TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Microsoft's efforts to knock down Google from its perch as king of search is playing out as an epic -- and expensive -- endeavor.

Under the headline, "Can Microsoft make you 'Bing?'" The New York Times goes inside Microsoft's local offices and inside the strategy to make Bing the dominant search engine.

The article focuses on the people leading the Bing strategy, including Mike Nichols, a Microsoft general manager. Nichols says he is inspired by Muhammad Ali's defeat of Sonny Liston. Then known as Cassius Clay, the young brash boxer pulled off one the biggest upsets in U.S. sports history.

A 20-year old man in the UK has died from a blood clot after participating in a marathon 12-hour online session playing on his Xbox console.

The Daily Mail reports that the man, Chris Staniforth, who was described as a promising young computer programmer, died from a pulmonary embolism.

Tatyana Schastlivaya at the TechFlash event (PSBJ photo/Marcus Donner)

Amazon.com's 51 percent spike in sales topped a week of news that also saw other companies like Expedia continue the recent trend of local tech companies reporting strong earnings.

We saw another strong week of venture capital deals, including Lucid Commerce raising $8 million, Varolii Corp. also raising $8 million, SeniorHomes.com raising $3 million and Inrix's monster $37 million round.

We told you that Bellevue-based T-Mobile USA has already talked severance packages with employees that may be let go should a T-Mobile-AT&T merger go through.

Meanwhile, it looks like Amazon's dispute with states over collecting sales tax on online purchases will be taken up by Congress now that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) plans to push for a federal law allowing states to require all retailers, including online stores and brick-and-mortar retailers, to collect sales taxes.

And the TechFlash crew presented another successful summer bash at Thursday's TechFlash Summer BBQ and Ping-Pong Tournament at the Showbox SoDo.

Hear are a few items I am now catching up on:

Is Amazon.com finally getting what it has asked for?

As we told you Friday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) plans to introduce a bill that would allow states to require all retailers, including online stores and brick-and-mortar retailers, to collect sales tax,

The bill is called the Main Street Fairness Act and is co-sponsored by Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.). A similar bill is expected to be introduced in the House by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

Amazon has said that the company collects sales tax or its equivalent in more than half of the areas where Amazon does business.

Amazon CFO Thomas Szkutak recently said during a conference call with industry analysts that Amazon has long supported a "federal simplified approach" to the sales tax issue.

"We think in the U.S., that the federal solution's a great way to solve this," Szkutak said.

The proposed federal law by Durbin already has drawn criticism from eBay, as well as a host of industry organizations such as NetChoice and the Information Technology Industry Council.

Microsoft photo

As Microsoft prepares to roll out dozens more of its own stores nationwide -- challenging archrival Apple in America's shopping malls -- the Redmond tech giant's retail strategy remains murky to some analysts, and even to some shoppers.

"It seems like a big giant store with more employees than customers," said Chris Sennert, who was shopping at the Bellevue Square Microsoft Store for Xbox games on a recent Tuesday afternoon.

Microsoft opened the Bellevue Square store in November, just six miles from its Redmond headquarters and four doors from the mall's Apple Store. Microsoft recently announced plans for its long-awaited store in Seattle's University Village near the UW campus.

A visit to the dueling tech outlets illuminates the opportunities and challenges Microsoft faces as it tries to scale up its retail presence, as Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner promised earlier this month. Turner said Microsoft would open 75 stores -- in addition to the existing 11 -- in the next two or three years.

Troy Davis

Seattle startup Seven Scale provides log aggregation and management as a hosted service for developers and systems engineers.

The company is based in Belltown near the Elephant Car Wash. Seven Scale recently launched its cloud-based management service called Papertrail that allows engineers and startup entrepreneurs to get searchable and scalable repository for their server and application log messages over the internet.

Papertrail is a sponsor of this weekend's Cascadia Ruby Conference in Seattle, a gathering of techies to discuss the general-purpose programming language.

Seven Scale was co-founded in 2008 by Troy Davis and Eric Lindvall. In 2010, Davis and Lindvall sold their Seattle cloud telephone startup Cloudvox to Chicago-based Ifbyphone.

It looks like Amazon's dispute with states over collecting sales tax on online purchases will be taken up by Congress.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is expected to introduce a bill that would allow states to require all retailers, including online stores and brick-and-mortar retailers, to collect sales tax, reports Politico.

The bill is called the Main Street Fairness Act and is co-sponsored by Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.). A similar bill is expected to be introduced in the House by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

The action comes on the heels of Amazon's recent refusal to comply with a California law that required online retailers to collect sales tax. After the bill was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, the online retail giant cut ties with 10,000 affiliates in the state.

Here's a daily deal for all you PopCap fans out there: Plants vs. Zombies, one of the Seattle gaming company's most popular games, is available for $10 today through Tippr.

The video game download -- half-off the regular $20 price tag -- is available for PCs and Macs. So far, 30 people have bought the deal, which will run for another four days.

One of Amazon's distribution centers under construction in Tennessee (Amazon image)

Amazon.com has announced that it will open a 500,000-square-foot fulfillment center in Lebanon, Tenn., to be completed this fall.

The online retailer has two other fulfillment centers in the works in the state, also opening this fall. Earlier this year, more than 4,300 Tennesseans applied for jobs at those centers within only two days.

Today marks the last day of Microsoft's Innovative Education Forum, the annual event that recognizes educators who incorporate technology in the classroom in unique ways.

Participants have been presenting their learning projects to a panel of judges over the last couple of days over on Microsoft's Redmond campus. The judges will select 10 of those projects to represent the U.S. at the Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum to be held this November 6-11 in Washington D.C.

Of the 100 presenters at the forum, 12 are from Washington state. Projects range from using Microsoft OneNote in a science classroom to creating video announcements that promote diversity and discourage bullying. (Check out the full list of projects here.)

I talked with a few of the educators from Washington to see how they are using technology to helps kids learn.

Seattle startup Lucid Commerce has raised $8 million in funding.

The financing round was led by Rho Ventures and supported by StarVest Partners, Positec USA Inc., as well as existing investors OVP Venture Partners and Greycroft Partners LLC.

Lucid -- led by former aQuantive employee Tyson Roberts -- develops products to help companies track the performance of marketing campaigns across TV, radio and the Web.

Jim Quigg as a Will Ferrell character (PSBJ photos/Marcus Donner)

More photos and more details from Thursday’s TechFlash Summer BBQ and Ping-Pong Tournament at the Showbox SoDo.

This year, cartoonist Milt Priggee set up shop and drew caricatures of people at the event. Many will recognize Priggee as the cartoonist who contributes to the PSBJ website. I watched Milt in action last night, and he said he really enjoyed being a part of the event.

Seattle startup PressOK Entertainment has found a way to localize gaming and -- maybe -- offer mobile game developers a bigger payday. Last week it launched PlacePlay, a new platform that helps connect gamers with other nearby players, and adds local advertisements into game play.

Using PlacePlay, mobile game developers can add location-based tournaments to their games so players can play against others living, say, just down the street. Data collected during its three-month beta showed that gamers participating in the tournaments played, on average, 1.6 times more, said PressOK.

How deep is the nation’s debt crisis? Or how much of a giant has Apple actually become?

The Financial Post reports that Apple has more cash on hand than the U.S. Treasury.

The Treasury Department reported Thursday that it had an operating balance of $73.768 billion. Apple reported in its latest earnings report that it had $76.156 billion in cash.

Valeri Kim, representing Akvelon, once again defended his TechFlash title in 2011 in the expert ping-pong division. (PSBJ photo/Marcus Donner)

In the end it was all about Team Akvelon.

Tatyana Schastlivaya and Valeri Kim, both representing tech consulting company Akvelon, faced off in the championship match in Thursday’s TechFlash Summer BBQ and Ping-Pong Tournament at the Showbox SoDo.

And Kim, a Microsoft developer, took home the trophy, again. It was the third time ping-pong wizard Kim has won the TechFlash ping-pong tourney.

In all. more than 80 players competed in TechFlash's third-annual ping-pong bash. And hundreds more attended, again making the event as our big summer bash and a chance for people across the Seattle tech community to relax, catch up with each other and have fun.