TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Amazon.com announced today it signed a deal with Paramount Pictures that will bring hundreds of older "legacy" films to its streaming video site, Amazon Prime Instant Video.

Customers can rent and purchase movies and television shows on Amazon’s streaming service, which launched a little more than year ago and is similar to the popular Netflix streaming service. The site boasts that it has more than 120,000 titles available for rent or buy, and Amazon has been steadily adding to that, signing a deal with Viacom earlier this year for popular Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon shows.

The Prime Instant Service is a $79 per year subscription service that lets customers choose from 17,000 streaming videos and television shows.

Netflix, which first made streaming video popular, has several competing options, including a streaming-only option for $7.99 a month (or $95.88 per year) and, for an additional $7.99 per month, new releases delivered by mail.

Movie-by-mail and video streaming business Netflix Inc. has created the new position of vice president of original content and has moved a 10-year veteran of the company into the job, where she will oversee original programming.

Cindy Holland, a Stanford University graduate who's worked 10 years at Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), was in charge of licensing television shows in the United States for the company. She started out at Netflix buying DVDs for the company.

Jason Ropell, a former NBCUniversal Inc. vice president who's worked at Netflix for a year on acquiring shows in Canada and Latin America, will take over Holland's former responsibilities in the United States. He'll keep Canada, but someone else will be put in charge of Latin America.

Apple is the world's most valuable brand, according to a study.

Starbucks Corp. shot up 30 places on the world's most valuable brand list, ending up at No. 42, while Amazon.com Inc. fell four places to No. 18 and Microsoft Corp. stayed at No. 5.

Apple Inc. stayed at No. 1, with an estimated brand value of about $183 billion, according to Millward Brown's 2012 BrandZ Top 100 list.

Amazon.com Inc.'s new industrial supply website Amazon Supply, which was launched last month, has raised some concerns about competing industrial suppliers, but publicly those companies aren't expressing great worry.

The Financial Times reports Amazon Supply is competing against long-time bricks-and-mortar industrial suppliers such as MSC Industrial Direct, WW Grainger and Fastenal — companies that have seen their share prices drop more than 15 percent since Amazon launched its new site.

Daily deal company Groupon Inc. will open a 20-person office in Seattle's International District, headed by a former Amazon.com Inc. executive.

The Wall Street Journal's All Things D reports the Groupon Seattle office will be headed by former Amazon exec Vinayak Hegde. Other Amazon execs now working for Chicago-based Groupon include CFO Jason Child, SVP of Product Jeff Holden and SVP of Americas Kal Raman.

Seattle is the nation's No. 13 most "well-read" city, according to Amazon.com Inc., and Bellevue ranks No. 16.

The Seattle online retailer ranked cities by sales data of all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format since June 1, 2011, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents.

So readers don't have to buy an external light to use their Kindle at night, Amazon.com Inc. is planning to introduce a Kindle e-reader with front lighting this July, according to a new report.

Reuters reports Amazon also plans to introduce a Kindle Fire tablet with a larger 8.9-inch screen in time for the holiday shopping season.

Competition for Seattle’s best tech minds just got even tougher.

Amazon announced Monday it is hiring more than 1,000 new people for its Seattle offices.

The company is looking for technical developers to work on software engineering, management of software development, user interface and user experience design, and technical program management.

Amazon will be competing with Microsoft, which is hiring more than 1,500 new tech workers in the same geographic area.

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates saw his wealth rise $35.5 million to $61.8 billion last week on Bloomberg's "Billionaire Index" while Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos saw his wealth fall $87.1 million to $21.3 billion.

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Another view of the bi-level aerial walkway and the dedicated bike entrance on the right at Amazon's proposed Seattle campus.

The City of Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development has posted the latest renderings of Amazon’s proposed Denny Triangle campus.

The new images give a much better idea of what the 3-million-square-foot project will look like when it’s completed.

Reaction to the revised design was generally favorable at a public design review board meeting earlier this week. Attendees liked proposed amenities that include outdoor artwork, a playing field, a dog park and space for food trucks.

BUSINESS JOURNAL PHOTO | Anthony Bolante

Tanesha Tekola (left) and Sera Day demonstrate in front of Amazon.com's corporate headquarters in Seattle on Thursday.

There were more Amazon.com employees waiting in line at nearby food trucks Thursday than there were noon-time protesters outside Amazon's headquarters in South Lake Union.

Approximately 35 people from the SEIU, Teamsters and Working Washington unions were protesting working conditions at Amazon’s Pennsylvania warehouse. Two former workers from Pennsylvania warehouses were on hand to share stories of what they said were extremely hot conditions, long hours, and an unfair points system for workers.

Jim Herbold, who worked in an Amazon warehouse for five months when he was 61 years old, said the company expected older workers to work at the same pace as younger workers, and that the company responded to complaints about hot conditions in the warehouse by parking paramedics outside in case anyone passed out.

“Very few people work there past three months,” he said.

Karen Salasky, who worked in the Pennsylvania warehouse for nine months, said she also experienced extremely hot conditions, up to 115 degrees.

Amazon.com Inc. will make J.K. Rowling's series of "Harry Potter" e-books available in its Kindle Owners' Lending Library on June 19.

In a statement, Amazon said it will offer all seven Harry Potter books through its Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, which Amazon's Prime members will have access for free. Previously, "Harry Potter" e-book buyers and Amazon Kindle users had to go directly to Rowling's own Pottermore.com web site to download the e-books. Amazon sells its Prime membership for $79 a year.

Amazon.com Inc. said it plans to open a new 70,000-square-foot customer service facility in Winchester, Ky., near Lexington in the central part of the state.

Amazon said it will invest more than $20.7 million and create more than 550 full-time and 600 seasonal jobs by 2017 at the Lexington facility, which will provide customer service and technical support. Amazon currently operates distribution facilities in Louisville, Lexington, Campbellsville and Hebron, Ky.

Shipments of Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire tablet dropped to less than 750,000 units in the lastest quarter from 4.8 million units shipped in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Why the big drop in shipments in one quarter? The Wall Street Journal's All Things D surmises that the drop from a 16.8 percent worldwide market share to about 4 percent in one quarter could be because some consumers are waiting for the newest versions of the Fire to come onto the market. Or it could be that consumers are responding to Apple Inc.'s discounting of its iPad 2.

An aerial view of Amazon.com's proposed campus in the Denny Triangle. This rendering was submitted to the City of Seattle before design tweaks were made May 8.

A dog park, a playing field, space for food trucks and a large public plaza protected by a vast glass canopy — those are the latest tweaks to the design of Amazon’s proposed Denny Triangle campus.

The reaction to these and other changes was generally favorable at a public meeting Tuesday night. During the meeting, held at City Hall, members of Seattle’s Design Review Board and the public got to comment on the proposed 3-million-square-foot project.

It was clear that the sheer scale of the project, the years it will take before it is completed, and the importance of getting it right are weighing heavily on the Design Review Board.

“The pace of the approval, the tremendous list of ‘more is coming’ – I want to help,” said board member Brian Scott, “but I don’t want to be sick to my stomach ten years from now.”