While many consumers would be hard-pressed to define an 'app,' the little mobile miracles are on track to generate $17.5 billion in revenue by 2012. That's according to independent research conducted by Chetan Sharma Consulting for app store operator GetJar. What's more, in less than two years, the number of available apps will catapult from 7 billion in 2009 to 50 billion. But what can apps really do? Shortly, pretty much everything that your clunk 'ol desktop computer can do, according to Getjar founder and chief executive Ilja Laurs. As such, Laurs predicts that "mobile apps will eclipse the traditional …

With the help of analytics firm RJMetrics, TechCrunch provides some new (if not entirely surprising) insights into Chatroulette -- a video chat forum that randomly connects users with strangers. According to some informal research based on 2,883 Chatroulette sessions, RJMetrics found that about half of all "spins" -- or random connections -- set users up with someone from the U.S. The next most likely country was France at 15%. Of the spins showing a single person, 89% were male and 11% were female. Users, meanwhile, are more likely to encounter a webcam featuring no person at all than one featuring …

Still focused on fleshing out niche content verticals, AOL has overhauled its Food channel in the form of recipes site Kitchen Daily. Parts of AOL Food will remain Kitchen Daily, including a Grilling Hub and Dinner Tonight page. Meanwhile, an AOL rep tells paidContent that the Slashfood blog will be kept as a separate, stand-alone site, as it continues to focus more on food news and culture. Also, "If Kitchen Daily looks a little like Condé Nast's Epicurious, it's not exactly a coincidence," notes paidContent. Its editor-in-chief is none other than Cheryl Brown -- formerly of Condé Nast's now-deceased Gourmet …

Hoping to revive its digital darling status, social news site Digg is planning a big relaunch, which, CEO Jay Adelson promises, will not "dilute" its appeal. Rather, it will help users to focus more effectively than ever on what is of interest to them, Adelson tells The Telegraph. This weekend, at the South by Southwest conference, Adelson was giving members of the press more details on the coming changes. "The key changes to Digg will be a greater focus on personalization [sic], a more flexible taxonomy in which every keyword on the site can become a topic and a community, …

European music streaming service Spotify is gearing up for a big U.S. invasion. Exactly when that will be, however, remains a question mark. Chief executive Daniel Ek says the service, which debuted in 2008, now has 320,000 paying subscribers, and about 7 million users across countries like the U.K., Sweden and France. In Europe, Spotify offers free, ad-supported access to streaming songs. A premium version is available for around $15 a month, depending on the exchange rate of each country. Meanwhile, Ek says Spotify's U.S. version might be "slightly different" from its European one, "suggesting the company is still having …

Analysts continue to have high hopes for Google's mobile operating system, but its future as phone maker looks shaky at best. Indeed, Google has sold just 135,000 Nexus One phones since its debut at the beginning of the year, according to new data from mobile analytics firm Flurry. The estimate covers the handset's first 74 days on the market. In stark contrast, Apple sold a million iPhones in its first 74 days. Motorola, meanwhile, managed to sell over a million Droid in that time. Why has the Nexus One sold so poorly? Well, it's only online through …

Science might have found a cure for "CrackBerry" addiction -- and it's called the iPhone. Indeed, two in five BlackBerry owners plan to swap their current device for an Apple-made phone when it's time to upgrade, according to new data from market researcher firm Crowd Science. The data suggests that "RIM isn't keeping up with consumer demand in its efforts to combat growing encroachment from the likes of iPhone and Android," concludes Ars Technica. Despite RIM's entrenchment among business users, the iPhone platform has grown at a faster rate than the BlackBerry over the last year. Why? …

A full 60% of virtual servers are less secure than the physical servers they replace, according to new research from Gartner. That's a potentially troubling finding for Google and Microsoft, both of which are betting their futures on virtual, a.k.a., "cloud" computing. On the bright side, Gartner predicts that by 2015, only 30% of "virtualized" servers will be less secure than the physical machines they're expected replaced. According to Gartner, virtualization itself is not inherently insecure, but "many virtualization deployment projects are being undertaken without involving the information security team in the initial architecture and planning stages." …

AOL has decided to not increase base salary this year, according to an SEC proxy picked up by paidContent this morning. "However, as always, other perks more than make up for it," remarks paidContent's Rafat Ali. Of particular note, Ted Cahall, until recently Chief Technology Officer at AOL, received a secondary retention payment 10 days before the company announced his departure."Pursuant to a secondary retention program for Mr. Cahall established in December 2008, Mr. Cahall received a retention payment of $100,000 on May 15, 2009 and a retention payment of $354,000 (an amount equal to 60% of …

Knocking Google off its perch, Hitwise says Facebook is now the most popular site in the U.S. Specifically, the social net surpassed Google in terms of overall traffic for the week ending March 13. In other words, Facebook commanded 7.07% for all U.S. web traffic that week, while Google was responsible for a laughable 7.03%. Over the past year, Facebook's growth has been remarkable. Traffic to the site increased 185% compared to the same week last year. During the same period, visits to Google increased just 9%. "In early 2008," notes DigitalBeat, "there were reports of Facebook's …