TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Simon and Eugenia Han of Yoogi's Closet

Some businesses get started with venture capital. Others get going with a second mortgage. But Yoogi's Closet -- an online retailer which specializes in re-selling pre-owned handbags, jewelry and shoes -- got off the ground after co-founder Simon Han sold his Ferrari.

Han -- who previously created the online automotive site CarDomain -- sold his 2000 Modena 360 for $102,000 just before the market crashed last year. The 35-year-old entrepreneur then plowed the proceeds from the sports car into Yoogi's Closet, laughing about diversifying his holdings into designer handbags.

"It was awfully painful," said the car enthusiast. "But it definitely has paid off."

St. John

The San Francisco social networking upstart hi5 is starting to take on a Seattle shine. Seven months after tapping former AudienceScience executive Bill Gossman as CEO, the company is back in the Emerald City cherry picking talent.

This time it is a pretty big name from the gaming industry. Alex St. John, the outspoken founder and former CEO of Redmond-based WildTangent, has joined hi5 as president and chief technology officer. It is unclear whether St. John will be permanently based in San Francisco or Seattle, but for now he is making the commute to the Bay Area for the job, according to a hi5 spokesman. (We have an email into St. John -- who is traveling -- to get more details).

St. John certainly is a key hire as hi5 looks to ramp up its social gaming efforts, competing against the likes of Facebook and Zynga. [Post updated with comments from St. John and Madrona's Greg Gottesman]

Clearwire plans to turn on its new high-speed wireless network in the Seattle area beginning tomorrow, the 27th market where the company offers WiMax service. The announcement is significant given that Clearwire is based in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland.

For months now, Clearwire has served the Seattle area with a pre-WiMax technology that didn't have the speed or capacity of the WiMax network. With the new network in place, the company said that customers will be able to experience mobile download speeds of three to six Mbps with bursts up to 10 Mbps. The new service is being marketed under the Clear moniker, a brand that you're likely to start seeing more of in the coming weeks.

We've been following with a mix of fascination, sadness and fear the tragic killing of four police officers near Tacoma, the subsequent siege of the alleged shooter at a home in Seattle's Leschi neighborhood and now the alarming news that the suspect may be roaming the University District or Beacon Hill.

And we've been tracking all of this primarily on Twitter, where the events have played out almost in real time under the hash tag #washooting. Could this be a watershed moment for the use of Twitter and other social media tools in Seattle journalism? It appears so.

A wide variety of sources -- from traditional journalists to government agencies to ordinary Seattle residents -- have been combining to create one unified stream of news. And one could argue that it's a much more powerful and informative stream than any single news organization could muster. [Post updated with The Seattle Times crediting Twitter for its record traffic on Monday of 3.3 million page views.]

Hopefully, at this point, everyone has recovered from their turkey- and stuffing- induced food coma. We are getting back to business, and are looking forward to a busy week in the Seattle technology community. But before moving ahead, we're taking a look back at the most discussed stories on TechFlash of the past week. Here's what you missed in case you're just tuning in, along with some featured reader comments.

"Datel sues Microsoft over Xbox 360 memory unit crackdown" (23 comments): "Now that MS has killed my Datel, and effectively erased all my game saves I've decided that I like my PS3 better. I am the customer MS should want to keep, not drive away." -- Reader Moses Joseph.

"Microsoft, Murdoch vs. Google: Smart move, or sheer madness?" (15 comments): "Google is just a well paid paper boy, News Corp would rather not pay the paper boy so much to throw the paper in your drive way. This is Ballmer's genius in deconstructing the paper boy's rich paper route." -- Reader Andrew Milligan.

"Exclusive: InfoSpace gets into ecommerce biz with Haggle" (11 comments): "What's entertaining is that Haggle started out as a small auction website acquired by Go2Net for an absurd amount of money; this was in the dotcom era when you could sell anything with an HTML tag for millions of dollars. The site was eventually decommissioned once it was by realized by the powers-that-be that it had no value. Go2Net was eventually acquired by InfoSpace, and it's amusing to see the long-dead site being reanimated in it's current form." -- Reader Go2Net Alumni.

