Prolific startup investor and jOBS star Ashton Kutcher has news for everyone: he’s a total brainiac, not unlike Steve Jobs! The whole time he was playing dumb bro characters in sitcoms like That 70′s Show and Two and a Half Men and tweeting clueless riffs on sensitive news stories, he was actually acting. Read More
Move over, Josh Brolin: there’s a new uber-dedicated method actor in town, and his name is Aplusk.
If you thought the recently released clip of the Steve Jobs biopic Jobs looked a lot like Ashton Kutcher walking and talking just like Ashton Kutcher but in a black turtleneck, you obviously underestimate his dedication to his craft. USA Today reports that just prior to shooting Jobs, Mr. Kutcher was briefly hospitalized for submerging himself a little too deeply into the character. In an attempt to get closer to his hippie entrepreneur character, Mr. Kutcher adopted Mr. Jobs’s all-fruit-and-nut diet. Read More
Feeling blue about missing Sundance? Cheer up. Ashton Kutcher’s Steve Jobs biopic is slated to arrive April 19 at a theater near you. [The Hollywood Reporter]
Apple set a company record for iPhone sales last quarter, but it wasn’t enough to placate investors, who sent shares falling in late trading after Apple announced its quarterly results. [AllThingsD]
It wasn’t all bad for tech stocks. Netflix soared after the company announced better-than-expected profit on the strength of new subscribers. [Bloomberg]
Careful. The NYPD has a new device that detects the energy emitted by the rocket in your pocket. [NYDN]
“While I haven’t seen hard data on how this plays out across the industry, my personal experience has been that women in tech are primarily found in these emotional labor-heavy departments, even in the tiniest companies.” [Quartz]
Raaaaaaandi! [Fast Company]
Not only is Starbucks accepting payments via Square, the coffee conglomerate is now also selling the Square credit card reader for $10 at its retail locations. [New York Times]
Spotify has suspended its music download service in the U.K. Users can still stream music, but are sent to an unhelpful FAQ page when they attempt to purchase it. [Pocket-Lint]
Kim Dotcom says the U.S. “planted” evidence, encouraging him to keep copyrighted files on the Megaupload servers but then punishing him when he did so. [Ars Technica]
That indie Steve Jobs film, that will star Ashton Kutcher and be an inevitable flop that we will still watch anyway, is slated for release in April. Who wants to go with us? [Wall Street Journal]
The New York state comptroller is suing microchip company Qualcomm for data about its political expenditures with the hopes it can bring more transparency to corporate political spending. [New York Times]
David Mas, a graphic designer based in Crevillente, Spain, was just looking for a creative way to stand out in his crowded field. So he turned to the land of sepia filters and brunch photos for help, natch.
Mr. Mas created an Instagram account, @esto_es_un_curriculum, to showcase his skills and past projects. Uninterestingly enough, no borders or filters have been applied to any of the 38 uploads, but none of them have been tagged with #nofilter. It’s a total rookie move. Read More
It's Zuck's World We're Just Living In It
Ever since its bungled IPO, Facebook has grown increasingly serious about snatching top engineering talent for its sprawling compound. The company has even begun plucking Wall Street engineers from their siloed banking institutions and putting them to work cranking out PHP. In fact, it appears the company is growing so desperate for engineers that they’ve compiled a little cheat sheet that can enlighten any potential applicants on how to nab a Facebook job. Read More
Given the dearth of qualified engineers in New York (and Facebook’s propensity for hoarding them), an online job tool geared solely towards programmers and designers was more or less inevitable. Enter Path.to, a Florida-based online job company that announced today that it is expanding to New York, along with Chicago and Boston.
Path.to describes itself as an “eHarmony for jobs,” but if you can forgive them for that PR fumble, the company’s approach to hiring is actually quite novel. “We try to get a deeper understanding of job seekers, life situation, personality, their experience and education, as well as their passions and interests,” Path.to’s CEO Darren Bounds told Betabeat by phone last week. “We pair that with a better understanding of a business and their culture and what it takes to be successful in a particular role. We combine those two things and sprinkle algorithmic sugar on top, and we come up with a Path.to score. It’s a 0-99 measure of how compatible we feel a person is with a specific role at a specific company.” Read More
Instapaper proper Good news, Android users: No more workarounds for you. You can finally have for-real Instapaper, rather than the next best thing. The reading app is now available for the platform that’s not iOS. (That is, unless you’re unwilling to cough up the $2.99.)
Ever better Meanwhile, Sailthru is iterating all up in here. They’ve added new features including zip code radius, so users can now find subscribers within a certain geographical area. Plus you can now label templates with custom tags (simplifying search) and include data feeds in transactional emails.
Gamify your life The NYC Gaming Meetup is moving on uptown. The gathering has outgrown GA, so next Monday, June 11th, will be the first demo night at Microsoft’s offices, their new home. RSVPs due tomorrow, June 7th; holler at the organizers if you’ve got something you’d like to show off.
Gathering in Gotham Heads up for later in the month: The Gotham Ruby Conference is June 23. Here’s the speaker lineup for all you curious hackers. Also, we should probably mention that a yacht party is included in the cost of admission.
Just for me Quincy reportedly just closed a $950,000 seed round, led by Great Oaks Venture Capital. The company aims to offer better-fitting women’s clothing at a non-couture price point. Here’s how: Ditching the traditional S/M/L categories but eschewing the ultra-tailored approach, Quincy has developed its own, more customizable sizing system based on length, bust and cup size. Read More
We haven’t really been following All Things D’s D10 conference, but when we heard Aaron Sorkin was slated to hit the stage, we decided to cue up the livestream. It’s a slow news day, after all.
We’re glad we did, though. In a discussion with Walt Mossberg, Mr. Sorkin revealed a few interesting details about the current film he’s working on–an adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s biography of the late Steve Jobs–including what kind of actor he envisions playing the title role. Read More
In real life, the actor Ashton Kutcher has made a name for himself by backing several of today’s biggest startups–like Airbnb, Foursquare and GroupMe, to name a few–so it’s no surprise that he wants to take his tech obsession to the big screen.
Mr. Kutcher will be taking on the role of the late Read More
