TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

It’s been a while since we blogged about Limeade, the startup with the online program that helps companies improve the health and well being of their workers.

But now we hear that the Bellevue startup led by former Bocada executive Henry Albrecht has landed three new executives with prior experience at Microsoft and ShapeUp.

And the company has doubled its workforce since the beginning of 2011 and is seeking more talent.

Mercy Corps photos

A young woman presents a new business idea at the first Startup Weekend in Gaza, part of the new Mercy Corps Arab Developer Network Initiative.

Mercy Corps , Google and Seattle-based Startup Weekend are gathering in Seattle on Thursday to talk about how investors and philanthropists can contribute to global business development in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank.

The event is designed to create a sense of urgency about creating job growth for youth in the Middle East and North Africa; economic conditions were part of the motivation for the uprisings sparked in January 2011 in Tunisia.

Google engineers and business development experts have traveled to the region with Mercy Corps to offer technical and business training and mentorship opportunities.

EMC Isilon Storage Division president Sujal Patel (from left), EMC chairman and chief executive Joe Tucci and Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn at recent event where Isilon announced ambitious growth plans for Seattle. (PSBJ photo / Anthony Bolante)

The tech industry has become the new stable source of jobs, luring workers from other sectors who would have shied away from tech following the volatility of 1990s-era startups.

Tech giants including Amazon.com, Apple and Google increased their work forces by at least 50 percent over the past two years, according to Bloomberg News.

The competition for qualified workers has promoted these companies to look to people with non-technical backgrounds, and has drawn many from other sectors to pursue tech careers.

PSBJ photo / Anthony Bolante

Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna is putting the resources and expertise of his office behind a problem that is plaguing social media giant Facebook: spam that is targeting Facebook members.

Feisty fights over online spam, rising tech salaries, Apple earnings and a few major deals dominated the news this week.

Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna has teamed up with Facebook to fight spam that targets Facebook uses -- a.k.a. clickjacking -- by lobbing suits against Adscend Media LLC, a Delaware-based online ad network.

Adscend responded to the lawsuits on Friday, saying it complies with state and federal laws and is being falsely accused of clickjacking and "friending" users on Facebook as a deceptive means of spreading spam.

Good news for local techies: The average tech salary in Seattle is now $90,362 -- up 5 percent from one year ago -- and one out of three reported receiving a bonus in 2011. Another sign of a (potentially) healing economy: tech job postings have grown every month over the past two years.

Sensors, Energy, and Automation Laboratory chart

The Dietary Data Recorder System uses 3D modeling to estimate food volume, analyzing user-recorded videos that are obtained with a simple “swooping” motion

Can your smartphone help you lose weight and stay healthy?

University of Washington researchers have developed a device that uses a smartphone to help people watch what they eat and maintain a healthy diet.

With a swooping motion, a user can take an image of a pear, apple or other food item and the device’s 3D modeling estimates the food’s volume and calculates and logs the caloric content. It works for more than 9,000 types of food.

The Sensors, Energy, and Automation Laboratory at the University of Washington worked on the project with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Cozi has raised an additional $3 million in equity funding, according to a regulatory filing.

Cozi said the $3 million investment round is an extension of Series C funding that brings the total raised to $25 million. The funds will be used to build out the company’s Cozi Gold offering, launched last September.

Cozi said its year-over-year sign ups increased by more than 100 percent in 2011, with more than 1 million new family members joining the service.

There’s been a lot of activity lately involving companies looking to deliver information about doctors online.

In the mix is ZocDoc.com, a New York-based startup backed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that is offering appointments with doctors instantly online. ZocDoc.com recently launched in Seattle with a mobile app. The service lets a patient search for area doctors who accept their insurance.

LifeWise Health Plan of Washington this week launched a mobile app -- LifeWise Mobile -- to help LifeWise members find a doctor and verify that they are covered under their insurance plan.

Seattle startup Avado, meanwhile, has developed a cloud-based patient relationship management system to help healthcare providers go paperless and streamline their operations.

Spark Capital general partner Bijan Sabet believes venture capitalists ought to be willing to pay more of their income in taxes.

"Preserving Bush tax cuts for the rich (doesn't) make sense in the world we live in. Trickle-down economics don't work. If they did work, we wouldn't see an accelerated spread between the rich and poor."

Those aren't the sentiments of a left-wing activist. That's part of a blog from Bijan Sabet, prominent venture capitalist from Boston's Spark Capital — one of the very people who'd be impacted by the sort of tax changes he's advocating.

Namely, the tax policies that allow fund managers such as VCs — and often, former fund managers like Mitt Romney — to pay 15 percent of their income as taxes, compared to the 35 percent paid by less-wealthy Americans.

The reason, as many are learning via the Romney coverage, is that fund managers earn some or all of their income through capital gains, which are taxed at the 15 percent rate.

The policy is based on the premise that money invested has already been taxed once — when it was earned — making it unfair to tax it a second time at the normal rate.

But carried interest, which earned Romney $12.9 million in 2010 and 2011, is treated under the law as a capital gain even though it comes from investing someone else's money.

Marla Schimke

Seattle mobile media company Zumobi has hired Marla Schimke, a former Microsoft marketing director, as the startup's vice president of marketing.

“We’re absolutely delighted to have Marla join the Zumobi team. Her deep digital advertising experience and proven track record in building digital media brands will be invaluable to us as we enter our next stage of growth,” said Zumobi CEO Ken Willner.

Prior to Zumobi, Schimke lead marketing for audience aggregator AudienceScience. She also was director of marketing at Microsoft.

Schimke founded the Behavioral Targeting Standards Consortium and is an active member of the American Marketing Association and the Internet Advertising Bureau. She also serves on the Mobile Marketing Association’s Mobile App Committee.

Seattle tech salary levels with percentage changes (Dice chart)

Here are some numbers that put the local tech hiring frenzy into perspective:

The average tech salary in the greater Seattle area is now $90,362 a year, up 5 percent from a year ago. One in three Seattle-based tech professionals said they had received a bonus. The average for 2011 was $9,892.

On any given day, there are 2,500 openings for tech jobs posted in the greater Seattle area. And tech job postings have grown each month for the past two years.

That's all according to a survey conducted for the tech career site Dice.

The survey bolsters earlier reports about tech hiring. We already know that software engineers and other tech workers are in big demand, with companies like Facebook, Google, eBay and Zynga setting up shop here to tap into our talent pool.

Cloud storage startup Symform has raised $2 million in equity funding from West River Capital.

Seattle-based Symform, co-founded by former Microsoft managers Praerit Garg and Bassam Tabbara, has now raised $7.5 million.

The company says it has users in 46 countries storing more than 2 billion data packets and has seen revenue, partners and users grow rapidly over the past year.

Symform offers small businesses a unique way to implement cost-effective data backup services, with an operating a system that lets customers turn over unused storage capacity on their servers in exchange for online backup services.

In December, Fisher Interactive Network launched SeattleNow.com, a local daily deals site intended to combine deals from both small businesses and national chains.

And now the subsidiary of Seattle-based broadcaster Fisher Communications has landed a partnership deal with Pirq to use the Kirkland startup’s restaurant deals app on the shopping site.

Under the deal, Fisher Interactive becomes the exclusive media partner for Pirq, providing a strategic marketing campaign tapping into Fisher’s TV, radio, internet and mobile properties in the Seattle market.

The deal marks another partnership for Fisher, as the Seattle company with its roots in radio and television continues to branch out into the digital world of daily deals sites, hyperlocal neighborhood blogs and mobile video apps.

The average annual salary for tech workers in Silicon Valley surpassed $100,000 for the first time in 2011, according to a report Monday by online jobs site Dice Holdings Inc.

Dice Senior Vice President Tom Silver told the Wall Street Journal that the average is up 5.2 percent from 2010's average and much higher than the 2 percent pay raise that tech workers elsewhere in the U.S. got last year, which averaged $81,327.

Dice began its annual survey of tech salaries in 2001.

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that police must obtain a search warrant before using a GPS device to track criminal suspects, cops all over must be rethinking their strategies for using technology to build arrest cases.

But what about the broader question of privacy in an era of cell phones that can be tracked, along with Foursquare check-ins and other location-based services? The justices left that bigger, dicier issue for another day.

Here are some details from The Washington Post:

Bellevue-based startup Finsphere Corp. has raised $11.3 million in venture capital led by Vodafone Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Vodafone Group.

Also participating in the round are existing investors Mohr Davidow Ventures, Shasta Ventures and Frazier Technology Ventures.

Finsphere, founded in 2007, provides identity-authentication services for wireless carrier customers.