Technology

Wait, smart glasses? Smart night light? Smart ring?

Sounds dumb. Amazon seemed to go nuts with its announcement of new hardware products on Wednesday.

The company also announced a high-end smart speaker, earbuds, a smart oven, an updated Echo Dot with a clock, a new regular Echo, a lower-priced Echo Flex, a higher-priced Echo Studio, an updated Echo Show 8 and even an Echo Glow smart lamp for kids. It even launched a pet tracker called Fetch, and a long-range, low-power networking technology called Sidewalk to go with it — 15 new products in all.

Remember when Amazon was an online bookstore?

The glue that holds together most of these disparate products, of course, is Alexa, Amazonvoice assistant.

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Where does tech end and media begin? It can be hard to find the dividing line, particularly as tech companies move into the media business, and as big Hollywood blockbusters are increasingly created on computers.

So even though TechCrunchDisrupt SF event (happening next week!!) is ostensibly a tech conference, we&ll have plenty of big names from the worlds of media and entertainment onstage to discuss the changing landscape.

On day one, those namesinclude Joseph Gordon Levitt, who you may know as an actor in films like &Inception& and &500 Days of Summer,& but who also founded the creative collaboration platform HitRecord, which raised a $6.4 million Series A earlier this year.

We&ll also be joined by actor Will Smith and director Ang Lee to discuss their new movie &Gemini Man,& in which Lee utilized cutting-edge computer effects to create a younger version of his star.

From the tech industry, we&ll have Neal Mohan, chief product officer at YouTube, who can discuss the video platformongoing challenges, and how YouTube can balance its commitment to openness with growing pressure to battle hate speech and misinformation.

And while 5G will probably the main focus of our interview with Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg and Verizon Media CEO Guru Gowrappan, we here at TechCrunch (which is owned by Verizon Media) are certainly interested in hearing about the companydigital media plans.

Meanwhile, if you&re more interested in the nitty gritty of developing a media strategy, we&ll have a panel on that very subject on our Extra Crunch stage, with speakers including MakeLoveNotPornCindy Gallop and Brooke Hammerling of Brew PR.

Then on day two, we&ll turn our attention to one of the fastest-growing media categories, esports. 100 Thieves is a big player in this space — combining streaming content, competitive esports and apparel — and we&ll talk to the companyfounder Matthew &Nadeshot& Haag (a pro gamer himself), along with co-owner Scooter Braun (who also manages Justin Bieber and Arianna Grande).

Our Extra Crunch programming on that day will also include a session thatall about future of digital media, which will be sponsored by publisher engagement company Spot.im.

Finally, on day three, we&ll be joined by YouTube star and &Queen of Shitty Robots& Simone Giertz. While the conversation will likely focus on her latest robotic and hardware creations (including her crowdfunded Every Day Calendar), Giertz is a remarkable case study in how someone can build an enormous following and business on digital media platforms.

We&ll also have an Extra Crunch session about brand-building — Brooke Hammerling will be sharing more of her knowledge, and she&ll be joined by Bumble VP of Marketing Chelsea Cain Maclin and Character co-founder/creative director Ben Pham.

Disrupt SF will take place from October 2 to 4at San FranciscoMoscone Center. Browse the full agenda and buy your tickets.

EC Editorial Announcements

TechCrunch Disrupt SF is this week: join us on the Extra Crunch stage

TechCrunchbiggest event of the year is happening this coming week at the brand-new Moscone North convention center in SF. We have wall-to-wall programming on our inaugural Extra Crunch stage, where audience members can ask questions to our panelists on topics as diverse as growth marketing, recruiting, fundraising, legal quandaries, and more.

If you want to join but haven&t bought your ticket, remember that all Extra Crunch annual subscribers get 20% off our tickets by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. And if you can&t join, we will have synopses of some of the EC panels coming out in the following weeks.

Transfer your Extra Crunch Brex Reward points to JetBlue

A while back, we added an Extra Crunch member benefit where all EC members can receive 100,000 Brex Rewards points if they sign up for a new Brex account. Now, those points can also be transferred to JetBlue, perhaps for those fancy Mint seats between New York and SF. We are going to continue to add new member benefits, so do let us know if you have any interesting ideas or want to partner with us.

Follow our new @extracrunch Twitter handle

Finally, we now have a new Twitter handle for Extra Crunch: @extracrunch. We will be retweeting all EC articles on the handle, and later on, will be exploring other ways to engage with members through Twitter. Follow us!

Inside the venture capital recruiting process

Top venture capital partner recruiter (among other verticals) Dan Miller of True Search describes what it takes to become an investor these days at a VC firm:

If you are interviewing for operating roles in companies in parallel to interviewing with VC firms, you will get multiple offers (probably quite good ones) in the former category before you&ve made it far in the latter. It is exceedingly common in the VC Partner searches I run to find out that an excellent candidate has multiple strong offers in Product roles from big tech companies and hot startups, for example, before they&ve made it halfway through a VC interview process.

This Week in Apps: AltStore, acquisitions and Google Play Pass

TechCrunchapps maven Sarah Perez is starting a new, occasional series on the most important developments in the app world along with her analysis of whattaking place. This week, she explores AltStore, a new type of app store, iOS 13 adoption trends, an App Annie acquisition, and five or so other stories: