(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.

Mr. Karnjanaprakorn (Photo: About.Me)

The Principal of New York

Before Mayor Bloomberg signed up for Codecademy, before General Assembly signed its first lease in the Flatiron—even before Peter Thiel started paying kids to skip school—Skillshare founder and CEO Mike Karnjanaprakorn was trying convince New York investors to finance his peer-to-peer learning startup. He billed the company as the Etsy of education, since it set up a market for anyone to teach—and learn—practical skills through an affordable hands-on class, starting at $25 a night. (The hybrid online classes that Skillshare launched this August, with Livestream office hours, start at just $20 a night.)

But in 2010, two years before The New York Times dubbed 2012, “The Year of the MOOC” (massive open online course), venture capitalists weren’t biting. As with hardware and clean tech, investors begged off education—burned by one too many startups shut out by the gatekeepers of traditional K through 12 and higher ed. “Some of my favorite notes that we got from investors were, ‘We don’t think education is a big market,’ ‘We think education is a shrinking market’ and ‘We don’t think people enjoy learning at all after they graduate,’” he said. “‘You have to get a master’s in education before you can teach,’ was another.”

Economic realities like persistent unemployment, mounting student debt and an army of jobless graduates without the skills to fill open positions quickly proved otherwise. The time was right for Skillshare’s modernized approach. Through its online platform, the company promotes the classes, procures students, processes credit cards and books rooms for in-person offerings—often in a tech company’s lounge or lecture hall—all in exchange for a percentage of the sales.

In the early days, Mr. Karnjanaprakorn, whose previous employer Hot Potato was acquired by Facebook, and his co-founder Malcolm Ong, a product manager at game-maker OMGPOP, gravitated toward the kind of programming and entrepreneurship classes they wanted to take, like Mr. Karnjanaprakorn’s popular course, “Launch Your Startup Idea for Less Than $1,000.” As the Silicon Alley refrain goes, meeting tech people is easy: just take a Skillshare class and drop by General Assembly.

Skillshare’s emphasis on nonacademic classes with real-world application paved the way for other local players like CourseHorse, Lore and Codecademy. Signing up felt less like an indulgence than a practical necessity. “There’s a real-world application” to Skillshare classes, he said, “something that you could use immediately.” Headlines about an instructor quitting his day job with the $100,000 a year he made teaching Ruby on Rails to aspiring programmers helped attract instructors as well.

In 2012, the company expanded to other U.S. cities like San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles, and kicked off its large-scale online-only classes with an offering from Union Square Ventures co-founder Fred Wilson—a Skillshare investor—that reached 2,500 students all over the world. Mr. Karnjanaprakorn said that it would take him two years to teach that many students if he taught every week here in New York City.

Mr. Karnjanaprakorn compared making a case for accessible education outside of a university to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. “If the first phase is awareness and huge institutional change,” he told The Observer, “The second step is making something that will fix it or being a company that tries to solve it. I can feel that happening. It’s less about why should people learn. Nobody asks that question now anymore.”

Next: Rick Webb, Tumblr: The Undercover Ad Man

Back to the beginning

(Photo: Uncubed)

The Uncubed tech talent fair is back, but this time it's taken on some major partners and expanded into a two-day, tech celeb-studded event plus awesome party.

As we told you back in April, NYC Uncubed is an initiative that seeks to buck traditional recruitment tactics in favor of innovative new ways for startups to recruit talent. Now, Uncubed has partnered with NYC Digital to host a tech festival on November 1st and 2nd November 12th and 13th* at the Altman Building in Manhattan.

The first day, called Scout, will be "for startups looking for talent and talented people looking for startups." Aside from having over 60 recruitment booths, there will also be classes and workshops, talks and stories by tech experts and a paper napkin pitch session. Also, because this is Startupland, there will be a ping pong tournament and a latte art battle.

The second day, Scale, will be for "startups looking to grow and brands looking to learn and collaborate." It's jam-packed with storytelling and talks from a slew of NYC tech luminaries like Scott Heiferman, Ricky Van Veen, Gary Vaynerchuck, Neil Blumanthal, Rachel Hoat and Jessica Lawrence.

The official afterparty will be DJ'd by Nancy Whang of LCD Soundsystem and Chris Keating of Yeasayer because of course.

