TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

With months to go before their expected release, there's no telling at this point which new motion-sensing video-game control system will be best, or which will prevail in the market. But Sony is taking the gloves off with a new video promoting its upcoming PlayStation Move system and, without mentioning them by name, spoofing Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's planned Project Natal control system for Xbox 360.

It's extremely funny, and it's getting a lot of attention today on video-game and tech blogs, but in the process of implicity poking fun at Project Natal, it overlooks an important aspect of the Microsoft system.

Today's your last chance to sign up for the first TechFlash Live event of 2010, taking place Tuesday March 23 at the Showbox Sodo. We've got a fantastic panel on hand to discuss how to make money online and the future of advertising. If that's not enough to whet your appetite, we're also rolling in some ping pong tables so folks can warm-up, scout the competition and challenge your tech rivals in advance of the big TechFlash pong tourney later this summer.

Registration will close later this afternoon. So if you haven't signed up yet, now is the time to pull the trigger. Tickets here.

Astronomy geeks will get a kick out of a new Bing Maps application that was introduced today in conjunction with Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope. The Microsoft search engine already is used by consumers to find their way to the grocery store or dentist, but now Chris Pendleton explains in a blog post how it can be used to locate the stars and planets overhead.

Bellevue. Flickr photo/Rutio

Seattle's doing it. So are Renton and Bellingham and Portland. Now, Bellevue -- the Seattle suburb located just a few miles from Microsoft's headquarters -- is the latest city to bid for Google's high-speed Internet network.

We've been tracking some of the unusual PR stunts that politicians are pulling out in order to lure the search giant to their communities. And Bellevue is calling on its citizens to fill out surveys, upload videos to YouTube or comment on the city's Facebook page in order to show support for the effort.

When is this going to stop? Thankfully the deadline for community submissions is March 26, so there's about a week left for communities to make their best pitch or change their names as was the case in Topeka, Kansas.

Don't you wish you could do this to a picture of your boss sometimes? Microsoft's Scott Guthrie had some fun on stage this week at the company's MIX conference, showing a Windows Phone 7 app that turned Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer into a dancing marionette. Guthrie said Ballmer himself recorded the audio for the demo, adapting his trademark "developers, developers, developers" rallying cry for the mobile phone.

Before he headed to Las Vegas for Microsoft's MIX conference this week, Microsoft Internet Explorer general manager Dean Hachamovitch sat down with TechFlash to talk about and demonstrate some of the underlying technical changes in Internet Explorer 9, the next version of the company's web browser.

Mel Sampat

Normally the departure of a key program manager does not signal positive things about a product, particularly with only a few months to go before it ships. But Mel Sampat said today that his decision to leave Microsoft's Windows Phone team to start his own app development firm was actually a vote of confidence in the company's potential to support a strong ecosystem of third-party apps.

To be clear, he's well-grounded in reality. In a phone conversation today, Sampat acknowledged that he was uncertain about Microsoft's chances for challenging the iPhone and Google Android as recently as a year ago. But in the time since, things have started to turn around for the company, culminating with the positive reception for the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series at last month's Mobile World Congress.

"When we saw the way the market responded to (Windows Phone) 7, everyone at Microsoft was thrilled and excited," he said. "Soon after MWC is when I decided, well, if this is how the market is going to respond, if we are a legitimate alternative to the iPhone and Android, then I should get out there and try to do something more with it."

Microsoft today will preview Internet Explorer 9, the next version of its web browser -- promising a faster online experience and stronger support for emerging web standards, while making the case for traditional PC hardware and operating systems in a world increasingly focused on computing in remote data centers.

The company says Internet Explorer 9 will come with a new underlying scripting engine that takes advantage of multicore computer processors to make web pages run faster. Microsoft also says the new browser will bring better support for HTML5, CSS3 and other web standards, attempting to make it easier for web developers to create a single version of their site that can work across multiple browsers.

But the most eye-catching demonstration is the way the new browser will tap into the computer's graphics processor, rather than the central processing unit, to make high-resolution images and animations zip around the page. It's a new approach that works through the DirectX application programming interfaces in Windows to let the browser access more of the underlying power of the computer hardware.

Mobile Crunch reports this morning that Mel Sampat, a program manager on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 Series development team, is leaving the company to start his own firm -- focusing at least in part on helping companies bring their iPhone apps to Microsoft's mobile platform.

The mobile news site identifies Sampat's company as Mist Labs and points to this placeholder page, which shows an iPhone and a Google Android phone in addition to a Windows Phone 7 device. Our search of Washington state corporations and Securities and Exchange Commission filings didn't turn up any further details on the company, but we've got messages out to Sampat and Microsoft for more info.

McIlwain

Ballmer

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, F5 CEO John McAdam, T-Mobile USA CEO Robert Dotson and Madrona Venture Group's Matt McIlwain are among the Seattle area technology leaders who are tossing their support behind a national broadband plan. In a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski today, more than two dozen tech executives, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Netflix CEO reed Hastings and Dell CEO Michael Dell, write that broadand is "critical to America's long-term economic and social well-being." Noticeably absent from the marquee list of supporters is anyone from Google, which has set its sights on its own broadband push with Internet speeds of as much as 1 Gigabit per second. The letter -- full text of which is below -- was organized by TechNet, Technology CEO Council and the Information Technology Industry Council.

Foursquare on Windows Phone 7

Microsoft has a long way to go before it matches Apple's 150,000 iPhone apps, but the Redmond company this morning released an early list of companies and developers working on apps for its upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series devices. The company also released details of the software development platform and the core features that developers will be able to access when they make Windows Phone 7 applications.

The news is coming out of Microsoft's Mix conference in Las Vegas. A live stream is available here. Some of the more notable names on the list of initial Windows Phone 7 Series application developers are Foursquare, Pandora, Sling Media, EA, Seesmic, PopCap, and Namco.

On stage at Mix, the company showed a Netflix application that will let people use Windows Phone 7 Series devices to watch streaming content from the movie service's online library.

Jeff Wood

It's been nearly three years since Microsoft gobbled up Seattle online ad giant aQuantive for $6 billion. And, as we have documented over the past few months, the talent from aQuantive continues to spread their entrepreneurial wings. Now, words comes of another startup created by former aQuantive and ex-Microsoft employees, though this one calls Raleigh, North Carolina home.

aiMatch says it is trying to help Web publishers maximize the value of their advertising inventory. The company is led by Jeff Wood, who previously served vice president of publisher sales at Microsoft. Wood, along with co-founders Guy Taylor and Ryan Treichler, previously worked together at online ad startup Accipter. The Raleigh, North Carolina company -- which sold ad serving technologies to Web publishers -- was gobbled up by aQuantive for $30.3 million in 2006.

We're hearing from some AT&T customers today who are experiencing problems accessing e-mail and the Internet.

It is unclear how widespread the problem is, and a spokeswoman for AT&T said this afternoon that the network is operating properly. She suggested that the problem may be connected to Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system, but didn't have further details. It does not appear that iPhones -- which run exclusively on the AT&T network -- have been impacted. [Update: Some iPhone users in the comments below and on Twitter are reporting network problems, as well.]

Update March 13, 9:50 p.m.: Here's the latest from the AT&T spokeswoman: "The reported outage in the Washington area has been resolved as of Saturday evening. We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers." Update: The spokeswoman said there was a problem with network equipment in Washington state, which caused the outage here as well as some other locations on the West Coast.

Sales of video game hardware, software and accessories in the U.S. were down across the board in February, according to results released today by the NPD Group research firm. Total industry sales of $1.26 billion for were below the same month last year, and also the same month two years ago.

"Honestly, I had expected the industry to perform somewhat better this month," said Anita Frazier, an NPD analyst, in an email distributed by the firm. However she struck an upbeat tone for the future, saying that "strong new releases, and Easter gift-buying bodes well for industry performance in March."

The news was better for Microsoft's Xbox 360, which registered the highest U.S. monthly unit sales of the three major consoles for the first time since September 2007, when Halo 3 was released. "Bioshock 2" for the Xbox 360 was the top-selling video game for the month. The Xbox 360's 422,000 in unit sales compared with 397,900 for the Nintendo Wii and 360,100 unit sales for the PlayStation 3 in the U.S.

Many people consider themselves more productive when they're working away from the office, according to a study of workers at a variety of companies across the country, commissioned by Microsoft. But the study also found that not as many companies support the practice.

"Sixty percent of respondents to the Microsoft Telework survey — conducted among 3,600 employees in 36 cities nationwide — say they are actually more productive and efficient when working remotely," Microsoft says today said in a summary of the findings. "With less time spent commuting and fewer cubicle 'drive bys' causing distractions, respondents say, more time can be spent on the task in front of them."