TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Microsoft says a problem with the internal clock in its 30GB Zune players, related to the leap year, caused the widespread device failures reported earlier today. However, the company says the device should fix itself as the clock shifts to Jan. 1.

"The technical team jumped on the problem immediately and isolated the issue: a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year," the company said in a statement. "That being the case, the issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009."

Read on for the complete statement.

This is like something out of a science-fiction novel: Users of Microsoft's 30 GB Zune music players are reporting in large numbers that the devices crashed and stopped working, en masse, early this morning.

Users on the Zune.net forums began reporting problems with "frozen"  Zunes around midnight last night. Giving a sense for the magnitude of the problem, one forum thread has attracted more than 1,000 posts. So far, the problem appears to be affecting only the 30 GB Zune models, not those with flash memory or other hard drives.

Update, 2:30 p.m.: See follow-up post: Microsoft blames clock bug for Zune glitches, promises magic fix.

The newsstand that spawned the personal-computer revolution may finally be falling victim to it.

There's a fascinating story in today's Boston Globe about Out of Town News in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass. The newspaper reported previously that the company running the newsstand was ending its lease, blaming the shift to online reading.

The new twist is reporter Martin Finucane's confirmation, through Paul Allen, that it's the very place the Microsoft co-founder bought that fateful edition of Popular Electronics more than three decades ago. As the legend goes, that magazine, featuring the early Altair 8800, is what convinced Allen and Bill Gates to start the company.

Search engine guru Danny Sullivan today published an insightful analysis of Microsoft's long struggle in the Internet search business. The piece, Tough Love For Microsoft Search, offers a collection of possible remedies for the company in its battle with Google. One of them is particularly timely: Why doesn't the company just make Microsoft.com its primary search brand and portal?

Hewlett-Packard, which was a launch partner for Microsoft's Windows Home Server operating system, today announced an expanded HP MediaSmart Server lineup that also works with Apple Mac computers. The new capability is being aimed at homes with both Macs and PCs on their networks. HP says the servers will work with Apple's Time Machine backup software.

How Quickly We Forget: A new Microsoft patent filing outlines an approach to pay-as-you-go computing, in which PC users would be charged depending on which software and hardware elements they use, and how much time they use them. Some of the coverage is skeptical that Microsoft would actually try such a thing, but in fact, the company started testing a similar model a couple years ago with its FlexGo program in emerging markets. [More after the jump.]

Steve Ballmer (Microsoft photo)

What does Steve Ballmer have in common with Dale Chihuly? Unless the Microsoft CEO has been taking glass-blowing lessons on the side, the answer is that each has contributed the maximum $50,000 to President-elect Barack Obama's Inaugural Committee

The committee's website also lists "William Gates" for a $50,000 donation, although it's not clear f that's the Microsoft co-founder or his father, who are often confused in elections filings. Melinda Gates is listed separately for another $50,000 donation, as is Ballmer's wife, Connie. That's $200,000 total from the Gates and Ballmer families, for anyone keeping track.

A tip for anyone who unwrapped a new PC over the holidays: Microsoft recently launched a new site that offers answers to common Windows Vista questions and problems. Targeted to a general audience, the Microsoft Answers beta appears more user-friendly than the existing Microsoft Support page. But making the most of it will still require more than the average level of technical knowledge.

It's time once again for tech companies to provide a glimpse of what they've been cooking up for the year ahead. TechFlash will be covering the Macworld Expo in San Francisco and the big Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week.

If your Seattle-area company will be showing new products or technologies in conjunction with these shows, we'd like to hear from you. Please drop us a note at techflashtips@bizjournals.com.

Live Icons in Windows Vista.

The concept of providing a thumbnail preview of a file inside its desktop icon has become common in recent years. Microsoft calls them Live Icons, but many other companies use a similar approach. Now, a small company called Cygnus Systems Inc. has sued Microsoft, Apple and Google, saying that the practice infringes on a patent it was awarded in March.

This week brought news of a 9-year-old girl becoming a Microsoft Certified Professional, achieving the designation that the company gives to outside experts "who have the skills to implement a Microsoft product or technology successfully as part of a business solution in an organization." The reports about M. Lavinashree of India becoming an MCP earned her lots of praise online.

It's a great story, particularly in an industry that needs more women, and we don't mean to take anything away from the achievement. But in reality, she's only the latest in a series of children under 10 to achieve Microsoft certification.

Which raises the question: Are we seeing the emergence of a new generation of technological geniuses? Or are Microsoft's certification exams too easy?

Each year there are a ton of videos made by, for and about Microsoft, and the phenomenon only grew bigger in 2008. In fact, there were so many videos that a Top 10 list seemed appropriate. So here it is, our ranking of the best Microsoft-related videos of the year. Hope you enjoy the clips. And Merry Christmas from TechFlash.

Monday: The Good: What went right in Seattle tech in 2008.

Tuesday: The Bad and Ugly: Where things went wrong, and how they got worse from there.

Wednesday: What to watch in Seattle tech in the year ahead.

What bears watching in Seattle technology in 2009? That's easy. It's the economy, of course. The global financial crisis is continuing to ripple through the regional tech industry, forcing nearly every company to adjust to a new economic reality.

But in reality, the answer is a lot more nuanced and interesting than that. And apart from the economic turmoil, there will still be plenty of promising technologies to monitor, big corporate moves to anticipate, and geeky gadgets to drool over.

These are some of the areas we'll be tracking in the next year.

Google, Microsoft and other big tech companies spent the past few years ramping up employee perks as they battled each other for top talent. Now, as the tech industry tries to weather the economic storm, the fate of those extras will be an interesting barometer of the severity of the cutbacks, and the effects. Will the perks survive? And what will happen to employee morale if they don't?

To monitor the situation, just keep an eye on Microsoft's towels.

Monday: The Good: What went right in Seattle tech in 2008.

Tuesday: The Bad and Ugly: Where things went wrong, and how they got worse from there.

Wednesday: What to watch in Seattle tech in the year ahead.

The ongoing financial meltdown has the tech sector on its heels, with layoffs and other cutbacks dominating the headlines as 2008 draws to a close. The economic turmoil defined the year, and perhaps the era.

But even without those problems, many Seattle tech companies did just fine screwing things up on their own.

In fact, the past year was like a soap opera. It started with the local software giant's ill-fated bid for one of its biggest rivals. Later we had two executives at a local startup admitting to concocting the financial statements presented to their board. Now we have allegations that another local startup is wrongfully keeping hundreds of thousands of dollars from youth sports programs around the country.

Not to mention those weird Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld ads.

And the bison slayings.

Seems like only question at this point is who gets the movie rights. So brace yourself: Here's our review of The Bad and The Ugly in Seattle technology in the past year.

Microsoft's Live Search team hasn't been ignoring the iPhone, despite Google's position as the default search provider for Apple's mobile device. In the MacRumors forums last week, the Live Search team was touting a new mobile version for the iPhone.

But there's a catch: Rather than releasing an iPhone app, the Redmond company's search group has tuned its mobile site for the iPhone's Safari browser. The approach means that, even on the Live Search page on the iPhone, the first thing most users see is the Google search field in the browser frame.