Tickets for day one are $20 and for day two are $50. Sign up quickly for an earlybird discount, since next week they'll go up in price.

*Dates have been changed due to Hurricane Sandy.

Best job ever. (Photo: flickr.com/bytemarks)

Instapaper proprietor Marco Arment has launched an iPad magazine called The Magazine. It will "often, but not always, be about technology," and it'll run four articles (solicited just for the magazine) every two weeks. What happens when you Instapaper those articles is not clear. [Marco.org]

That latest update to Google StreetView adds a whopping 250,000 miles. Included are locations like Catherine Palace and Singapore's Fort Canning Park, which seems to confirm our suspicions they're having to look really hard for new things to photograph. [Google Maps Blog]

Speaking of Google: The company's self-driving cars probably have more full-time lobbyists advocating on their behalf than you. [ Wall Street Journal]

The IFP--the Independent Filmmaker Project, that is--will be developing and operating a Bloomberg-approved "Made in New York" Media Center, a kind of coworking-space-cum-networking-hub where creative types can connect with entrepreneurs and new technologies. Partnering with IFP will be General Assembly, which'll run educational programming in the space upon its opening in the spring. [IFP]

Mr. Flombaum

On a windy evening back in April, Betabeat took a Skillshare class with Designer Pages founder Avi Flombaum called, "Be One of the Cool Kids: An Introduction to Ruby on Rails." We emerged a modicum cooler, with a much better understanding of Ruby, but nowhere near ready to touch an SDK.

"Does that make sense?" Mr. Flombaum asked repeatedly, thoughtfully checking in on whether his pupils understood why "hash is like a vending machine." Once he got into the weeds, the best we could do without a programming background was nod politely and pretend.

That helps explain the need for his newest venture, the Flatiron School, which attempts to the close the gap between a dilettante and a skilled app developer.

Together with Adam Enbar, a venture capitalist at Charles River Ventures, Mr. Flombaum has bootstrapped the Flatiron School. It will offer three months full-time classes--as opposed to sheepishly ignoring those Codecademy emails--in app development for $5,500. In fact, it seems like one of the more practical--or at least immersive--attempts to address structural unemployment--where the labor force isn't equipped to fill open jobs.

"By the end of the semester, students will have built and contributed to Ruby-based web and iPhone applications," he told Betabeat by email, noting that the school will put a technical emphasis on the full stack--and finding students a job. "We're excited about creating a talent pipeline not just of coders, but rather, professionals in general." Considering Mr. Flombaum attracted enough interest as a SkillShare instructor to quit his CTO gig, he seems up for the task.

The first class, which starts tomorrow, has a diverse group of 20 students, including a lawyer, graphic designer, and poker player. "It was really important to us not to accept 20 bankers, even though I'm sure they'd make amazing programmers," he said.

Mr. Flombaum compared the workshop format to creative writing courses, with an adaptive approach to finding the best way to instruct students, "whether I'm giving a lecture, or we're turning to our educational partners CodeSchool and Treehouse for some unique content, or reading and discussing some of the great books O'Reilly donated, or bringing in some experts from the tech community in NYC."

But all work and no play makes Jack (or Jill) a bad coder. Hence incorporating classes on deejaying (paging Kevin Systrom!), knot tying, and dance. "Programming is really about managing complexity, about breaking things down into small parts and then recombining those individual pieces to make new things," he explained. "That abstract talent can be flexed in a variety of skills, whether it's seeing the individual phrases and beats of a track and how they can be overlaid and mixed into others when DJ'ing or about understanding the various tension points and loops in a knot."

The cofounders' presence in the startup scene will come in handy considering Flatiron School's focus on career counseling. "Over the past year I've mentored and placed a handful of my Skillshare students," said Mr. Flombaum. "I'm honored to have a pretty good reputation in the community and it's been a pleasure connecting my students to some of the startups I love."

But the scope of potential employers doesn't look exclusively at startups. "When considering jobs for students, we're looking for companies that invest in people," he said, "And I don't think that it is an exclusively startup trait. After that, it is really all about fit for the students. We want our students to be happy at work."

To that end, Mr. Flombaum said Flatiron School will be hosting "a reverse job fair" on December 6th where tech companies can meet students and hear about their projects. "The dream is that they will all have offers by the new year," he said.

The initiative seems more like a labor of love than the next General Assembly, which has expanded to London and Los Angeles in the past year.

Everything from the office lease on West 26th Street, to the 20 Ikea tables and chairs, to student scholarships were funded by the two cofounders. "We're really not looking for outside investment," Mr. Flombaum said. "I think education is all about quality. And I think venture capital is all about scale." Local businesses have also offered donations. ErgoErgo has given the school 20 standing-desk-killers and the New York Health and Racquet Club has subsidized gym membership and planned fitness classe.

"I'm still trying to get a hold of Hill Country, as it is right across the street, about doing a weekly BBQ, but no luck (yet)," he said. "The idea is to create a decentralized campus, finding partners to provide the facilities and experiences the students need rather than sink millions into building yet another campus in NYC."

(Photo: Github)

They Alley may think it's got somethin' on the Valley, but in California it's now illegal for employers and universities to solicit your social media passwords. Damn hippies. [The Atlantic]

Speaking of California, General Assembly partnered with LaunchPad LA to open a branch in Los Angeles. [PandoDaily]

Google faked an address in its "iLost" Motorola commercial to make Apple Maps look bad. Come on, guys. You don't need to lie to make Apple Maps seem unusable. [AppleInsider]

App.net is giving out $20,000 per month to developers that already have $50. Sigh. [App.net]

Kittydar uses Javascript to detect cats in photos. Sadly, when we uploaded a picture of our cat hanging out in our fridge's crisper drawer, it could not locate him. :( [Github]

This is what we are picturing. (Photo: Morsipr.blogspot.com)

Fresh off blowing up Mitt Romney's tax scheme spot on the opening track of Cruel Summer, Kanye West must have decided it was safe to take his eye off the throne for a minute. We hear the rapper dropped by General Assembly's East campus at 902 Broadway today to meet with a startup. "He was just there. He was in the classroom," an entrepreneur stationed in the coworking space told Betabeat. "He didn't have many people with him and was just in the front. I think he was in the classroom most of the morning."

We first noticed the sighting via a tweet from Matthew Witheiler, principal at Flybridge Capital Partners. Alex Taub, head of biz dev at Dwolla, also tweeted about the surprise guest--and his stylish wardrobe choice. Another venture capitalist, Nikhil Kalghatgi at Softbank Ventures, used the social network to express his disbelief. Meanwhile, student developer Chevon Christie was bummed to have missed the whole thing.

Crazy world. @kanyewest currently meeting with a company at @ga.

— Matthew Witheiler (@witheiler) September 13, 2012

Okay... @kanyewest is at @ga . Was just listening to Watch The Throne one minute ago. Also- nice pants! — Alexander Taub (@ajt) September 13, 2012

@nikhilkal @kanyewest @ga black and red pants. They were really nice. I sort of want to know where they are from... — Alexander Taub (@ajt) September 13, 2012

Apparently, kanye came by my workplace, @ga, today.. #HowDidIMissThat?

— Chevon Christie (@ChevonChr) September 13, 2012

Last summer, Mr. West (along with Lady Gaga) was rumored to have invested in the music startup Turntable.fm. Unlike Elevation Partners cofounder "Bono Rockstar," Mr. West does not yet have a Crunchbase profile and the deal, as far as we know, is unconfirmed. However, he's no stranger to Silicon Alley. Mr. West was recently seen advising Joseph Einhorn, founder of The Fancy. At the time, a company rep told Betabeat, “He gave some advice to our CEO Joe Einhorn, who looks up to Kanye the way most tech folks idolize Steve Jobs." Earlier this year, Mr. West disclosed plans for "a new collective of creatives and developers" called DONDA. The startup, he said, will have 22 divisions aligned under the goal of making "products and experiences that people want and can afford."

As for today's classroom session at GA, it's unclear whether Mr. West was teaching, learning or recruiting. If you know the identity of the mystery startup, holler at your girls: tips@betabeat.com.

Mr. Uhovski (Photo: Twitter/ValentineNY)

Between General Assembly setting up shop in London and poaching New York tech loyalist Courtney Boyd Myers as director of audience development, we might as well rename Shoreditch "Silicon Alley East."

All of your old friends with be across the pond this Friday, as well as a très chic new one: Valentine Uhovski, Tumblr's head of fashion, who replaced controversial fashion director Richard Tong. (Technically, Mr. Uhovski's title is "Fashion Evangelist," because of course.)

