Barclays Capital analyst Douglas Anmuth is predicting that Amazon will sell 5 million Kindles this year, putting it in the first place in terms of dedicated e-reader sales. Anmuth sees the iPad and the Kindle “bifurcating” the market for e-readers with the Kindle running the low-end while iPad takes the high. → Read More
We just got done interviewing Digg founder Kevin Rose here at TC Disrupt and got back to our seats to discover that a new “Digg This” button had just been launched both on our site and on Digg.com itself.
Perhaps this “design refresh” is the first in a slew of features about to launch in the coming weeks? While prettier and faster, the button opens up a pop window where you have to “Digg” the story for a second time in order for the “Digg” to register which still seems like an uneccessary extra step. → Read More
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, Google’s Marissa Mayer took the stage to talk with our own Michael Arrington. But before her talk she had a couple new things to announce. Specifically, new things about the recently-announced Google Instant.
Mayer invited a couple Google employees up on stage to show off a couple new Google Instant features. One allows you to use keyboard navigations with the service. The other brings Instant features to other search verticals — like video and news search. These features will be rolling out of the next couple of days, Google says. → Read More
Shervin Pishevar, founder and Executive Chairman of mobile gaming company SGN, has just taken the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt to showcase an impressive new iPhone application called Mini Tycoon: Casino. The game is the first of a series that Pishevar believes will be extremely popular on the platform — he’s predicting Casino will do over $1 million in revenue per month.
The preview of the game was fairly brief, but gameplay will be similar to Farmville, except you’ll be planting slot machines instead of crops on your path to building a successful virtual casino. Pishevar says that the game has been in development for a year and that a huge amount of attention has been paid to getting the details right — and the graphics do look quite polished. → Read More
Digg founder Kevin Rose took the stage here today to talk to TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington about the future of Digg among other things.
One revelation that came up during the talk? Jay Adelson, Rose and Digg crew turned down a $60 million dollar in cash plus $20 million in earnout offer during the trajectory of the social news site. Rose told Arrington that he didn’t regret turning down the offer, which we’re guessing came either from Current or Google (Rose refused to disclose). → Read More
This video shows the version of iOS running on the Apple TV appearing to work correctly on an iPod Touch Gen. 4. Hacked by DHowett, the system seems to do everything the Apple TV can do but the process is very rough and technically could fry your device. Think of it as an interesting yet dangerous experiment, and, like most dangerous experiments, they should be left to the experts. via TUAW → Read More
Bose showed off their latest innovation yesterday: The VideoWave, an average 46-inch LCD with an enlarged Wave Radio speaker setup bolted on the backside. It’s expensive. Of course it’s expensive. I mean, it’s a Bose system. Did you expect anything less? However, it’s a tad too expensive at $5,349 and I believe Bose knows this.
Now, I understand Bose and their target demographic. I sold AV equipment retail for years at Circuit City and know that Bose products sell themselves. They require nothing more than a quick demo and a store credit card with a high enough limit. My friend’s father recently “treated” himself to Bose speakers after retirement, beaming with pride as he unboxed his set.
It’s even easier to sell against Bose, though. All it requires is a reasonable argument from the salesman and suddenly a customer is spending hundreds, if not thousands less, on an Onkyo HTIB with professional installation. It’s this logic Bose is afraid of and perhaps explains the high-price. Bose knows they’re not going to sell a lot of these TVs. → Read More
At the Web 2.0 expo in New York today, Facebook CTO Bret Taylor announced that 2 million websites have added the “Like” button and Facebook’s other new social plug-ins, which were launched five months ago. Facebook also confirmed the stat in a Tweet.
That’s impressive considering the number was 50,000 only five months ago. Facebook’s new social plugins,which include a ‘Like’ button for the web and an array of other widgets, were launched at f8 in April. → Read More
Fresh off a $7.4 million funding round, last year’s TechCrunch50 winner Redbeacon took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt today. The company announced that it has expanded to its second city; Seattle. Redbeacon was previously only available in San Francisco (and has over 5,000 Bay Area providers listed on the site).
