TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Barnes & Noble has elevated its battle with Amazon.com, saying that customers browsing the shelves of B&N bookstores won’t find books from Amazon’s new publishing imprint.

The move is in response to Amazon’s recent deal to have Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish the print versions from Amazon’s New York-based publishing division.

While not a Big Six publisher like Random House, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, HarperCollins, Hachette and Macmillan, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is still an important publishers that previously had ties with Amazon’s Kindle Owners’ Lending Library earlier this month. The library lets Prime users -- those who pony up $79 per year for free shipping and other benefits -- download one book per month for free to their Kindle devices.

Washington State Tourism photo

If Amazon.com’s employees all lived in one city it would be more populous than the state capital of Olympia.

The Seattle-based tech and e-commerce giant has been hiring heavily. The company ended 2011 with 56,200 workers, a 67 percent increase from a year ago, when Amazon had 33,700 workers.

Amazon chart

Related TechFlash coverage: Amazon.com acts like a startup, but will Wall Street abide?

Amazon pulled in revenue like crazy in the last three months of 2011, with Kindle tablet sales tripling during the holiday shopping season. But the Seattle e-commerce and tech giant also spent like crazy to fuel its current growth surge. The result: net income was down nearly 60 percent.

Amazon’s fourth quarter earnings results -- released Tuesday afternoon -- show that net sales increased 35 percent to $17.43 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $12.95 billion in fourth quarter 2010.

Amazon’s fourth-quarter revenue missed the mark estimated by industry analysts on Wall Street. Amazon’s stock fell 8 percent, trading at about $178 a share in after-hours trading Tuesday.

Analysts are expecting to see Amazon’s revenue grow 40 percent, to $18.2 billion for the fourth quarter.

It’s been a while since we blogged about Limeade, the startup with the online program that helps companies improve the health and well being of their workers.

But now we hear that the Bellevue startup led by former Bocada executive Henry Albrecht has landed three new executives with prior experience at Microsoft and ShapeUp.

And the company has doubled its workforce since the beginning of 2011 and is seeking more talent.

Mercy Corps photos

A young woman presents a new business idea at the first Startup Weekend in Gaza, part of the new Mercy Corps Arab Developer Network Initiative.

Mercy Corps , Google and Seattle-based Startup Weekend are gathering in Seattle on Thursday to talk about how investors and philanthropists can contribute to global business development in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank.

The event is designed to create a sense of urgency about creating job growth for youth in the Middle East and North Africa; economic conditions were part of the motivation for the uprisings sparked in January 2011 in Tunisia.

Google engineers and business development experts have traveled to the region with Mercy Corps to offer technical and business training and mentorship opportunities.

Apple has named John Browett, CEO of European electronics retailer Dixons, to run its iconic retail chain.

If Microsoft is going to make any gains in its efforts to compete with Apple on the store front, this is the guy to beat.

Apple has gone outside the company to hire the head of a European electronics retailer to run its iconic retail stores.

John Browett, CEO of Dixons Retail PLC, was named senior vice president of retail operations and expansion on Tuesday by the Cupertino company.

He takes the vacancy made when replaces Ron Johnson left Apple in November to run J.C. Penney Co.

Browett, 46, had been CEO of Dixons since 2007. He begins at Apple in April.

Matt Hulett

Matt Hulett, president of GameHouse, the games division of RealNetworks, is joining the board of Seattle online travel startup Yapta.com.

Hulett is the former President of Expedia Corporate Travel, now Egencia.

Hulett also was the CEO and chairman of AdXpose, the online ad company bought by ComScore in August 2011. Before AdXpose, he was president of the corporate travel division of Expedia Inc., where he launched the corporate travel business.

He also was a former executive at RealNetworks, as well as a founding partner of the entertainment company AtomFilms.

Amazon chart

Amazon’s cloud service for developers has seen explosive growth, a sign analysts say that Seattle’s ecommerce giant is rapidly becoming the dominate cloud provider.

“As of the end of 2011, there are 762 billion (762,000,000,000) objects in Amazon S3. We process over 500,000 requests per second for these objects at peak times,” Amazon’s AWS Evangelist Jeff Barr blogged.

That was a year-over-year growth rate of 192 percent, Barr blogged.

Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is a web service for developers that allows for the storage and retrieval of data.

