Web-to-TV streaming will be be worth $2.9 billion by 2013, according to a new report released by the mobile internet and digital entertainment analyst In-Stat.

“Once Web-to-TV video becomes simple and convenient, mass consumer adoption will follow quite rapidly,” said Keith Nissen, In-Stat analyst. “Our primary research shows that users want a variety of their consumer devices to enable a web-to-TV video experience.”

40 percent of young-adult households in the U.S. already view video streamed to their TV at least once a month, according to the report.

Other highlights include:

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Amazon is expected to unveil a new Kindle Wednesday. The new model is reportedly designed for newspaper and magazine reading, and the New York Times is partnering with Amazon on the reader.

The new Kindle is one of several e-readers being developed for newspapers and periodicals.

Hearst (owners of our city’s struggling San Francisco Chronicle, which recently bought out some of its best columnists), announced in February that it is developing its own device.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is also launching an e-reader next year, as is Plastic Logic, a well-financed German startup.

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This week there have been a couple of discussion-provoking Twitter studies by Nielsen making the rounds.

The first, and loudest, was Nielsen’s report that 60 percent of Twitter users abandon the service in the first month, predicting that the figure augured a slim 10 percent growth rate for the microblogging site.

“Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few months, but it will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty,” wrote David Martin, Vice President of Primary Research for Nielsen Online.

“Frankly, if Oprah can’t accomplish that, I’m not sure who can,” wrote Martin, as the flames he fanned continued to rise.

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Things continue to get better for we TV viewers who don’t own TVs.

Disney’s new deal with Hulu means that, with the inclusion of ABC content, three of the four major networks will be putting their content on the fast growing video site.

In a wired.com article, Gartner research vice president Mark McGuire said that “Disney is acknowledging that [Hulu] is clearly more than just a couple of networks throwing some of their content online.”

“This is a fairly serious platform they need to be part of,” McGuire added.

Disney is acquiring 30 percent of the video site launched last year by NBC and FOX.

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Personal finance site Mint launched a new feature Tuesday, a tool inspired by the gaming world.

Mint’s “Financial Fitness,” released in private Beta, tracks users’ budgeting efforts, rewarding them with points and achievements, as in Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games.

The five main categories are “Know your Money,” “Spend Less than you Earn,” “Use Debt Wisely,” “Invest Your Savings,” and “Prepare for the Unexpected.” Within these main categories are subcategories like getting a high yield bank account or avoiding bank fees.

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Is Microsoft taking a public-service cue from Google? The Redmond, WA, corporation has just released the private beta of Vine, a tool for keeping track of your family and friends during an emergency.

The Vine dashboard is conceived as a way of keeping in communication during an emergency situation, but can also be used for organizing groups or sharing information, including Facebook status updates, with your network.

The desktop dashboard is a geo-localized map showing your contacts’ location and alerts or status updates. Vine also sends location-specific reports from over 20,000 local and national news services and public service organizations such as the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

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The number of people using online banking continued to grow through 2008’s economic woes. ComScore attributes this to banks’ aggressive customer-acquisition strategies and a heightened financial awareness among customers.

Online banking had the same growth in Q4 2008 as it did in Q4 2007, .09 percent. Establishing a baseline in online banking growth is difficult according to comScore’s stats, as quarterly results fluctuated from quarter to quarter in 2007 and 2008.

While the average quarterly growth was 2.06 in those two years, three of the eight quarters had the same growth of .09 percent.

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Washington D.C. will be the first U.S. city with free mobile digital TV broadcasts.

The consumer trial will begin later this summer, and will broadcast the programming of local CBS, NBC, PBS, FOX and Ion affiliates to cell phones, laptops, PDAs, portable media and gaming devices, and in-car entertainment systems.

The mobile broadcasts will be exactly the same as on TV.

“Broadcasters recognize that the successful launch of mobile DTV will make broadcast TV practically ubiquitous,” said David Lougee, President of Gannett Broadcasting.

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ComScore recently reported that mobile broadband subscriptions took a big hit in Q4 2008, a result of diminished consumer spending.

Mobile broadband subscriptions, which had been growing in double digits since Q2 2007, dropped to five percent growth in 2008’s final quarter, after subscriptions had grown 22 percent in Q3.

“We’ve observed a significant deceleration in subscriber growth during Q4 2008 coinciding with the economic downturn, an indication that mobile broadband service may still be seen by many as a luxury rather than a necessity,” wrote Andrea Vollman, author of the report.

While mobile broadband is still considered a luxury in this economic climate, the Internet is viewed as a necessity. In a report published in February, BIGresearch and STORES reported that Internet service was the most “untouchable” consumer good.

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Whether or not the just-announced “Death of Moore’s Law” will affect gadgets like Carl Anderson thinks it will hit servers and chips remains to be seen.

But as gadgets become increasingly smaller, a new set of usage problems arise. Touch screens are getting so small that the tool used to interact with them – the human finger –can be a big hindrance to smooth computing.

“On first sight, touch-screens seem to allow for particular compactness, because they integrate input and screen into the same physical space,” wrote Microsoft researcher Patrick Baudisch on his website. “The opposite is true, however, because the user’s fingers occlude contents and prevent precision.”

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