TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing kicked off earlier today with our own Sarah Lacy interviewing Pony Ma, founder, Executive Director, Chairman, and CEO of Chinese giant Tencent. In the first interview Ma agreed to by a foreign journalist, Lacy and Ma chatted about Tencent’s past to the role China will have as the web continues to grow and mature.

Next up, TechCrunch’s John Biggs took the stage to interview Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka, to chat about Rovio’s plans for the future, Rovio’s desire to become more than a games company, and why Angry Birds won’t end up like Pac-Man.

Former Googler Kai-Fu Lee sat down for a fireside chat with Lacy to talk about the startup ecosystem in China, his incubator InnovationWorks and more.

Wang Hua of Innovation Works, John Lagerling, Director of Android Global Partnerships at Google, and David Chao of DCM served on a panel discussing the Android Market in China.

And YouTube founder Steve Chen sat down for a candid, founder stories interview with Lacy, where he reminisced about selling his company to Google.

In the Startup Battlefield, 16 startups launched their ideas to the world including:

Richi: Richi allows the consumer to merge credits from multiple programs (in the future, this will include systems like Facebook credits, airline miles, and credit card points) into one pool, opening up rewards purchases they may not otherwise be able to make.

Alpha Outlook: Alpha Outlook allows for real-time social media tracking as well as improved control over reputation management and influencer monitoring

Qiuqiu: Qiuqiu is an app search that offers results based on your location, the time of day, and the things you like and do.

OrderWithMe: OrderWithMe is a group buying site specifically designed for the small Western businesses who are having trouble navigating the somewhat unintelligible world of Chinese manufacturers.

8Securities: 8Securities is a service that combines elements of StockTwits, E*Trade, and iGoogle’s personalization to allow users to build a largely customized web interface for absorbing financial information and dealing with trades.

Anquanbao: Anquanbao is a cloud-based software program that helps protect websites from security violations like malware and denial of service attacks.

Vide: Vida is a fun way to express the stories of your life with friends from mobile phones.

Yuwan: Yuwan is an application that lets TV viewers check into their favorite TV programs or even commercials and then share them on social media platforms such as Sina Weibo.

UPcload: UPcload uses your computer’s webcam to size you up, then recommend clothing that will fit you well.

NextGoals: NextGoals is an app that actually asks you to work out and then verifies that you went to the gym.

UnitedStyles: UnitedStyles is a Facebook Connect-enabled service that lets any user create customized women’s apparel, allowing them sketch out, adjust and share a design via an online interface and customized 3D preview.

Shakr: Shakr automatically creates video clips as the news breaks by algorithmically pulling in information, photos, and video snippets from around the web.

TouchPal: TouchPal is a mobile app that helps you “keep in touch with your contacts,” namely by adding social aspects to your current contact list.

Huohua: Huohua uses semantic analysis to find your social circle instantly.

Moglue: Moglue lets anyone create children’s books, using a simple and straightforward UI.

Gulu: Gulu is an event planning app that wants to fill the gap between services like Facebook Events/Plancast and those like Foursquare.

Tune in for Day 2 today here at 6 pm PT!

Yahoo hopes to become the web’s next major online video destination with Screen, a revamped portal for all of its TV shows and premium video content. In addition to Yahoo Screen, Yahoo has announced eight web original shows for the Fall 2011 season, all focused on women.

“When people think video, we want them to think Yahoo,” David Rice, VP of media properties, told Mashable.

The new Yahoo Screen is an aggregation of the video content across all of Yahoo’s verticals, including entertainment, sports and finance. This notably includes content from Hulu, thanks to a licensing deal between the two companies. This means you can catch up on shows like Glee through Yahoo Screen. Other licensing partners include CBS, UFC and Revision3.

Yahoo Screen’s design takes its cues from theater: It has a darker background centered around Yahoo’s video content. The company’s video editors sift through the site’s video content and feature the best TV shows, clips and Yahoo originals in Sports, Lifestyle, Comedy, News, Finance, TV Shows and Movies.

It also contains Yahoo’s original video content. The company claims it has the top 10 most-watched original web video shows (based on a custom comScore report). Its flagship show is Primetime in No Time, which recently surpassed 500 million video views. Tech Ticker, The Thread and other Yahoo originals are also accessible through the new portal.

Yahoo has a lot of video content, but it has been spread out across its many verticals. But now that it has been collected in one place, the company hopes people will realize it is an online video destination on par with YouTube and Hulu. “Video should be on par with the rest of our verticals,” Rice says.

Yahoo also recently announced a major content deal with ABC News. These moves are all designed to make Yahoo relevant again. It needed an online video portal it could leverage to do it. Now it must find a way to convince its massive audience Screen should be their first stop on their search for premium video content.

A new add-on for the Android SDK will enable developers to optimize their apps for Google TV or build new ones all together, the company announced on Monday.

The add-on lets developers emulate Google TV devices and build apps optimized for larger screens. It also includes new APIs for TV-specific features and actions.

The Android Market’s impending arrival on Google TV was announced at Google I/O in May, at which points a few clues had already surfaced suggesting that the feature was on its way. Google TV devices will support Android apps with the next release of the Honeycomb operating system.

One potential challenge for developers is going to be the difference in screen size and user interface requirements for a television set or screens as big as 10 feet. That’s quite different than designing for phones, which are only a few inches wide and people tend to hold in their hands, rather than sitting across the room from it. Using this new SDK add-on, developers can get a preview of what their apps would look like on bigger screens and adjust them accordingly.

Not all Android apps will find their way onto Google TV. In a blog post announcing the new add-on, Google TV Product Manager Ambarish Kenghe explained that “apps that require features not supported on Google TV won’t appear in Android Market on Google TV.” That is, if an app requires touchscreen capability in order to function, it can’t appear on Google TV, since the televisions don’t have touchscreens. Google’s documentation lists the features that are and are not supported.

The first Google TV-powered set top box was released last year, but has not been wildly successful, due in to issues with its user interface, a lack of cooperation with some content providers and, at $300, a relatively high initial price point.

Bringing the Honeycomb UI and Android Market to Google TV is one major step the company is taking in hopes of revitalizing the product.

Do you think this is a step in the right direction for Google TV or has that ship sunk? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

This week we’re reviewing five trends that have helped define 2011. So far we’ve covered online privacy, group messaging and HTML5. Today we’re looking at a still emerging trend, but one which is (pardon the pun) very much worth watching: second screen apps. By that we mean apps that run on your smartphone or tablet device and complement your television viewing.

Over 2011, second screen apps have continued their push into the living room. Watching TV used to be a passive activity, but now the Web and devices like Android phones and the iPad have made it interactive.

According to a study published in January by Yahoo’s advertising division, 86% of people who use the mobile Internet use their mobile device while watching television. Of those using their mobile device, 25% say they are browsing content related to the program they are watching.

Social TV

Despite the increasing use of time-shifting devices like DVRs and TiVO – which allow you to record and watch TV shows at any time – there has been a lot of growth in synchronous social networking around TV shows.

GetGlue is an app that we’ve tracked closely in this space and in April this year it announced 1 million users. At that time it also had 100 million data points – likes, reviews, check-ins – representing connections between entertainment and people.

With GetGlue, essentially you ‘check in’ to a TV show like you would check in to a venue on Foursquare. This allows you to talk about the show with other people who are also watching it. This activity is becoming increasingly popular, at least according to GetGlue. April turned out to be a high point for the company, with about 4 million check-ins.

Other companies in this space include IntoNow (acquired in April by Yahoo!), Miso and PHILO.

TV Tweeting

When it comes to real-time social networking, Twitter is where a lot of that activity happens. Including around TV shows. In January, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo discussed what he called “the Glee phenomena” at the Consumer Electronics Show.

“The characters on Glee actually tweet and they tweet during the show. When Glee starts, the moment it airs for the first time on the East Coast, the tweets per second for Glee shoot up,” said Costolo. “They stay up there at a super high level at hundreds of [times] what they are before the show comes on until the moment the show ends and then they drop. [...] People feel like they have to watch the show while it’s going on because the community is tweeting about the show and the characters are tweeting as the show’s happening so [they have to] watch it in real time.”

But Wait, There’s More…

Recently we profiled a product called WiO, which enables TV watchers to immediately get information about the products and services they see advertised on screen, both in TV commercials and within the shows themselves.

Through a mobile app running on customers’ phones, marketers can offer a variety of follow-up actions to the TV viewer. These include coupons, reminders, contact info and more. In total, there are 10 follow-up actions offered. The consumer controls which ones, if any, they respond to.

Internet TV Continues to Ramp Up

Finally we should mention the Internet TV efforts of various companies, such as Google TV and set-top boxes like Roku and Boxee. These aren’t second screen apps, but all of them will complement those apps and some will even be development platforms for them (e.g. Google TV). Also it’s worth noting that these services are steadily eroding the audience of cable television, so in that sense they are becoming increasingly important to second screen apps.

The Internet TV ecosystem is growing. To take one example, in May Roku announced that it had reached 15 million channel downloads from more than one million people on its service. The “big four” channels, as Roku calls them, are Netflix, Hulu Plus, Pandora and Amazon Instant Video. What’s more, Roku estimates that 15% to 20% of its users are cutting the cord on cable television.

Let us know in the comments which second screen apps you’ve started to use and your thoughts on them.

Soon you might be heading to the television to take a call instead of the phone.

Comcast has partnered with Skype, a video-calling service that was recently purchased by Microsoft, to offer the service for TVs sometime next year.

Subscribers who rent a video kit from Comcast will be able to use their TVs to make and receive calls from other Skype users — regardless of whether those people are also using a TV for the call. The kit will also come with a remote that has a keyboard to allow chat.

Although Skype-enabled TVs have been available since last year, this is the first time that Skype will be available to Comcast subscribers regardless of which TV they own.

Comcast hasn’t yet announced what it will charge for the kit, but presumably it will be less expensive than purchasing a Skype-enabled television.

“Your television is ringing” might become a new household phrase.

[via Associated Press]

Ecommerce startup Decide launches Monday and uses two straightforward words — “buy” or “wait” — to educate consumers on when it’s best to buy their next laptop, television or camera.

On Decide, the experience is simple: Search for a product and get an immediate buy or wait recommendation, along with a machine-generated prediction on when to buy and a percentage indicating Decide’s confidence in that prediction.

A quick Decide search for a particular Samsung Plasma HDTV, for instance, will yield a “wait” because the site predicts that prices for that model, with 87% confidence, are expected to drop $92 within two weeks.

Decide’s purchase recommendations are generated using a combination of proprietary data and predictive algorithms. Decide takes into account 40 distinct price factors, historical data on model lineage releases and pricing, and relevant rumors on when the next iteration of a product is coming.

The problem, as Decide CEO Mike Fridgen sees it, is that the rapid rate at which technology evolves can often leave consumers with a feeling of buyer’s remorse if they discover there’s now a newer version of that laptop, TV or camera they just bought.

“We are, at the moment of purchase, the place to go to answer the ‘when to buy’ question,” Fridgen says.

Decide has raised $8.5 million in pre-launch funding. The web- and mobile-friendly site earns referral fees for directing consumers to sellers’ websites. Eventually, the startup will broaden its scope beyond TVs, cameras and laptops to offer recommendations on more products and gadgets.

Mirroring has been all the rage since the iPad 2′s announcement back in March. It essentially allows you to display whatever’s on your iPad or iPhone directly onto your television.

The only problem with mirroring is that it goes back to the archaic (relatively speaking) days of using wires to output pictures and video from your iOS device, to your video display.

With recent technologies like AirPlay gaining steam, it was a bit disappointing to see Apple opt for a wired solution instead of a wireless solution.

One Israeli company is trying to capitalize on this need, and has created a case that allows you to wirelessly mirror the output from your iPhone to your television…(…)
Read the rest of Olion’s Moov Allows Wireless Mirroring From Your iPhone to Your Big Screen TV

“Olion’s Moov Allows Wireless Mirroring From Your iPhone to Your Big Screen TV” is an article by iPhone Download Blog. Make sure to follow us on Twitter and friend us on Facebook.