"Ongo," founded in 2009, was going to be the centralized newspaper paywall system. Companies like the Washington Post, the New York Times Company and Gannett poured in a few million dollars to find a solution to delivering ad-free news to people who would pay for it. They launched their product in January of 2011, and at the end of this month, they will close their doors (and, as you do, lay off their employees). Here's the now-former CEO, Dan Haarmann, on his way out the door, talking to Nieman Journalism Lab: “I hate advertising in my news. I cannot stand people trying to send me a mortgage or [...]

Say that Peter DaSilva is coming over to take your photograph. The San Francisco-based photographer has shot them all, from Ev Williams to Mark Hurd to Hunter Walk to Carol Bartz to, now, Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom, the Instagram darlings of the moment, to accompany the front-page New York Times story about their sale to Facebook (for a billion in cash and stock, basically about a week after Instagram raised $50 million, at a $500 million valuation). And Peter's done it all without kicky filters! Tee hee! Anyway so of course maybe this photograph will end up on the front page of the New York Times and you [...]

With Buzzfeed announcing a fresh $15.5 million in funding today, on top of its previous $11.5 million in funding, all web properties should stop and ask themselves: what would you do with that cash? We already have it planned!

• office radio with AM and FM.

• tiny house collection in the middle of the office's sculpture courtyard.

• a "sympathy big board," displaying only least-viewed blog posts.

• Ben Smith's younger, weirder cousin from Ditmas Park, Yaniv Smith.

• an actual awl.

• basement meth lab (because media companies just becoming tech companies is very 2011; 2012 is about dreaming bigger).

• a fearsome, extremely [...]

"When Betabeat first visited General Assembly a few weeks before it opened, co-founder Adam Pritzker told us that the vision was to create an educational space free from the pressures of venture capital so often tied into startup incubators and accelerators.

That has all changed now." —Yup: with investments of $4.5 million (asdfasdjfl???), General Assembly can do all kinds of things! But they've got a plan, writes their cofounder: "So will we open a bunch more campuses? Put all our classes online? Start training executives? We don’t know."

Oh, no. Coming in September to Bloomberg TV (I think that's channel 547803 in New York?), it's TechStars! A TV show based on the entrepreneurial mentorship bootcamp program! This is formatted as a reality show, and was shot at TechStars' last three-month incubator program in New York. It's all about winning that big check for your hot startup, just like in real life. (Ha.) But it's not just about tech! It's about stars too! Because money = fame, and fame = money, and both of those = validation. This all fits into my theory that the current bubble is more of an emotional bubble, not actually an economic bubble. [...]

Groupon competitor Yipit comes out with all guns (and some charts!) blazing today, analyzing Groupon's business in Boston. It does seem notable that the cost to acquire a Groupon subscriber is something like $30, while their quarterly revenue per subscriber is $14. (That being said, customer averages are always weighed down by the one-time customer, and businesses rely on the repeat "power user.") And at least the company had $810 million to pay to backers and executives! Buying a printing press to make dollar bills at home would be much more work, it turns out.

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1k usernames reserved so far…Mon Apr 18 20:18:42 via HootSuiteKohortkohort

I just signed up for yet another web thingy and I don't even know what it is! (I always do this, because I waited till August of 2007 to sign up for Twitter, and I felt stupid.) It's Kohort, which "will be related to social media," and which just got $3 million in seed money. Started by some hot guy who went to Duke! It sounds… great! Whatever it is. I guess? With all this hubbub going on—like, [...]

The brand new Graze magazine, based out of Chicago and so far entirely supported by food events, has just published issue number one. You'll never take my subscription to Gastronomica but you definitely had me at "In search of Cambodia’s ancient stinky cheese"! Only $10 for the first issue!

It's been really quiet on the Internet Bubble front, because no one likes that narrative. It's bad for everyone! (Except some people.) But here's a report from close to the startup incubators that makes it pretty obvious that nothing's changed in the last year. Or if it has changed, then for the worst: "Y Combinator had sixty-five companies present. And we saw 500 eager investors, frenzied almost, excited to invest in entrepreneurs. One investor emailed me four times, texted me three times, called me and sent me a message on LinkedIn—desperate to get a check in before the round closes. No business plans, not even pitch decks [...]

I love watching an argument unfold across the Internet. Here's a thread that bounced from evangelist-loudmouth-romanticizer to startup engineer to VC where everyone's right and everyone's a bit wrong too.

• "You might be sad that you work long hours and that sometimes your boss yells at you when tensions run high. But you also know that there is nowhere on earth like Silicon Valley…. There’s so much money in Silicon Valley now that a lot of non-like minded people have rolled in. Looking for easy stock options at a hot startup. They start whining when they realize that they have to give so much to make it [...]

"Groupon's filing Wednesday also revealed its financial results for its second quarter, which ended June 30. Groupon's sales came in at a record $878 million, but it lost $102.7 million." —Everybody be carpin' at Groupon but it's hitting records, you see! Groupon also had a first quarter loss of $117.1 million. Let's go buy some!

"The party was friendly but ultimately like all other startup parties: serial startup consultants Rex Sorgatz and Rachel Sklar showed up, as did several members of the ad agency Barbarian Group… [People] were surprised to find I’d just asked my way into the party; everyone else attending was a friend or a friend’s plus-one, which probably proves that the same ten people are doing everything in New York startup-land." —Startup launch parties reviewed: "Fortnighter." (Previously: the "Socialisting" launch party.)

By the time I took my seat at [TechConference] on Monday, I had already seen its host’s logo 51 times. The name was printed twice on my conference badge, five times on the lanyard holding that badge, 16 times in the conference agenda, nine times on the side wall of the conference’s main hall, and finally all over the 20-logo tessellation on the stage background. (A giant wooden statue outside the front door spelled out its initials, but we won’t count that.) As I sat down for the first panel, heavy synth-and-bass beats shook the speakers overhead. It was the conference’s theme song. The only lyric: The conference’s name, [...]

Color, the app that makes location-based photo sharing possible, that launched with $41 million in investment three weeks ago, is… well, it's still in business! But the day comes in every business where you send the employees into isolation to "hack" new schemes to pivot the business….

10. It could be like Shazam, which "listens" to music and tells you what it is! Except for colors: you point your camera at something and it names it. ("So that's what chartreuse is!")

9 Visual learning tools for pre-tweens and toddlers. ("Color: We Learn Together!") Point and match shapes! Has great sponsorship opportunities.

8. Totally kicky Latina lady iPad mag. [...]

"In an e-mail to Stickybits's investors, the pair explained Turntable and gave them a choice: They could take back what money remained or stick with them. All except one kept the faith. Chasen's announcement, made the day the staff returned from the winter holiday, was abrupt: The developers, with one exception, would cease work on Stickybits immediately. The business side would wind down client relationships. Left unsaid: All except a skeleton crew would soon leave the company." —An enjoyable story about the path to date of Turntable.fm. It's also an interesting reminder that entrepreneurs may be "job creators" but also sometimes they lay off everyone along the way.

Tmrrw I'll write about my favorite ice cream flavor & then spend three days dealing with press attacks about how unethical I am.

— Michael Arrington (@arrington) February 14, 2012

If you love Internet drama—and why wouldn't you? It's so spiritually refreshing and intellectually fulfilling!—don't miss the current "Silicon Valley tech reporter/investor" throw-down happening at multiple showcases near you. Here's a pretty good entry point: "This started when Nick Bilton of the New York Times posted an item criticizing Path, which had been caught up in a firestorm when it emerged that Path had been uploading entire address books from people’s iPhones. Bilton made the legitimate point [...]

"To hear the city’s female entrepreneurs tell it, an ambiguous date-meeting with Charlie O’Donnell is almost a rite of passage—like living on ramen while you launch your first app…. What seemed to grate on many of Mr. O’Donnell’s targets was the sense that they’d been subjected to a romantic version of the bait-and-switch: expecting a meeting, they’d found themselves on a date. " But why are you entrepreneuresses holding out on all this? (I mean, besides, I guess, that he lives in Bay Ridge. Must love R trains!)

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From @TheStartupDaily, If you improve by just one percent each week, your business will be 50% better after a year. http://t.co/n7UVUS6Wed Aug 03 14:29:28 via Twitter for MacMike Karnjanaprakornmikekarnj

I hope all these people who are glomming onto The Startup Daily's hideous daily koans aren't doing the accounting at their oh-so-hot startups. I mean, say my startup was 51% good already, then I made it 52% good? So at the end of the year it's not going to be 101% good, because, COMPOUND INTEREST, [...]

Rumors on the Internets put the Facebook IPO as coming early next year, which, BOOM, BANG, EVERYTHING BLOWS UP, CONFETTI, DEATH, BOTTLE SERVICE, THE FOUR HORSEMEN, INVISIBLE RICHES, CHINA BUYS BRAZIL, CATS AND DOGS HAVING SEX, THE END OF TIME, ALL THE LIGHTS GO OUT EVERYWHERE, THUNDERDOME, STERILITY, A NAKED OLYMPICS AGAIN, WE ALL TRY TO MOVE TO THE MOON, A SELECT FEW LIVE FOREVER BUT MOSTLY EVERYONE DIES. But first in IPO-landia comes Zynga (who? The makers of FarmVille) and Pandora. And Avaya ("a global leader in business communications")! For one billlllion dollars! One billion dollars. One billion dollars. (One billion dollars.)

No one startup should have all that Power.com. (But you could! "confidential. sealed. bid. auction. ends. august. 17. 2011.," as the website puts it.)