Photo: NASA

Who Doesn't Want To Meet A Real-Life Astronaut? We've already covered the upcoming 2013 International Space Apps Challenge, the NASA-sponsored space app development challenge, but the event just got even better with the announcement that U.S. astronaut Ron Garan will be in attendance as NASA's official ambassador. Attendees will have the chance to meet Mr. Garan, who has nearly 100,000 followers on Twitter (@Astro_Ron), at the NASA Hackathon Kickoff Party at Alley NYC (500 7th Avenue), this Friday at 7 PM. Trips to space not guaranteed.

SocialSign.In Hopes To Solve Everyone's Wi-Fi Problems At Work SocialSign.in announced the public launch of its social network-powered Wi-Fi platform today at the DEMO Mobile 2013 conference. SocialSign.in allows workers at a company to link their social media presence such as their Facebook with their company's Wi-Fi, giving them easy online access at all of their company's locations with a simple uniform password and ID. SocialSign.in also helps companies track user data and patterns, and can be used across all Internet-connecting devices. Now hopefully we can all clean out our desks filled with those sticky notes for Wi-Fi passwords.

New Blog Totally Steals Our Name In a move to simplify several blogs into a single hub, The Wall Street Journal announced the creation of their new leading financial and business blog, Moneybeat. Some of the blogs being integrated into Moneybeat include MarketBeat, The Source, Overheard and all of the paper's Deal Journals. MoneyBeat will be run by former Deal Journal and MarketBeat editor Stephen Grocer, and will be "a one-stop shop for everybody interested in finance and markets, no matter where they are around the world,” WSJ Managing Edito Gerard Baker said in a press release.

Fresh Cash for NYC Cloud Company Booker, the cloud-based communication and marketing system for SMBs and other enterprises announced yesterday a new $27.5 million Series B investment, led by Bain Capital Ventures. Other investors include Booker's Series A supporters Revolution Ventures, Grotech Ventures, TDF Ventures, and Vital Financial. Booker said in a press release that the new funding will be used to increase the product's reach and advertisement capabilities in online marketing. Maybe they can use the money to help fix all those "targeted" Facebook ads.

Alloy Acquires DBG Online distributor and marketing company Alloy Digital, which we've previously featured, announced today that it has acquired digital video advertiser Digital Broadcasting Group. The deal is meant to help combine Alloy's distribution network with DBG’s large video syndications.

NYT and BBC Host Perfectly Timed Social Media Summit The New York Times and the BBC College of Journalism will be hosting a Social Media Summit this Saturday to address the current state of social media and its use by journalists in investigating and reporting stories, and social media distribution company Mahaya will be on site to cover the event. Mahaya, which provides real-time summarization, ranking, and display of stories that appear on social media, is one of three companies currently participating in The Times's new timeSpace initiative to bring entrepreneurs to the NYT headquarters to refine and grow their businesses. Wonder if they're going to bring up this little 'ol Boston Marathon Suspect Twitter mess?

Food Delivery Anonymity Now Possible With Bitcoins Boston-based online food delivering service Foodler announced today that they will become the first online food ordering service to accept Bitcoins as payment for delivery and takeout. Foodler users will now be able to connect their Bitcoin wallet with their Foodler account, which will allow them to buy 'Foodlerbucks', the company's online currency, with their Bitcoins. These "Foodlerbucks" are then used to pay for deliveries. The company, which also has an iPhone app, can be used in 48 states across the U.S. Because who doesn't want to pay for a cheeseburger with the world's most volatile currency?

Ziggeo Completes Beta Ziggeo, the online video network which allows you to privately screen videos of candidates for jobs and roommates, testimonials, and more, has announced that it has completed its beta testing and is now available for public use. Users can choose from a free plan for 20 second videos, a personal plan for up to 2 minute videos and a pro one for up to 10 minute videos.

For roughly a year now--almost six months since I wrote a wildly popular column about it for The Observer--Facebook has been pushing an utterly duplicitous and embarrassing business model.

The scheme: Facebook posts are seen by only a woeful fraction of a company’s total fans or subscribers (often less than 15 percent). And conveniently, that percentage is controlled by Facebook, while the site simultaneously offers an expensive "service" that allows companies to pay to reach its own fans. This throttling quickly became a source of millions of dollars of revenue for the social network.

It's about as plain and malignant a case of conflict of interest can get. One that only Facebook would dare to try.

Small businesses and entrepreneurs have reacted vehemently against it, even going as far as to create a protest called “I Want My Friends Back”. Mark Cuban threatened to stop using the platform over it. Hell, the whole thing is old enough that the inevitable counter-backlash already came and went.

But only now, when Nick Bilton at the New York Times experienced it himself, did the phenomenon suddenly hit the top of Techmeme.

Some of the tweets from Bilton's colleagues are pretty amazing: "I dunno, I kind of feel like we knew this was coming eventually," writes Anthony De Rosa, a Reuters columnist and social media editor.

Indeed! We knew it because it already happened.

Felix Salmon, also of Reuters, tweeted back to Bilton at the Times, "Insofar as it applies only to fans/subscribers rather than actual friends, surely not a big deal."

Except that's not true either. In October, TechCrunch revealed that Facebook was expanding the program so that users needed (or could choose, depending on your interpretation) to pay $7 to extend the reach about "important announcements" like weddings, garage sales or parties.

I don't mean to pile on any of these well-meaning writers. (Some, like Zach Seward at Quartz, pretty much nailed it with his analysis of how Facebook tweaks "the black box that is EdgeRank," in order to promote and incentivize features). They are right to be outraged and perplexed. Facebook's pay-for-placement program is ridiculous. Except it's been ridiculous for quite some time. And apparently part of the reason Facebook has been able to get away with it is that few media gatekeepers, who are supposed to follow this stuff for a living, know how the platform really works.

The common dismissal I’ve seen from far too many journalists--“how else should Facebook make money?”--implies that they or their sources just don’t understand the ad business. They aren’t able to see that Facebook’s sponsored story play is fundamentally different from most ad models.

Take Tumblr’s new ad platform Radar, on which I have done six-figures worth of buying for my client American Apparel. To create it, Tumblr designed entirely new advertising space on the platform that people have to pay to be a part of. In that case, buyers didn’t previously have access to it so if they want it, they have to pay for it. Tumblr’s interest is to make that space as attractive and valuable as possible to buyers, so they’ll pay for it. In this case, our interests are aligned--however long it took Tumblr to get here.

That’s very different from Facebook’s model, in which the worse Facebook posts ‘work’ for brands, the more brands will need to pay Facebook. That means that Facebook and I now have divergent interests. Intentionally or not, the less my posts show up, the more I need to spend to cover the difference, especially since brands have invested in and become dependent on Facebook over the years.

Facebook has put itself in an ugly position. Even if they’re not doing anything with it right now—it looks like they easily could. To me, it doesn’t seem any different than someone like Goldman Sachs or any financial firm being short a position that they turn around and sell to an unsuspecting client as an investment. The worse it does for their client, the better it is for the house. Why even risk the potential impropriety? Greed is the only answer. I seem to remember we fined a ton of Wall Street analysts during the first dotcom bubble for exactly such a maneuver.

Does Facebook have a ‘right’ to operate this way–to throttle access and charge unequally for passage? As a for-profit company, they absolutely do. It’s just bafflingly shortsighted--and borderline unethical--to anyone who really thinks about it for two seconds.

I’m just starting to realize that most tech media have neglected to do that.

And THAT is why Facebook has gotten away with this appalling bait-and-switch. That's how they’ve been boldly able to be (and remain) broken on purpose.

Ryan Holiday is the bestselling author of  Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator and a PR strategist for brands and writers.

It was high time that The New York Times published a trend piece on GIFs. It was not surprising that the GIF the Grey Lady embedded didn't actually loop..  [Gawker]

"Does she ever wonder, though, whether her readers might need that tip-jar money more than she does?" More on the blogonomics of Maria Popova's Brain Pickings. [Counterparties]

For those of you who have always dreamed of syncing your iPod to your favorite sex toy, here are some possibilities for a high-tech Valentine's Day. [Mashable]

After President Barack Obama issued an executive order on cybersecurity following his State of the Union address, Congress has scheduled hearings on a cyber bill. [The Hill]

Mark Zuckerberg's stake in Facebook has climbed to nearly 30 percent, according to recent filings. [Business Insider]

(Photo: Labnol.org)

You may have heard the devastating news that The New York Times has finally plugged the famous paywall loophole that allowed users to access more than their monthly allotment of articles. Once you used up your 10 free articles for the month, you could just delete the "?gwh=numbers" part of the URL to easily and freely access the story.

Sadly, the Times confirmed that they've officially put the kibosh on this notorious workaround. "We have made some adjustments and will continue to make adjustments to optimize the gateway by implementing technical security solutions to prohibit abuse and protect the value of our content," Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy told New York Mag.

Lucky for you, there are still several workarounds you can employ in order to access premium content without paying for a subscription--but don't say we forced you to take the cheap way out.

1. Google the headline 

This also works for the Wall Street Journal paywall. Google the headline and click through from the Google search results page and you should be able to read the story.

2. Use an incognito window in Chrome

Incognito windows let you browse the web privately. Since cookies are deleted each time you close the window, you should be able to access stories to your heart's content.

3. Search for the link on Twitter

Copy and paste the link into a Twitter search and click through to the story from Twitter. Stories accessed via social media don't count towards your article limit.

4. Use the NYClean bookmark

The NYClean bookmark is an easy way to skirt the paywall. When you hit a paywalled story, just click the bookmark and it unblocks the story for you. Magic!

5. Quit complaining and pony up the $15/month for quality journalism

Nobody likes to hear this option, but there is a reason the Times is the paper of record. Digital subscriptions for unlimited access to content on NYTimes.com and the NYTimes app cost $15/month.

Srs cyber bsns. (Photo: Wikimedia)

With cyber attacks whistling by at an ever-increasing clip, it's not surprising that the Obama administration is hard at work nailing down how to respond. The policies will remain hush-hush once they're finalized, but the New York Times (which previously connected the president to the deployment of Stuxnet) has one juicy tidbit: A classified legal review has found that the president has "broad power to order a pre-emptive strike if the United States detects credible evidence of a major digital attack looming from abroad."

That'll sound familiar to anyone who hasn't entirely repressed the memory of the Bush administration! (Mr. President, a very agitated Colin Powell is on line two. Something about enriched uranium and the U.N.?)

Now, this does not mean that President Obama will be launching the cyber nukes to prevent "routine" attacks, like when some hacktivists wants to DDOS your online banking provider. That's the province of Homeland Security and the F.B.I., because your inability to check your balance? Not actually an imminent national security threat.

But when someone launches an infrastructure-crippling attack on the power grid, for example (it's always the power grid!), it becomes a military concern. In that instance, the president has the authority to act preemptively should he see fit.

However, as rationales go, it's not totally airtight:

Pre-emption in the context of cyberwar raises a potentially bigger quandary, because a country hit by a pre-emptive cyberstrike could easily claim that it was innocent, undermining the justification for the attack. “It would be very hard to provide evidence to the world that you hit some deadly dangerous computer code,” one senior official said.

Glad to know diplomacy in the age of cyberwar hasn't changed that much: It's still mostly just throwing up one's hands and shouting "wasn't me!"

(Photo: Alley Cat Allies)

A group of cats rights activists are decidedly not amused by the recent backlash against the Internet's favorite mascot. Last week, the New York Times ran a story called "That Cuddly Kitty Is Deadlier Than You Think" based on a Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute report, which set off a firestorm of “Cats are killers!” stories--angering cat ladies everywhere.

Cat advocates refuse to stand for this breed of anti-cat propaganda, and they intend to do something about. In a newsletter sent out by the Maryland-based cat charity Alley Cat Allies, the Times and its ilk are taken to task for publishing "junk science" that was "authored by researchers with an anti-cat track record." They maaaaad, bro.

Alley Cat Allies relies on a system called “Trap-Neuter-Return," which they say has lead to a reduced number of feral cats being trapped and sent to kill shelters. The group claims the recent stories decrying murderous felines are based on "biased research that could lead to more outdoor cats being rounded up and killed." They also claim the study cites a researcher who was "convicted and fired for trying to poison cats." Yikes.

"We cannot stand for cats to be scapegoats," reads the outraged newsletter, which directs readers to a link where they can sign a petition asking the Smithsonian to disavow the study. Hey now, let's not bring the goat lobby into this.

Last year, Kickstarter sent 19 films to Park City, four of which picked up awards. This year, 17 Kickstarter-backed films made it to Sundance and took home 5 awards. More importantly, you might actually get a chance to see some, since four films already inked deals. 

Blood Brother won the U. S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary & U.S. Documentary Audience Award, both Inequality For All and American Promise picked up the U. S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Achievement in Filmmaking, This is Martin Bonner won Audience Award: Best of NEXT, and The Square won Audience Award: World Cinema: Documentary.

In terms of distribution deals, Newlyweeds sold to Phase 4, Inequality For All sold to Radius, I Used to Be Darker sold to Monteray Media, and 99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film sold to Participant Media.

Those weren't the only notches in the Kickstarter team's hipster belts this week. David Gallagher, deputy tech editor at The New York Times, announced on Twitter that he will soon be joining as director of communications. "We're thrilled that David's decided to join the team," said Justin Kazmark, who has been handling PR for the company for awhile. Any other journos interested in defecting, the company is hiring. Here's a handy reference guide for Silicon Alley negotiations.

(Wikipedia)

New York City is pretty well saturated with incubators and accelerators and the like, such that when West coast stalwart 500 Startups decided to move into Silicon Alley, it opted to launch a coworking space, rather than further clutter an already crowded market.

Not that the plethora of local options is stopping everyone from piling into the accelerator game: According to a post on The New York Times website, the paper of record is launching a program called timeSpace:

a new initiative from The New York Times that brings entrepreneurs to our headquarters to refine and grow their businesses. Over four months, you and your team will work out of 620 8th Avenue, meet with relevant Times staff, demo your product and teach/learn alongside entrepreneurs and employees who make their livings in digital media, technology and journalism.

Well, why not? The existence of prior offerings from smaller, earlier competitors has rarely stopped The New York Times from piling into a story. What's good for editorial strategy is good for the tech portfolio, no?

But slow down.

Just because the Times has invested in digital media startups such as WordPress, Betaworks and Federated Media, doesn't mean it's seeking equity in timeSpace companies—which, per the announcement, will likely be early stage startups with a product already launched: "If and when you raise an institutional round of financing, The New York Times Company will separately consider participating if invited."

As for whether New York needs another accelerator, the Times appears to be hedging there as well.

"You may call it an accelerator or an incubator," the Grey Lady said in its carefully-worded call for applications. "Right now we are calling it an experiment and looking forward to working alongside you."

(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.

(Photo: IGN)

As a pretty avid Xbox aficianado and also a person with two X chromosomes, this Betabeat reporter was unsurprised to read in the New York Times today about the seriousness of sexism in gaming culture. We gave up using a mic on Xbox Live long ago, the slew of vicious insults hurled at us just for having a girly voice not worth it when we could happily kick friends' asses on local co-op mode, no slurs necessary.

But the Times's piece hammers home just how rampant the degradation is, and it's pretty jarring. In one video clip embedded in the article, a female gamer's coach threatens to "smell her" as punishment for losing a round in Cross Assault. It's not the creepiest thing we've ever seen, but it comes damn close.

Writes the Times:

In other game communities, however, sexual threats, taunts and come-ons are common, as is criticism that women’s presence is “distracting” or that they are simply trying to seek attention. Some have been offered money or virtual “gold” for online sex. Some have been stalked online and in person.

In good news, however, some gamer bigshots are taking measures to weed out sexism in gaming. “The nasty undercurrent in the scene isn’t a joke or a meme,” one gaming tournament cofounder told the Times. “It’s something we need to fix.”

Now if you'll excuse us, we have some yelping skags to kill in Borderlands.