TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Amazon.com caused a stir a few months ago when it remotely deleted copies of George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm" from people's Kindles. A Michigan high school student, Justin Gawronski, was so incensed that he sued the online retailer, alleging that Amazon essentially ate his homework when it removed his copy of "1984" and caused his "copious notes" to disappear. Now Amazon has settled the lawsuit with Gawronski and a co-plaintiff. As part of the deal, which awaits court approval, Amazon said it "will not remotely delete or modify" works on Kindles, with some exceptions.

Last spring, when we published our initial listing of notable women in Seattle technology, we received lots of feedback: First, many TechFlash readers wanted us to recognize more scientists, engineers and others in technical careers. And second, many of the women on the list suggested that we organize an event where they and others could meet.

So we're doing both. We've expanded the list to include many of your suggestions, and we're inviting all of the women on the list, along with the rest of the Seattle tech community, to register and join us for the upcoming TechFlash Live: Women in Technology event -- to be held the evening of Oct. 28 at the W Hotel in downtown Seattle.

See the expanded list, get details and register for the event here.

Since the launch of its first Kindle reader in 2007, Amazon.com has focused on nurturing the U.S. market for electronic books and reading devices. But the Kindle may be poised to go international, at least according a report coming out of the U.K. Bookseller.com reports that Amazon is gearing up for a Kindle launch in Britain as early as next week.

Amazon.com's strategy of putting new release books on Kindle on the same day they release in hardcover has met with mixed reaction from publishers. Random House agreed to Amazon's terms with Dan Brown's latest thriller, "The Lost Symbol," but the publisher of Ted Kennedy's memoir "True Compass" delayed the electronic version indefinitely. Now HarperCollins is delaying the e-book version of another buzzed-about title, Sarah Palin's memoir "Going Rogue." The Palin book is due to release on Nov. 17, but the digital edition won't be available until Dec. 26.

A slew of big tech and media companies are entering the electronic book market in various ways, including Amazon, Google, Sony, Apple, and, most recently, Microsoft. Now you can add Disney to the mix. The entertainment giant has launched a digital books site offering over 500 interactive, multi-media e-books for children.

Zondervan photo

Amazon's recent move to expand its Amazon Fresh grocery delivery service to cover all of metro Seattle got me thinking about the ill-fated online grocery experiments of the dot-com era. I went looking for Joseph Park, one of the founders of Kozmo.com, which flamed out in 2001. After Kozmo's demise, Park went on to work for Amazon.com (a Kozmo investor), where he launched Askville, the user-driven question-and-answer site. It turns out Park recently made an interesting career move, leaving Amazon for Bible Gateway, a Bible search engine.

As students at universities across the country begin to test Amazon.com's Kindle DX reader as a textbook replacement, the device has met with some grumbling at Princeton. Many of the 50 Princeton students who received the readers as part of a pilot project say they are "dissatisfied and uncomfortable" with the devices, according to a report in The Daily Princetonian. The sour reaction from Princeton, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' alma mater, shows the ecommerce giant still has some work to do to get academia on board.

Amazon.com has targeted its cloud-computing services at startups, Fortune 500 companies, government and scientists. It's also quietly looking to hedge funds as another customer base. Amazon is holding a cloud computing event specifically for hedge funds in New York City on Oct. 19. It's selling the cloud as a cost-effective way for hedge funds to process the large amounts of data required for their often complex trading strategies. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos could certainly talk shop with the hedge fund crowd. He helped build hedge fund strategies on Wall Street before heading west to found Amazon.

Students at a bunch of universities across the country are getting Kindle DX readers as part of a pilot project with Amazon.com.

Microsoft's publishing arm, Microsoft Press, is joining forces with O'Reilly Media in a broad digital partnership that includes "ebook initiatives." O'Reilly, a publisher and organizer of tech conferences, will give Microsoft Press access to its social media tools, webcasts and web portals. The deal gives Microsoft Press -- the software giant's in-house publisher of books and training manuals on Microsoft technologies -- another distribution outlet for its titles. It might also signal new Microsoft interest in electronic books -- a market where Amazon, Google and others have taken an early lead.

Amazon.com is clearly interested in finding government customers for its cloud computing services. The ecommerce giant has been quietly building an operation in the Washington, D.C. area and Amazon Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels is making a big sales pitch to federal agencies. Now we're hearing that Amazon is exploring a partnership with Apptis -- a Virginia-based government IT services company -- to provide the federal government with a variety of cloud services.

Dutch company Irex Technologies, which is working on an electronic reader for the U.S. market to compete with Amazon's Kindle, is looking more interesting all the time. The company earlier announced a partnership with bookseller Barnes & Noble, giving it access to a large selection of digital book content. Now Irex is teaming up with Verizon, which will power 3G wireless downloads of books for the device, and with retail chain Best Buy, which will carry the Irex reader in some stores.

If you haven't seen the lime green Amazon Fresh delivery trucks rolling through your Seattle neighborhood yet, just wait. After testing the concept in neighborhoods such as Ballard, Queen Anne and Capitol Hill, Amazon tells Bloomberg News that it plans to roll out service to the entire Seattle metro area by the end of the year.

“We have a lot of confidence in the long-term economics,” Amazon vice president Doug Herrington tells Bloomberg. “For a significant portion of the population, they’re going to find that the convenience, selection and pricing of online grocery shopping is going to be really compelling.”

Amazon.com caused a stir in the publishing world last week when it revealed that the Kindle electronic version of Dan Brown's new thriller "The Lost Symbol" outsold the hardcover edition of the book on its first day of sales. Now Dan Brown's publisher Doubleday has come out with some numbers that put Amazon's announcement in a little perspective. According to Doubleday, e-book sales made up around 5 percent of the more than 2 million copies of "The Lost Symbol" sold in its first week of release. That's roughly in line with current estimates of the electronic book market, which put it at 1 to 5 percent of total book sales.

Amazon.com named the winner of its amateur ad contest today. The company said "Kindlicious," a playful, stop-motion commercial for Amazon's Kindle electronic reader, was No. 1 based on jury selection and feedback from Amazon customers. The commercial's creator, Los Angeles photographer Angela Kohler, gets a prize of $20,000 in Amazon gift cards and a screening at a New York film festival. But Amazon isn't saying yet whether it will use "Kindlicious" as the basis for a new TV ad campaign.