Shares of Amazon.com surged nearly 10 percent today -- rising $4.02 to $45.21 -- even though Citigroup cut its estimate and price target for the Seattle online retailer due in part to what it believes will be a relatively stagnant holiday sales period.

Atlas Accelerator, a consulting firm that helps startup companies with fundraising, recruiting and sales, has named former Cray executive Vic Chynoweth to the position of chief financial officer. Atlas also said that it has doubled its investment outlays this year to $4 million. Prior to serving as vice president of finance at Cray, Chynoweth worked at MTI Technology and Lehman Brothers.

TreeHugger lists five CEOs "Who have made an environmental U-turn" -- including Sir Richard Branson, T. Boone Pickens and Rupert Murdoch. Amongst that list of billionaires is a local guy who you've probably never heard of. His name is Brad Hole and -- as TreeHugger says -- he's not a "green celebrity CEO or an infamous international magnate." Hole runs Seattle-based Sustainable Group, which sells recyclable home and office supplies. The business -- which was co-founded by Cequint's Rick Hennessey -- is growing at 300 percent a year, TreeHugger reports.

Cequint, whose City ID mobile application identifies the city of origin of incoming calls, has inked a deal to provide the service to some customers of U.S. Cellular. City ID, which costs $1.99 per month, will be available to users of the LG UX585 and Samsung Delve R800. Based in Chicago, U.S. Cellular is the country's sixth biggest wireless carrier.

Massive, the in-game advertising business owned by Microsoft, plans to handle advertising for Activision and Blizzard Entertainment, according to Gamasutra. Microsoft's JJ Richards, who once served as Xbox Live's general manager, has been appointed to lead Massive.

Citing the global economic crisis, Adobe Systems today said it is cutting 600 workers.  The maker of Illustrator, Photoshop and other graphic design software operates a large facility in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood. Adobe said it expects revenue in the range of $912 million to $915 million for the fourth quarter, down from initial estimates of $925 million to $955 million. Adobe isn't breaking out the reductions geographically, but The Seattle Times reports that they know of at least one worker in the 500-strong Seattle office who was let go.

Headline of the day comes from VentureBeat: "Forget the recession, there may be an iPod famine!"