Ms. Houston (Photo: Wikipedia.org)

And I Will Always Google You Google just released its year-end zeitgeist list and Whitney Houston was named the most searched person and term of the year. Gangnam Style clocked in as the second most searched thing of the year and the now-pregnant duchess Kate Middleton was the second most searched person in 2012. In terms of New York's search history, Hurricane Sandy took the number one slot and was followed by "MTA" and then "NY Knicks" (The new Brooklyn Nets didn't manage to crack the top 10). In terms of restaurants, Nobu was the most searched place to eat in New York, but Daniel and Chef's Table didn't fall too far behind.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Tumblr Tumblr is instructing its users to tag their favorite posts "#TumblrGiftGuide." The Tumblr team then will troll through the entries and reblog the best entries onto the official Holiday Gift Guide Tumblr. A look on the site shows a knit skull and a case for an iPad with cute typewriters all over it. No GIFs are currently on the site or for sale anywhere in the world.

Just Disrupt It Nike has announced a partnership with TechStars Oregon's branch to create an accelerator called the Nike+ Accelerator. The company plans to host ten companies for a three-month mentor-driven accelerator experience in Portland. The companies have to make products that integrate with Nike’s fitness-tracking Nike+ technology. But how will they get to test any of the equipment if they're coding all day long?

Cooler To Look At Than Macy's Christmas Windows NYU's winter ITP show takes place this weekend. Projects made by students in the two-year graduate program will be on display. Some of this year's entries include an app that lets you find hungry friends to eat with and a site that lets you capture a friend's reaction to a YouTube video. Cue up all of those videos where something jumps out and scares you.

Zuck Saves The Children Citizen Schools, a NYC nonprofit, has partnered with low-performing middle schools and volunteers from companies like Google and Facebook, to organize an after school program that encourages kids to learn more than just what goes on in the classroom. This Friday at Bronx Writing Academy, a middle school, the students will show off projects that include solar-powered cars and video games they programmed themselves. Software engineers, designers, and programmers from Facebook who’ve been teaching all semester will be there to watch their proud pupils.

And It's Just Like Honey We could all use a couple discounts this holiday season, so thank God for Honey, a Chrome extension that automatically scans the web for discount codes and then instantly deducts money from your total bill at checkout. It works with a ton of websites including Amazon, Nike, and Sephora. After a big boost from Reddit, the extension has been downloaded about 60,000 times. Honey said in a press release sent to Betabeat that "at just 7,000+ installs, Honey had saved consumers $30,000." That's a lot of extra gifts that you can buy for your mom.

I'm Feeling Very Lucky The search technology startup Q-Sensei Corp just announced the end of a Series A-2 funding round led by Verizon Ventures. $1.175M was raised which raises the total of its seed and Series A funding to over $5 million. Richard N. Nottenburg, the former CEO of Sonus Networks and graduate of NYU Poly, also now joins Q-Sensei's board.

Be My Benefactor Recent college graduates who want to achieve their dreams while still battling their impossible mountains of debt now have a new solution. Pave, a company that matches up the young and hopeless with backers who want to help the youth achieve their dreams through mentoring and/or cash sponsorship. In turn, when prospects turn a profit, they reward their backers with a percentage of earnings. It's like turning your poor post-grad life into a Kickstarter project.

Ms. He's sign

On a mild, sun-dappled Sunday, Betabeat applied our sunscreen and ventured to the Long Meadow in Prospect Park for an event aptly named "The Internet Picnic." A few weeks ago, a friend of ours named Nicole He had won the Listserve lottery and was tasked with sending an email out to 20,000 random Internet strangers. Ms. He works in community at the crowdsourcing platform Kickstarter. "What should I write??" she frantically gChatted us, before eventually deciding to invite all 21,288 subscribers to a picnic yesterday in Brooklyn.

"I have a mole under my eye and I'll be wearing red," she wrote, and then posted the same invitation to her Tumblr, where it received almost 300 notes.

Back in April, Betabeat introduced you to The Listserve, a project out of NYU ITP that allows a different user each day to send an email to a list full of subscribers. The idea is to give one randomly chosen person daily the opportunity to expound upon whatever's important to them to a platform of over 20,000 apt listeners. "This project makes every-day people think — and talk — about the internet," one of the Listserve's cofounders, Alvin Chang, told us at the time. "It makes people aware of the medium.”

Though Mr. Chang now lives in Boston and couldn't attend the event, his comment turned out to be especially prescient. When we arrived, Ms. He had positioned a hand-painted sign that read "#internetpicnic" (hashtag included) to rest upon a memorial rock. About 50-75 people (we're terrible at estimates) were spread out on blankets across a hill at the end of the meadow, eating fruit salad and drinking beer and laughing.

Just in case you weren't entirely sure that the people at the picnic were "from the Internet," a tan and white corgi named Tartine pranced about, provoking awws as she tried to nab some of the picnic food. (For the unaware, corgis are arguably the favorite mascot of certain corners of the Internet.) We wondered how many BuzzFeed posts Tartine might inspire.

All of the attendees at the picnic appeared to be under 35 and most of them worked on the Internet for a living. Many lived in New York, but a fair amount came down to the city just for the event. A couple of Yale computer science students who had traveled from New Haven took up residence on the extra space we had on our blanket. A guy throwing a frisbee around said he had come from Maryland. The youngest attendee was a 15-year-old boy, sporting the accessory so common among teens that age: a full set of braces. He was visiting from San Diego, and had heard about The Listserve through Twitter.

Tartine the corgi

But the majority of attendees worked in tech in New York: we spotted employees from Kickstarter (including cofounder Yancey Strickler), Foursquare, Etsy, Tumblr, Timehop, AppNexus and ScrollKit. It was basically a New York Tech Meetup, but with more pie.

John Skylar, a scientist with an organization called Better Worlds, introduced himself to us. Mr. Skylar also moonlights as a sci fi writer and asked that we use his pen name. We asked him why he decided to spend his Sunday afternoon fraternizing with Internet strangers. "Besides a general spirit of adventure, I run a lot of events geared towards getting people to talk to each other, and I was like, 'Hey, I could have discourse in real life!'" he said.

Next to us, we heard a snippet of conversation: "Troll has such a dirty connotation." Another person behind us was saying, "I blocked Henry Blodget on Twitter." The sun grazed the trees and began to spoil the fruit that was splayed out on blankets that had been abandoned for a group game of Cards Against Humanity, which--yes--was a successfully funded Kickstarter project. We also detected a hint of weed in the air, but it could've been coming from the cricket players across the lawn.

The Listserve's creators, minus Mr. Chang, also made an appearance. "It's pretty phenomenal," Zena Koo told Betabeat. "I wasn't sure how many people would come, but it's nice to see how many people actually showed up. I think The Listserve attracts a lot of people yearning to have conversations online, so this is the perfect evolution of all that coming together full circle."

"This whole thing keeps surprising me every day," added Greg Dorsainville, another Listserve cofounder.

A couple hours into the festivities.

Mr. Dorsainville and his fourth cofounder, Josh Begley, told us that they've never had to censor an email, except for a spammy one that broke the terms of service. Though, many Listserve emails do have a similar theme: "Everyone turns into Deepak Chopra," quipped Mr. Begley.

Behind him, someone started playing "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid on an acoustic guitar. A startup cofounder with a Dali mustache joined our circle and asked us what low-cost superpower we would have, if we could choose. We picked the power to have the subway arrive at the exact moment we hit the platform, every single day. A guy from AppNexus said he wanted the ability to never burn his food.

The acoustic guitar wasn't the only instrument to make an appearance. Ms. He had brought her ukulele, but demurred when we asked her to serenade us. As a girl began to play Gotye on an accordion, and people began to fold up their blankets, we decided it might be time to take our leave. We hugged Ms. He goodbye.

"See you on gChat!" she called, as we headed back, sun-tired and socially drained, towards the F train. A long night of socializing--on the Internet, naturally--lay ahead of us.

(Photo: Kickstriker)

Oh good, the folks behind Invisible Children's botched Kony 2012 campaign are at it again. After the highly-criticized campaign's frontman Jason Russell was caught running around the streets of San Diego naked, the campaign tunneled underground to avoid further scrutiny. But now they're back in the news for a pretty silly reason. Turns out they have a few choice words for the NYU ITP students who started Kickstriker, a Kickstarter parody that imagines a world where crowdfunded wartime might be possible. College kids, amiright?

Wired reported yesterday that Kony 2012 has sent a cease and desist letter to the Kickstriker team, alleging that they are "causing public confusion through your use of Invisible Children’s copyrighted and trademarked property on www.kickstriker.com. This impermissible use is a blatant and egregious infringement of Invisible Children’s valuable copyright and trademark rights."

Kickstriker purports to send you Joseph Kony's skull upon his capture if you pledge $1,000,000, so if Kony 2012 is alleging that people will actually believe Kickstriker is a real thing, they have very little faith in human reason.

Kickstriker, for its part, appears only amused by Invisible Children's efforts. In a letter obtained by Wired, they fired back at Kony 2012's lawsuit threat, writing, "The purpose of our website, Kickstriker.com (henceforth ‘Kickstriker’), is to critique a number of institutions, including Invisible Children, through the use of political satire." Kickstriker contends that their use of Kony 2012's assets is legal under the fair use act.

Kony 2012 seems to have some serious public image issues. After all, if we've learned anything from The Oatmeal's dustup with Charles Carreon, it's definitely that the best way to engender Internet support is by lodging more lawsuits against beloved projects. (SMH)

The BurritoB0t, in all its delicious glory. (Photo: flickr.com/laserpirate)

It's lunchtime on the East Coast, which seems like a good time to talk about the BurritoB0t, which is arguably the tastiest invention to come out of the 3D printer trend. Yes: it prints edible burritos.

BurritoB0t is a senior thesis project by NYU ITP student Marko Manriquez that fuses Mr. Manriquez's "two passions – digital fabrication and good food." Also, it prints burritos.

According to TechCrunch:

The system will let you use your iPhone to order different condiments and toppings. Sliders control the amount of salsa, guac, and crema. It uses a Thing-o-matic and is currently in beta form, so don’t expect it to make you a burrito anytime soon.

Mr. Manriquez's website says that he'll be demoing the BurritoB0t in New York this summer, so tell your belly to stop growling right this instant.

(internetweekny.com)

Unless you've gone off the grid, you probably already know that Internet Week 2012 launches on Monday. But with a dizzying number of events to attend, it's hard to figure out which ones are worth the time, effort and subway fare. Betabeat guest blogger Gary Sharma, something of an events truffle hound, already penned his personal list of recommendations. But consider this Betabeat's official to-do list: blogger tested, Betabeat approved.

The Art of Apps Gallery Opening
Monday, May 14th, 10am-6pm
138 Sullivan St.

Expect a lot of rounded edges and pixel talk at this gallery opening, featuring the designs of tech types like Path's Dave Morin, Jon Slimak of Piictu and Matias Corea of Behance. The exhibit will feature some of the best UI designs for apps on iPhone and iPad.

NYU ITP Spring 2012 Show
Monday, May 14th, 5pm-8pm
721 Broadway, 4th Floor

We write about ITP a lot (see the Listserve, the Descriptive Camera, and Kickstriker for some recent examples), mostly because the majority of projects produced by the students at NYU's interactive telecommunications program are actually really, really cool. ITP will unveil its best projects to the public in a two-day spring show on Monday 5/14 and Tuesday 5/15, and we think it's worth attending if only for the chance to see most of the most nimble young minds in the city at work.

Choosey Netizens Choose GIF: Analyzing an Animated Cultural Lexicon
Tuesday, May 15, 12pm-12:45pm
82 Mercer St.

We are huge fans of animated GIFs. In fact, we would probably devolve into communicating entirely through tiny moving pictures, if we could. Motherboard deputy editor Sean Yeaton will discuss how the GIF became its own cultural phenomenon.

Why Being a Good CEO has Nothing to Do With Being a Woman
Tuesday, May 15, 1pm-1:45pm
82 Mercer St.

If you haven't noticed, all of the full-time staff writers here at Betabeat possess two X chromosomes, so we're never ones to turn down a good panel about our fellow XX in tech. Featuring Birchbox cofounder Hayley Barna and Nestio CEO Caren Maio, in addition to some other talented lady founders, the discussion should offer some helpful advice on leading as a woman in the tech community.

TIME Inc.’s 10 Startups to Watch
Wednesday, May 16, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Top Secret

The list of TIME's 10 startups to watch reads like a week in Betabeat posts: NYC tech scene favs Code Academy, Art.sy, Fab.com and Side Tour are among the honorees. But the event is invite-only so be sure to get on the guest list if you want to attend.

WeWorkLabs Happy Hour
Wednesday, May 16, 5pm-8pm
175 Varick St., 4th Floor

First off: there will be free beer at this event. Plus, you'll get to check out the coworking space of WeWorkLabs, a NYC tech staple that seeks to foster collaboration between up-and-coming entrepreneurs. Check out some of the pitches from WeWorkLabs members and network with other like-minded techies.

hackNY Fundraiser
Wednesday, May 16, 7pm-9pm
foursquare HQ: 568 Broadway, 10th Floor

10gen will be providing drinks for a celebration of the hackNY community, an event to help raise funds "for the future tech innovators of New York City," and keep kids off Wall Street as the slogan goes. We had a pretty great time at the last hackNY fundraiser. But if nothing else, it's a chance to peep Foursquare's sweet office digs.

The Webutante Ball
Wednesday, May 16th, 8pm-11:55pm
Marquee

Don't pretend like you don't want to see the digerati all dolled up. The Webutante Ball is in its 4th year, and it's not really getting any cooler, but there will be lots of drinks. The "prom committee" is packed with NYC tech allstars, like Ben Lerer, Dave Tisch, plus old school fameball Julia Allison.

Walkabout NYC
Friday, May 18th, 1pm-6pm
187 Lafayette St. 6th Floor

If you're a fan of the Roger Mag, or just an interior design nut, you'll probably want to take some time to hit up Walkabout NYC, an open house of startup offices around the city. The lineup includes Betaworks, Gilt Groupe, Tumblr and Facebook, among many others.

Future of Media Panel
Friday, May 18th, 1pm-2pm
20 Cooper Sq. at 5th st. (NYU's journalism HQ)

Oh look, another panel to discuss the future of an industry about which no one has the slightest clue. Yay. But! The lineup is packed with A-list names in both media and tech, including Buzzfeed's Jonah Peretti, Thrillist's Ben Lerer and Jezebel's Jessica Coen. As long as everyone's candid about the real state of things, we think it should prove pretty entertaining.

(youtube.com)

Remember the The Listserve, the email list project announced last week out of NYU's ITP masters program that would only launch if it reached 10,000 subscribers? Seems like people aren't too afraid of it becoming spammy, because the team hit their 10,000 goal on Sunday afternoon, just a few days after putting up the site.

"I'm ecstatic. It's been a very fun -- and thought-provoking -- week," Alvin Chang, a Listserve team member, told Betabeat via email. "And to reach the goal with such great teammates has been an absolute privilege."

Mr. Chang said that the team would use a random number generator to pick a user to send the first email within three days. That means that if you signed up, you'll be entered in the drawing and receiving emails by Wednesday.

The Listserve project went viral last week, hitting the front page of Hacker News and drawing the attention of some of the tech world's most prolific tweeters. Mr. Chang said the project has been very well-received.

"I know we were excited about the idea. But to have so many other people excited is pretty cool," he said. "We've been very interested in the kind of analysis people have been doing on the project. It's not just your usual pontificators, though. This project makes every-day people think -- and talk -- about the internet. It makes people aware of the medium."

But glory is rarely long-lasting for a graduate student. "I need to get back to working on my thesis!" he added.

(youtube.com)

It's the sad truth of the Internet: you can tweet and blog your sweet little heart out, but there's no guarantee that anyone is actually listening. But what if there was a platform that gave you the chance to deliver whatever thoughts, feelings or advice you had, right to the intimate confines of someone's inbox? And they actually voluntarily signed up for the chance to hear you?

It's not a newsletter or a shared-interest listserv: it's a new project out of NYU's ITP masters program called The Listserve that gives the chance for one person each day to share their thoughts with thousands through a random lottery email system. Users sign up to receive one email daily from a randomly selected user. The email can be about anything--from what they had for breakfast that morning, to a picture of a kitten, to a politically-motivated diatribe--and it's sent, either publicly or anonymously, out to the other Listserve subscribers.

The project was incubated in an NYU masters class run by Internet scholar Clay Shirky entitled "Designing Conversational Spaces." Listserve's tagline? "If you had the chance to speak to one million people, what would you say?"

"The basic idea that it comes from is to see what people do when given a spotlight," Josh Begley, a Listserve group member, told Betabeat via phone. "I’ve long been curious about that idea. You know, even on Facebook when you see a bunch of friends having this perception that a lot of people are listening, sometimes we end up doing crazy, heartfelt or surprising things. So we're just trying to create a scenario in which that can happen in a low budget way."

Alvin Chang, another Listserve member, explained it further. "How do we play with it to the point where we can find something out about how people are having conversations and how people are viewing things in context based on not only design choices, but contextual spaces?"

For those of you who took journalism classes, Mr. Chang is essentially applying famed journalism scholar Marshall McLuhan's popular phrase, "The medium is the message," to this experiment.

The group argues that what differentiates the project from other large-scale email lists is that it's not organized around a specific theme or topic. It simply exists to allow people to share and listen to what others have to say, regardless of their interests, location or physicality.

"The obstacle that most people have now is that they are in silos, they talk to people of like-mindendess," said Greg Dorsainville, another team member. "When I thought of the use cases of getting an email from someone you don’t know and you don't know the topic it will be about, it’s an antithesis to that type of behavior."

To protect anonymity, the user who is randomly picked to send out the list-wide email can choose to have it sent either from their email address, or by the Listserve team, and each email will be vetted before being sent, to avoid users sending out hardcore porn or computer viruses. "We just want to make sure that some 12-year-old who happens to sign up for the list doesn’t get porn," said Mr. Chang.

Listserve is staged to be a social experiment. The group members say they want to see what gets people to communicate, and how their messages change depending on the size of the audience and the medium used to convey their message.

"I want it to be understood that this is as earnest as it sounds," said Mr. Dorsainville. "We would like to take out this notion of communication having to be about something else behind it, like how Facebook gives you a platform because they want you to bare your data. That’s not what we want to do. We want to share your stories and your feelings and your opinions."

Very earnest, indeed.

It's worth noting that the project will only begin once it reaches 10,000 subscribers. Until then, perhaps playing the Fame game can satisfy your desire to be heard.

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 follow him at @garysguide and reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.

NYU ITP (where foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley got his start) is now accepting applications for ITP Camp. What is ITP Camp you ask? Well its like ITP Classic put in the blender and smooshed into a month! It is ITP’s test kitchen, its R&D arm, its back of the napkin. It’s the place they encourage you, their faculty, former students, colleagues, and community to experiment, challenge, and play. Intrigued yet? You can apply here.

The good people at SkillShare are hosting their first ever education conference, Penny, at The Times Center on April 20th. Great line-up of speakers including the incomparable Baratunde Thurston (The Onion), Charles Best (DonorsChoose), Zach Sims (Codecademy) and much more.

The 2012 User Experience Awards is now open for submissions. Get more details here and buy tickets here.

And now lets see whats going down in the tech parts of town this week...

Hack and Tell: Round 16: Ivan Drago went down in 15, but we're still going!
5 minutes to show off your hack, and 5 minutes for the audience to applaud, cry, laugh, inquiry, snore, chew, stand, sit, dance, grow, interact, etc :)
Monday (Apr 09), 6:30 p.m. @ Meetup HQ, 632 Broadway, Ste 901

NYC Music Technology Meetup
Demos by Limited Run, Music Dealers, VYou, Spinrs, BandsInTown, WeAreHunted, Maestro.fm and a Kinect hack!
Monday (Apr 09), 7 p.m. @ Knitting Factory, 361 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn

NJ Tech Meetup 23
Featured Speaker: Tad Martin (Collective[i], Overstock, Gear.com). Demos by Meddik, Patient Communicator and Inquisit Health.
Tuesday (Apr 10), 6:30 p.m. @ Babbio Center at Stevens Institute Of Technology, 513 River St, Hoboken

Women in Design & Technology Series: The Future of Fashion: Trendsetting in the High-Tech Age
A discussion with Mariah Chase (President & Co-founder, Send The Trend). Moderated by Julia Lovallo (Member, Damsels in Design and Co-Founder, 4eCreative).
Tuesday (Apr 10), 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Floor

Investor Feedback Forum: Future Energy
With Kef Kasdin (General Partner, Batelle Ventures), Ann Partlow (General Partner, Earthrise Capital), Willem Rensink (GameChanger, Shell International Exploration & Production) and Yanev Suissa (Venture Capitalist, New Enterprise Associates). Pitches from Kristen Cleven (Green Charge Networks), Adam Rein (Altaeros Energies), Beth Stewart (United Catalyst), Michael Newell (Ener-G-Rotors) and more.
Wednesday (Apr 11), 6:30 p.m. @ NYU Stern Business School - Kaufman Management Ctr, 44 W 4th Street

Design + Tech: Stories of Collaboration from the Past, Present and Future
With Keenan Cummings + Eric Jacobsen of Wander, Renda Morton + Andy Pressman of Rumors and Robert Lenne + Craig Spaeth of Art.sy
Wednesday (Apr 11), 7 p.m. @ General Assembly, 902 Broadway, 4th Floor

ER Accelerator Happy Hour
Applications now open for ERA June 2012 class
Thursday (Apr 12), 6:30 p.m. @ Connolly's NYC, 121 West 45th Street, 3rd Floor

Appsumo presents #Techdrinkup - Open Bar @ Inc Lounge - The Anniversary Party
A party for NYC's brightest and savviest people in tech to get together at exclusive NYC venues and mingle over drinks and food.
Thursday (Apr 12), 8 p.m. @ Inc Lounge, 224 W 49th St

FounderMatchup New York
Are you a marketing wizard looking for a Ruby on Rails guru? Are you an MIT mastermind whose ideas need a customer sales 007? On Friday the 13th, come meet your match!
Friday (Apr 13), 6 p.m. @ Dogpatch Labs, 36 East 12th Street

Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy (BLIP) Legal Hackathon
With Art Chang (Tipping Point), Sherwin Siy (Public Knowledge), Andrew Rasiej (Personal Democracy Media and NYTM)
Sunday (Apr 15), 9 a.m. @ Brooklyn Law School, 250 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn

More on the horizon…
An Insiders Guide to Angel Fundraising on Apr 17 @ General Assembly
Founders@Fail Avi Muchnick: Aviary on Apr 17 @ Dogpatch Labs
April NY Enterprise Technology Meetup on Apr 18 @ Cooley
AWS Summit 2012 | NYC on Apr 19 @ Jacob K. Javits Convention Center
New York Tech Day on Apr 19 @ Lexington Armory
SkillShare Penny Conference on Apr 20 @ The NY Times Center

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

Mock up of the MetroChange

Have you ever seen folks standing by the Metrocard reader (the one that tells you how much is on the card, not the turnstile) just swiping card after card from a big pile. That's because a lot of times people end up with a random chunk of spare change on their card, but end up throwing it away instead of refilling.

A group of students, Stepan Boltalin, Genevieve Hoffman and Paul May, from NYU's ITP created a prototype for a system called MetroChange that lets straphangers donate that left over fare to charity. The trio points out that every year $52 million is lost on Metrocards people throw away. The problem has gotten so bad the MTA is introducing a $1 replacement fee in the new year.

The kiosk the group created also doubles as a recycling container for the depleted Metrocards. The group is looking for a partner, either the city or a charitable organization, to help them process the payments.

Here's a video demonstration of how the MetroChange system might work. Thanks to Alexis Madrigal for spotting the project.

MetroChange from Genevieve Hoffman on Vimeo.

Ms. Burns and Mr. Crowley at this year's Webby Awards.

Here's one way to win the tech talent war. Barry Diller's IAC announced today that it's committing $250,000 towards the IAC Teaching and Research Fellowship Fund for top post-grad students from ITP.

ITP, or Interactive Telecommunications Program, is a graduate program in interactive media run out of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts which boasts Internet famous alum like foursquare's Dennis Crowley. (An ITP mention at most Silicon Alley event is likely to get few whoots from the crowd.) ITP founding chair Red Burns was awarded a Webby this year by Mr. Crowley. "Red Burns has been a seminal leader in creating ITP, long before the activity of interactivity became a prime driver of innovation and commerce in New York," said Mr. Diller.

According to the press release, the fellows will function like TAs at ITP while they lending their recently-honed academic skills to IAC, of course:

"IAC Fellows will work directly with IAC mentors, leading business and strategy executives at the company and its brands, to discuss ongoing research, tackle challenges, and build a framework for a sustainable and successful career, post-fellowship. The fellows will also participate in a part-time internship within one of IAC's divisions."

Of the four fellows named today, two (Patricia Adler and Mike Knuepfel) will work at IAC's in-house incubator Hatch Labs and two (Calli Higgins and Chika Iijima) will work at Vimeo.

Sorry folks, that's four less people showing up at the Silicon Alley job fair this Friday.