On September 14th, Mr. Uhovski will join Ms. Myers, affectionately known to techies as @CBM, as well as Advent Ventures general partner Frédéric Court, SilkFred.com founder Emma Watkinson, The Business of Fashion founder Imran Amed, and Sarah Kunst, director of business development at the street style app Kaleidoscope and Betabeat's "Minority Report" columnist for a panel and fireside chat called "From High Street to Haute Couture, How London is Redefining Online Retail." (Hey, isn't that supposed to be New York's claim to fame?)

If anyone attends, let us know whether Mr. Uhovski gets candid about Tumblr's plans to win back fashion brands. Inquiring minds, etc.

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.

Entrepreneur's Roundtable (which spawned the excellent ERA accelerator) is turning 50. Yes, time does indeed fly. Started in 2007 as a non-profit devoted to helping startups succeed, the program has expanded beyond NYC to Philadelphia, Istanbul and even Tokyo, and more than 17,000 entrepreneurs have attended. Over the years, its rockstar speaker lineup has included Fred Wilson, Chris Dixon, Esther Dyson and others. Congrats to organizer Murat Aktihanoglu--a pillar of the New York tech community--for putting together such a consistently awesome event. Here's looking forward to the next 50 editions of Entrepreneur's Roundtable.

A party you say? Well, of course there is a party! ;)

Women 2.0 is now accepting applications for their inaugural PITCH NYC startup competition. What's the dealio? Companies must have at least one woman in the founding team, must be in beta stage and must have received less than a million in funding. They’re looking for disruptive web/mobile ventures, connected device companies, double and triple bottom-line ventures, etc. Prizes include $25,000 cash, services and more. Apply now!

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

Data Science & Big Data - Talk & Panel Discussion
With Max Sklar (machine learning engineer, Foursquare), Paul Dix (cofounder, Errplane; organizer, NYC Machine Learning Meetup), K Young (CEO, Mortar Data) and Eric Lubow, CTO, SimpleReach). Moderated by Kurt Schrader (VP of engineering, Intent Media).
Monday (Aug. 13), 6:30 p.m. @ Pivotal Labs, 841 Broadway, 8th Floor

The NYC MusicTechnology Meetup
Demos by RapGenius, Stereotypes, NextBigSound, Twitch, and Jamplify
Monday (Aug. 13), 7 p.m. @ the Knitting Factory, 361 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn

[Eyebeam Presents] #ArtsTech: Slow Tech
Slow Tech can be about finding the time to unplug. Or it can be about slowing down to read that eight-thousand-word article or watch that two-hour documentary. Speakers include Gilly Leshed (Cornell), Dan Phiffer (artist/hacker), Andy Nealen (NYU Poly) and Alexander Provan (Triple Canopy).
Tuesday (Aug. 14), 7 p.m. @ Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St.

Gdgt presents: Samsung Galaxy Event
There will be catering, celebrities, entertainment, hands-on demos with the new device, and, of course, a few giveaways.
Wednesday (Aug. 15), 7 p.m. @ Frederick P. Rose Hall in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, W. 60th St.

General Assembly Demo Night
Demoing will be Doorsteps, DerbyJackpot, Customer.io, Barzer, Seer and AuthorBee.
Wednesday (Aug. 15), 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Floor

TimesOpen 2012: HTML5, Apps and JavaScript
With Alex Komoroske (product manager, Google), Eric Schorr (lead games developer, New York Times) and Terrence Ryan (developer evangelist, Adobe).
Wednesday (Aug. 15), 7 p.m. @ The New York Times, 620 8th Ave., 15th floor

NY Web Tech Scaling Meetup 2: Scaling @ SendGrid
Swift from SendGrid will talk about how SendGrid is able to send 3 billion emails each month (90,000/minute), how they were able to reach that point and some lessons learned along the way.
Wednesday (Aug. 15), 7 p.m. @ 10gen, 578 Broadway, 7th Floor

PandoMonthly Presents: A Fireside Chat with Ben Lerer
With Ben Lerer, cofounder and CEO of Thrillist, the modern lifestyle brand for hip urban guys everywhere.
Thursday (Aug 16.), 6 p.m. @ Bennett Media Studio, 723 Washington St.

