TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Amazon.com's new app for reading Kindle books on PCs sparked a new round of talk that electronic books are inherently prone to piracy. Now comes word that Amazon is considering some rather unique piracy-prevention measures. The online retail giant recently patented a method for "programmatically substituting synonyms into distributed text content" so that "illicit copies of the excerpt may be recognized."

As noted by theodp on Slashdot, Amazon says the method could apply to various kinds of copyrighted material including books, short stories, reviews, articles and papers. Given the firestorm Amazon created when it remotely deleted copies of George Orwell books from people's Kindles, the public may not be so keen on the idea of Amazon fiddling with digital works. Plus, imagine what such a system could do to famous literary quotes: "All the world's a theater platform"?

Car Toys' Glen Hamilton

Car Toys Inc. sells GPS navigation devices, car stereos and cell phones at its 49 brick-and-mortar stores and through its website. But the Seattle-based electronics chain also does a lot of its selling through the nation’s biggest online retailer, Amazon.com.

“It’s been good or better than any of our online channels,” said Car Toys’ online director Glen Hamilton, who said his company’s sales via Amazon have increased 300 percent this year.

Amazon.com Inc. has turned third-party sales into one of the pillars of its business strategy since opening its website to other retailers a decade ago. Third-party sellers have helped Amazon rapidly expand its product selection, and contributed to the company’s continuing growth in a tough economy. But Amazon's rivals are now trying to get in on the action. Big retailers Wal-Mart and Sears recently invited other merchants to sell products on their websites.

Constantine

Hutchison

Last week, we conducted a poll for the upcoming Seattle mayoral election. Interestingly, the techie -- T-Mobile USA executive Joe Mallahan -- was just edging out the environmentalist -- Mike McGinn.

But there's another important race happening on November 3, which could have even bigger implications for the region's tech industry. In the race for King County Executive, County Council Chair Dow Constantine is facing off with former TV news anchor Susan Hutchison. Hutchison has some interesting connections to the tech industry, having served as the executive director of former Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi's foundation.

In this race, transportation is a key issue. And Hutchison has come out in favor of a plan to route light rail over the Highway 520 bridge -- a direct pipeline to Microsoft. Constantine supports the voter-approved plan to take light rail over the I-90 bridge. We're curious where the tech industry is coming down on these two candidates, so cast your vote in the poll above.

Credit: Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Wal-Mart and Target have engaged in a price war over popular books. Now they're telling customers: Don't buy too many. The retailers are limiting online orders of the books to between two and five copies, trying to prevent other booksellers from buying truckloads of the heavily discounted titles and reselling them.

Wal-Mart caps the books at two per order, Amazon has a three-copy limit, and Target draws the line at five, the Wall Street Journal reports. The retailers are selling the books — including Stephen King's "Under the Dome" and Sarah Palin's memoir "Going Rogue" — for $9 (or slightly less), far below list price and cheaper than what many smaller booksellers would pay for them at wholesale.

It was great to see so many people at the TechFlash: Women in Tech event last night. It was a packed house, and we learned a lot from a fantastic panel and illuminating conversations in the halls.

Before things got rolling, we took some time to ask a few of the women in attendance how they got interested in technology and what advice they'd offer to young women looking to break into the tech business now. Read on for excerpts from their answers.

Thanks to all of you who joined us last night for our first TechFlash Women in Tech event. It was a great night, packed with Seattle-area technology leaders and lots of insights into the technology industry. Here's a video with highlights from the night, including one of the most interesting and engaging panel discussions we've heard in a while.

With the holiday shopping season fast approaching, Amazon.com is trying to make it even easier to buy online. The online retail giant is launching PayPhrase, a shortcut for buying on Amazon or other ecommerce sites. Shoppers create a phrase — "Home Sweet Home" for example — for their preferred shipping address and payment method. When they're ready to make a purchase, they enter the phrase, followed by a pin number, and then approve the order in a matter of seconds.

Plastic Logic's Que proReader

With so many electronic readers hitting the market, some consumers may want to physically check out and test the devices before buying one. That's not possible with Amazon's Kindle readers, which are sold solely online (though Amazon tries to connect current Kindle owners with prospective buyers through a website). Now Barnes & Noble is setting itself up to be a major physical retailer of e-readers. B&N says its stores will demo and sell both its own Nook reader and the new Que reader from Plastic Logic.

Amazon.com is dropping the price of its core EC2 cloud computing service. Starting Nov. 1, the company will cut the price of all on-demand EC2 compute instances. Charges for Linux instances will drop by 15 percent. That means small Linux instances will now cost 8.5 cents per hour, down from 10 cents per hour. Amazon's price cuts come as Microsoft prepares to launch its own Azure cloud computing services.

Amazon is also adding new cloud computing tools, including a Relational Database Service and EC2 High-Memory Instances.

Amazon.com's patent for the 1-Click process of buying goods online has come under a lot of fire over the years from critics who question whether such a broad technology should be patented at all. But the company continues to defend it. In Canada, Amazon is appealing a decision by that country's Commissioner of Patents to reject the 1-Click patent, according to this legal update.

Here in the U.S., the Supreme Court has taken up the so-called Bilski patent case, which could determine whether companies can patent so-called "business methods" such as 1-Click.

We're gearing up for the TechFlash Live: Women in Tech event, which will take place this Wednesday October 28 at the W hotel in downtown Seattle.

We're thrilled about our expert panel -- which includes University of Washington computer science professor Yoky Matsuoka, OVP Venture Partners managing director Lucinda Stewart, Microsoft's Lili Cheng and Technology Access Foundation director Trish Millines Dziko. Former Q13 news anchor Christine Chen, now a principal at Chen Communications, will lead the discussion.

The event will likely sell out some time today or tomorrow, so if you are interested in attending please go here to register.

Amazon.com first launched its free shopping application for iPhone users during the 2008 holiday season, at least in the U.S. Now the ecommerce giant is offering the app in the U.K. People can now use iPhones and iPod touch devices to buy stuff on Amazon's British website. The app includes the "Amazon Remembers" feature, which lets users snap a picture of an item and get product and pricing information from Amazon.

Amazon has been trying to juice holiday sales in the U.K. The company recently said it would offer free shipping on all products on its U.K. website through Jan. 1 (temporarily removing a £5 threshold for free shipping).

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos is putting more money into Aviary, a Long Island, N.Y.-based startup that aims to "make creation accessible to artists of all genres, from graphic design to audio editing." Bezos, who previously invested in the company, took part in a new $7 million funding round led by Spark Capital, according to reports. Bezos certainly has some wealth to burn. He just got $2 billion richer as a result of Amazon's huge stock surge on Friday.

Steve Ballmer

It was a momentous week for Seattle's tech titans. Microsoft won accolades for its new operating system, Windows 7, and then a day later surprised Wall Street with better earnings than analysts expected. Meanwhile, Amazon.com blew the doors off its third quarter results, sending its stock into the stratosphere.

Those two news events alone drove plenty of discussion on TechFlash over the past week. Here are some of the comments that caught our eye.

Steve Ballmer's comments about the Internet not being designed for the iPhone generated plenty of chatter. Reader Grand_Poobah suggested that it was time for the Microsoft CEO to find another job. "Seriously, the iPhone is the first phone that made surfing the internet on a portable device EASY. I can pinch the screen, tilt, zoom in, zoom out, scroll with the touch screen... it's just so easy. This is denial and he needs replaced badly. Microsoft can do so much better."

Bezos

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos made $2 billion off his stock holdings on Friday after the online retailer's stock soared 26 percent. The new bounty left one commenter a little jealous: "That lucky SOB. Honestly I want to hate the guy, but Amazon is just so awesome how can I?"

Amazon.com is pulling back from plans to sell wine nationally online, the company said today. The ecommerce giant had been planning to get into the wine business for some time, but hit a setback when its fulfillment partner New Vine Logistics ran into financial trouble and suspended operations this past summer. Still, Amazon continued to demo its wine website to select members of the wine industry, and seemed poised to move ahead with wine sales.