ReadWriteStart

Have you ever found yourself ignoring the directions of your car's GPS in order to get somewhere faster or more efficiently than it can calculate? Me too. Chances are when leaving point A, you plugged in the address of point B, and a route was calculated on how to get from one to the other. The problem is, things come up on the route from point A to point B that may cause you to divert from your path such as construction, road closures, traffic, side trips you need to make or neighborhoods you may choose to avoid driving straight through.

It's not every day you get the chance to hear a half dozen executives from successful startups speak openly about how their companies managed to get to where they are. In fact, its most likely that to get that kind of access in one day, you'd have to be at some high-priced convention that costs several hundred dollars to attend. This isn't the case, however, with Starter Day, an event hosted by software makers Atlassian that will showcase six CEOs and founders from various startups, including Boxee, Aardvark and Pandora.

Known by many as The Big Apple, and by some in the tech scene as Silicon Alley, New York City has been an international hub for media, art and business for decades. More recently New York has ebbed and flowed with the success and failures of the Internet startup culture, and is now well on its way to cementing its reputation alongside Silicon Valley as a driving global force in the industry.

Capitol Hill is abuzz as Comcast and NBC Universal defend their merger in an antitrust investigation before the Senate Judiciary Committee. While a number of interest groups are commenting on the potential acquisition, Boxee CEO Avner Ronen's blog post offers some hints at how the merger could affect the environment for web TV startups.

Anyone who has been using Facebook for a few years knows that even minor changes to an interface design can cause a wide variety of reactions from a loyal user base. When the popular social network has made design tweaks in the past, there is always some portion of their users that are upset, if not enraged, by the changes made. A couple of weeks ago, we told you how your registration process could be driving potential users away, and a large part of that has to do with the design.

Savvy content publishers are celebrating the announcement of what may be a potentially lucrative revenue stream. Yesterday morning, net television provider Boxee wrote about its plans to launch an upcoming payment platform. Content partners will have a chance to offer pay-per-view and subscription media as one click purchases from the remote.

Today marks the official start to the 2010 Consumer Electronics Showcase in Las Vegas where all of the biggest electronics manufacturers show off their coolest and newest products. While CES is mainly a gadget show, entrepreneurs looking for the next big thing should pay close attention to the innovative ideas being pushed into the consumer market.

The big show is just getting underway, but we are already seeing some trends emerge that could point to new opportunities for startups in 2010.

Not long ago it was considered revolutionary to do all of your holiday shopping from your computer. Amazon and other companies on ReadWriteWeb's List of Geek Shopping Sites make it possible for busy (and lazy) consumers to avoid the department store lines and shopping malls. After looking at what's in store for 2010, we may find our shopping experience transformed even further.

In a world where content is king, Boxee has found a way to give entertainment producers the royal treatment. After a successful App challenge and calculated rollouts of its Mac, Windows and Linux releases, internet television platform Boxee is launching into private beta with a new and improved look. ReadWriteWeb got an early look at the product and found out how the company plans to increase its growing user base.

Often described as "crowd sourced television", online community site Redux is quickly becoming the most addictive entertainment experience on the web. With this morning's announcement of Twitter and Facebook integration, it looks like the community's content is about to increase tenfold. Like many other sites, users can import their Twitter and Facebook streams into their profile feeds; however, unlike other social feature integrations, there's a catch. Rather than simply spitting out a stream of text with bit.ly links, the service converts URLS into video thumbnails and site previews. This conversion is sure to improve Twitter and Facebook-based discovery.