information.

Even if these are the real deal, do you really want to blow the cost of remodeling your kitchen on a product you'll probably be able to buy before the end of the year, anyway? Unless of course you're someone like Larry Ellison, in which case we say #YOLO.

Update: 

Just kidding, Ebay has now removed the listing. It's unclear why, but the Daily Dot speculates the posting violated Ebay's presale rules.

(Screencap: Ebay)

It seems as if poor, poor Glenn Beck is the next sympathetic figure to be punished by eBay's Machiavellian auction rules. After submerging an Obama statue in what he claimed to be a glass case of his own urine, he decided to auction the piece of "art" off, with proceeds benefitting his own charity, Mercury One. Someone actually offered $11,300 for the statue, maturely named "Obama in Pee Pee," before eBay swooped in and shut the whole thing down.

Wrote Ebay:

Your listing contain the bodily fluid of urine. We do not allow bodily fluids to be listed on our site. Even if the liquid in the jar is not urine, you are describing it as such.

Now, Mr. Beck is soliciting donations via Gmail, because this is Amurrica, dammit.

The whole thing was meant to be some sort of comment on a piece of artwork where a dude peed on a cross, but really it just made us all acknowledge, once again, that Glenn Beck exists.

Mr. Dixon

Earlier today, serial entrepreneur and investor Chris Dixon made it official. The cofounder of SiteAdvisor (acquired by McAfee) and Hunch (acquired by eBay), who invests both personally and through Founder Collective, will be decamping our fair city for sunnier shores to join Andreessen Horowitz as the Sand Hill Road powerhouse's seventh general partner. We spoke with Mr. Dixon by phone shortly after the announcement was made to find out what it means for the many ventures he's involved in here (like eBay's massive new Flatiron R&D lab, which is slated to house 200 developers and data scientists).

Don't hold your breath for an East Coast outpost, as cofounder Marc Andreessen emphasized earlier, his is a "single office firm." In fact, based on the tenor of our questions, Amy Grady, a representative from Andreessen Horowitz who was also on the call, wanted to assure us Mr. Dixon's hire was about more than just geography. "We didn’t hire Chris just because of New York. It’s a huge bonus, he’s obviously really tapped in, but if we find an entrepreneur with a great idea in Idaho, we’ll invest!"

Silicon Prairie, start your pitch decks.

Is this a way for Andreessen Horowitz to keep a better eye on New York without opening up an office here?
Chris Dixon: I’m keeping my apartment in New York, I plan to be there a lot. I plan to make a lot of investments there. I think they saw it as a positive that I have been in New York and know a lot of people there. That said, I’m going to be based in California and I think it’s important with these things--VC firms need to work together as a team and, you know, that just often requires being around each other a lot. But yeah, I’m going to be very aggressively looking for investments in New York.

What about your role at Founder Collective and the fate of Founder Collective in general?
CD: There’s two people who run Founder Collective, Eric Paley and Dave Frankel. They’re the general partners. I’m not a general partner. What I’ll do is I’m going to continue to support any companies that I invested in through them. So if I can be helpful to those entrepreneurs I will be--the same for my personal angel investments. [In addition to Founder Collective, Mr. Dixon has personally invested in Skype, Gerson Lehrman Group, OMGPOP, BillShrink, Oddcast, Knewton, and many others.] But I’ll be doing all my future investing through Andreessen Horowitz.

Will you still be an advisor at eBay or Hunch?
CD: It hasn’t been finalized yet, but I will have some kind of an advisory role at eBay and my cofounder [Tom Pinckney] from Hunch is going to be taking over the New York office. He’s been my cofounder for two companies now [including SiteAdvisor] so they’re in good hands.

You mentioned Andreessen Horowitz’s so-called CAA model of offering help in various domains like recruiting and research. Will your expertise be in bringing in deals?
Amy Grady: Just to be clear, he’s the check writer, he’ll be doing investing.
CD: So the way it works is there are seven general partners and I’m one of them. Those are the people who go out and find new investments and then make the investment and join the board and do things they can do to help. Then there’s 55 other people who provide all sorts of support for the entrepreneur, once the investment’s made.

Was it a difficult decision to leave New York? In a lot of ways you’re representative of the scene from its infancy. You started in Wall Street, transitioned into startups, and then to investing. Were you worried it would be a loss for the community?
CD: To the extent that I can try to get Andreessen Horowitz to be more active in New York, I think that’s a net win for the New York City tech scene. You could look at this glass half full or half empty, but that’s how I see it. I care a lot about the New York tech community, it’s in a great place and it’s growing quickly and I want to keep supporting it.

I’m not sure if Marc Andreessen or Ben Horowitz or anyone there commented on how vocal you are on Twitter or in your blog posts in terms of critiquing trends that you see?
CD: They’ve encouraged me to continue to be vocal and blogging and tweeting and doing all that stuff--Tumblring, Foursquaring [laughs]. So, yeah I intend to do that. They’re totally supportive and they like it.
AG: Yup, we welcome it, no censorship allowed. We welcome feedback. We love a fresh perspective so he actually fits in quite well with the culture.

What are you most excited about in terms of moving out there? To be immersed in a place that has a different kind of expertise than New York’s consumer web?
I think it will be nice to have a different perspective, I think I’ll learn a lot. The people at this firm are really, really impressive and I’ll learn a lot from them. Over the last few years--seven years--that I’ve been angel investing, it’s always been sort of a hobby for me. So it’s just going to be fun to try it as a full time thing.

I imagine part of the appeal is having so many resources behind you? In your blog post, you mentioned founders choosing the investor and Andreessen Horowitz excels at that.
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve always done the angel investing stuff totally by myself. It’s trying to do something on a larger stage with more resources, it’s pretty exciting.

What will you miss the most about not being here?
Well, I’ll be there, okay? [laughs] I’ll be there a lot! I love New York and I’ll be there a lot. And I want to make a lot investments there. I’m hoping I won’t miss anything because I'll be there a lot.

Mr. Wenig

Ebay announced two new product features today to help better position itself as a competitor to ecommerce sites like Amazon and Etsy. With Ebay Now, an iPhone app, customers are able to order things from their mobile devices and have them delivered anywhere they choose, usually within an hour. Ebay Now has been tested in San Francisco. An Ebay rep declined to elaborate on when the feature would be available in New York.

The site also announced an interface redesign to make search and browsing easier, as well as a new Pinterest-like feature called "Feed" that, as Ebay CTO Mark Carges said, "is a little like creating a newsfeed, but instead of search it offers visual shopping inspiration." Users can follow brands, styles, bands--basically any topic aggregated on Ebay--and streamline it into a visual shopping board, a lot like Pinterest, where they can easily click through and purchase items with a seamlessly integrated Ebay-Paypal account.

Even though Ebay is essentially working to compete directly with powerhouse Amazon, by positioning itself as a partner with brands and not a competitor, it strives to be seen as a much more appealing option for sellers. In this way, the new Ebay is almost competing with seller-friendly platforms like Etsy.

The news was announced at the Highline Stages on the Western edge of Manhattan, where journalists and brand representatives gathered to listen to Ebay reps launch a new mission to help shape the future of the booming ecommerce market. The normally spacious Highline Stages were decorated to look like a high-tech space pod, about 15 large screens surrounding attendees in a 360-degree ring. When Betabeat first arrived, it was clear we would need to take advantage of the free Blue Bottle Coffee and breakfast foods set up on a fancily decorated table in order to withstand whatever it was we were about to experience.

In the presentation room, low-slung leather white chairs that Captain Picard would be comfortable in were positioned throughout the space. Soon after slurping down our coffee, the presentation began with a series of customer testimonials. As the videos played, attendees had to swivel in their futuristic chairs and crane their necks to watch them, projected onto different screens in the 360-degree display.

Soon Devin Wenig, Ebay's president, took center stage. Betabeat does not know if Mr. Wenig went to Penn but he looks like someone who went to Penn.

"Today is about the future of commerce, the future of retail and the future of how consumers shop," Mr. Wenig opened, without being grandiose at all.

"Our model and our 17 years of experience set us apart, uniquely positioning us to enable commerce globally and locally, but not to compete and not to disrupt traditional players."

Ms. Parham

At this point, Mr. Wenig continued to ask awkward questions like "How many of you use Ebay?" while the audience half-heartedly played along, a smattering of diehards wiggling their fingers in the air in agreement with his statements.

"Consumers want insight," Mr. Wenig continued. "They want personal curated experiences relevant for them controlled by them. Consumers want experiences that are not intrusive but inspiring. Search results are not enough. We want to make moments of inspiration instantly shoppable. That is what Ebay intends to deliver."

Ebay CMO Richelle Parham was up next to explain how Ebay intends to use insights and statistics collected from its customers to offer this personalized, Pinterest-like experience.

"It's all about getting a better understanding of what our customers need and want," Ms. Parham said. "What we have is closed loop data, insights into the entire customer decision journey for more than 100M active users. Insights into more than $2,000 worth of transactions every second every day."

"The information we have about our community is the equivalent to what a brand and retailer has," she continued. "And we have the same amount of data that credit card companies have. We have the power of these two datasets combined. We're practically the only player in the world who has access to this type of information about our customers."

At this point, Betabeat began to feel slightly creeped out, looking around to make sure no one was coming to tap us on the shoulder and offer us a swig of Kool Aid.

Next came Ebay CTO Mark Carges, who walked us through Ebay's new UI as well as how the Feed will work. It looks almost identical to a Pinterest page, but only curates Ebay products and allows users to easily click through to purchase them.

It's clear from all of Ebay's updates that it intends to position itself as a direct competitor to other online marketplaces. Considering consumers still think of Ebay primarily as a janky-looking auction site, pivoting to take on Amazon will take some convincing. Perhaps the new, prettier logo, which also officially launched today, will help.

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]

Isn't everyone at Oktoberfest, anyway? (Photo: flickr.com/maggiejane)

The government of Germany is urging citizens to stop using Internet Explorer--at least until a security hole you could drive a Volkswagen through is fixed. But who goes back to IE once they've switched, even for a couple of days? [Reuters]

If you must patent troll, it's important to get a few basic technological details correct. GitHub and Rackspace are different entities. [Wired]

It's official--tech companies including Amazon, Yahoo, and Facebook are joining forces to form The Internet Association, their very own lobbying shop. [TNW]

Do not shell out $1,600 on eBay just to have the iPhone 5 a few days early. That would make you a chump. [CNET]

A visit to the Ace Hotel: "'I’m just trying to figure out who those people are and do they have jobs,' said Chip Morrow, a lawyer from Memphis, staying at the hotel while trying a prescription drug case. 'I mean, I see laptops everywhere but I can’t figure out what everybody’s doing.'" [Marketplace]

Pieratt. (Photo: Brooklyn Beta)

eBay announced on its blog today that it has acquired Svpply, the NYC-based social shopping site that curates personalized collections of clothing and products. Located on Broome Street in Soho, Svpply raised $550,000 in seed funding back in 2010 from investors like Founders Collective, Spark Capital, SV Angel, Dennis Crowley and Jason Hirschhorn. Since then, Svpply has been bootstrapping itself to 620,000 product views per week and 140,000 registered members (as of May).

Last May, founder Ben Pieratt offered a candid perspective on first-time entrepreneurship, admitting his vulnerability. "I have zero experience or expertise in building a company," he wrote in a 2011 blog post. "So I'm learning on the fly."

Mr. Pierrat summed up a list of things he'd need to learn how to do, or Svpply would fail. Hey, in startup parlance, we'd say an acqui-hire counts as quite a success.

At least Svpply's other cofounder, parallel entrepreneur extraordinaire Zach Klein, brought some experience to the team. Mr. Klein is a partner at Founders Collective, and has had a hand in a plethora of successful startups. He cofounded Vimeo and BustedTees, helped launch CollegeHumor, worked as chief product officer at Boxee and serves as a director for both Skillshare and Svpply. According to AllThingsD, Mr. Klein linked up with Svpply in the spring of 2010 when he "connected with Ben Pieratt, a Boston-based designer who started Svpply in late 2009."

eBay's blog post suggests that the move to purchase Svpply is largely an acqui-hire:

With Svpply.com, eBay gains access to technology talent to further improve the shopping and selling experience for its customers. Svpply.com assets – including a talented team of six designers and developers – are well-suited to help eBay advance more personalized experiences and merchandising options on eBay.com.

Based in New York (see the office, above), the Svpply.com employees will work on merchandising, non-search discovery and browsing.

eBay has been aggressively ramping up its presence in New York as of late. Back in November, the online auction platform acquired NYC-based Hunch, a personalized recommendation engine. Then in April, eBay snapped up a massive 350,000 square foot office in the Flatiron. Guess they needed a few more devs to fill up those desks.

Svpply insists in a blog post that the site's not going anywhere anytime soon. "Svpply is not going away," it reads. "We’ll continue to bring our users new products each day—allowing our loyal fans to explore beautiful products and stores, all of them hand selected by the community."

Greg Leppert, Svpply's third cofounder, said the Svpply team would work on both eBay and the Svpply site. "We'll continue to build Svpply and our community and apply what we learn to eBay," he told Betabeat by email. Mr. Leppert also said that Svpply will not be rolled into eBay, but that both sites will remain distinct from each other.

"We’re excited to join the eBay and Hunch teams in the new state-of-the-art technology development center in New York City!" Svpply added in a blog post. Shake them pom-poms, y'all.

Additional reporting contributed by Nitasha Tiku.