Hot Bostonites enjoying Aereo. (Photo: Facebook)

Aereo, the online service that lets users livestream local channels, announced today that it will be rolling out service to Boston, its second major metropolitan area. Starting May 15, customers in the Massachusetts area who have pre-registered for the free service will start receiving their invites to try it out. On May 30, membership will available to all 4.5 million people in the Boston area.

Nearly 30 channels will be available for streaming, including the city’s network affiliates, specialty channels (i.e. PBS Kids, The Country Network) and some Spanish-language networks. The Boston market extends beyond Massachusetts and includes parts of New Hampshire and Vermont. Aereo has been staffing up in Boston and has several engineering job openings listed on its Career page.

Aereo’s expansion further solidifies the company’s bullish plans, despite facing lawsuits from the networks it carries. Earlier this month, a Second Circuit appeals court ruled in favor of the company, which thwarted a request from broadcasters for a preliminary injunction and allows Aereo to continue operating. That decision riled up News Corp. COO Chase Carey who threatened to move Fox to pay cable if courts continue to rule in Aereo's favor.

How it looks. (Photo: OKCupid)

Good news, singletons: you can now spend your Bitcoins to help you get laid. OKCupid has begun accepting the popular decentralized digital currency as a form of payment. Payments will be accepted via Bitcoin wallet website Coinbase, according to an announcement on its blog.

Betabeat first reported two weeks ago that the IAC-backed site was considering accepting Bitcoins after a Reddit user posted a screenshot from an alleged OKCupid representative claiming that the company was looking to expand its payment options. 

Now, the news is official. When we logged in to our OKCupid account, we noticed there's an option for Bitcoin payments on the site’s “A-List” premium subscription service page. The link directs users to Coinbase to complete the payment.

OKCupid charges users $10 per month to access the enhanced features, like message read receipts and the ability to creep on profiles without the person knowing. Today Bitcoin is trading at $61, which means a six month subscription comes out to about .5 BTC.

We reached out for comment from OKCupid but have not yet heard back.

The Next Web notes that OKCupid’s acceptance of Bitcoins lends further legitimacy to the budding currency:

OKCupid’s user base isn’t exactly the kind that you’d think is familiar with or already dabbling in Bitcoins, and there’s a real irony in allowing an anonymous currency to be used on a dating site — where trust is a big factor — but the fact that OKCupid is making this move demonstrates the mainstream attention that digital currencies are receiving right now.

Smize harder, Bitcoins: it's your time to shine!

What's wrong with that? (Photo: Wikimedia)

The Chat-rooming Classes Today, seemingly every tech reporter in the business tuned into Jason Calacanis's "This Week in Startups," presumably in the hopes that Mr. Calacanis would tell all re: the allegations of abuse against Michael Arrington. But as familiar names chattered away in the chat room, Mr. Calacanis had little to say beyond comparing himself to Obi Wan. That would make Mr. Arrington Anakin Skywalker, of course; Mr. Calacanis said he taught him how to be powerful in media, and "I regret that."

As for the allegations themselves, Mr. Calacanis was quick to say he wouldn't be commenting on whether they were true, citing his lack of direct knowledge. (He did, however, openly discuss the time that Mr. Arrington called a PR honcho "the c-word," thereby outing someone who'd never mentioned the incident publicly!) [Correction: Mr. Calacanis first mentioned the incident and the PR exec (Brooke Hammerling) by name in the comments of his Facebook post, prompting Ms. Hammerling to confirm the story, also in a Facebook comment.] All in all, it sounds like he (kinda sorta) regrets getting involved. He apparently thought writing a Facebook note wouldn't go very far. "I thought that that would be a place where it just lived there," he said. (Paging Randi Zuckerberg!) "I got a little P.T. Barnum in me and I feel like me commenting on all this stuff actually detracts from it," he added.

The Biggest Failure Silicon Alley fameballer and Vimeo cofounder Jakob Lodwick took to PandoDaily this week to lament his decision to sell his company Connected Ventures, which included CollegeHumor and Vimeo, to media conglomerate IAC in 2006. In the post, called “An acquisition is always a failure,” Mr. Lodwick wrote that selling the company to IAC was “the worst business decision of his life” because although it fattened his bank account, it stifled his ability to work creatively. Getting acquire is like giving up, he argued, which we’re sure delighted his fellow NYC entrepreneurs who are desperately groping for the exit sign.

We suppose you can’t have your cake and eat it too, even if the cake is made of millions of dollars.

Kenny Lerer's Got Ringtones In the midst of a recent phone call with Ken Lerer about Lure Fish Bar, his favorite power lunch spot, our conversation was interrupted by the dulcet sounds of Jim Morrison from his cellphone. Was that “People Are Strange,” we asked? Yes, Mr. Lerer confirmed, revealing that he spends “way too much time” picking out the right ringtones for the important people in his life. That Doors song was for Brian Bedol, Mr. Lerer’s business partner in the media and entertainment company Bedrocket. "If you knew Brian," he said, "'People Are Strange' is the perfect ring tone for him."

Did he have a ringtone for his son Ben, the cofounder of Thrillist? “Oh this is embarrassing,” he replied, admitting that it was Rod Stewart’s “Some Guys Get All the Luck.” “Not bad, huh?” quipped Mr. Lerer the elder.

Brit’s Got Jokes On Monday, Brit + Co. founder Brit Morin announced on her Facebook page that she was expecting a baby with her husband, Path cofounder Dave Morin. Of course, the update was quickly debunked as an April Fool’s Day prank, despite the fact that she posted it towards the end of the day. “For all of you who wished me congratulations on being pregnant, thank you for being a total sucker!” she wrote.

Apparently, along with making Christmas trees out of cheese and turning Mac extension cords into jump ropes, such personal pranks are part of Ms. Morin’s repertoire.

“The trick is to wait until the evening of April Fools when people think all the jokes are over,” she wrote. “I pull this one every single year and still, so many fall for it ;)” Guess she lost all of next year’s suckers by giving away her secret.

PR darling Brooke Hammerling had a subtweet for the ladies pretending to be with child for April Fool’s Day:

https://twitter.com/brooke/status/319229167046623233

Jack Did it All for the Nookie We knew about Jack Dorsey's nose ring, but we had no idea he used to be in Limp Bizkit. Business Insider uncovered an old photo of the Square cofounder that shows him looking quite different than he does when sporting his current hand-sewn jeans look. The black and white portrait has Mr. Dorsey with full-on 90s rave kid hair. Pass the glowstick, bro.

(Photo: Twitter)

Bloggers! They're Just Like Us! Business Insider editor Steve Kovach gets hearts aflutter, apparently. As overheard by fellow editor (so many over there!) Alyson Shontell, a starry eyed PR person compared their meeting with Mr. Kovach to that of a Hollywood star. It's understandable, we constantly confuse Mr. Kovach with Jake Gyllenhaal every time we see him out with the normals.

http://twitter.com/shontelaylay/status/319838156486758400

Do You Startup, Bro? Silicon Valley's fraternity president and Digg founder Kevin Rose was the subject of an ABC News profile this week which reminded us he's still around! The Google Ventures partner revealed what new apps he's circling to potentially fund, including a personal training app called FitStar. He also revealed that the Instagram filter Toaster is named after his adorable dog and detailed what his typical day is like: "Invest in start-ups. Find the next big thing. Meet with entrepreneurs. Drink coffee. Hang out." Sounds like a Bravo show in the making.

Internet Weak On Thursday, the New York collective of the Web’s  hive mind met up for a low key gathering at the Watch What Happens Live prop closet Design Within Reach showroom in SoHo to celebrate the quickly approaching Internet Week. The festival's new director Caroline Waxler welcomed the sharply dressed but older-skewing crowd. iPads were shuffled around to get attendees to sign up and vote  for the 200+ panels that are in contention for just 13 slots to be showcased at the yearly event. (Holding a drink from the open bar and registering on the iPad was difficult, but we managed.)

Anyway, the annoyingly arranged support columns, a seating arrangement dependent on the furniture layout, and the tri-level setup made it hard to pay attention to Vice editors Kelly Bourdet and Brian A. Anderson. After talking for a half hour about all the cool things Vice does (and plentiful mentions of the burgeoning media empire's massive presence at SXSW), they showed off a drone for people to play with. But that wasn’t enough to amuse the partygoers as throngs of them slinked off shortly after the panel ended. Perhaps that was enough Internet for one day.

