TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

John Moe

Many people in the Seattle region know radio personality John Moe for his past work on KUOW-FM, before he went on to become a host of "Weekend America" and a contributor to other national programs. Next week, the native of Federal Way, Wash., will take the reins from longtime host Jon Gordon on "Future Tense," a daily five-minute American Public Media technology program out of Minnesota.

We spoke with Moe via phone this afternoon about his plans for the venerable show, his interest in technology and, of course, his enduring curiosity about flying cars and jet packs. Continue reading for excerpts from our conversation.

AdReady, the Seattle online advertising startup, has landed an additional $5.3 million in financing, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The new money comes five months after former aQuantive executive Karl Siebrecht took over the reins as CEO.

Intel executive Sean Maloney has resigned from the board of Clearwire, an announcement that comes nearly two months after suffering a stroke at his home. Maloney is being replaced by Arvind Sodhani, who serves as executive vice president of Intel and president of Intel Capital. He previously sat on the company's board until 2007.

Logo for the Richland H.S. Bombers

The Tri-Cities grew to prominence in the 1940s and 1950s with the founding of Hanford, which produced the plutonium used in the first nuclear bomb. Now, two former wireless executives are hoping to help transform the Tri-Cities into a hotbed of innovative technologies that could actually help save the planet.

Former McCaw Cellular executives Wayne Perry and Cal Cannon are spending about $10 million of their own money to build a new Innovation Center for emerging companies in the clean tech sector, reports The Puget Sound Business Journal's Steve Wilhelm. [Subscription required]. The Richland facility, which could welcome the first tenants in the next 12 months and span some 7.9 acres, is located next to the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

After attending the recent TEDx Seattle event, I noted that science fiction writer Greg Bear's talk -- warning of a future society filled with too much information -- was the one I'd most like to see made available for widespread public consumption. Well, we're in luck. It was posted this week along with all of the other talks from the day.

"We're heading into a time period when, basically, there will be no secrets," he says, adding later, "How much of this do we really want? We can do it, but how much of this do we really want? If we're tweeting all the time and we're totally gossiping with each other, we don't have time to read books. Please take time to read books. ... Eventually we won't have time to watch movies ... We won't have time to be private. We will have lives that are totally recorded, totally available to everybody, and then there will be the discouraging fact that no one wants to see it."

Chris Capossela, a Microsoft Business Division senior vice president, is gearing up for the upcoming launch of Microsoft’s Office 2010 products. In a recent interview, he talked about efforts to upgrade the venerable Office programs by giving them new social networking features and offering web-based versions of Word, Excel and other traditional software programs, pitting Microsoft more directly against Google Docs.

I always get a kick out of seeing startups in their own environments. That's why I loved this short video from Zpop Media's Scott Weiss, who goes behind the scenes at the Founder's Co-op in Seattle.

In the video, you'll see everything from dogs wandering around to Founder's Co-op general partner Chris DeVore pouring whiskey drinks. Just one question: Isn't Maker's Mark too high-end for startups? I thought they'd be drinking something like Early Times.

Weiss is planning to shoot more videos of startup life in the coming months, and we'll showcase those here on TechFlash.

About the only thing missing from the tech industry this week was a sudden and mysterious case of amnesia. If only Steve Ballmer were so lucky.

One day after the news that Microsoft has mothballed its Courier tablet project, TechCrunch this morning quotes an anonymous "source who's been briefed on the matter" saying that Hewlett-Packard has killed the highly hyped Windows 7 slate that caused the big stir at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year.

No official word yet from HP or Microsoft, and based on our own sniffing around this morning, it's worth treating this one with a dose of skepticism until we get official confirmation. That said, there's no question that Microsoft finds itself in an awkward spot as the industry rushes to compete with the iPad in the emerging niche between smart phones and traditional computers.

The Seattle 2.0 Awards are less than three weeks away. We're excited to be a media sponsor of the startup celebration this year, and as part of that we've got an opportunity to give away tickets for the big show.

If you want the free tickets, all you have to do is answer this trivia question about keynote speaker Jonathan Sposato of Picnik: Sposato is well known for selling two startup companies to Google. But what was the entrepreneur's first job in the technology industry?

Sposato

Astute readers of TechFlash will have an edge on this one, and if you need a hint just let me know in the comments. The first person to email me at johncook@bizjournals.com with the correct response will win two tickets. Please include your contact information. (Editor's note: Post updated with the contest winner, as well as the correct answer to the trivia question).

ReVolt Technologies, a maker of rechargeable Zinc-air batteries which is moving its headquarters from Switzerland to Portland, has received one of the largest federal research grants in the latest funding round from the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. ARPA-E, as the agency is known, yesterday announced $106 million for 37 projects.

ReVolt, which raised just over $5 million, wasn't the only organization with ties to the Pacific Northwest to receive funds. ARPA-E also awarded $6 million to a joint project between the University of Washington and University of California, Berkeley. The project is tied to a Boston company created by five MIT PhDs called Gingko BioWorks, which is developing ways to engineer the E. coli organism into the liquid fuel isooctane. ARPA-E said that isooctane works well with the U.S. transportation system.

A high-profile engineering summit taking place in Seattle in the coming days aims to deliver insights into some of the greatest challenges of our century -- and light a fire under the people in a position to take them on, now and in the years ahead.

The Seattle Grand Challenges Summit, taking place Sunday on the University of Washington campus and Monday in downtown Seattle, is the latest in a series of events across the country focusing on the 14 "Grand Challenges" identified by the National Academy of Engineering -- key problems that the group believes need to be solved for the good of society and the future of the world.

The idea is to provide "information and inspiration for current professionals, and especially for the next generation of engineers coming on," Matt O’Donnell, the University of Washington's dean of engineering, and one of the organizers of the event. "These are the problems that are going to define their careers."

Expedia saw double digit increases in revenue, net income and gross bookings during the first quarter as the travel industry showed signs of life. Expedia Chairman Barry Diller offered a bullish take on the prospects of the business, noting in a release that the company has become a consistent "cash machine." In fact, Diller said that Expedia returned more than $200 million in cash to shareholders during the quarter.

Newspapers across the country are desperately trying to figure out how to make money online. And while there's been plenty of chatter about pay walls and micropayments, the jury is still out on what will or won't work.

The Los Angeles Times this week unveiled a potentially lucrative pilot program, which calls for green e-commerce hyperlinks to be added to some of the lifestyle stories and blog posts on the newspaper's Web site. The e-commerce links -- directly related to the content in the story -- will direct readers to products on sites such as Amazon.com.

Gizmodo photo

Microsoft is abandoning plans to build a new tablet computer known as Courier, an interesting move given that the device could have served as direct challenger to Apple's recently released iPad.

Citing unnamed sources, Gizmodo reports today that Microsoft execs pulled the plug on the project this week. The Courier was never formally announced by Microsoft, though Gizmodo uncovered details of the multitouch device last September.

Bill Gates

Billionaire Bill Gates is investing $10 million into Schrödinger, a Portland-based software company whose products have been used by nearly all of the major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies over the past 20 years to help accelerate drug research and development.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Gates was introduced to the company's co-founder, Columbia University chemistry professor Richard Friesner, over games of bridge. The Microsoft co-founder invested through his private investment fund, Cascade, and he told the Journal that he'd consider investing more money based on the progress the company makes.