TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Here's the latest look at some of the Form D filings from Washington companies submitted to the SEC in recent weeks. In most cases, these are links to the raw filings, and as the SEC notes it has not been determined if they are accurate or complete. Nonetheless, there are some interesting new and old companies in this latest batch as you'll see below.

Comverging Technlogies, a new Seattle telecom startup which is working on "advanced roaming solutions," has raised $5.7 million of a $14.5 million round. Executives listed in the filing include Carl Gunnell, Benjamin Woo and Roderick Nelson, who previously worked in executive roles at Sotto Wireless and AT&T Wireless.

Nextune, a Redmond startup that's providing music services to businesses, has raised $182,000 of a $3.7 million round. The company is led by Michael Dukane.

Ideal Network, a Seattle startup led by Ronny Bell and Jon Ramer, has raised $100,000 of a $400,000 debt round. Bell, who previously served as CEO of Pioneer Organics, described the company in his LinkedIn profile as "a marketplace where collective purchasing meets the common good, resulting in a 'win, win, win' for consumers, non-profits and merchants alike."

RMJ Inc. of Spokane said it is planning to raise up to $2.5 million in equity financing.

Should I take that job? Should I marry that guy? Those are among the important life decisions that Wisemuv wants to help people make. The year-old startup, with operations in Seattle and Mountain View, California, is described as an online "decision helper." We chatted with Wisemuv founder Chirag Pancholi, who came up with the idea for Wisemuv prior to proposing to his girlfriend, for the latest installment of Startup of the Week.

What’s your elevator pitch — in 140 characters or less... We help people tackle vexing situations in life with a neat tool that builds confidence when making decisions.

Nancy Xiao

Nancy Xiao: In America, it’s become a staple. We can’t leave the house without it, and the need to constantly stay in touch is unavoidable. Looks like we’re not the only ones tied to that little rectangle we call a cell phone.

This summer, I spent a month traveling through China-- visiting everything from the Gobi Desert to the richest cities and the poorest villages. One thing was clear: the country is hurtling without barriers towards advancements in technology, infrastructure and culture.

As I explored historical museums, universities, bars, clubs, and other hot spots, the bulk of my time was spent with the next young and tech-savvy generation. The upper class teens were treated to iPhones (jailbroken, of course) and there was a definite air of Apple fanboy syndrome floating around.

Zillow.com entered the apartment rental arena late last year in a move which we described at the time as a direct assault on Apartments.com and a host of other rental listing companies. But the rivalry between Chicago-based Apartments.com and Seattle-based Zillow.com didn't last too long. Today, the two companies are announcing a strategic partnership in which Apartments.com will distribute its 90,000 rental listings directly on Zillow. The direct feed more than doubles Zillow's rental listings, bringing the total to more than 150,000.

It's not uncommon for me to hear about some new technology product or feature, from some company other than Microsoft, and realize that it sounds very similar to something I've covered before. More often than not, that something similar from the past ends up being a Microsoft Research project.

We've covered this phenomenon before in the case of Apple's Magic Mouse. It happened again today with the announcement of Google's new "Priority Inbox," a Gmail feature that uses a variety of inputs, including user correction, to automatically determine whether a particular message is deserving of higher attention.

The Microsoft Research project this reminded me of is called Priorities. It uses machine learning to analyze messages and determine their importance, ranking them and in some cases sending a text message when an email is deemed particularly important.

Amazon.com is periodically rumored to be eyeing Netflix. But is the ecommerce giant working on its own Netflix-like streaming service for TV and movies? The Wall Street Journal reports Amazon has proposed a web-based subscription service to big media companies NBC Universal, Time Warner and Viacom.

That would be an interesting move by Amazon, which has been putting more emphasis on its digital businesses in recent years, most notably Kindle and Amazon MP3.

Seattle technology veteran Matt Williams, who had been working at Amazon.com since selling his startup LiveBid to the company in 1999, was named the new CEO of user-driven news site Digg.com today.

The news first reported by TechCrunch, was confirmed this afternoon by Digg founder Kevin Rose, who has been serving as Digg's interim CEO since the abrupt departure of Jay Adelson from the job in April. Williams was most recently Amazon's GM of consumer payments.

