TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Apple is reportedly getting set to roll out its iPad 3 in the first week of March in one of its big special events in San Francisco.

AllThingsD cites unnamed sources who say there is no indication yet when customers will actually be able to get their hands on the new tablets. They are usually available a week or two after the unveiling.

It is expected that the new iPads will look like the first two generations but have much faster chips and a much sharper display.

BUSINESS JOURNAL PHOTO | Anthony Bolante

The surge of Amazon.com employees in Seattle’s transformed South Lake Union neighborhood has prompted Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc. to propose zoning changes allowing taller buildings in the area.

Paul Allen's Vulcan real estate company wants to build taller buildings in Seattle's South Lake Union area.

Bloomberg reports that Vulcan, which owns about one-sixth of all the land in South Lake Union, wants to be able to build taller buildings, and the city of Seattle is examining new building height proposals that could allow construction of apartment and condo towers – including buildings near the lakeshore – as tall as 400 feet. Neighborhood groups oppose such tall residential structures right next to Lake Union.

Jeff Bezos

Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos has lost $300 million in the past year after the company's poor performance in the latest quarter but the billionaire still has plenty of money — a net worth of $17.6 billion according to the latest estimate.

Forbes branded Amazon's Bezos a "loser" on its annual list of billionaires with Facebook Inc. co-founder Mark Zuckerberg listed as a "winner" and ahead of Bezos with a net worth of $19.5 billion.

From checking sports scores and playing Angry Birds to ordering a private-car service after a night on the town, local business executives are making heavy use of smartphone apps in their everyday personal lives.

As part of a special "App Report" coming Friday in the Jan. 10 print edition of the Puget Sound Business Journal (a sister publication of TechFlash), we surveyed several executives to see how they use their mobile devices – for both business and personal purposes.

This week we're running their answers to four questions. Yesterday, we asked what apps they use most often for business purposes. Today we focus on the more personal side.

Coinstar's Redbox subsidiary, which announced a joint venture with Verizon on Monday morning, has now said it's buying part of NCR Corp. that includes Blockbuster Express movie kiosks – a key competitor to Redbox.

The deal is subject to regulatory approval but is expected to close in the third quarter of this year, according to a statement by Coinstar Inc. The company said Redbox is paying up to $100 million for NCR's entertainment assets.

Some 20 years ago, technologists with their heads in the clouds began predicting that the advent of the World Wide Web would mean the end of shopping malls, schools and universities, phone companies and even workplaces. The theory was that we’d all be doing everything online. No need for human interaction of any kind. Or very little, anyway.

So it’s ironic that today the same World Wide Web is lighting up with rumors that Amazon.com will open a retail store in Seattle. Amazon – the company born on, by and of the Web. The company blamed for killing bookstores, crippling movie and music producers, and infuriating big retailers, including Target.

The fast-moving and extremely competitive business of streaming, on-demand video took another leap forward today with the announcement that Bellevue-based Coinstar Inc. would team with Verizon Communications to offer movies and other content over mobile devices.

The subscription service will be offered beginning in the second half of this year, through a joint venture established by the two companies, officials said Monday morning (Feb. 6) in a statement. Verizon will own 65 percent of the venture and Redbox, the movie kiosk service owned by Coinstar, will own 35 percent.

Struggling Netflix and Blockbuster, and internet octopus Amazon (with arms in so many online businesses) are already duking it out in the streaming-movie business. But this move could grab attention – and customers – quickly.

Verizon has some 100 million wireless and broadband customers worldwide and brought in $111 billion revenue last year. Redbox has 30 million customers and supplies movie and video-game rentals through kiosks at 29,000 locations throughout the U.S., including groceries, drugstores, convenience stories and some McDonald’s restaurants.

One big unknown, however, is how – and where – the venture will gain rights to stream movies, TV shows and game content. They’re starting from behind, given the stock of content already available on Netflix and Amazon.

BUSINESS JOURNAL PHOTO | Marcus R. Donner

Jason Andrews, president and CEO of Andrews Space, stands in his company's flat floor room with a spacecraft simulator. The 5-axis simulator simulates all software and hardware functions of a spacecraft. Andrews Space used the simulator in an Air Force contract to simulate rapidly retasking a spacecraft.

As government-run space launches give way to growing commercialization, a constellation of Washington companies is bidding to lift the region to prominence in the private-sector space era.

The companies — including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin LLC, Andrews Space Inc. and Tethers Unlimited Inc. — are thrusting themselves into the expanding private space industry.

(Paul Allen’s new StratoLaunch venture is headquartered in Huntsville, Ala., but will retain close ties to this region.)

“This is emerging as one of the key spots for commercial space; the other is Southern California,” said Jason Andrews, president and CEO of Tukwila-based Andrews Space Inc. “Commercial space is driving this space market now in Seattle.”

There is less than one week left to help the Puget Sound Business Journal identify the best in-house counsel in Washington state for the 2012 Corporate Counsel of the Year Awards. Nominations are due Feb. 8.

Amazon is joining other local tech companies in backing a proposed state law to legalize same-sex marriages.

In a statement, Seattle-based Amazon said the “spirit of these bills is consistent with our long-standing employment practices.”

The statement, reported by The Seattle Times, comes a couple of weeks after Microsoft, RealNetworks and Concur said they were endorsing a move to legalize same-sex marriage in Washington.

Amazon is buying TeachStreet, a Seattle startup that helps people find tutors and online classes in subjects ranging from cooking to guitar lessons to preparation for graduate school admissions examinations.

TeachStreet blogged about the move Thursday, saying the company was closing and that employees were joining the AmazonLocal team:

Amazon has gotten a toehold in India by beginning a shopping service called Junglee, which takes potential buyers to other sites that sell products.

The website has the look and feel of Amazon's site, with offerings for Kindle, books, electronics, video games, toys, and jewelry.

Just on the eve of the Super Bowl, Amazon is launching an online store to sell collectable baseball and hockey cards and other sports collectables and memorabilia.

This autographed jersey that Mariners star Ichiro Suzuki wore in the 2001 All-Star Game is for sale on Amazon for $755.

With its Sports Collectibles Store, Amazon is promising a “broad selection from official licensees of the National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League and International Federation of Association Football,” according to an announcement.

With the move, Amazon is seeking to tap into an online retail niche for signed sports jerseys, balls and trading cards. Amazon promises memorabilia from stars from the past, such as “a $4 Wayne Gretzky trading card or a $34,950 Babe Ruth autographed baseball -– as well as signed collectibles from today’s stars like Eli Manning, Tom Brady, Albert Pujols, Derek Jeter, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Alexander Ovechkin or Lionel Messi.”

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.