Synaptics is announcing today that it has created new touchpad improvements that will make life easier for frustrated laptop users.

The company’s newest laptop touchpads include SmartSense chips, which are smart enough to reject accidental palm touches on the pad. The latter problem is a huge pain when you’re typing because, as I have experienced many times, it’s quite easy to accidentally touch the pad, highlight text, and delete it by accident. They new touchpads can also detect up to four fingers touching a pad at the same time, enabling new kinds of gestures. The technology will show up in new, more accurate laptops in the coming months. That’s important, as laptops have to compete against other new gadgets such as smartphones, tablets and other devices.

Some folks may consider touchpads to be old technology. But Synaptics is showing there is still room for improvement. And Synaptics’ user interface expert Andrew Hsu recently posted that there is considerable room for improvement in human-machine interface technology.

At the Computex 2010 trade show this week in Taiwan, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company is showing off its PC TouchPad-IS family of products, which use new image sensor chips, including SmartSense.

Synaptics’ new ClickEQ technology also makes it easier for users to press the touchpad as if they were pressing a button, eliminating the need for the mechanical buttons that are on every touchpad-enabled laptop today.

Companies: Synaptics

The last decade hasna t been a very good one for venture capitalists, showing poor returns for their investors.

The House voted yesterday to extend unemployment benefits and fund more summer jobs, while raising taxes on hedge fund managers and venture capitalists.

BillShrink chief executive Peter Pham just announced that he’s leaving the startup for Trinity Ventures, where he will serve as an entrepreneur in residence.

The Redwood City, Calif. company helps users save money by looking at their usage of things like cell phones and credit cards, then recommending new plans and options. It was founded by Schwark Satyavalou and Samir Kothari, and Pham came on in 2008 from Photobucket, where he was vice president of business development.

BillShrink hasn’t shared its user numbers with me, but it seems to be doing well — it has grown to 22 new employees, has gotten coverage from major television networks as a money-saving tool, and it is steadily expanding its services, most recently with the addition of cable and satellite television plans.

Satyavalou, who has been serving as BillShrink’s president, will reassume the CEO position. Judging from Pham’s blog post, it sounds like he will be using his EIR position at Trinity to search for a cool new startup to join:

I always live and breathe what I’m doing, and for the past two years it has been BillShrink.

However, like many entrepreneurs, I always have new ideas brewing. Knowing the time to pursue those ideas is key. This is that time. So I have decided to join my mentor Gus Tai at Trinity Ventures as an Entrepreneur in Residence. Stay tuned for what’s next for me.

Trinity led BillShrink’s $8 million second round.

Until Toyota stepped in last week, Daimler was the only major auto manufacturer to take a stake in electric car startup Tesla Motors — a company that has now become synonymous with next-generation transportation. Now it wants to work the same magic with BYD, the Chinese battery and electric vehicle maker, to establish its own transcontinental dominance in the market.

Daimler announced today that it is partnering with BYD to build a new brand of electric cars via a joint venture called Shenzhen BYD Daimler New Technology. Together, they have invested $88 million into the development of the product, which will be targeted at Chinese consumers.

The deal sounds extremely similar to the partnership announced by Tesla and Toyota last week. Even though the most recent version of Tesla’s S-1 filing reveals that no official agreement has been made between the two companies, both of their CEO’s aired plans to build a car in tandem, with Tesla providing the unique drive train system and Toyota supplying everything else. Seemingly following in their footsteps, Daimler says it will be building cars around BYD’s drive trains and batteries.

Just like Tesla has its own all-electric Model S sedan in its arsenal, BYD already has an all-electric car of its own, the e6, which has fund its way into Chinese government fleets so far. The big difference: the e6 is already out and ready to launch on the consumer market this year, while the Model S is slated to launch in 2012.

Given this, it seems like BYD might be a more stable partner for Daimler, while also extending its reach into the two biggest car markets in the world. Not only does BYD have a thriving battery business, it also has the blessing of American mogul Warren Buffett, who bought a $230 million stake in the company. A shrewd investor, he rarely chooses wrong.

In addition to its technology, BYD also brings manpower to the table. The company already boasts 3,000 engineers and has the capacity to hire 10,000 more. It also has a low-cost manufacturing infrastructure in place, which the joint venture will be able to take advantage of. Tesla says it will also be able to staff its recently purchased NUMMI automotive plant with 10,000 workers prepared to churn out Tesla-Toyota vehicles, but the ramp up will be slow, if it happens at all.

The Daimler-BYD joint venture also has government subsidies to look forward to in China. Already, the government has expressed support for the development of greener vehicles, and incentives for consumers are believed to be on the way.

The two companies have yet to announce timeline for their new brand of cars. Tesla says that its potential vehicle, developed with Toyota, would probably come out in four to five years. As an investor in the company, Daimler obviously has an interest in this coming to fruition. In the meantime though, it looks like its hedging its bets with a BYD alliance likely to yield more results sooner.

Tags: electric vehicles

Companies: BYD, Daimler, Tesla Motors, Toyota

It’s that time. After seeing 20 startups plus two audience choices present at TechCrunch Disrupt, last night, that list was whittled down to five finalists: Betterment, MOVIECLIPS, Publish2, Soluto And UJAM. And now it’s time to announce a winner.

Without further ado, the runner-up is UJAM. And the winner is… Soluto.

The Israeli-based startup offers something that millions of people want — no, need: a way to make their computers run better. One thing that’s interesting about this company versus most of the others in the competition is that they’ve created native software. It monitors your PC to find the things that are likely most annoying to users. For example, it tracks down printing problems, crashy apps, resource hogs — all the good stuff.

That alone is interesting. But more interesting is that it offers up solutions for how you can fix your computer issues. And the data they’re (anonymously) collecting about PC problems should be useful across a range of industries and services.

Quite simply: if Soluto can convince the millions of frustrated PC users to use their software, they could transform the industry. Or, disrupt it.

The company has previously raised $8 million over two rounds, but has been in beta until now.

Other award winners tonight include:

Must-have technology: LiveIntent

Biggest New York disruptor: Betterment

Most promising media concept: LiveMatrix

Congratulations Soluto! And congratulations to all the finalists. Each will undoubtedly prove to be disruptive in their own way.

Soluto will be the first company to get the TechCrunch Disrupt Cup. In the Fall, they will hand it off to the next winner. We look forward to seeing you all in San Francisco in September.

The worldwide video game industry is poised to to $70.1 billion by 2015, thanks to the combined growth of console, portable, PC, and online video games, according to market researcher DFC Intelligence.

DFC is one of the few market researchers that tries to gather data on a worldwide basis. It estimates that games were a $60.4 billion business in 2009. Hence, over five years, the game industry will grow just 16 percent. That’s not exactly a staggering figure, but we are dealing with the law of large numbers here.

On top of that, pricing is dropping for games as consumers embrace free business models. So while the game industry continues to reach new people, the amount of money that it gets from each game player is going down.

“There is likely to be a significant change in spending patterns as consumer spending shifts away from buying packaged goods at retail to buying products online either for digital delivery or by paying a subscription or usage fee,” DFC analyst David Cole said.

Consumers are embracing online business models with significant free play components. These models may generate more profits than tradtional retail sales, but in the short term they provide less revenue.

Market researchers like to get carried away with their projections. But the video game industry has been growing by leaps and bounds and this forecast isn’t just a bunch of hype. It is exceedingly difficult to measure the size of the worldwide game industry, since no single entity collects data on all parts of the market worldwide. DFC has to make educated guesses on the actual size of the worldwide market. By contrast, NPD can keep close tabs on console game sales in the U.S. market, based on reports from retailers.

The PC platform continues to be the platform where the new business models are accepted. By 2015, the PC game business will be $20 billion. Console online games sales are expected to quadruple revenue by 2015 as online distribution and subscription models make their way to the consoles. That should help offset a decline in store sales.

DFC forecasts that revenues could decline in the near-term years of its forecast, with most of the predicted growth happening from 2013 to 2015. The decline is expected because of a slowing in console games, while growth in PC online platforms will not enough to offset the console drop.

Companies: DFC Intelligence

Evertune, a startup that promises its customers will never have to tune their guitars again, just raised $800,000 in seed funding.

It’s been a good month for the Los Angeles company, which also just won an Invention Award from Popular Science. Evertune says it’s finalizing testing on a guitar bridge that keeps the instrument in tune regardless of the temperature, humidity, or how a string is pulled. Normally, a guitar goes out of tune when the tension of its strings loosens. With the Evertune bridge, a set of “six spring and lever contraptions” (in PopSci’s words) compensates, keeping each string at whatever tension is set by the guitarist.

The device was invented by Cosmos Lyles, a guitarist who studied engineering at Duke University. The company is now being led by new chief executive Mark Chayet, who founded CD and DVD manufacturing company Evermark. Chayet provided some of the seed round, and was joined by David Weiderman, director of artist relations at Guitar Center, William Quigley of Clearstone Venture Partners, and entrepreneur Brock Pierce.

Here’s a video of Australian rock band Sick Puppies raving about the product.

Companies: Evertune

People: Brock Pierce, Cosmos Lyles, Mark Chayet, William Quigley

Evertune, a startup that promises its customers will never have to tune their guitars again, just raised $800,000 in seed funding.

It’s been a good month for the Los Angeles company, which also just won an Invention Award from Popular Science. Evertune says it’s finalizing testing on a guitar bridge that keeps the instrument in tune regardless of the temperature, humidity, or how a string is pulled. Normally, a guitar goes out of tune when the tension of its strings loosens. With the Evertune bridge, a set of “six spring and lever contraptions” (in PopSci’s words) compensates, keeping each string at whatever tension is set by the guitarist.

The device was invented by Cosmos Lyles, a guitarist who studied engineering at Duke University. The company is now being led by new chief executive Mark Chayet, who founded CD and DVD manufacturing company Evermark. Chayet provided some of the seed round, and was joined by David Weiderman, director of artist relations at Guitar Center, William Quigley of Clearstone Venture Partners, and entrepreneur Brock Pierce.

Here’s a video of Australian rock band Sick Puppies raving about the product.

Companies: Evertune

People: Brock Pierce, Cosmos Lyles, Mark Chayet, William Quigley

When word first got out that Facebook was working on a question & answer service, the immediate reaction was that it would a “Quora killer.” That’s an obvious and sexy statement to make since Quora was built by former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo and engineer/manager Charlie Cheever. And it’s even more sexy since Benchmark invested in the service at a $86 million valuation (and it’s not out of private beta yet). But Blake Ross, the Facebook employee (with quite the illustrious history of his own) behind the project quickly poured water on those fires — on Quora, naturally.

So what is Facebook Questions? If it’s not a Quora-killer, is it an Aardvark (recently purchased by Google) eater? Or is it something else? Only those lucky enough to have access to the very limited test know for sure. So we got the story from one of them.

Sid Yadev, a Facebook users in New Zealand, has been using Facebook Questions within his Facebook social circle for the past month or so. His take-away? It could be “the next killer app of Facebook,” he says.

He also confirms that it feels different from Quora because it “seems to be more intimate/fun/terse than intellectual/useful/detailed.” Here’s his full run-down in his own words — complete with pictures of what it looks like. Notably, you’ll see that “Questions” has been added to left-column of Facebook, where many of Facebook’s main functions lay. Yes, this is going to be a big product.

Here’s Yadev:

For the past month, I’ve been a part of what seems like a secret beta of Facebook Questions, as have most people in my network. If its recent push to making status updates a front-facing feature was a swipe against Twitter, and its planned check-in feature is one against Foursquare, this seems to be the equivalent to a Q&A site like Quora or Aardvark.

In the sidebar, among ‘News Feed’, ‘Messages’, ‘Events’ and ‘Photos’, there’s a ‘Questions’ tab. Clicking on it brings up a page full of questions and answers. At the top is a “What do you want to know?” box, akin to its “What’s on your mind?” status update box. I can ask a question, and attach what’s known as ‘question topics’ to it. These topics, Facebook claims, will “show your questions to the right people” — a feature that is at the crux of a service like Aardvark.

The question then appears on my friends’ (and appropriate answerers’) ‘Questions tab, which they can then answer. So far, some popular questions among my network include “Who is your favorite glee character?”, “Why do people still push when the door says pull?”, and “Where do people get good massages in Christchurch [New Zealand]?”.

Unlike Quora, which is in private beta right now and one of which I’ve been also a part of, the quality of questions and answers on Facebook Questions seems to be more intimate/fun/terse than intellectual/useful/detailed. When rolled out at a large scale, I can definitely see it becoming potentially the next killer app of Facebook. Whenever I have something to know I think my friends can help me with, or even a fun ‘Pirates or ninjas?’ discussion, I’d look no further than Facebook Questions. It may end up taking off among Facebook’s more intellectual users whose utility of the service is slightly beyond operating a virtual farm and tagging party photos.