Less than 24 hours after Halloween, Amazon.com is already ramping up for the holiday season. The Seattle-based online retailer announced its annual Black Friday Deals store, which counts down the days until the after-Thanksgiving shopping extravaganza with daily deals on select electronics, jewelry, clothing and other gift items.

The site is live today and will continue to offer deals (they tend to sell out quickly, so get 'em while you can) through Nov. 20. Starting on Nov. 21, it will launch a full-blown week of Black Friday deals.

Cloud storage company Symform has added Margaret Dawson as vice president of marketing. Dawson, a 20-year veteran of the industry, was most recently the head of product management and marketing for cloud services provider Hubspan and has held senior communications positions at Microsoft and Amazon.

Dawson said she's excited to help grow the business and its "disruptive technology." The Seattle startup was founded by two former Microsoft employees and recently raised an additional $1 million for its data backup services, which allow customers to turn over unused storage capacity on their servers in exchange for online backup services.

Mobile ad and marketing company Hipcricket has partnered with the Virginia Lottery to provide players with information through QR codes and text messages. The lottery will use Hipcricket's platform to boost interaction among players through QR codes on lottery vending machines, as well as an opt-in alert program that will alert players to high jackpots or help them find retail locations for lottery tickets.

Kirkland-based Hipcricket was recently acquired by mobile marketing firm Augme Technologies.