Redbeacon lets users search, browse and book local service providers – from plumbers to bakers – on its website. Service providers pay a fee to Redbeacon for new paying customers, or in some categories, like lawyers, for a lead. → Read More
Oh, Yatzhee, always being funny. This time he takes on Amnesia: The Dark Descent, an indie horror game with bite. → Read More
Bitfenix is a new company in the case market, but they are certainly making their mark. Their latest product is the Survivor series, a ruggedized mid-tower ATX case that manages not to look silly. → Read More
We brought 4INFO founder and CEO Zaw Thet, VP of Groupon Mihir Shah and Brand In Hand founder John Hadl together to talk about their experiences in mobile marketing here at TechCrunch Disrupt, on a panel moderated by TechCrunch’s own Jason Kincaid.
Panel moderator Jason Kincaid began the panel with the classic mobile marketing example of a consumer having a phone in their pocket and having a push notification give them an alert that there’s a frozen yogurt discount nearby. → Read More
On stage today at our TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Vinod Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures, recalled a story from the days when he backed Excite, one of the original Internet portals. Specifically, he spoke briefly about the time they failed to acquire Google.
This story has been circulated for a while, but not many people know about it. Khosla stated it simply: Google was willing to sell for under a million dollars, but Excite didn’t want to buy them. → Read More
Last month, we noted that PayPal would soon launch a new version of their iPhone app that would be more check-friendly. That app should be released in the next day or so, PayPal’s Laura Chambers revealed on stage today at our TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco.
On a panel alongside Keith Rabois from Square and Holger Luedorf from Foursquare, Chambers said that this new app will allow you to take a picture of the front and back of a check with your iPhone camera, and it will be added to your PayPal balance. → Read More
When it comes to third-party applications, quantity has never been webOS’ strong suit. While BlackBerry OS is hovering at around 10,000 apps and Android and iOS are well past 80,000 and 250,000 respectively, webOS has yet to move beyond 5,000. Until now. Sort of. → Read More
As anyone with working pair of eyes knows, EA released FIFA 11 yesterday. Far more important than Madden to EA’s global bottom line, FIFA 11 is the company’s latest chance for you take take Real Madrid to Wembley. Well, unless your name is Pedro León! → Read More
Lifehacker has a great primer on killing bad Android apps and uninstalling them before they cause damage. While it may feel great to kill apps and see your phone work faster, in reality you could be doing more harm than good. → Read More
Sorry, we were wrong. 2010 wasn’t the year of tablet like it was deemed back in January. We all had such high hopes for this year, too. We thought that every manufacturer was going to out some-sort of tablet, but that clearly didn’t happened. There are a few tablets from various manufacturers, but there are only really three tablets available now that aimed at the general consumer market: The Apple iPad, the Dell Streak, and within weeks, the Samsung Galaxy Tab.
Retailers and advertisers are already gearing up for what they believe will be a feeding frenzy for these tablets this holiday season. That’s not going to happen. The tablet is not going to be this year’s netbook or Furby — unless that smaller Apple iPad rumor is true. → Read More
In Silicon Valley fortunes can change in a matter of weeks. Last year’s awkward nobody entrepreneur could be today’s mogul, angel or VC. This always creates an interesting social tension: Suddenly the guy who was skulking around coffee shops trying to get his business plan in an angel’s hand is the guy new entrepreneurs are skulking around. No one wants to become too cloistered, because they remember where they came from and they might miss the next Facebook. But on the other hand, being too open is a dangerous slippery slope of a time suck with diminishing returns.
That’s why angels I talked to backstage at Disrupt this week were in love with Formspring. (Note to self: Someone’s valuation is going up in the next round…) It’s a way to interact and answer questions without exposing yourself too much or giving up too much control over what’s published. They called it “office hours” and today a bunch of angels are holding these open forums on Formspring. If you need a break from our Disrupt live feed, head over and ask some questions to some of the Valley’s most powerful mentors and investors. → Read More