Startup Tours for Developers: Conductor & GetGlue
Get a peek at Conductor's office kegerator and end the evening at GetGlue.
Thursday (Aug. 16), 6:30 p.m. @ Conductor, 230 Park Avenue S, 12th Floor

Startup Showcase: Fashion in 3-D
Presenters include Shapeways (the NYC-based 3-D printing company), Continuum Fashion (part fashion label, part design label) and a mystery company (imagine a high-end stiletto specially created to fit the biomechanics of your foot!)
Thursday (Aug 16), 7 p.m. @ Space530, 530 Seventh Ave, M1

More events on the horizon...
Entrepreneurs Roundtable 50 on Aug 22 @ The Alley
Digital DUMBOs dd:SOCIAL on Aug 23 @ Dumbo Loft
Aug 26: Nyc Tech Picnic – Chelsea Piers lawn at Sunset on Aug 26 @ Chelsea Piers Lawn
NY Games Conference on Sep 05 @ Museum of Jewish Heritage
Comedy Hack Day on Sep 08 @ Pivotal Labs NYC
FinovateFall 2012 on Sep 12 @ Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
Design for Manufacturing Summit on Sep 20 @ Dumbo Spot

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

(Photo: The Yard)

Back in February, Betabeat introduced you to The Yard, a freshly-opened coworking space in Williamsburg that we minted the "General Assembly of Brooklyn." Turns out we're psychic, because today The Yard announced that--just like its Manhattan competitor, GA--it will be offering continuing education courses in subjects like programming and biz dev, beginning this fall. All at "Brooklyn prices," no less!

"We really want to cultivate a culture here that is cutting edge and innovative and collaborative," Andy Smith, The Yard's PR and curriculum coordinator, told Betabeat by phone. "It seems like now that we’re at a point where we are full, we can sort of branch out and extend our efforts to other aspects to cultivate that culture. Educational initiatives seemed like the next natural step."

The Yard differentiates itself from other coworking spaces by offering over 90 private suites for rent. Highly hyped startups like Uber and Wanderfly have made the converted factory their home away from home, and Mr. Smith assured us that there's currently a waiting list for new coworkers.

The Yard doesn't have all of the logistics of the new curriculum figured out just yet. "We’re still playing with a price point on the different classes," said Mr. Smith. "We’re still curating the curriculum, but we plan to offer one-time workshops---2-3 hour experiences--as well as longer courses. We’re also talking with some really qualified teachers to even go a step beyond that and offer intensive 10 or 12 week programs on software, iOS--more hands-on, heavy duty tech and programming."

Of course, the Flatiron-based General Assembly possesses similar offerings and is far more established than the 7-month-old Yard. But Mr. Smith thinks the Yard's location in Brooklyn provides it with a unique advantage.

"What GA does is great, but we’re in Brooklyn," he confided. "There’s a whole other world in Brooklyn that maybe is a little bit fresher and a little bit riskier."

What do you mean by riskier, we asked?

"I think the two boroughs attract different types of people and different types of startups," explained Mr. Smith, who has lived in Williamsburg for eight years. "I think Brooklyn has become a global name and now people are starting to tune into Brooklyn on this tech level, this startup level, where you don’t need to pay Manhattan prices for office space and you don’t have to pay Manhattan prices for classes like some place at GA."

We were starting to sense a Brooklyn/Manhattan beef, tech style. Mr. Smith explained that "we're not renting a floor on Broadway near the Flatiron, so our overhead is lower and we can pass that savings onto our students."

In true nouveau Brooklyn fashion, Mr. Smith then launched into detail about the renovations of the converted warehouse that now serves as The Yard's HQ.

"Anyone who comes by here can see that we’ve kept that environment of the original space. The archictect that we used to build this place out did it in an as efficient and green way as possible. We really tried to repurpose the building and cut costs everywhere we could and keep it as creative as possible."

Because of that, Mr. Smith added, "we have the opportunity to perhaps offer something similar to places in the city, but for maybe a little bit less."

Ah, yes, the "Brooklyn is cheaper" argument. Wonder what our friends at the New Jersey Tech Meetup have to say about that.

To help beef up its impending courseload, The Yard is looking for teaching candidates and applications for curriculum. You can get in touch with them if you're interested.