Soon? (Photo: BigTimeDates.com)

Bitcoin, the popular decentralized digital currency, is having a moment. Its worth topped $106 this morning, Bloomberg Businessweek called it the “global economy’s last safe haven,” and a smattering of online retailers are beginning to the accept the unregulated crypotcurrency.

Aside from Reddit, no other major websites have dipped their toes into the untested waters—just yet. So, several Redditors were surprised to see the IAC-backed dating site hint that it might soon implement Bitcoin as a payment option. The news arrived via an unverified, Imgur-hosted screenshot of an email from an OKCupid employee (named “Alice”) about changes to its billing methods.

(Photo: Imgur.com)

(Although the bulk of OKCupid’s services are free, there’s a $10 a month subscription service called “A-List.” That includes life-changing features like the ability to edit usernames and more customized search results to weed out the inevitable creeps.)

“We are hoping to add PayPal (and bitcoin) payment options in the next couple of months,” the employee responded in an email about payment options. “If they follow through, this is huge news. Okcupid is a giant,” responded one Redditor.

In response to questions from Betabeat about the post, an OKCupid spokeswoman declined to comment.  So for now, you’ll have to use your credit card if want to pay for the “best free dating site.” But start brushing up on your Bitcoin knowledge, it might be the new key to getting laid.

Multiple sources have told Betabeat that IAC shuttered Hatch Labs--its incubator for building mobile tools, apps, and platforms--on December 31st. Hatch Labs closed both its fifth floor offices in the IAC building on 18th street and in Los Angeles.

"After exploring several strategic options for Hatch Labs, IAC stopped investing in the company, and their operations were subsequently discontinued," IAC said in response to questions. "IAC is still funding and exploring options for a few of the assets that came out of Hatch Labs."

Hatch Labs’ New York space is already occupied by other IAC entities. (The only exception is Blu Trumpet, which was spun out as an independent company in 2011, but remains in the Frank Gehry building.) When we stopped by the office last May, it had all the accoutrements of your standard startup accelerator, including a ping pong table and drawers full of free snacks.

"It didn't make sense in the corporate entity of IAC," said one source familiar with Hatch Labs. "These businesses should have a more diverse set of funds from VCs, who can support them in a way that a corporation can't." Considering that successful startups from Hatch were permitted to seek outside funding--if they could raise it--that may not have been the full story behind its demise.

As the accelerator bubble begins to deflate, even prominent venture-backed outfits like Y Combinator are trimming the fat. As we reported last September, AOL Ventures also sunset QLabs, its Soho think tank of hackers that failed to get traction.

Hatch Labs, which invested in proven entrepreneurs rather than concepts, lists ten startups on its website. (When we spoke with CEO Dinesh Moorjani last May, he said Hatch Labs had built seven business and wound down one.) Tinder, a recently launched casual dating app cofounded by serial entrepreneur Sean Rad, the former head of Hatch Labs' L.A. development team, has been gaining popularity with "normal, non-geeky people," on college campuses and is still operating. We hear Cash Island (sometimes referred to as CashPlay), a "real money" slot machine app that lets users win gift cards and get extra turns for taking surveys is also continuing on, although its website is currently offline.

Other Hatch Labs startups have taken the opportunity to shut down efforts that weren't paying off, par for the course of an experimental incubator. The websites for BroDown, an app that lets you challenge people around the world to a push-up contest, and Cardify, a customer loyalty app, are both down. A source called the transition "really smooth."

When Hatch Labs was unveiled in March, 2011, IAC billed it as an "innovation sandbox" designed to rapidly prototype and launch technology related to the emergence of mobile. (In that respect, IAC had a head start on Mark Zuckerberg, who didn't recognize the shift towards mobile until late 2011.)

Mr. Moorjani, a Harvard MBA who started IAC's mobile group back in 2007, quietly founded Hatch Labs in 2010. But in 2011, the incubator formally debuted as a joint venture between IAC and Xtreme Labs, a successful Toronto-based mobile development shop, which recently opened up offices in New York City. Reports differ, but Hatch teams were given three months and capital from "well into the $100Ks" up to $1 million.

The amount of funding Hatch Labs received from IAC and Xtreme Labs wasn't publicly disclosed. However, in a 10-K filing from February 2012, IAC reported that operating income before amortization loss increased from $500,000 in 2010 to $12.1 million in 2011. That was due in part to Hatch Labs, as well as operating expenses at its production studio Electus and lower revenue at Pronto, its comparison shopping engine. In a 10-Q filing from November 2012, IAC reported product development expenses of $2.7 million "primarily due to increased investment in Hatch Labs." It's also unclear whether Xtreme Labs continued to invest after 2011.

In interviews, Mr. Moorjani consistently stressed how Hatch Labs was different from traditional incubators or bootstrapping a startup because of its emphasis on helping proven founders with product building and marketing, which he pegged as particularly difficult. A recent report from the ad network Adeven predicted that the iOS App Store would see 435,000 new apps this year, but that most would go unnoticed. IAC's networks, data and experts could help with that, he argued. He also said Hatch Labs benefitted from investing in entrepreneurs with skin in the game. Startups had equity in their own product and in Hatch Labs overall.

On LinkedIn, Mr. Moorjani lists his tenure at Hatch Labs as ending in January. He is also the cofounder of Kleverbeast, a mobile publishing platform still in beta. In an astute op-ed last month in the Huffington Post, he name-checked Kleverbeast for its ease of building iOS and Android apps "without typing a single line of code," as a sign of the democratization of app development. He also mentioned CashPlay when he predicted mobile gaming would return to its casino roots.

In the piece, Mr. Moorjani also delved into a return to rationality in funding, writing:

"Mobile is no different. Many startups will unravel, unable to secure additional financing, because some of these deals should never have been seeded at inception. The dearth of capital leads to funneling investment dollars into quality startups, and consequently, carnage among companies that lack sustainable competitive advantages, talented teams or noteworthy market traction."

UPDATE 2/2/2013: A representative for Mr. Moorjani offered the following statement about Hatch Labs by email:

"Hatch finished deploying the capital from the first Hatch fund over the past two years and IAC is now managing the portfolio of ventures that were built, including Tinder, Blu Trumpet, etc.  Dinesh is raising his second Hatch fund outside of IAC with their support, and Xtreme Labs who has expressed interest in participating in the fund.  As a co-founder, he is currently focused on building Kleverbeast, a NY startup, into a world-class mobile SaaS company, and advising various companies, whose Boards he serves on as a director and/or advisor."

We have reached out to Xtreme Labs and we will update the post when they respond.

Killer Diller. (Photo: flickr.com/techcrunch, by Dave Getzschman)

Hey, look: It's some actual news out of CES, which has absolutely nothing to do with Evernote-integrated refrigerators! New York-based, Barry Diller-backed TV-streaming service Aereo has been teasing an expansion for some time now, and in a speech today from CEO Chet Kanojia, the company made its move.

The service will roll out to 22 new cities, including Boston, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C, starting in the late spring. Aereo will continue its "Try for Free" program in each of the cities, so would-be cord-cutters can get a taste, but it'll be invitation-only at first. 

To fund this attempt at world conquest, the company also announced it's closed a $38 million Series B led by IAC and Highland Capital. Get money, ya'll. Previous investors including FirstMark Capital, First Round Capital, High Line Venture Partners and "select individuals" also threw invested. The round was actually oversubscribed, Mr. Kanojia told Betabeat by phone from CES. Aereo was aiming for $30 million, but when financiers came clamoring, he said, "Alright." The additional capital will be used to build up infrastructure, marketing and cover some considerable legal bills. "We decided that we were gonna go into expansion mode and it came together very very quickly."

The cities were chosen based on population density, how many households get over-the-air broadcasts, and the age of the population. Age is a factor, he noted, because the majority of Aereo's customers tend to be 35 and under. "It's a great fit for their lifestyle," he enthused. "This is not your dad’s cable TV." Customers "use it as it fits their life."

Expansion plans were also related to proximity to Aereo's homebase. The headcount has doubled since our feature about Aereo in May, but it's still a small team, so they wanted to be able to, "knock off as much ground cover as we can in a two hour flight," adding, "L.A. has never been a TV town." Cities that get the service include: Boston, Miami, Austin, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Tampa, Cleveland, Kansas City, Raleigh-Durham, Salt Lake City, Birmingham, Providence, and Madison, WI.

All told, that new ground covers 97 million new potential customers. If you look at the younger demographic in those market, it could mean 30 million people, said Mr. Kanojia. Although he declined to disclose subscriber numbers, he did say usage numbers--the metric Aereo focuses on--is "extremely strong."

Of course, this depends on Aereo clearing all its present legal hurdles. Sure, they managed to avoid a preliminary injunction, but broadcasters are far from done fighting. We asked Mr. Kanojia whether her expected more lawsuits from local affiliates in new cities? "I don’t know who can sue us or not," he said with characteristic nonchalance. "Frankly I'm not too worried or focused on that." After all, if you start "obsessing" over every incumbent, that hardly leaves time for convincing people to cut the cord.

This post has been updated to include our interview with Mr. Kanojia. 

(Photo: flickr.com/classicchanelhandbags)

Healthy Hills? Everyday Health, the SoHo-based and more successful version of WebMd, has acquired EQAL, the creators of Lonelygirl15 and the owners of LaurenConrad.com. Everyday Health's ad revenue grew 40 percent in the first quarter, compared to WebMD’s decline of 20 percent. This coincides with Everyday Health's announcement that they're moving beyond YouTube and launching a version of it's web show "Recipe Rehab" for ABC stations around the country.

Diller Brings Back Dog Ben Silverman's multimedia entertainment studio Electus, part of Barry Diller's IAC, just sold ten episodes of a new show starring Dog the Bounty Hunter and his wife Beth to CMT. "Dog and Beth are not only great television characters," said Electus CEO Chris Grant, "They are the best bounty hunters in the world, and this show is a natural evolution of their life story.”

Exit This Way Indeed, which describes itself as "the #1 job search engine worldwide," has been acquired (for a rumored $750 million to $1 billion price tag) by Recruit Co. Ltd, a large-scale Japanese HR company with over $10 billion in revenue. Rony Kahan, co-founder of Indeed, says that half of the site's traffic comes from outside the U.S and that they see this buyout to further that.

Thrillist on the LES Jackthreads, owned by Thrillist, just launched Goodale's Fall 2012 collection. Swedish singer/songwriter Sebastian Mikael modeled the clothes at the Lower East Side's Hotel Chantelle. There are a few days left of the heavily discounted sale. What, no Asher Roth seasonal playlist to shop by this time?

Shop Local Smallknot, the site that lets backers help small businesses get off the ground in exchange for rewards, had a pretty busy couple of weeks. They launched their first three Los Angeles businesses this week. The company partnered with Accion USA, a microlending company, to help fully fund A7, a Brooklyn-based shop that makes handcrafted leather camera straps. The team at Smallknot is also hard at work at a new product that will help small business owners get the word out about their products.

But It's So Dead At Night The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) launched a competition called “Take the H.E.L.M.: Hire + Expand in Lower Manhattan." The contest invites all companies that plan to either open or expand office space in Lower Manhattan in the next 12 months to apply for the opportunity to win a grand prize of $250,000. Twenty finalists will also will also receive $20,000 each. David Tisch and former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt will join Reddit's Alexis Ohanian as judges to pick the winner.

Will Hack For Food NYU's Courant Institute will be holding a hackathon this weekend with over 300 hackers already planning to attend. It starts this Saturday at 2 p.m. and goes until Sunday at 2 p.m. Appetude will be providing free food at the event for sleep-starved participants.

Mongo Matriculation 10gen announced today that it will offer free online training courses for its parent company's key product, MongoDB. The courses are open for registration now--there's one for developers and one for administrators. Lead MongoDB developer Dwight Merriman will teach the first class that starts in early October. Learning MongoDB is apparently the second most wanted skill companies are looking for right now.

Très Fab Custom design shop, Fab, just expanded the site's European version, which already has 2 million members. These updates essentially make the site just as fully functional as the U.S. version. There are already 200 million Fab employees overseas. The company says that Fab Europe is on pace to represent about 30 percent of the company's 2012 sales.

Changing That Ratio Women 2.0, a media company that offers resources for aspiring women in tech, just announced its partnership with Google. Their first effort together will be pumping up Women 2.0's signature event, Founder Friday, a monthly networking meetup. Detroit and Mexico City will host the event on November 16th, followed by Sao Paulo, New Orleans, and Moscow later on. Mary Grove, head of entrepreneurship outreach at Google, said, "We're looking forward to hosting these important gatherings in Google offices around the world and working together to help female entrepreneurs turn their ideas into innovative, sustainable businesses." No word yet on whether the gift bag includes What Would Marissa Mayer Do? bracelets.

The Tipping Point Partners office. (Photo: Tipping Point)

Like cushy sign-on bonuses or drool-worthy stock options, perks are a potent recruiting tool for startups, dangled before potential hires like a treat before a ravenous animal. Expensive, Steve Jobs-approved gear and kitchens overflowing with every snack imaginable are treated like they’re the equivalent of platinum health insurance.

We get it--having a thriving, enjoyable work culture is integral to fostering a healthy work/life balance and not becoming consumed with resentment every time your shitty desk chair breaks. But is it possible that some of these perks aren’t all they’re cracked up to be?

Unlimited Vacation Days

One of the most frequently touted startup perks is the unlimited vacation day policy, under which, instead of receiving a finite amount of vacation days, employees are allowed to take however much vacation they want ... as long as they work super hard the rest of the year. It seems too good to be true: having the option to take three weeks off at a time to jet around Europe? Fabulous. And all sizes of company offer this perk: Adobe, Gilt Groupe and Tumblr are just a few that come to mind.

But some reports have shown that when people have unlimited vacation days, they actually end up taking less time off. Without a finite amount of days to use--think "Oh, it's December, better use my extra vacay days!"--employees are often unsure of what's the appropriate amount of time to take off.

As The Wall Street Journal wrote last year:

Some employers promote this as liberating, saying their workplaces are so flexible that old-fashioned constraints such as assigned time off aren't needed. But others say the lack of guidelines fuels a tendency to work all the time ... Americans have trouble taking time off even when they are assigned a specific number of days. Only 38% of U.S. employees use all their allotted vacation time, says a 2010 survey of 9,000 people by travel-booking company Expedia.com; the average worker took only 14 of 18 days permitted.

In 2011, Evernote--a startup based in San Francisco--began literally paying its employees to go on vacation. As soon as the company switched to an unlimited vacation day policy, "The first thing we noticed when we did it was that some people started taking less vacation," chief executive Phil Libin told Businessweek last year. In order to correct this, Evernote began giving employees $1,000 every time they took a weeklong vacation.

For many startups, encouraging employees to take the vacation they deserve often starts at the top. "It's all about creating a culture of flexibility so people feel O.K. taking advantage of it," said Kara Rota, director of editorial and partnerships at Cookstr, which boasts Tipping Point Partners as an institutional cofounder. "I think it’s the responsibility of people in executive and management positions to role model it and be very vocal about the things they have going on outside of work."

Unlimited Snacks

On a recent trip to the Vimeo offices in the soaring IAC building, Betabeat was asked upon arrival whether we'd like to indulge in some delicious snacks. The kitchen, situated right where you get off the elevator, was stocked with every kind of treat you could imagine: candy, cookies and other sweet things were tucked into one side of the island, while chips, crackers and salty items invaded the other side. It was a snacker's delight.

But there are downsides to all this food: for one, it can keep you from ever having to leave your desk for a lunch break. Even big corporations like Bloomberg LLP employ this strategy. As a Vanity Fair profile of Bloomberg pointed out, staffers there were "taken care of," but, as one employee put it, "The free junk food was great but it was there to keep us from going out for coffee."

There's also an important health aspect. Even if your startup stocks healthier snacks like fresh fruit and unsalted nuts, there's a chance that you'll eat more than you want to just because food is around.

"Your proximity to food has a huge impact on whether or not you're thinking about food," said Richard Talens, the cofounder of Fitocracy, a fitness social network. "This in turn impacts your desire to eat. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs have a scarcity mentality when it comes to food, especially free food. If they see that there's free calories lying around, they will likely prefer to go for that rather than paying for a lunch."

Mr. Talens said that in order to eradicate mindless snacking, the Fitocracy office doesn't stock snacks.

"There are no snacks per se at Fitocracy," he told Betabeat by email. "As a company, we're not big snackers, to be honest ... quite the opposite. Most people at Fitocracy try to remain within a caloric range on most days and we have the same philosophy: we'd much rather eat a few larger meals than snack constantly throughout the day."

If you can't convince your company to get rid of the M&Ms, Mr. Talens also advised how to hit the gym on the cheap. "Try to bargain with your local fitness club to see if you can get an employee discount for everyone," he suggested.

Food can be an important way to bring people together, though. "We provide a breakfast spread every Monday," Ms. Rota said. "It’s a good opportunity for people to check in at the beginning of the week and to have a good boost socially. It's important culturally and has an opportunity to let people sort of connect with each other in another way."

Working From Home

Allowing employees to work from home is a common perk, but frequently--if the office culture doesn't encourage it--it's one that can easily fall by the wayside.

"People used to do it, but then at some point it just became standard to work from the office, and now you can't really work from home unless you really need to (cable guy, doctor's appointment, whatever)," said one person employed at a well-known New York startup, who asked not to be named.

Different people work in different ways, whether it be collaborative--through activities like pair programming--or solitary. Different tasks also require various work methods. At the Cookstr offices, Ms. Rota said that there are couches and conference rooms set up for group work, while other employees prefer to work from their own private desks. She also argues that removing the emphasis from hours spent working at your desk can help employees flourish.

"A culture that is focused with how many hours you’re sitting at your desk puts the focus on the wrong place," she added. "It’s an artificial definition of what work looks like."

In the end, fostering a culture where employees feel comfortable to take advantage of the perks so many recruiters promote is key to maintaining a happy and productive office environment.

"It really is about setting a precedent to make people feel comfortable with alternative work styles," she advised. "If you’re an intern, or new, or if you’re not an executive leader, you’re not going to feel comfortable being the one person taking advantage of the work from home policy. But if there’s a real culture of that, and you trust in your coworkers that they're doing the things that they need to be doing, then there's really no concern about it."

Lotsa ants. (Photo: flickr.com/pinkmoose)

The MPAA and the RIAA aren't raking in as much cash as they used to. [TechDirt]

This breed of ants works a little like the Internet. [PC World]

Time Warner is expanding its fiber network in New York City, hopefully preventing any more techies from tearing their hair out over problems getting high-speed Internet. [Wall Street Journal]

IAC has purchased About.com for $300 million, because of synergy. [The Hollywood Reporter]

America's V.P. gets no Facebook love. [Buzzfeed]

Getting your Gmail hacked is going to look like a walk in the park once hackers can rifle through your innermost thoughts. [ZDNet]

(Photo: Barrydriller.com)

We somehow doubt that Alki David, the irreverent prankster behind Aereo competitor (and hilariously named) website BarryDriller.com, didn't see this one coming. Today, news broke that IAC chairman and Aereo board member Barry Diller is suing both Mr. David and BarryDriller.com for using his likeness to falsely advertise the business.

The Hollywood Reporter has the complaint, which states that Mr. David is:

"Seeking to unfairly capitalize on the success of the new business venture supported by Plaintiff, Defendants devised a scheme to launch what they characterize as a competing business called 'BarryDriller.com.' "Defendants are using Plaintiff's name in their 'BarryDriller.com' business to (1) associate their service with Plaintiff, and (2) mislead the public into believing that Defendants' service has been judicially sanctioned."

Mr. Driller is seeking "injunctive relief and punitive damages," which we assume means a big fat check.

This is a delicious twist in an otherwise amusing saga, but we can't help but feel bad for BarryDriller.com's 28,000 users. Maybe they can just use Aereo now?

UPDATE:

Mr. David provided Betabeat with the following statement:

Barry Diller’s Aereo is as irrelevant as is Network Television. The only reason for having Network TV on a virtual-cable service likes BarryDriller these days is because Consumers believe it is better to have it. People want TV but they want their kind of TV not what someone thinks it should be. Hence the popularity of YouTube, Hulu et al. Our numbers clearly show that Bikini TV and BattleCam are individually more popular than the major Networks combined.