CNet reported Friday a rumor from Jason Calacanis that Apple was working on networked televisions. The end result would be Apple’s monitors with a television tuner and the functionality of the Apple TV built into the set itself.

We’ve speculated previously what the next generation of Apple TV needs, and top of that list was a DVD/ Bluray player to make the box more appealing. I made the following observation as to why the Apple TV needed to do more:

With most TV manufacturers launching internet enabled TV sets in 2009, the use case for the Apple TV diminishes, after all, why buy a box from Apple when your TV will offer many of the same features built in.

I’d presumed that the problem of Internet enabled televisions (see our full post on the rapid coming of Internet enabled television here) meant that Apple needed to more with the Apple TV box. The problem in that mix though was always going to be Apple’s preference for digital content delivery over support for physical mediums; offering DVD support means customers have a choice other than the iTunes store. But what if the solution to the coming of Internet enabled televisions isn’t an improved Apple TV box, but an actual Apple manufactured HD LCD Television with the functionality of the Apple TV box built in as standard?

New market, new player

Apple entering the television space may seem a little far fetched, after all, it’s a market place with many existing competitors, entrenched brands, and often savage price cutting. Lets swap television with mobile phone, and it’s the same argument we heard prior to the iPhone being launched.

Apple has proven that it can enter new markets and take significant marketshare with the iPhone, and they can do the same here.

Unlike mobile phones though, internet enabled televisions are a new market within a market. There are no established internet enabled televisions on the market today, and Sony, Samsung, Panasonic and Phillips are all slated to launch their sets in 2009.

Clear and present danger

The entry of most of the top television makers into the internet television space presents a clear and present danger to Apple. We don’t know all the details of who will offer what (or how open the sets will be), but we do know that some manufacturers are doing content deals that will see services offered exclusively instead of others. Every internet enabled television sold that offers premium content from stores other than iTunes is a threat to Apple’s leadership position in the future. The market for the Apple TV box will dry up as people buy internet enabled television sets, and don’t need Apple to buy or rent movies from their lounge rooms.

The market today for premium digital content (outside of music) may be small, but once you overcome the delivery issue through internet enabled televisions, the market will boom. It will be the last stake in the death of broadcast television, but who will benefit from this?

Apple wants to maintain its leadership in premium digital content delivery where ever people are in the home. If Apple is not in the lounge room, it doesn’t get its share of the boom to come. Worse still, if a competitor such as Amazon is offered by other players, those customers may not only end up renting movies from Amazon, they become Amazon digital content customers and there may well be a switch away from the iTunes store for music as well...and the flow on affects could also deliver a hit to Apple’s iPod/ iPhone franchise.

Apple needs to be in the lounge room, and the Apple TV box can’t compete against internet enabled television sets. The only way to tackle this risk is for Apple to offer its own range of televisions, tied into the existing Apple content and product ecosystem. Naturally they also need to be better than the competition, but this is one part of the mix Apple is good at.

Arriba! Arriba!

For the second week in a row, Beverly Hills Chihuahua was the #1 movie at the U.S. box office.

Disney's cute doggies brought in another $17.5 million. Its 10-day total is at $52 million!

Hot dog!

During these crappy times, guess there's nothing like an adorable Disney movie to make you feel warm and fuzzy for a few hours.

Newcomer thriller flick Quarantine nabbed the #2 spot with $14.2 million in ticket sales.

And, to round out the top three, Leo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe's CIA drama Body of Lies debuted to a less than impressive $13.1 million.

Why didn't these big boys draw in bigger crowds?

Well, a suit said, "Body of Lies may have dealt with too sober a topic after all the disastrous financial news."

Is that a good enough answer?

P.S. We saw Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist on Saturday and LOVED it.

It's the Say Anything for a new generation!

We heart Michael Cera!

ReferralKey has been described as LinkedIn mixed with AngiesList. That’s not a bad way to put it because they do allow you to build a network of professional contacts as on LinkedIn and they build lists of reputable businesses as Angieslist does with reliable contractors.

This service focuses on a simple premise: You scratch my back and I’ll scratch your’s. So, you just build your network of contacts and refer the best you know and hopefully they’ll do likewise and everyone benefits from the exchange. ReferralKey does all of the dirty work and helps you track every transaction and analyzes everything for you too.

You can advertise your business on ReferralKey and get listed by your location and industry. They will also register your listing with many search engines. This all enhances the odds of consumers finding your listing.

Membership to ReferralKey isn’t free, even though they do let you create an account for free and allow you to receive up to three referrals without incurring any charges. Once you’ve reached three referrals you’ll have to decide on which membership plan you want. There’s a Silver Key plan for $10 a month and a Gold Key plan for $20 a month. The differences are detailed on here.

The concept of this service is solid and if referrals can generate significant amounts of revenue then it makes sense to sign up for one of ReferralKey’s membership plans. The site is easy to use and they provide a great deal of useful information regarding your contacts and your industry. The old adage is true: It’s not what you know, but who you know that counts. In this case, it could pay off big time as well.

---
Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

ONLINE BUSINESS TOOLBOX: 230+ Tools for Running a Business Online

Just last week we were getting excited about the prospect of Firefox Mobile finally getting into gear, and now seemingly out of nowhere, the first screen shots of the browser have emerged.

The initial shots show a nice prominent address bar at the top of the screen, as well as a handy looking panes tab to the left, where a miniature icon of the open tabs can be seen at a glance. There also seems to be different configurations of the main browser buttons such as back, forward and reload with one shot displaying them under the address bar and another with them taking up a slender column on the right hand side.

Encouragingly, despite the fact that these shots are from an alpha build that is still a while away from public consumption, the benchmark browser performance test, Acid3, came out at 88 out of 100, which is very accomplished for a mobile browser. Oh and if you haven't noticed already, it looks like Windows Mobile is where the action's at (though other versions are no doubt in the works too).

Hopefully Mozilla will treat us all to a public beta before long, but until then, hit the jump to feast your eyes on more pics.

READ

With the accidental discovery of "black silicon," Harvard physicists may have very well changed the digital photography, solar power and night vision industries forever. What is black silicon, you say? Well, it's just as it sounds. Black silicon. It's what this revolutionary new material does that's important, starting with light sensitivity. Early indications show black silicon is 100 to 500 times more sensitive to light than a traditional silicon wafer.

To create the special silicon, Harvard physicist Eric Mazur shined a super powerful laser onto a silicon wafer. The laser's output briefly matches all the energy produced by the sun falling onto the Earth's entire surface at a given moment in time. To spice the experiment up, he also had researchers apply sulfur hexafluoride, which the semiconductor industry uses to make etchings in silicon for circuitry. Seriously, he did this just for kicks and to secure more funding for an old project.

"I got tired of metals and was worrying that my Army funding would dry up," he said. "I wrote the new direction into a research proposal without thinking much about it — I just wrote it in; I don't know why," he said.

The new experiment made the silicon black to the naked eye. Under an electron microscope, however, the dark sheen was revealed to be thousands, if not millions, of tiny spikes. As we said above, those spikes had an amazing effect on the light sensitivity of the wafer. Mazur said the material also absorbs about twice as much visible light as traditional silicon, and can detect infrared light that is invisible to today's silicon detectors.

And there's no change to the manufacturing process, Mazur said, so existing semiconductor facilities can create black silicon without much additional effort or, more importantly, money. [New York Times]

In case you needed more, here's a proof that seems to completely confirm that—as expected—both the MacBook and MacBook Pro will be updated this Tuesday at the Apple MacBook 2008 event in Cupertino, where heads may be rolling after a PDF document referring to the "MacBook/MacBook Pro (Late 2008)" line was accidentally posted today in their support site. The document—now gone from Apple servers—details the full procedure for replacing the display in the new notebooks. [MacRumors]

This is a 20-foot-long Lego model of the HMS Hood, a Royal Navy battlecruiser built in 1920 and sunk by the German Kriegsmarine Battleship Bismarck in 1941. This stunning piece of brick engineering, built to minifig scale, has a robotized mast and is actually bigger than the 16.4-foot-long Lego U.S.S. Harry S. Truman. Check the gallery to get the idea of how gigantic this thing is, and see how the Lego frames to support its weight are built inside.

Just imagine how cool would it be to actually build the Bismarck to the same scale and film a battle in stop-motion for the Go Miniman Go contest. Fortunately, you don't need to go that far to participate and win one of the priceless classic vintage sets we are giving away. You only need to send your entry to us as soon as possible because the end of the month deadline is quickly approaching. If you want to participate, check the contest rules here and send your video now. [Flicker via Brothers Brick — Thanks Lindsay Joy]