The Roku digital music player says customers can now use the device to watch more than 40,000 streaming movies and TV shows from Amazon Video on Demand. Roku originally announced the partnership with Amazon in January. The Roku set-top box now serves up both Amazon and Netflix streaming video to TVs.

Amazon Web Services is expanding the reach of its Elastic Compute Cloud service to new regions. Amazon said EC2 to run Windows Server and SQL Server is now available in another U.S.-East zone and in two new zones in Europe. Amazon CTO Werner Vogels blogs about the new geographies, saying, "Rolling out services and features globally is very important to us as it allows our customers to take a uniform approach to serving their customers world-wide."

Adeo Ressi, creator of the VC ranking service TheFunded, has set up a new incubator called TheFunded Founder Institute in order to help new businesses get off the ground. TechCrunch -- which calls it a "semester-based startup camp" -- compares it to Y Combinator, TechStars, Seed Camp and other programs.

LG Consulting, a unit of the Seattle executive search firm The Laurel Group, has named Eric Steinmetzer to the position of executive vice president. He spent the past 11 years at Logicalis.

MOD Systems, a developer of digital media kiosk technology, said that investors NCR and Toshiba will showcase the technology at the Retailtech Japan 2009 show in Tokyo. The Seattle company, whose CEO has been accused of fraud and embezzlement by an angel investor, plans to launch the technology at retail locations in the U.S. later this year.

The slumping stock price of Kirkland wireless broadband provider Clearwire has caused Google, Time Warner and other investors in the company to gain a larger share of the Kirkland wireless broadband provider. MarketWatch reports that because the stock has traded below $17 for a set period it triggered a cause that boosted the percentage ownership that the tech titans own. The stock is down 40 percent in the past three months, with Broadband Reports asking: "Can Clearwire Fix Their Public Image Problem?

Evri, the Seattle startup that recommends articles based on user patterns on Web sites, gets a write up in VentureBeat after its presentation at DEMO. Meanwhile, TechCrunch says that Evri wins in a "face off" against UK rival Ensembli in helping people track specific terms on the Web, though the reporter says both companies have improvements to make.

Mercent, a Seattle startup that helps merchants sell products on online shopping sites, signed a deal with Performics, the search engine marketing agency that is part of advertising giant Publicis Groupe.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is the scheduled speaker at the Seattle Rotary Club's 100th anniversary celebration on March 5.