TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Using Microsoft's new Windows Phone interface feels at times like placing a small frame on wide landscape, and then moving it around to get a sense for the larger picture. People accustomed to self-contained mobile screens will find this jarring at first. For example, as noted in one early review, "PowerPoint" looks like "PowerPoir" because the text trails off the edge, until the user swipes to see the rest.

You can see the effect above, in one of the promotional images Microsoft is using to illustrate the concept. It's almost as if Microsoft designed the Windows Phone software for something larger, and then figured out a way to make it work on smaller screens. What if that's actually what the company did? How would this look on a slate?

Pretty cool, as it turns out.

Yes, in fact, Steve Ballmer did promise that Microsoft's interns will get Windows Phone 7 devices, on him. It sounded sketchy at first, but we've been able to independently confirm the story, first reported by Gizmodo earlier this week.

The site quoted an anonymous "intern tipster" who said the CEO made the promise in response to a question an event with the interns, when asked whether they would get new Windows Phones like the company's employees are.

"Recruiting doesn't have the budget, but I do. So, Yes!" he said, according to the site.

No word on how many phones or how much money that translates into, or how the giveaway will work. But it's clearly a lot, with Ballmer reportedly calling it "the most expensive last question I've ever had."

Today's must-read story is this Wall Street Journal investigative piece on the way websites and third-party marketers track and profile users based on their web browsing. Bellevue-based BlueKai's CEO, Omar Tawakol, is quoted in the story. (More background on BlueKai in this previous TechFlash story.) The Journal's investigation puts a spotlight on the activities of sites including Microsoft's MSN.com portal.

Microsoft Research this week showed off a project called "Street Slide" that takes a different approach from Google's Street View by stitching together street-level pictures into a horizontal panorama, rather than making it look as if they're being viewed from inside a bubble. The project was presented at the SIGGRAPH 2010 conference. Read the paper and watch a video demo here. CNet News.com has more details.

Microsoft will formally oppose the proposed partnership between Google and Yahoo Japan, and present evidence to Japanese regulators, a company representative tells Business Insider. Microsoft had previously spoken out against the deal but not gone so far as to say it would formally oppose it. Yahoo Japan is an affiliate of Yahoo Inc., but not a wholly owned subsidiary, which gives it the freedom to operate outside of Yahoo's separate search and advertising partnership with Microsoft in the U.S. and elsewhere.

And finally, Microsoft's Ballmer this week told Wall Street analysts that a location in Bellevue Square mall will be among its next wave of retail stores, confirming news that we reported here in May. No specific date was given. Microsoft also is planning new stores in Oakbrook Center near Chicago, and the Mall of America in Minneapolis. Those three will join existing stores in Denver, San Diego, Mission Viejo and Scottsdale, giving Microsoft a total of seven.

This week on the TechFlash Podcast, continuing our partnership with 97.3 KIRO-FM in Seattle, we bring longtime Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley and veteran Apple watcher Glenn Fleishman into the studio to talk about the rise of the iPad, the prospects for a legitimate Microsoft response, and the announcement of a new Kindle. We also hear the funny story of what happened when Mary Jo, a newly minted iPad owner, first went to an Apple store to research her purchase.

The show airs on the radio at 7 p.m. Saturday night in the Seattle region, but you can also listen below right now or subscribe to the TechFlash Podcast using this RSS feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/techflashpodcast), or via iTunes or Zune. Call 206-876-5465 to leave a message for our next show, and continue reading for links related to this week's episode. Access the podcast archive here.

Ballmer during yesterday's meeting. (Microsoft photo)

The threat posed by Apple's iPad was a central topic during Microsoft's annual meeting with financial analysts yesterday in Redmond. But analysts don't seem to have walked away convinced that Microsoft can come up with a true iPad rival.

As noted by Fortune's Philip Elmer-DeWitt this morning, Ballmer talked at length -- too much length -- about Microsoft's plans for tablet and slate computers. He made it clear, at least, that Microsoft is enthusiastic about its prospects in the market, but his comments at times required a translator to decipher. As an example, here's one exchange from the Q&A session.

Shakil Haroon, GM with Brazil's Spring Wireless. (Marcus Donner/PSBJ)

Shakil Haroon, a former manager in Microsoft’s mobile business, is the Seattle-based general manager for Spring Wireless, a Brazilian company that makes mobile software applications for big companies. The company established its U.S. headquarters in Seattle last year.

Haroon's past experience at Microsoft and current work in enterprise mobile software gives him a unique perspective on trends in the world of smartphones and mobile devices. Continue reading for edited excerpts from our conversation.

Microsoft this morning filed its annual Form 10-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a treasure trove for anyone digging for nuggets of information about the company. The first one that jumped out at me: Microsoft made more money selling companies than it spent buying companies in its last fiscal year.

The company says it spent $267 million to acquire five entities in its 2010 fiscal year -- a small fraction of its available balance of more than $31 billion in cash and short-term investments. That was down from $925 million on nine companies in fiscal 2009.

Meanwhile, the company says it sold three companies "for total consideration of $600 million" during the year. One of those companies was Razorfish, the advertising agency picked up in Microsoft's $6 billion purchase of aQuantive in 2007, which Microsoft sold to Publicis Groupe for $530 million last year. The other two aren't identified.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today acknowledged the momentum seen by Apple's iPad in the market for slate-style, consumer-oriented computers -- a sector that his company has been trying to crack, without as much success, for the better part of the past decade.