"Seattle angels back DevHub" (8 comments): "The investment received by DevHub/EvoMedia will add to the creative and innovative progress they have shown over the past year. DevHub is a media force to watch." --Reader clickbobb.

"What's on your geek gift list?" (8 comments): "Me, I just want gadgets that remain cool and useful after 90 days out of the box, and don't require a manual for basic functions. (In the four years I reviewed gadgets for Q13, the latter was a key evaluation component -- that a mere mortal could get started without the manual.)" --Reader Frank Catalano.

It's shaping up to be a great week for Seattle geeks looking for interesting technology events to attend. Here are a few of the highlights from the TechFlash Events Calendar and the Seattle Tech Calendar.

Xconomy Forum: The Future of Search and Information Discovery: Representatives of Google, Microsoft Bing, Vulcan Capital and the University of Washington assess the direction of the search market. Plus mini-demos by startups Evri, Gist, Sage Bionetworks, SEOmoz, and Topsy. Monday Nov. 30, 5:30 p.m., UW Kane Hall 225. Tickets: $75 in advance, $95 at the door, $25 students. [Registration]

Ignite Seattle 8: Fast-paced, five-minute talks on a variety of technical, societal and cultural subjects. Topics this time include "How to Sneak into Bars," "iPhoning My Way to Retirement, $.70 at a time," "Defamation and Twitter: A Practical Guide to Covering Your Ass," and "Google vs. Microsoft: An Insider's Guide." Tuesday, Dec. 1, 7 p.m., King Cat Theatre, 2130 6th Ave., Seattle. Free admission. [Details]

Why Pluto is Planet-Worthy: Alan Boyle, msnbc.com science editor and author of the new book, "The Case for Pluto," speaks on the subject as part of the Seattle Science Lectures series. Tuesday, Dec. 1, 7:30 p.m., Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Avenue. Tickets: $5. [Registration]

WTIA Cocktails and Contributions Holiday Networking Cruise: Washington Technology Industry Association holiday networking and charity raffle aboard the Royal Argosy Cruise Ship. Wednesday, Dec. 2, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., boat leaves at 7 p.m. sharp from Pier 56, Seattle. Pre-registration $25 for WTIA members, $30 non-members. [Registration]

Why Are Graphics Systems So Fast? Pat Hanrahan of Stanford University speaks as part of the University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering Department's Distinguished Lecturer Series. Thursday, Dec. 3, 3:30 p.m., UW Electrical Engineering Building Room 105. Free admission. [Details]

I made it all the way to IPO, and all I got was this T-shirt!: Stories and Strategies for Surviving Your Exit: MIT Enterprise Forum of the Northwest: Experienced entrepreneurs Jordan Mitchell, Chris Early and Loren West share lessons on the end of the startup lifecycle. Thursday, Dec. 3, 5:30 p.m., 600 University St., First Level, Seattle. Tickets: $25. [Registration]

DEMO Innovation Seattle Meetup: VentureBeat editor-in-chief and DEMO executive producer Matt Marshall will be in town in search of companies to participate in DEMOspring 2010. Thursday, Dec. 3, 6 p.m., Barca Seattle, 1510 11th Avenue. Meetup admission free. [Details and Registration]

The Impact and Evolution of Mobile Broadband: Mobile Breakfast Series, Friday, Dec. 4, 7:30 a.m., Harbor Club, 801 Second Ave., Seattle. Registration closed, waiting list available, tickets $36. [Details]

And a final note on the subject of upcoming events: Don't forget to register for the TechFlash Holiday Party & Birthday Bash, featuring our first-ever Seattle tech trivia contest. Wednesday, Dec. 9, 5 p.m., Spitfire, 2219 4th Ave. Seattle. Tickets: $35. [Registration]

Check the TechFlash Events page and the embedded Seattle Tech Calendar for more events, including regularly scheduled meetups such as Hops & Chops and TechFoam. Know of an upcoming Seattle-area tech event we should be tracking? Send an email to techflashevents@bizjournals.com to submit a listing.

Almost every weekday we receive reports from the Securities and Exchange Commission with details about new financing deals. These Form D filings are a treasure trove of information, offering insights on the financing plans of privately-held companies (sometimes before they are ready to share details with the rest of the world).

Only in the past year have these filings become accessible online, changing the way people track information on the venture capital beat. (Before the online records, you had to pay about $40 to have the paper filings faxed or emailed). Now, they are free, and full of juicy details.

We pick up a lot of these filings here at TechFlash, using them as a way to dig a little deeper and report on emerging startups around the region. But we aren't able to cover them all as individual stories. Beginning today, we are going to start sharing more of what we find in these filings.

We're still playing around with the format, so let us know if this is the sort of information you'd like to see. Here's what caught our eye in the past few weeks.

Can you really predict which entrepreneurs will strike it rich? Adeo Ressi -- creator of the TheFunded and the The Founder Institute -- thinks so. And if that's the case, Seattle entrepreneurs should come out on top when compared to their counterparts in Silicon Valley, San Diego, New York and Washington, D.C. (Maybe -- as the Olympia beer slogan goes "It's the water" up here).

Laptops and smartphones and digital cameras, oh my. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday around the corner, we've started to compile our own holiday gift lists. To get a better sense of what's hot this year in high-tech land, we asked a few Seattle geeks to tell us what's on the top of their wish lists. Feel free to offer you own suggestions in the comments below.

Mike Koss, angel investor and founder of StartPad.org.

"I want a Flip Ultra HD camcorder with a Flip Video AWC2T with an underwater case. Why? My friends know that my secret passion, outside of software development, is Wake Surfing. If you don't know what that is, you can check out this video."

Joe Heitzeberg, vice president of engineering and technology at Whitepages:

"The iMo Pivot Touch -- it's a 7-inch touchscreen display that I'd plug into my MacBook Pro to create a dedicated Twitter window. Finally, twitter without interruption."

A billion or so here, a billion or so there. That appears to be the fundraising pattern at Clearwire, the fast-growing (and money-losing_ Kirkland broadband wireless company which announced late Tuesday that it has raised $920 million in debt financing.

The new money -- raised through a Clearwire subsidiary operating under the name Clearwire Escrow Corp. -- followed a $1.5 billion fundraising effort which was announced just two weeks ago. That deal included money from Sprint Nextel Corporation, Comcast Corporation, Time Warner Cable, Intel, Eagle River Holdings, and Bright House Networks.

There's been a lot of startup activity in recent months around the idea of helping companies and individuals back up their data online. And now a Seattle company has reeled in more cash to attack that problem.

Datacastle -- led by former Qpass executive Ron Faith --has raised an additional $3 million in equity financing, according to a SEC filing. That followed a $5.3 million round earlier this year.

A group of angel investors as well as an undisclosed private equity firm are pumping $1.5 million into EVO Media Group, the operator of the DevHub.com Web site hosting platform. Angel investors in the round include Voyager Capital's Geoff Entress, WhitePages CEO Alex Algard, Intel Capital's Jeff Schrock and former Disney Online president Richard Wolpert.

DevHub has grown extremely quickly since the launch of the free service just nine months ago. It now has more than 30,000 publishers utilizing the online platform, with those sites attracting about two million unique visitors per month. Web sites utilizing the service include niche-oriented online publishers like SinkHardware.com, Seattle Ave. and TowelStore.com. Those sites and others in the DevHub network keep the majority of revenue that they generate.

Bellevue-based InfoSpace is the mystery company behind a new e-commerce website called Haggle that lets people bid on computers, electronics, game consoles and other items, TechFlash has learned. It's an online auction site with a gimmick: people pre-purchase bid packs — ranging from 20 to 600 — and use them to place bids on individual items.

InfoSpace has actually owned the Haggle domain name since the dot-com era, but just relaunched it three weeks ago as an active website.

The move into online shopping is an interesting turn of events for InfoSpace, which spent the past several years shedding businesses in order to concentrate on internet search.

Farecast made some waves in the online travel business a few years ago when founder and University of Washington computer scientist Oren Etzioni came up with an algorithm to predict whether airfares on selected flights would go up or down.

That technology -- following Microsoft's acquisition of Farecast last year for $115 million -- now serves as the core of the new Bing Travel. But here's a unique twist on the Farecast concept. What if you could accurately predict which flights will be delayed? That's the idea behind a San Francisco startup called FlightCaster, which this week announced $1.3 million in funding from Sherpalo Ventures and others.

Qliance Medical, which operates insurance-free medical clinics in Seattle and Kent and plans to open another facility in Mercer Island in January, has named Ona Karasa to the position of chief operating officer. The 49-year-old executive previously served as president of the Atlas Division at aQuantive, which was initially backed by Second Avenue Partners co-founder Nick Hanauer. Qliance has raised $7.5 million in venture funding from Second Avenue, New Atlantic Ventures and others, with plans to expand to other states. Before aQuantive, she served as general manager and executive vice president at msnbc.com.

The controversial online marketing tactics of Intelius continue to come under fire, with Seattle Weekly offering the perspective from a former customer service representative at the company in a report today.

And speaking of Intelius, The Financial Times has a good read on the company's future IPO plans. The story quotes Ryan Jacob of the Jacob Internet fund, who says of Intelius founder Naveen Jain: “Many investors looking at his history would be very careful.”

Seddigh

Light Sciences Oncology has named Akbar Seddigh -- a director at medical device company Elekta -- to its board. The appointment follows news earlier this month that Light Sciences Oncology -- a Bellevue company developing treatments for cancer -- had raised $35 million.

Google is pushing deeper into the online display advertising category with the purchase of San Mateo, Calif.-based Teracent, a move that should be of interest to Seattle-based AdReady which also operates in the space. Teracent's technology allows advertisers to customize their display ad campaigns by highlighting various pricing, colors, products and more, according to MediaWeek.

Smilebox -- the online greeting card and photography service -- said that customers can now print and pick up their custom holiday cards and other Smilebox creations at any Walmart and Sam's Club store in the U.S. The deal follows Smilebox's recent purchase of Preclick, which pioneered the in-store printing technology. The Redmond startup -- led by former RealNetworks exec Andrew Wright -- also said that it has expanded a relationship with the Hallmark to create DVD Greeting and Digital Scrapbook products with Hallmark's Gold Crown stores.

Former ZymoGenetics CEO Bruce Carter has taken a more active role at Seattle startup Immune Design, with the biotech executive telling Xconomy that his may job will be to raise "money, money and more money." The company -- which is developing vaccines for infectious diseases -- raised $18 million last year.

Naverus, a Kent-based company that develops navigation systems, has been acquired by GE Aviation in a deal of undisclosed size. The 60-person company was founded in 2003 by Steve Fulton and Hal Anderson -- pilots at Alaska Airlines -- as well as high-tech entrepreneur and former Coinstar CEO Dan Gerrity. The Naverus technology helps airlines reduce flight times, carbon emissions and community noise during takeoffs and landings. The company raised $4 million in venture funding earlier this year.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., R2 Investment LDC and other lenders and stockholders of Charter Communications are trying to block the company's exit from Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan, with the St. Louis Business Journal reporting that the financial institutions object to a plan which they say would force them to lend the re-organized company $8.4 billion on pre-bankruptcy terms. Charter is backed by billionaire Paul Allen, who under the new bankruptcy plan will hold 35 percent of the voting shares of the giant cable company.