TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

A few weeks ago, a TechFlash reader suggested that it would be cool to create a map that showcases the locations of Seattle technology companies. I thought it was a cool idea, and so did Kevin Merritt of Seattle-based Socrata who handed over some nifty tools to make it happen. So, here's the deal. Let's try to create a map of all of the technology companies in Seattle, both big and small. Just fill out the form below and add your company to the map.

Let's try to limit the map to true technology companies in the fields of software, Internet, biotech and clean tech, so no service providers like law firms, recruiters and PR agencies. Hopefully, if this is successful, we can start to see where clusters of firms are located in the region. Editor's note: The latitude and longitude is not necessary.

Spoon is trying to make desktop applications available to users no matter where they are -- without installations or downloads. The 25-person company recently changed its name from Xenocode to Spoon, and launched a new service that streams applications directly from the Web. Founder and CEO Kenji Obata, a former Microsoft employee, discusses what makes his company tick in the latest installment of Startup of the Week.

What’s your elevator pitch — in 140 characters or less, please... Spoon launches desktop apps from the Web without installs.

We came up with the idea for the startup... While studying math at Berkeley.

Vivek Bhaskaran/PSBJ photo

Vivek Bhaskaran's journey to the Seattle tech community has been a long one, from high school in India to an engineering college in Russia to Brigham Young University in Utah. But now the 33-year-old is firmly rooted in Seattle, building the profitable and growing online survey company Survey Analytics. We chatted with the fast-talking and foul-mouthed Bhaskaran about bootstrapping, competition from Survey Monkey, social media and more.

On leaving Russia for the U.S.: "In hindsight, those two years (in Russia) kind of toughened me up to a point. It was fairly brutal in a sense. I was just out of high school and I'd say by the time I went -- it was 1995 to 1997 -- it was not the worst time.... It had seen darker days, but still it was not a walk in the park. But I remember when I came to the states, things were so much easier for me. Not that I had been through a lot, but everything just happened. And there were rules and laws, and things were more structured. Russia is a lot like India -- chaos, unstructured, everything is moving. So, that actually helped me a lot when I came to BYU."

Derek Streat

Derek Streat's new online venture arose from the worst circumstances. Last year, the Seattle entrepreneur learned that his 2-year-old daughter was suffering from a rare, life-threatening autoimmune disease.

"When that happened, I did the only thing that I know how to," said Streat, who previously co-founded AdReady and worked as an early executive at Classmates.com. "I kind of went into battle mode and went highly analytical on this. I started consuming as much information as a I could and tried to make sense of it."

From that very personal experience, Medify was born. The stealth company -- formed six months ago by Streat and former Farecast vice president of technology Jay Bartot -- today is announcing $1.3 million in venture financing led by Voyager Capital. Medify's goal is pretty straightforward: to help families better manage the complex maze of medical information associated with the most challenging health care situations.

Zillow.com today is releasing numbers about its growth for the first half of the year, touting a boost in unique visitors and mobile downloads. The Seattle online real estate company said it attracted 10.7 million visitors in June, up 26 percent over the same period last year. Meanwhile, the company says it has recorded more than 1.75 million downloads of its mobile app across platforms such as the iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile.

But there are key metrics that you won't find in the Zillow press release: profits and revenues. Of course, as a privately-held company, Zillow.com can choose not to release those sorts of numbers.

I've encountered some odd PR moves in my time as a technology journalist. But I've got to admit that I've never seen a rapping monkey puppet announce the sale of a company before. But that's how Woot.com -- a Carrollton, Texas-based e-commerce company that markets just one product a day on its site-- decided to spread the news about its sale to Amazon.com today. Check it out in this video:

What's especially interesting to me (beyond the rapping monkey) is how Amazon.com -- a media shy technology giant known for a hard-charging corporate culture -- appears to be smitten with quirky technology companies that ooze transparency. After all, Amazon.com last year spent $1 billion on Zappos, the online shoe retailer whose wacky corporate culture is legendary in tech circles. Is Amazon hoping that some of that creativity seeps into the bricks of the company's new South Lake Union headquarters? Or does an offbeat company culture actually translate into more business?

Disappointing sales have led Microsoft to cancel its Kin mobile phone initiative a little more than a month after the company launched the devices, according to sources close to the company.

The decision was announced internally today by Andy Lees, the head of Microsoft's mobile division, bringing a quick conclusion to a high-profile and ultimately futile effort by the company to capture the attention of teenagers and young adults.

Microsoft is advertising open positions on a team that will create "a new game in the Halo universe" -- beyond the upcoming Halo: Reach -- according to a report today by CNet News.com's Ina Fried. See the open positions here. Although the company spun off Bungie Studios, the developers of the blockbuster video-game series, Microsoft's internal 343 Industries studio retained rights to further develop the franchise.

