(Screencap: YouTube)

Google announced a campaign this morning that would allow non-developers to score a pair of Google Glass by tweeting a missive about what you'd do with the specs along with the hashtag #ifihadglass. The whole thing quickly devolved into a bunch of bad Twitter jokes. But techies, it seems, are pretty desperate to get their hands on Glass.

First, we have tech writer Jason Kincaid, who made a music video about how badly he wants Glass. If he doesn't win, at least now the Internet knows what a magical singing voice he has.

Business Insider writer Nich Carlson wants to use it to make "better, experience based slideshows." NEW MEDIA JACKPOT.

https://twitter.com/nichcarlson/status/304213322637660162

There were the suckups:

https://twitter.com/ajt/status/304233891315732481

https://twitter.com/nickbilton/status/304282064851726336

The impossibly topical entries:

https://twitter.com/spencerchen/status/304260383093452800

https://twitter.com/spencerchen/status/304289259341369344

https://twitter.com/alexismadrigal/status/304279568301301760

The geniuses:

https://twitter.com/joshgreenman/status/304299102353649664

https://twitter.com/BarryTheArtGuy/status/304312879283322881

The humblebraggers:

https://twitter.com/jeffjarvis/status/304308390925049856

https://twitter.com/Natkinns/status/304313587592224768

And of course, the doubters.

https://twitter.com/bendreyfuss/status/304300046164324352

https://twitter.com/bendreyfuss/status/304304671449808898

https://twitter.com/kashhill/status/304281088258359296

As for Betabeat, we made the completely rational and reasonable offer of our left kidney, but are still waiting for a response from Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google/Babies.

(Photo: Digital Trends)

Rupert Murdoch's less than two-year-old foray into digital-only publishing has officially come to an end with the news that The Daily, News Corp.'s iPad-only magazine, will cease publication on December 15th. Some of The Daily's assets and 120 employees will transition over to other News Corp. entities; Jesse Angelo, its editor-in-chief, will serve as the new publisher of the New York Post.

Mr. Murdoch wrote in a press release:

From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation. Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term. Therefore we will take the very best of what we have learned at The Daily and apply it to all our properties. Under the editorial leadership of Editor-in-Chief Col Allan and the business and digital leadership of Jesse, I know The New York Post will continue to grow and become stronger on the web, on mobile, and not least, the paper itself. I want to thank all of the journalists, digital and business professionals for the hard work they put into The Daily.

The news comes on the heels of downsizing that took place at the iPad mag this past summer, when it went from 170 employees to 120.

News Corp.'s brazen bet on an iPad-only format raised eyebrows when it was announced two years ago, and it may have been the mag's inability to expand its audience within the cluttered app market that led to its demise. Likewise, the company's hacking scandal, which caused it to split News Corp assets like The Daily and The Post away from profit-filled pocketbooks like film and broadcast, may have prevented it from supporting money-losing ventures.

While many seem saddened by the news, new media evangelists on Twitter have already taken to gloating. "How well did that pay wall religion work at The Daily,@rupertmurdoch?" tweeted CUNY journalism professor Jeff Jarvis.

(Screencap: Twitter)

Update: Our long national nightmare is over. Twitter has reinstated @NYTOnIt, under the condition that it gets a new logo or else face "permanent deletion." The NYTOnIt Facebook page is now having a design contest for a new logo.

Avid media watchers are well acquainted with the presence of @NYTOnIt, a longstanding Twitter account that gently mocks The New York Times by pointing out articles or trend stories that tread somewhere between indulgent and "duh." Each tweet always ends with "and The Times is ON IT" to drive home the point that the stories tweeted by @NYTOnIt are some of the Times’s less-than-thought-provoking fare. As the account's Twitter bio explains, "Because sometimes stories in newspapers are just *that* obvious."

But now, Twitter has suspended the beloved @NYTOnIt account, which according to a Google cache of the page boasted over 20,000 followers. The account is now inaccessible via Twitter.

Benjamin Kabak, author of the blog Second Avenue Sagas, outed himself on Twitter as the writer behind @NYTOnIT. "Considering how many NYTers know I run @NYTOnIt, it's pretty disappointing they couldn't contact me without going through Twitter's TOS," he tweeted. "Some Times lawyer got upset over my edited use of the T logo. I say it's fair use and they used Twitter's TOS to suspend account. So now I have to wait for Twitter to unsuspend the account before I can correct the *allegedly infringing* materials."

Mr. Kabak further explained what happened on the Times is On It Facebook page:

Twitter has suspended my account over a claim from The Times that my avatar violates a trademark. I say fair use. Right now, I'm waiting for Twitter to process my request to fix the problem so I can get the account reenabled. But feel free to spread the word over how the country's largest newspaper feels threatened by a small Twitter account right now.

@NYTOnIt does use an edited version of the "T" used to represent The New York Times Style Magazine. But Mr. Kabak was careful to differentiate the account from the actual New York Times, including the following line in @NYTOnIt's bio: "(This is a parody account clearly not associated with any newspaper.)"

Twitter does not comment on individual accounts, so can't offer any further clarification as to why the account was suspended. We've reached out to The New York Times for comment and will update when we hear back. The Times did confirm to Poynter that it had filed the complaint:

We did file a complaint with Twitter and it is our understanding that they have suspended this account for a violation of Twitter’s terms of service. We’re not seeking to disable the account however it is important to The Times that our copyright is protected and that it is clear to all users of Twitter that parody accounts or other unofficial Times accounts are not affiliated nor endorsed by The Times.

In the meantime, CUNY journalism professor Jeff Jarvis has taken it upon himself to pick up where @NYTOnIt left off.

Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Jarvis

Betabeat is reporting today from the Guardian Activate Summit, a meeting of the minds thrown by British newspaper The Guardian to discuss technology and media. The presentations at this year's summit were interrupted by a loud, unbelievably annoying jackhammer that continuously pounded from below. You could feel the ground of the Paley Center for Media shake as the audience struggled to ignore it and focus on the speakers, but this reporter doesn't even have ADHD and found it incredibly distracting. Jeff Jarvis, director of CUNY's Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, joked that it helped score the beat of the conversation.

Mr. Jarvis chaired the summit, and continuously referred to himself as the Oprah of the event, which repeatedly triggered muffled giggles. Following opening remarks from Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor in chief, Mr. Jarvis kicked off with a conversation with Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn's cofounder and executive chairman.

The conversation broached a number of topics, including the importance of an open Internet, advice for startups and how to build successful news and business ecosystems.

Some of the highlights are below.

On advice for startups:

• "I’d have to see the details of the startup--generic advice isn’t usually that useful," said Mr. Hoffman. One of the pitfalls for startups, particularly news startups, is that innovation becomes stifled by the cages news organizations put themselves in, such as their brand or if their staff is very large, said Mr. Hoffman. "You should start from a blank slate and think what are the kinds of things you can start running experiments on."

On LinkedIn going public:

• "When you’re a public company, you try to make no forward-looking predictions and have to communicate that while you’re also trying to be good on the public arena when you’re not making those statements," said Mr. Hoffman. "I worried going public would actually make the company less open, but it's been okay so far."

On Kickstarter and crowdsourcing:

• "If people haven't played with Kickstarter, I highly recommend it. It allowed movies and board games which aren’t as financeable as companies--and maybe they’ll turn into a company because there’s a demand for a product, and it could be a precursor to that."
• "We are in a series of transformations which have been instrumental, because you have open source software and it’s much cheaper to start Internet companies. You now see thousands of them happening. You can literally talk to an undergraduate and they say, 'We’re working on a company,' and that used to not be true."
• "The Internet is an open platform that’s already been transformational, and crowdfunding is an increment."

Following the conversation, Mr. Jarvis opened it up to questions from the audience. The first person asked a question about social, and then made an awkward attempt to endear himself to Mr. Hoffman by asking him out to lunch.

"I already have lunch plans," responded Mr. Hoffman, quite dipolomatically.

Mr. Jarvis asked how many people in the audience had a startup, and about 10 people raised their hands. The discussion closed with Mr. Jarvis giving three people in the audience the opportunity to tell Mr. Reid their elevator pitches for their startups. Most of them had to do with social media, except for the last, which was "a magazine for millennials, by millennials."

"'Magazine' is a very retro term," noted Mr. Hoffman.