In the not-so-distant future, you'll be walking down the street and your phone will beep and offer you a few lunch suggestions just around the corner, or it may tell you that the museum across the street is having an exhibit of that artist you once Googled. That's Google CEO Eric Schmidt's vision of the future. In a keynote address at Tuesday's TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Schmidt said that at some point in the future, Google's search technology will be autonomous, meaning that it will offer you search results even before you've looked for them.

Qwiki won the $50,000 grand prize and The Disrupt Cup. A battlefield of twenty-seven startups was whittled down to a final, elite group of seven. Qwiki climbed above the rest by offering a new way to consume information: text, audio, video, and images melded together in a seamless interface, generating a dynamic movie of whatever you search for.
Photo by Max Whittaker

Co-founder Doug Imbruce, who demonstrated Qwiki on-stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco this week, compared the site to what you see in science fiction movies like Wall-E, where users ask a computer a question and then receive an answer with relevant images and narration. Qwiki users type in a search term, and Qwiki pulls information and media from the Web and narrates the answer in a computerized voice while displaying related media.

IAC/InterActiveCorp honcho Barry Diller says he doesn’t want to own it. People are telling Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt that he should. The only incontrovertible fact: Twitter is the company on everyone’s lips at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco this week. Diller TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington asked Diller in an onstage interview Wednesday what he thought of Twitter. "I don’t think much," Diller retorted.

At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco today, LinkedIn demonstrated what for it is a radical new look: A feature that lets LinkedIn's 80 million members filter and search the comments of everyone on the site. Think of it as LinkedIn meets Twitter. The product, called Signal, should be available to all LinkedIn users by year's end.

Groupon CEO Andrew Mason just made an unusual announcement at TechCrunch Disrupt: if you have a child with someone you met on a Groupon date, the company will give the child $60,000. The site promoting the grant, Grouspawn, tells single Groupon users that they can cash in on the offer by using its "Date Assistant" feature.

Silicon Valley needs to be sent a message that we need real innovation and interesting new ideas. A couple of years ago at Techcrunch 50 they picked a Twitter clone, Yammer, to win. That made sense, because it was the best business. But looking at the final seven companies at this year’s Techcrunch Disrupt, just announced, I see one that sticks out.

I’ve watched Arrington from the very first day he published (he regularly tells people I was the first blogger to link to Techcrunch) and it’s an organization I’ve always looked up to, even with a little bit of a jealous eye. “If I were smarter or more ambitious, I could have built that,” I remember thinking to myself once in a while. Stupid thinking, I know, because I’ve built an absolutely awesome life and I really don’t want to do the hard work of building a business. Mike has my respect for doing the hard work of building a great brand and team. I don’t know when I’ll see a similar effort, so tonight, my glass is raised to Mike and his team and I’ll be in the front row tomorrow to hear exactly the details of this news.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. - SEPT. 28, 2010: Left to right, Tim Armstrong, AOL's CEO announced the acquisition of TechCrunch on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2010 along TechCrunch lawyer Lior Zorea, TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde, and TechCrunch founder and co-editor Michael Arrington. The deal was signed in front of the conference audience. Photo by Dave Getzschman

The acquisition was formally announced in rather dramatic fashion earlier this afternoon at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, where AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and Michael Arrington took the stage to announce and sign the agreement, as well as answer a few questions from members of the audience. CNBC’s Julia Boorstin reports that the price is “about $40 million.”

Schmidt spent about 20 minutes outlining his vision of the future before taking questions from the audience here. None of it was particularly new to those who track Schmidt's public statements closely: mobile devices are becoming more important than desktop PCs, software delivered through cloud computing offers a lot of advantages, and computers can improve the quality of life.

Over breakfast at Doerr’s house, Pincus pitched his start-up, social-gaming company Zynga Game Network Inc., to the famed investor. As it turned out, Doerr’s teenage daughter, Mary, was home at the time and happened to be playing one of Zynga’s games. When Pincus left, Mary’s assessment was to her father was, “He’s pretty cool.”

John Doerr, Bing Gordon and Mark Pincus talk about their joint effort to turn Zynga's into the biggest social gaming company.

On-stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Chamillionaire said he read some blog posts and Twitter updates recently wondering why he keeps showing up at tech events. The implication: He’s taking attention away from a more deserving speaker from the tech world.

Chamillionaire said the tech world can’t just talk to itself. Cool companies might launch at Silicon Valley conferences, but the message “isn’t going out to the rest of the world.” Just by appearing at a conference and mentioning it online, Chamillionaire said he’s introducing these startups to a whole new audience.

Mike Arrington, editor of TechCrunch, and Grammy winner, Chamillionaire, at TechCrunch Disrupt Conference

This blogger watched the TechCrunch Disrupt SF "Women In Tech Panel" from Gate 73 while waiting to board the flight to Denver then to Atlanta. In fact, this post is being written as I wait standby. ..Sara's awesome. She's done a lot for herself in carving a good niche in tech journalism. She's a friend. Well, we'll see after this little crit, but for now, yes.

What do you get when you combine seven panelists plus one moderator on to a stage for 30 minutes to talk about a serious topic? Answer: Not much. And that was evident on today’s Angel vs. VC panel. It’s a shame. There are real changes in the venture capital industry and it would have been fun to talk about them. I said almost nothing in the 30 minutes.

'Techcrunch Disrupt' collection by Robert Scoble featuring content by: Adam Wexler, Wavyx, Mariya, Michael Arrington, Andrew Nacin and 5 other sources

Robert Scoble's favorite real-time news from Techcrunch Disrupt, September 2010 in San Francisco.

Robert Scoble's favorite real-time items from the Techcrunch Disrupt (September 2010 in San Francisco) conference.