TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

A jury awarded ICO Global Communications, a firm controlled by local cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, $236 million in additional damages in a long-running court case against Boeing, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

Seattle's Second Avenue Partners has participated in a $33 million funding round for Ice Energy, a Colorado energy storage company whose technology is used to shift air conditioning energy loads to off peak periods. ... [Plus more after the jump.]

The folks over at Seattle's Jackson Fish Market have cooked up a little Halloween treat called They're Ugly, a simple Web application where users can send virtual flowers to friends (or enemies). Names of the virtual bouquets include Grim Reaper, Spiky Stench and Meat Eater.

Google, of course, has changed its logo in celebration of the spooky holiday. (A trend that Yahoo and MSN also have jumped on). Have you seen any other fun Halloween-related applications or tech sites?

Last year, I remember a Seattle blogger who used Zillow.com's real estate valuations tools to help kids find the best neighborhoods for trick-or-treating. But I couldn't locate the site today.

Eric Wilfrid

Microsoft today named a new general manager for its Macintosh Business Unit -- the group that makes Office software for Apple computers -- and said it promoted the previous GM to an undisclosed new position inside the Entertainment & Devices Division.

Eric Wilfrid (pictured) was named general manager. The previous occupant of the position, Craig Eisler, has "been promoted to a new role," the company says. That will no doubt lead to all sorts of speculation about what Eisler will be doing, but the company is keeping it under wraps for now. Eisler was GM for about 16 months -- time enough to attend only one Macworld.

Benjamin Black, who helped create Amazon.com's EC2 Web service and spent time at Microsoft as a director of engineering, has established a branch office in Seattle for Sausalito, Calif.-based cloud computing startup Joyent.

Black joined Joyent as vice president of research last month and plans to build a small staff here. In addition, he said that Joyent's CTO, Jason Hoffman, is moving to Seattle from San Francisco.

Yapta joins a growing list of Seattle area startups that are cutting staff as the economy takes a nosedive. The two-year-old company, which lets people track airfare prices, laid off 4 workers, leaving it with just a dozen staff.

Microsoft's new cloud-computing initiative will face stiff competition from the likes of Google, Salesforce.com and Seattle-based Amazon.com, all of which have beaten the Redmond company to market with cloud-based offerings of their own. And even if Microsoft does succeed in reshaping its business in the long run, it could see thinner profit margins if its product mix shifts away from its lucrative lines of software for PCs and computer servers toward potentially less costly online versions.

Google may walk away from its proposed advertising search deal with Yahoo rather than agree to regulatory restrictions, according to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News, citing anonymous sources.  Even without the deal, Google accomplished what may have been its most important goal -- keeping Yahoo away from Microsoft. But maybe, in the end, Google simply saved Microsoft from itself.

Post updated with Allen's video message to guests.

An undisclosed medical procedure prevented Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen from accepting, in person, the Seattle King County Realtors' First Citizen award Thursday evening at a celebration honoring the billionaire philanthropist in Seattle.

Allen instead appeared in a short video message shown on the big screens at the event. Many of Allen's friends and former colleagues -- including Bill Gates -- spoke about Allen's contributions to the city, from the founding of Microsoft to the construction of the Experience Music Project to the purchase of the Seattle Seahawks.

A pilot program introduced today by Washington state uses Microsoft Research technology to search, by keyword, thousands of hours of audio from legislative hearings dating back to the 1970s. It's great news for historians and for anyone who wants to listen, over the Internet, to an elaborate discussion of salmon habitat during a 1982 House Agriculture Committee hearing.

But that won't comfort open-source software advocates and others who worry that governmental agencies already rely too heavily on Microsoft. Running the service requires the state to use Windows Server and other back-end Microsoft technologies.

Microsoft's online ad agency Razorfish is feeling the impact of the financial sector's implosion. The agency today cut 40 jobs from its New York office, amid speculation that Microsoft is looking to sell the unit.

UPDATE: A day after the New York layoffs, Razorfish is adding staff, buying a digital ad agency in Spain.

Screen shot of Glympse showing location of founder Bryan Trussel this morning

Bryan Trussel, the former head of Microsoft's casual games division, has launched a new website that lets people track the movement of their friends and family online. It locates cell phone signals with GPS technology and plots their motion on Google Maps.

Martin Tobias scores $5 million for Kashless
Microsoft search gimmicks mostly fizzle
Madrona incubates SEO startup Optify
Frank Catalano: Web 1.0, Version 2.0
Handbag rental service Avelle cuts staff

What we're reading:
InternetNews.com: Will online Office apps help or hurt Microsoft?
Brier Dudley: Issaquah startup launches Web video voter guide
WSJ: Netbooks and the end of Windows Vista
VentureBeat: Google to AdSense users: Please don't dump us
All About Microsoft: Is Microsoft Azure just 'Hailstorm' revisited?
Information Week: Windows 7 Revealed: 24 Screen Shots
TechCrunch: Killer Startups gets a killer deal on Startups.com
Seattle 2.0: Rebecca Lovell: Hiring for Startups: Burger-flipping to B-to-B.

Frank Catalano

FRANK CATALANO: Now it’s clear to me the Web business boom of the past few years is completely different than the earlier, much maligned dot-com boom. Except where it’s exactly the same.

I have this gift of perspective because in October, four years ago, I disappeared. I gave up more than a decade of analyzing, commenting on, and consulting in the tech industry to take an executive-level position in a global publishing company. Then, recently, I left my corporate gig and started mingling again in local tech circles.

On the surface, it was invigorating, inspiring. Founders swore that their new companies had figured out markets and approaches that were completely different than what had gone before.

Yet what I saw made real the rumors that had made it to my corporate cocoon, a reality reinforced by the events of recent weeks. Turns out the differences for Internet companies from last decade’s boom mostly are not, and some companies not already in the toilet may be lapping at the water.

Martin Tobias

Whether at Loudeye or Imperium Renewables, Martin Tobias has always had an uncanny ability to raise capital. And while some of his past startups have not turned out as planned, the former Microsoftie has been at the forefront of two tectonic shifts in the business world, the rise of the Internet and clean tech. Now, word comes that he has raised $5 million for his new startup, Kashless. We pried as many details as we could from him on the phone early this morning from Hawaii.