TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Simon and Eugenia Han of Yoogi's Closet

Some businesses get started with venture capital. Others get going with a second mortgage. But Yoogi's Closet -- an online retailer which specializes in re-selling pre-owned handbags, jewelry and shoes -- got off the ground after co-founder Simon Han sold his Ferrari.

Han -- who previously created the online automotive site CarDomain -- sold his 2000 Modena 360 for $102,000 just before the market crashed last year. The 35-year-old entrepreneur then plowed the proceeds from the sports car into Yoogi's Closet, laughing about diversifying his holdings into designer handbags.

"It was awfully painful," said the car enthusiast. "But it definitely has paid off."

St. John

The San Francisco social networking upstart hi5 is starting to take on a Seattle shine. Seven months after tapping former AudienceScience executive Bill Gossman as CEO, the company is back in the Emerald City cherry picking talent.

This time it is a pretty big name from the gaming industry. Alex St. John, the outspoken founder and former CEO of Redmond-based WildTangent, has joined hi5 as president and chief technology officer. It is unclear whether St. John will be permanently based in San Francisco or Seattle, but for now he is making the commute to the Bay Area for the job, according to a hi5 spokesman. (We have an email into St. John -- who is traveling -- to get more details).

St. John certainly is a key hire as hi5 looks to ramp up its social gaming efforts, competing against the likes of Facebook and Zynga. [Post updated with comments from St. John and Madrona's Greg Gottesman]

Google Finance chart

Amazon.com shares reached another all-time high today as investors embraced the company's e-commerce prospects this holiday season and Amazon said its Kindle reader hit a new (undisclosed) sales record. Shares of the e-commerce giant were up more than 3 percent to $135.91 on Monday, and continue to climb in after-hours trading. The company's shares surged than 25 percent in late October after a strong third quarter earnings report.

Clearwire plans to turn on its new high-speed wireless network in the Seattle area beginning tomorrow, the 27th market where the company offers WiMax service. The announcement is significant given that Clearwire is based in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland.

For months now, Clearwire has served the Seattle area with a pre-WiMax technology that didn't have the speed or capacity of the WiMax network. With the new network in place, the company said that customers will be able to experience mobile download speeds of three to six Mbps with bursts up to 10 Mbps. The new service is being marketed under the Clear moniker, a brand that you're likely to start seeing more of in the coming weeks.

Nintendo sold more than 550,000 of its Wii game consoles in the U.S. during the Thanksgiving week, according to internal tracking data disclosed by the company this afternoon. Redmond-based Nintendo of America says in a news release that the result shows consumers are responding favorably to the Wii's new $200 price.

What the news release doesn't mention is that the company last year said it sold 800,000 Wiis in the U.S. during Thanksgiving week. Of course, console sales on the whole are down this year, thanks to the difficult economy. The real test will be how sales of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 compare with Nintendo's result.

In the meantime, Nintendo's stats show how rough things have gotten.

UPDATES: Microsoft disputes reports of Windows 'Black Screen' glitches and Security firm retreats from Windows Black Screen claims

Microsoft says it's looking into reports that its latest security updates are causing some Windows machines to stop working and display a mostly black screen with no desktop icons, taskbar, sidebar or other elements -- seizing up and displaying just a "My Computer" Explorer window, if they're lucky.

The issue reportedly affects a variety of Windows versions, including Wndows 7. PC World quotes the CEO of computer security firm Prevx saying it's "massively debilitating" for people who have it. Prevx first reported the problem last week, and the company is offering a free tool that it says could fix the problem for some users.

Paul Allen

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has held onto the largest voting interest in Charter Communications Inc. as the cable company announced this morning that it has emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The company was able to reduce its debt by about $8 billion, or 40 percent, through a restructuring approved by the bankruptcy court. Charter says that existing shares of its common stock have been canceled, and the company plans to apply for a new listing of stock on the NASDAQ sometime after 45 days from now.

The folks at Akamai put together a fun map that gives a snapshot of sorts of this Cyber Monday, tracking web traffic to more than 270 major e-commerce sites. Right now, at just after 1:30 Pacific Time, it's showing over 7.1 million visits per minute, which is 35 percent above normal. This doesn't provide the full online retail picture, or indicate actual sales, but it's interesting to see all the activity worldwide.

In a report generating some buzz today in the tech industry, an analyst disputes the popular assumption that Verizon Wireless will be first to get the iPhone in the U.S. when Apple's exclusive deal with AT&T ends. Instead, Thomas Weisel analyst Doug Reid says it could go to Bellevue-based T-Mobile USA.

The Street.com has details on Reid's note to investors, including the possibility that Apple may not be as interested in Verizon given its support for Google's Android platform via the Motorola Droid. In addition, T-Mobile USA parent Deutsche Telekom already has a deal with Apple for T-Mobile Germany, creating a precedent. ZDNet's Sam Diaz does a good job of explaining other potential factors in this post.

Simulation in Microsoft ESP. (Credit: Microsoft)

To answer the biggest question first, this is not the future of Microsoft's consumer Flight Simulator product. Flight Sim's fate remains uncertain following the company's decision to disband the studio behind the long-running and beloved product.

However, it is an example of the core Flight Sim technology living on. Microsoft has reached a deal to license to Lockheed Martin its Microsoft ESP system, which the Redmond company derived from the Flight Simulator project two years ago with an eye toward offering a "visual simulation" platform -- taking the immersive world originally created for Flight Sim and allowing it to be customized for specialized commercial applications.

Blue Nile isn't known as a discount retailer, but the online diamond merchant is trying to get in on some of the Cyber Monday action. The company for the first time is offering discounts on select pieces of jewelry in the post-Thanksgiving period (starting with a "diamond eternity bracelet" today, which is already listed as sold out), and offering free overnight shipping on Cyber Monday purchases.

Jimmy Fallon plays Project Natal (Credit: NBC)

For months now, Microsoft's leaders have been touting the concept of the natural user interface -- the ability to use gestures and voice-recognition technology to interact, via high-tech sensors, with increasingly intelligent machines. Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, spoke at length on the topic during his recent college tour, making it clear that he considers natural user interfaces central to the future of computing.

Bill Gates raised the subject again during his appearance this weekend on "Meet the Press," telling NBC's David Gregory that the natural user interface is "the thing that people underestimate right now."

OK, so where are Microsoft's own natural user interfaces? Sure, there are prototypes, and lots of touch-screen technologies, but that's just a slice of the broader concept. Project Natal, the motion-sensing Xbox 360 control system, isn't expected to hit the market until a year from now at the earliest, despite being named one of Time's 50 Best Innovations of 2009. And Natal is still just one piece of the vision.

What's to say this won't be yet another example of Microsoft researching something to death while a rival beats it to market?

Amazon.com is trumpeting the sales success of its Kindle electronic reader, without actually giving any data to back it up. The e-commerce giant put out a release today calling November "the best sales month ever for Kindle, even before Cyber Monday," and it repeated the mantra that Kindle is "most wished for, the most gifted, and the #1 bestselling product across all product categories on Amazon."

Clearly, Amazon is seeking to promote Kindle this holiday season and capitalize on the supply problems that have bedeviled its leading e-reader competitors, Barnes & Noble's Nook and Sony's new Daily Edition. But given Amazon's penchant for secrecy on Kindle sales numbers, you'll have to take Amazon's crowing with a big grain of salt.

We've been following with a mix of fascination, sadness and fear the tragic killing of four police officers near Tacoma, the subsequent siege of the alleged shooter at a home in Seattle's Leschi neighborhood and now the alarming news that the suspect may be roaming the University District or Beacon Hill.

And we've been tracking all of this primarily on Twitter, where the events have played out almost in real time under the hash tag #washooting. Could this be a watershed moment for the use of Twitter and other social media tools in Seattle journalism? It appears so.

A wide variety of sources -- from traditional journalists to government agencies to ordinary Seattle residents -- have been combining to create one unified stream of news. And one could argue that it's a much more powerful and informative stream than any single news organization could muster. [Post updated with The Seattle Times crediting Twitter for its record traffic on Monday of 3.3 million page views.]

The e-commerce battle between Amazon.com and Wal-Mart is shaping up as a win-win for both companies, at least in terms of web traffic. The two retailers saw a big jump in unique visitors on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, with Amazon up 28 percent and Wal-Mart up 22 percent, according to internet measurement firm comScore. Overall U.S. online spending on Black Friday was up 11 percent from the same day a year ago, hitting $595 million.