InformationWeek has a detailed profile of Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels, naming him Chief of the Year for his efforts promoting Amazon Web Services to the world. The story explores the 6'-5" Dutchman's background and his role in developing and evangelizing Amazon's cloud-computing architecture. The piece says of Vogels: "As Amazon reaches out to customers, his ability to articulate the benefits of cloud computing will have a lot do with whether they return the embrace."

Microsoft co-founder and Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen was among those bombarded with snowballs Sunday after his team beat the Jets. Frank Hughes of the News Tribune has the chilling details, noting that Allen's security detail defended the billionaire from the snowball attack as he arrived on the field to congratulate outgoing coach Mike Holmgren.

Blue Nile, the Seattle online jewelry retailer, has named former Mattel president Ned Mansour and Nike vice president Leslie Lane to its board. It also announced that Joanna Strober has resigned from the board. Meanwhile, CEO Diane Irvine is featured in a Q&A with the Puget Sound Business Journal, telling reporter Jeanne Lang Jones that men are procrastinators when it comes to diamond ring shopping.

Dallas-based Adaptix has sued the newly-formed Clearwire for patent infringement related to WiMax technology.

Laid off Seattle tech manager Hallie Goertz (who has been writing a guest column for TechFlash) is one of several people featured in a story in The Wall Street Journal about the struggles of talking to friends and family about layoffs at the holidays.

Sequoia Capital's Mike Moritz says the Silicon Valley firm continues to invest despite the widely circulated "R.I.P Good Times" slide deck that earlier this year indicated dark clouds ahead for startups. Now Moritz, one of the best known venture capitalists, says that nothing has changed and probably won't until 2010. "We've always invested through thick and thin. In fact, we prefer to invest in thin," Moritz tells the San Francisco Chronicle.

Amazon.com's Web Services and Microsoft's Live Mesh make ReadWriteWeb's list of the top 10 platforms of the year. Apple's iPhone SDK led the list, followed by Google's OpenSocial, Adobe's AIR, the Twitter API and Facebook.