But Microsoft hasn't given up on the market, he said, noting that the company sees new hope on the horizon.

"They’ve sold certainly more than I’d like them to sell, let me just be clear about that," Ballmer said after raising the topic of Apple's iPad during a speech this afternoon at the company's Financial Analyst Meeting in Redmond. "We have got to make things happen. Just like we had to make things happen on netbooks, we’ve got to make things happen with Windows 7 on slates, and we’re in the process of doing that as we speak."

Posting from Redmond: Microsoft executives are making a series of presentations today at the company's annual Financial Analyst Meeting, a day-long confab that brings investors and analysts from Wall Street and elsewhere to the company's headquarters. In simple terms, the event is a chance for the company to update the world on what it's thinking about. Which traditionally translates into lots of lists and diagrams.

Starting things off, the company said it is currently compartmentalizing its business into eight core areas: Xbox & TV, Bing, Microsoft Office, Windows Server, Windows Phone, Windows, Business Users, and SQL Server.

A big thanks to the more than 400 of you who joined us Wednesday for one of our favorite annual events, the TechFlash Summer BBQ and Ping-Pong Tournament, at the Showbox Sodo. The action on the tabletops was top-notch, the crowd was great, and we had fun catching up with people from across the Seattle tech community.

And who knew someone would come dressed up as a tree?

Team Banyan Branch, Spirit Award winners at the TechFlash BBQ and Ping-Pong Tourney. (Photo by Marcus Donner.)

That was the team from social media agency Banyan Branch (pictured at right), which took home the coveted Spirit Award thanks to their unique display of corporate pride -- coming out ahead of the stylish homemade getups worn by Blue Box Group and the, um, eye-catching matching pants sported by the team from online real estate firm Findwell (pictured below).

But the big winner of the night was a familiar name, ping-pong wizard Valeri Kim, representing tech consulting company Akvelon, who successfully defended his TechFlash title to take home the championship in the expert bracket. He overcame Minh Le of Silicon Valley Bank in a rematch of last year's final.

Valeri Kim, representing Akvelon, successfully defended his TechFlash title with a championship in the expert ping-pong division. (Marcus Donner photo)

Despite the loss in the final, Le's second-place finish earned him one of the best prizes of the night -- three hours of free lessons at the Washington Table Tennis Center in Bellevue, which brought some masters of the sport to the event to entertain the crowd with an incredible exhibition on a side table (starting at the 1:50 mark in the video above).

The Ping-Pong and Foosball tourney at the Showbox SoDo.

Oh, what a night. More than 400 people crowded into the Showbox Sodo for the second annual TechFlash Summer BBQ, Ping-Pong and Foosball tournament. Here's a look at some of the scenes from the big event, courtesy of photographer Marcus Donner.

We're broadcasting live from the TechFlash summer bash. So, just in case you can't make it out for the fun, check out the live stream below. Things get rolling around 4 p.m. with the first ping-pong matches and foosball games.

Who do you think will take home the big prizes in ping-pong, foosball and the coveted "Spirit Award?"

Walking around the packed gdgt live event in Seattle last night, we were surprised at the large crowd pushing into Microsoft's booth -- until we realized that the company was demonstrating Windows Phone 7, giving people a glimpse of something they won't see in stores for a few months.

These were hard-core technology users, the types of people that Microsoft would like to win over to help turn around its mobile business. So we took the opportunity to ask for their impressions.

In an unusual display of collaboration between competitors, Adobe says it will use the industry coalition and notification system launched by Microsoft two years ago to give selected security technology vendors early information about the security updates it releases for its products.

Adobe will become the first software company other than Microsoft to use the system to deliver early security information. Known as the Microsoft Active Protections Program, or MAPP, the system is designed to give companies including antivirus, intrusion detection and firewall vendors a head start to defend against the hackers who reverse-engineer publicly released security updates to exploit the vulnerabilities they're designed to fix.

Yahoo Japan's decision to use Google's search and advertising systems in the country, announced earlier today, is drawing strong objections from Microsoft, which is partnering with Yahoo elsewhere in the world.

“This agreement is even more anticompetitive than Google’s deal with Yahoo! in the United States and Canada that the Department of Justice found to be illegal," said Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, in a statement issued by the company today. "The 2008 deal would have locked up 90 percent of paid search advertising. This deal gives Google virtually 100 percent of all searches in Japan, both paid and unpaid. It means there will be no search competition in Japan and that Google will end up controlling all personal search information for all Japanese consumers and businesses.”

Toronto-based tech company i4i Inc., which last year won a $290 million patent verdict against Microsoft over the use of custom XML technology in Word, issued a news release today announcing that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has confirmed the validity of the patent at the center of the case -- again.

"Put simply Microsoft lost the trial, lost the appeal, and lost the reexamination. The PTO agreed with i4i. i4i's patent is clearly and unequivocally valid," says Loudon Owen, the i4i chairman, in the news release. "The protection of patents and intellectual property is vital to small inventors and pioneers like i4i, especially when confronted by giant infringing industry competitors like Microsoft."

Which is funny, because that's almost exactly the same thing Owen said when i4i announced essentially the same thing in May.