Yesterday's Bloomberg News report that the iPhone is coming to Verizon Wireless in January continues to be the talk of the tech industry, even though neither Apple nor Verizon is offering confirmation. One financial analyst is predicting that Verizon could sell as many as 12 million iPhones next year. To put that in perspective, Apple has reported sales of about 30 million iPhones, through all of its worldwide distribution channels, over the past four quarters.

Whether this speaks to the popularity of the iPhone, or the widespread use of Windows Live Messenger, Microsoft reports today that more than 1 million people downloaded its instant messaging app for the Apple phone in the first five days of availability. The company is promising an update soon to address "a few issues," which is tech-speak for bugs. More details on the Windows Live Messenger app in this previous post.

Tomorrow is the start of a long-awaited new era at Starbucks as the company rolls out its previously promised free, unlimited WiFi at its company-owned stores in the United States.

And back on the subject of video games, Nintendo yesterday announced plans for a series of summer events around the country, dubbed Wii Games: Summer 2010, where people will be able to compete in a series of games on the console, leading up to a national championship event in Los Angeles in September. Seattle's event will take place Aug. 13-15. Details and schedule here.

Ignition Partners is among the venture capital firms backing Zenprise, a Fremont, California startup that helps large enterprises such as Boeing, Facebook, Nuance and Sony manage, monitor and secure employee usage of smartphones. The $9 million financing round was led by Rembrandt Ventures, with Ignition, Bay Partners, Mayfield and Shasta Ventures also participating.

Looking to take its digital book experience to new frontiers and fend off competition from new entrants, Amazon.com today said that it plans to unveil a new option for its Kindle electronic book reading device that allows users to preview titles in HTML 5. Once the feature launches, Amazon said that users will be able "to sample Kindle books from anywhere."

"Kindle book previews will be available through your web browser-simply click a Preview button on an Amazon book detail page and a new browser window will open containing the preview," the company writes in a blog post. "If at any point while you're reading the preview you decide you want to buy the full book, simply click the buy button and it will be instantly downloaded to your Kindle or any one of our free Kindle apps."

The city of Seattle has launched a new online crime map, built on Microsoft's Bing Maps, that gives an interactive view of crime in our little burg, based on police reports. It's a worthwhile application, part of the broader trend of governments making data more accessible, and it's a good way to get a sense for what's really happening in your neighborhood, or one you're thinking about moving to.

Even better, the existing Seattlecrime.com site reports that it has been able to integrate the extra data provided by the city to make its Seattle Crime map even more useful. Seattlecrime.com's Jonah Spangenthal-Lee explains in a post this morning that the site has added the extra data about such incidents as robberies, prostitution and kittens stuck in trees to the real-time fire, medic and police 911 responses already on its map.

So if the dreary weather wasn't already making you rethink your decision to live here, now you can spend your time obsessing about all the crime happening around you.

Washington state may be getting another publicly-traded company. And this is a big one. Univar, the Redmond-based chemical distributor, filed to raise up to $862 million through an initial public offering.

Founded in 1924 by George Van Waters and Nat Rogers, the company generated $7.2 billion in sales last year after distributing 5.4 million metric tons of chemicals. It employs 6,842 people. And while Univar is not a technology firm per se, the company notes in the filing that its IT assets offer a strategic advantage over competitors.

Symform has landed $4 million in new venture capital financing, with Longworth Venture Partners and OVP Venture Partners participating in the deal. Total funding in the company -- founded by former Microsoft employees Praerit Garg and Bassam Tabarra -- now stands at $5.5 million.

Symform has created an unique way for small businesses to implement cost-effective data backup services. It does this by operating a system where customers turn over unused storage capacity on their servers in exchange for online back up services.

Amazon.com has been taking its Kindle electronic book app to multiple devices. Now it's doing the same with its Internet Movie Database (IMDb) site.

IMDb is launching an app for Google Android devices, letting users get movies information, trailers and showtimes and shop for DVDs and Blu-ray discs. IMDb already has an app for Apple's iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

IMDb has also created an "interactive" Twitter account @imdbbot that lets people tweet a question about a celebrity name or film and get an answer back.

Calistoga Pharmaceuticals has landed $40 million, the second largest venture capital financing round in the state so far this year. Total funding in the Seattle biotechnology company, which is developing treatments for cancer and inflammatory diseases, now stands at $96 million.

The financing was led by Quogue Capital, with Alta Partners, Amgen Ventures, Frazier Healthcare Three Arch Partners and Latterell Venture Partners also participating. The money will be used for continued drug research into CAL-101, a possible treatment for relapsed or refractory indolent non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, mantle cell lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia.