TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Google has added to its dominance of smartphone platforms, with the Android operating system supporting 47 percent of smartphones in the U.S., according to comScore. That was a 3 percent increase in market share for Android.

Apple’s iOS platform was No. 2, with 29 percent of the smartphone market, up 1.4 percent in November. That means that Android and iOS platforms are in 76 percent of smartphones in the U.S., a dominance that highlights Microsoft’s steep challenge to catch up with its rivals.

Microsoft had 5.2 percent of the smartphone platform market in November, down 0.5 percent.

The comScore report looked at a three-month average in September, October and November.

Washington State Department of Transportation image

Tolling on the 520 bridge began today. A roundtrip during peak hours may run up to $10. But for Microsoft employees, the free Connector service is an option.

To help make the now-tolled drive over the State Route 520 bridge a bit easier, Microsoft has stepped up its Connector bus service.

The extra runs and routes aren’t new – they were added back in April when the Washington State Department of Transportation was supposed to begin tolling. Issues with contractors and technology pushed the start of tolling back to this morning.

But with the cost of a round trip over the 520 bridge as high as $10, more Microsofties might look to hitch a ride.

The Microsoft Connector is one of several ways the tech giant is helping its employees get to work. It’s also one additional perk for recruiting in the extremely competitive tech personnel landscape.

Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos said the company runs about two dozen routes to the Redmond campus and in anticipation of tolling, added one or two runs a day on each route. Most routes now have five or six runs per day.

The University of California, Berkeley has picked an email system powered by Google over an offering from Microsoft.

According to a message from Vice Chancellor John Wilton, U.C. Berkeley will make the switch to Gmail and Google calendar systems next year and drop its homegrown “CalMail” system, which has failed several times recently. The package Cal chose, called Google Apps for Education, was picked over a rival Microsoft offering after “an extensive analysis,” the school said.

The university already has a Microsoft site license in place -- students can download the company’s Office software starting Jan. 9. That agreement is not affected by this decision.

Cal evaluated the Google system against Microsoft’s Office 365 to make its choice.

In terms of the “migration” to the new system, U.C. Berkeley found Google to be superior -- “Google offers a 6-10 week migration plan … A UC Berkeley migration to Google can start faster and with less infrastructure investment.”

That’s an important consideration -- less investment -- for a university struggling to save money. As consumer sale of tech products remains soft, big tech companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft have looked to government and education sales to boost the bottom line.

The HTC Radar 4G

Microsoft is said to be planning a high-end super phone named Apollo possibly with duel core and HD screens to make it more attractive to business users.

That is according to a leaked roadmap for Windows Phone that indicates Microsoft plans to introduce a super phone in the fourth quarter of 2012.

If the roadmap is followed, it would meant that Microsoft is preparing to launch a smartphone to go up against the planned Apple iPhone 5. The Apollo also would help Microsoft more fully exploit its partnership with Nokia, according to The Telegraph of London.

Microsoft purchased Skype in a deal worth $8.5 billion in cash. The acquisition gave Microsoft the highly visible internet voice and video service that accounts for about one in five international calling minutes worldwide.

The Skype takeover was voted the big deal of the year by readers of TechFlash as part of our 2011 TechFlash Newsmaker Awards, or Flashies.

Apple is considering using a hydrogen fuel cell to power some of its devices, such as the iPad or iPhone.

Apple has filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, noting the company’s “continuing reliance on fossil fuels” and customers’ interest in renewable energy sources, according to several media reports.

The hydrogen battery apparently could last for weeks, according to the patent filing.

Google’s new push into online travel arrangements is roiling the industry, with competitors saying the company is abusing its power in Internet search.

Beginning this month Google has been putting its new flight-search service above search results that would pull up competing services such as Expedia, Orbitz and Priceline.com, according to The Wall Street Journal.

AT&T has dropped its bid to take over T-Mobile USA for $39 billion in the wake of opposition from government regulators who say the deal would violate antitrust laws.

The move by AT&T -- announced Monday afternoon -- was a stunning outcome for the telecom giant that had sought to buy Bellevue-based T-Mobile USA -- an American subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. AT&T had underestimated the opposition it would face from government regulators and from competitors who feared what would become of the highly competitive wireless industry if the merger went through. The deal would have created the nation's largest carrier.

AT&T's decision to scrap its merger plan leaves T-Mobile in limbo. T-Mobile USA’s parent, Deutsche Telekom, is getting $3 billion in cash by the end of the year. And T-Mobile USA will get what Deutsche Telekom calls a “large package of advanced wireless solutions spectrum” and a seven-year national roaming agreement that will allow T-Mobile to bring faster service to Seattle and other big cities.

The deal gives T-Mobile more time to figure out its future, including upgrading its network and finding a new partner.

Microsoft says that Novell Inc. has insufficient evidence to reasonably support its antitrust lawsuit against the Redmond software giant now that a jury has failed to reach a verdict in the case.

The HTC Radar 4G

Microsoft released Windows Phone 7.5 to select devices in September. Internet Sharing (better known as tethering) was one of the biggest updates.

The smartphone operating system was voted the best tech platform of the year by readers of TechFlash as part of our 2011 TechFlash Newsmaker Awards, or Flashies.

The Windows Phone 7 update -- which was codenamed “Mango” as Microsoft tried to keep it under wraps before it was unveiled -- is chock full of tools to increase productivity and includes new IT features and a bunch of new apps.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation photo

Jeff Raikes in 2011 administers polio drops to a Nigerian child during an African trip that focused on ending polio and building other immunization programs. Raikes’ rural upbringing often helps him connect with the recipients of Gates Foundation programs.

As part of the announcement of the Puget Sound Business Journal Executive of the Year 2011, we’re sharing some anecdotes throughout the week from the friends, family and colleagues of this year’s winner: Jeff Raikes, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and former president of the Business Division at Microsoft.

Raikes manages big ideas and big bosses at Microsoft … From Nathan Myhrvold, former chief technology officer at Microsoft Corp.

Microsoft isn’t known for its tablet computing, but if Jeff Raikes had his way Microsoft would have been first on the market offering a tablet featuring a stylus.

“One thing that Jeff championed very early that turned out to be true with a vengeance is tablet-based computing,” said Nathan Myhrvold, founder of patent firm Intellectual Ventures . “Jeff championed pen-input computers in Windows, literally eons ago.”

Destination NSW image

Bill Gates and his family are spending the Christmas holiday in Sydney, Australia, where it is summertime -- and usually balmy.

Bill Gates

The problem is the weather. Sydney is known for nice weather this time of year and for a spectacular New Year’s Eve fireworks display in the city’s harbor. But this year, Sydney is having one of its coolest Decembers in 50 years, with many days in the mid-60s.

“Wish it was a tiny bit warmer,” Gates told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Microsoft reportedly put up big money to have Bing be the default search engine for the Firefox browser, but Google beat out the tech giant with a $300 million per year offer.

That’s what Kara Swisher at All Things D is reporting. In yet another effort to bump up Bing’s sluggish market share, Microsoft was presumably willing to fork over more than $250 million a year. Google accounts for about two-thirds of searches in the United States, while Bing and Yahoo, which are powered by Microsoft’s search technology, account for a combined 30 percent.

Nintendo image

Redmond-based Nintendo of America is enjoying a strong holiday selling season, with its 3DS portable hand-held having its best single month for sales and its Wii selling more units on Black Friday than ever before.

The Wall Street Journal’s All Things D talked with Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime, who said he’s not a big fan of social gaming companies like Zynga and that the company’s upcoming Wii U will be targeted to consumers with higher disposable incomes than current Wii customers.

GameHouse has expanded to Facebook to compete with rival Zynga

GameHouse, the gaming division of RealNetworks, is opening a social game studio in Victoria, B.C. and plans to double its staff there to at least 45 people by the end of 2012.

The move is part of GameHouse’s expanded focus on social games in attempt to compete with rivals, including Zynga, which recently went public. GameHouse said it has invested $10 million in 2011 in the company’s social gaming initiatives.

GameHouse joins Microsoft, which also is opening a game design studio in Victoria, B.C. GameHouse says it is hiring aggressively in Seattle and Victoria. GameHouse’s increased investment in social gaming comes at a time when popular social games like Zynga’s FarmVille are captivating millions of fans.

But it also comes at a time when investors and analysts are questioning the long-term viability of social games that rely heavily on Facebook and other websites for its revenue.

CBS image

Secluded in western Pennsylvania, about an hour and a half north of Pittsburgh, is a trove of 15 million original photos owned by Bill Gates’ Corbis.

Some of the photos include iconic images of Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein, including one of the physicist, famous for the theory of relativity, rowing a boat in his pajamas. There are also thousands of photos of presidents, celebrities and scenes of American life.

CBS News recently toured the facility, housed in an old limestone mine where Corbis moved its photo archive in 2001. The mine is temperature controlled for preservation of delicate negatives and prints.

The mine itself is massive; more than 150 acres located 220 feet underground. The National Archives, CBS and the U.S. Patent Office have documents stored in the same mine.