ReadWrite Cloud said that the growth reflects the overall rapid adoption of cloud computing and Amazon’s “dominance of the market.”

Palm Beach County in South Florida has reached a $1.9 million settlement agreement with major online travel companies, including Bellevue-based Expedia Inc, over alleged uncollected bed taxes.

The South Florida Business Journal reports that in addition to Expedia, other companies in the agreement include Orbitz, Priceline and Travelocity. Anne Gannon, the county’s tax collector, filed suit against the companies in July 2009.

The Nokia Lumia 800 has an 8 megapixel camera and tight integration with social media, but will it be enough to take on the iPhone?

Microsoft is paying Nokia $230 for each Windows phone in an effort to catch up with Apple and Google in the cell phone market.

That's the estimate made by Forbes. Microsoft paid venture partner Nokia $250 million, which shipped 1 million Windows phones. Microsoft receives a license from Nokia of about $20 per phone; or a $230 price that Forbes calls "desperation."

Microsoft paid Nokia $250 million in the fourth quarter of 2011 under an agreement that has Nokia adopting Windows Phone 7 as Nokia’s primary smartphone platform.

T-Mobile image

T-Mobile USA is teaming up with Square Inc. to offer a mobile payment device for small businesses that have not in the past accepted credit card payments from customers.

T-Mobile is the first wireless carrier to offer the Square credit card reader from San Francisco-based Square in its stores.

T-Mobile says the reader will be a bonus for small businesses because it can make it easier and faster to get paid from shoppers using their credit cards. The Square reader lets small businesses take credit card payments using the mobile card reader attached to their iPhones, iPads or Android devices, with the money from the transaction sent for deposit into the bank account of the small business the next business day.

“The success of our small business customers is important to us. Formerly 'cash only' small businesses can now simply and cost-effectively accept credit cards with their smartphone using Square, giving them an easy path to growth,” said Matt Millen, vice president of small and medium business sales at T-Mobile. “As these businesses evaluate their wireless needs, T-Mobile is committed to providing quality of service, cost savings and connectivity that are a requirement for their success.”

Barack Obama hung out on Google+ Monday, and people really wanted to talk about pot with the president.

Obama was doing his first "hangout" on Goggle's social network on Monday, answering some of the more than 133,000 questions that were submitted online for it.

Will Amazon’s sales of the Kindle Fire offset the Seattle online commerce giant’s spending on distribution centers across the United States?

That is the question that many industry analysts are looking for an answer to when Amazon reports its fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday.

The Street.com asked if Amazon is “biting off more than it can chew.”

Analysts are expecting to see Amazon’s revenue grow 40 percent, to $18.2 billion for the fourth quarter. But the company is expected to report earnings of 19 cents per share, down significantly from its year-ago earnings of 91 cents per share, as spending takes a big bite out of profits.

Analysts say Amazon sold 6 million Kindle Fire tablets during the fourth-quarter holiday season, a figure that could bode well for Amazon’s strategy to have Kindle Fire owners buy up a lot of digital books, games, videos and other content.

In a note to investors, Morgan Stanley analyst Scott Devitt said he expects Amazon’s margins to improve:

EMC Isilon Storage Division president Sujal Patel (from left), EMC chairman and chief executive Joe Tucci and Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn at recent event where Isilon announced ambitious growth plans for Seattle. (PSBJ photo / Anthony Bolante)

The tech industry has become the new stable source of jobs, luring workers from other sectors who would have shied away from tech following the volatility of 1990s-era startups.

Tech giants including Amazon.com, Apple and Google increased their work forces by at least 50 percent over the past two years, according to Bloomberg News.

The competition for qualified workers has promoted these companies to look to people with non-technical backgrounds, and has drawn many from other sectors to pursue tech careers.

Amazon’s Quidsi unit sells diapers, toys, groceries and pet supplies. And now this unit of the Seattle-based online retailer may be looking to sell hiking boots and camping gear as well.

If so, Amazon would be going up against some big brands including REI, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Hibbett Sports and Cabela’s, analysts at Credit Suisse said Monday, according to a report by Reuters.

Gary Balter and other analysts called out recent job postings by Amazon and Quidsi announcing a new “sports and activities” business and an “Outdoor Sportsman" destination.

A posted job opening for director, merchandising for sports, would be located in Quidsi’s home base of Jersey City: