(Photo: Amazon)
Front Page Printed Pages of the Internet Just before taking stage at SXSW to talk his crowdfunded Internet 2012 tour, Alexis Ohanian emailed out a link to his new book, Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed.
Since you asked, Mr. Ohanian, we dig the cover, but "without their permission," sounds a little iffy in the context of Reddit's Creepshot scandal, no?
Last week, we wondered when Mr. Ohanian was running for office already. “Alas no,” he emailed back. “I'm not going to rule anything out but right now I'm having too much fun (and impact) from my place in the private sector.” However, as the Young Entrepreneur Council founder Scott Gerber pointed out, Mr. Ohanian does happen to own the domain name ohanian2013.com.
Just checking in 525,600 minutes. How do you measure a year in the life of a (defoundered) man? Earlier this week, on the anniversary of his abrupt departure from Foursquare, cofounder Naveen Selvadurai posted a recap of the last 12 months. Don't expect to learn much about what he's been working on, though. Think more in daylights, in sunsets, in midnights and cups of coffee.
Mr. Selvadurai lost the founder 15; he traveled; he saw his family and friends; he traveled some more; he read books; he went to Disney and rode Space Mountain many times; he learned to drive stick; he went to the Olympics. "I always kept saying 'year 30' wouldn’t be such a big deal and that it’s just like any other. it turned out to be so much more and i’m grateful for that," he reflected.
Oh, but he might have picked up a bit of a gloomy streak, too:
this is how the war will start - "ohio man charged with shooting robot" singularityhub.com/2013/03/04/ohi…
— naveen (@naveen) March 6, 2013
(Photo: Instagram/Dens)
So (proto)typical Google Glasses are now just popping up everywhere, it seems. The latest sighting comes via Digg community manager Veronica De Souza: "SPOTTED: A skater bro wearing google glass in bedstuy. Who are you?" she tweeted. Betebeat welcomes any intel as to the identity of this mystery man, so we can pester him until he lets us try his specs on.
Maybe Dennis Crowley knows the guy. The Foursquare cofounder recently, "lost my Google Glass virginity."
(Photo: Instagram/Fred Benenson)
Spotted! Our friends at Quora--the erudite agoraphobe’s answer to Yahoo! Answers--never got the memo that print was dead. Thus earlier this year, the site opted to publish a 441-page hardcover book called “The Best of Quora,” featuring 131 primers. Forbes called it a “fascinating, enchanting, exasperating book,” and wondered if the inquiring minds of Quora were “too clever” for their own good.
Author Clive Thompson and Kickstarter’s Fred Benenson got to thumb through the pages and see for themselves when they spotted a copy “in the wild” at Lil Frankie’s Pizza in the East Village. Mr. Thompson said on Instagram that he received an advanced copy this week. As Bill Couch, a front-end product engineer at Twitter explained in the comments, “[Quora] issued them as gifts to the authors of those answers at the end of last year, then provided it as a PDF online.”
Guess the question about Betabeat didn’t make the cut.
:( Guys, we think Tumblr really hurt Shelby.tv cofounder Reece Pacheco feelings. He recently published a long, sad blog post announcing, "Tumblr I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down." Nothing says heartache like LCD Soundsystem! So what set Mr. Pacheco off? He logged into Tumblr the other day, as he does regularly, and found himself subjected to a laborious, drawn-out attempt to get him to follow more blogs. Then, he was given a few hovering tool tips--on a service he's been using for years.
He did not like this!
Thing is, I wouldn’t be so frustrated with you, Tumblr, if I didn’t love the platform so much. If you were just some other social network, I’d say “Do whatever you want. I don’t care. Your only value is your scale.”
But that’s not you, so don’t treat me like some number. You know I’m active. You know I’m a creator more than a reblogger. Treat me that way and show me some added benefit, rather than just trying to get more mindless engagement out of me.
Sorry, Reece--those revenue targets aren't gonna hit themselves.
Mmm, cake Happy birthday to GroupMe cofounder Steve Martocci, who got quite the gift in celebration. There's a Vine of the festivities, but here's a teaser:
Looks like a party, alright!
High fashion Huffpo cofounder Kenny Lerer is well known around Silicon Alley as an investor. But did anyone know he is, as his son Ben Lerer put it on Twitter, "fcking fashionable"? Mr. Lerer the Elder recently appeared in a New York Times profile of Laurent DeLouya, "the amiable proprietor of a hair salon that over 50 years has amassed a following that is kind of a cultural Core Club." Papa Lerer told the Times he'd "walk over hot coals for Laurent,” and apparently Mr. DeLouya performed baby Ben's first haircut at age 3.
We yearn to someday achieve that kind of rapport with a stylist.
User #279 Your user number can be a figure of pride among the tech set. If it's low enough it signals that you're an early adopter, and makes you feel cool, which is kinda sad if you think about it cuz like, look at your life.
"I'm User No. 279," humblebragged New York Times tech writer Nick Bilton in a recent Twitter back and forth. "I got @dens drunk and [sic] Nick Denton's house and made him give me a beta account."
Whatever works.