His installation as Digg CEO comes at a critical juncture for the site, which is trying to regain momentum with the rollout of a new and controversial overhaul of the site.

Foursquare popularized the idea of badges, virtual awards that individuals earn for checking into specific locations. Now, thanks in part to a new service from Seattle startup BigDoor, just about any Web site or application can incorporate the badge concept. Dubbed Badge-O-Matic, the new service allows companies to incorporate game mechanics in which users of a service earn points, badges or move up leaderboards for completing certain actions. For example a Web site publisher could award a badge if a user submitted more than 100 comments or create a leaderboard of the top commenters on the site.

Having finished its takeover of Yahoo's underlying search engine in the U.S. and Canada, Microsoft is now turning its attention to combining the search advertising systems of the two companies.

In a blog post today, Microsoft said companies that advertise next to Yahoo search results will be able to shift their campaigns from Yahoo's Search Marketing system to Microsoft adCenter starting this week. The transition is on track to finish at the end of October in the U.S. and Canada, according to the post. At that point, advertisers will be able to operate a single adCenter account to run search campaigns across Bing and Yahoo.

Finding movie listings these days is a relatively simple process, with multiple outlets publishing show times on the Web and via mobile applications. But if you're deaf, hard of hearing or visually impaired it can be tough to find an accessible theater.

Chris Sano and Brendan Gramer are on a mission to change that with Captionfish, an online directory which shows movie times for local theaters that include captioning, subtitles and descriptive audio. Think of it kind of like a Flixster for the deaf.

Sano, a 32-year-old software engineer at Microsoft, and Gramer, a 39-year-old user experience designer at Amazon.com, are both deaf technology professionals who work on Captionfish in their spare time. The idea emerged after Gramer moved to Seattle two years ago and struck up a friendship with Sano, both of whom were of the belief that movies should be more accessible.

Jeff Reifman

Jeff Reifman: Too many Comcast Xfinity customers in Seattle overpay for broadband Internet. For the last several years, I’ve had to call the company every six months to maintain the lowest competitive rate, about $29.99 per month.

Here’s how to cut your bill by more than half, based on my recent experience.

Is there some kind of secret brotherhood of lesser-known Microsoft and Apple founders? Steve Wozniak, the Apple co-founder better known as Woz, is voicing some surprisingly strong support for Paul Allen and the Microsoft co-founder's patent litigation against Google, Apple, Facebook and other tech giants.

Asked about the lawsuit during a video interview with Bloomberg News, Wozniak says he's "not at all against the idea of patent trolls," and he believes Allen's suit represents the fact that inventors have rights under the U.S. patent system.

Here's an excerpt from his comments.

Nearly everywhere you go people are talking about mobile apps, from gaming (Bejeweled) to music (Pandora) to video (Netflix). And now a new report from the research firm eMarketer indicates that consumers will be spending more money on mobile content applications in the coming years. Mobile content revenues will grow from $1.15 billion in 2009 to more than $3.53 billion in 2014, with mobile gaming leading the way at $1.5 billion in sales.

Microsoft is overhauling the Xbox 360 controller with some interesting tweaks, but people buying the video-game console won't get the new design with the standard bundle for now.

The controller has a new directional pad, better known as a d-pad, that can quickly shift from a disc design -- good for sweeping movements -- to a plus design, better for games that require specific pointing in any of the four cardinal directions. It also has concave analog sticks and gray A, B, X and Y buttons, instead of the traditional colors.

But for now, at least, the company says the new controller will only come as part of a Play and Charge kit, selling for $64.99 and slated to be available starting in November in the U.S.

Amazon.com is expanding its mass-market strategy for the Kindle electronic reader. Today, the online retailer said office supply chain Staples will begin carrying Kindles in all its U.S. stores starting this fall. Earlier this summer, Target began selling Kindles nationwide after a test run.

Those two store chains represent a significant physical retail footprint for Kindle, which for a while was sold exclusively online by Amazon. Amazon made the Kindle more appealing to the mass consumer in July by introducing two new cheaper models, the $139 Wi-Fi only and $189 3G + Wi-Fi.