Yahoo! for Yahoos! We’ve found a leading candidate for the single person happiest to hear that Yahoo was acquiring Tumblr. No, we’re not talking about CEO David Karp.
Meet Tumblr engineer Jeremy Johnstone. He used to work for Yahoo, and, apparently, the company retains a place of pride in his heart. In fact, he still wears Yahoo gear so constantly that one of his colleagues (the parent of Tommy Pom, no less) has created an entire Tumblr–“Jeremy’s Yahoo Wardrobe”–to chronicle his displays of loyalty.
For example, here is the bright purple car covered in Yahoo decals that he drove in 2007. Here is his Halloween costume from 2006, when he dressed up as the Yahoo logo. And then there are his many company t-shirts. Love is a beautiful thing, you guys.
Quantify ALL THE THINGS Are you curious about what Foursquare cofounder Naveen Selvadurai is up to? Like, really, really curious? Good news! The quantified-self devotee has just debuted api.naveen, an attempt to create a personal API “that would expose all of the information i knew about myself in a clean, open document.” Included are data points like sleep, weight and checkins. He speculates it might be useful for research, so if there are any desperate grad students out there, have at it. The rest of us can just look at the amount of sleep he’s getting with envy.
One for the record books Yesterday, Betabeat ventured over to the dystopian castle that is the Jacob Javits Center to take in the scene at the annual Book Expo America. We noticed several signs of technology’s encroach: A couple of Wayfarer-wearing dudes in black Livestream t-shirts, a Kindle Direct Publishing booth parked within spitting distance of HarperCollins, and a Random House publicist who sorrowfully informed us that no, they no longer print catalogs. But perhaps the most telling sign: We spotted an actual Glasshole wandering the floor, teal face computer propped on her nose bold as brass.
Is nothing sacred?
Around the world Looks like the Zuckerberg family took a little vacay recently, inspiring extreme enthusiasm among the bloggers of Hungary. Unfortunately, Google Translate is just God awful with magyar (“Dani Thomas, carpenter and Botos immediately sent to the scene, who also found the party who Marvelosában after. The place did not betray what.”), so we don’t have any anecdotes about the pair lurking around the hot springs or boozing it up at a beer garden. But here’s a video of Mark and his bride rambling around sunny Budapest. Something tells us Priscilla is the chatty one in that relationship:
Oh, and speaking of Mr. Zuckerberg: photoshop, or someone’s stylish vintage grandma? You decide.
Kiss ups Apparently, at some point this week, AllThingsD doyenne Kara Swisher followed Comedy Central. Guess whoever runs their Twitter handle is a fan, because he did not play it cool at all: “Thanks for the follow. You’re more like – All Things Awesome!” Something tells us that outright flattery is not the way to Ms. Swisher’s heart.
Adventures As we mentioned, Senator Rand Paul is spending a couple of days meandering around Silicon Valley, hitting rich libertarians up for money and attempting to woo the could-be conservatives of Silicon Valley. He told the Wall Street Journal: “I think a lot of the people out here are much more fiscally conservative than President Obama…. They just need to be made to feel welcome in the party,” by doing things like toning down the gay-marriage-bashing.
Well, as part of his little adventure, he stopped by Facebook (META) and signed the company’s chalk wall. His message? Something about “give me liberty.” But of course!
Biking it Guys, Fred Wilson has declared his allegiances, and he is team Citibike. Naturally, he chronicled his conversion on Twitter:
Getting on a @CitibikeNYC to get to my next meeting. pic.twitter.com/zAcIHai2hH
— Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) May 29, 2013
33rd and Park to Bank and Washington in 19mins on @CitibikeNYC that beats the subway and is cheaper than a cab
— Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) May 29, 2013
