TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

A derivative shareholder lawsuit targeting former officers and directors of InfoSpace has been settled for $26.65 million, a portion of which will be provided back to the Bellevue Internet search company. The suit was brought by shareholders Anne Manos and James Mercer on behalf of InfoSpace, following special compensation packages that were established for executives.

Subjects covered this week: Halo: Reach launches to huge sales; Windows Phone avoids the porn; Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 gets a positive reception; Delve Networks acquisition leads to pointed comments from investor; and guest Matt Hulett, the head of RealNetworks' GameHouse division, joins us in the studio.

Also see this week's trivia question, about a hit GameHouse game for the iPhone, for a chance to win one of the prizes offered up by Hulett during the show.

Listen below or subscribe to the podcast using this RSS feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/techflashpodcast), or via iTunes or Zune. Call 206-876-5465 to leave a message for our next show, and continue reading for links related to this week's episode. Archive available here.

Attention video-game fans: TechFlash Trivia is taking things up a notch this week with some prizes courtesy of GameHouse, the RealNetworks casual-games division, whose new leader Matt Hulett was our guest on the latest TechFlash Podcast and offered up a GameHouse-related trivia question.

Submit a correct answer to this week's question for a chance to win a one-year GameHouse FunPass subscription, for unlimited access to a large catalog of casual games for Windows PCs. (FunPass normally costs $19.95 per month.) Winners also will receive some very nice GameHouse apparel.

Before we get to the new question, we should note that we've updated last week's trivia post, about the birthplace of LiveJournal, with the correct answer and the names of the people who won our new-and-improved Geek's Guide to Seattle posters. (Which you can now buy at Metsker Maps and Kroll Map Co. in Seattle, by the way.)

OK, enough with the commercials. Here's this week's question.

As if surpassing $200 million in sales on its first day weren't enough, "Halo: Reach" received some serious celebrity attention this week. In case you missed it, here's a soon-to-be-classic video from "Funny or Die" featuring Snoop Dogg and LL Cool J doing their best to distract each other in an epic Xbox Live multiplayer battle.

Google is pushing hard to complete its acquisition of online flight information provider ITA Software, but some rivals are warning that the deal could create an unfair playing field.

“The concern is about access to the engine and who gets the best quality result,” Morgan Reed, executive director for the Association for Competitive Technology, told a House Judiciary Committee panel hearing Thursday. Reed's group is backed by Microsoft and Orbitz, both of which rely on ITA's service to display airfares.

Previously, The Wall Street Journal reported that both Microsoft -- which operates the Bing Travel Web site --and Bellevue-based Expedia were discussing the implications of the acquisition with the U.S. Justice Department.

Sue Bird led the Seattle Storm to its second WNBA title. (Credit: Seattle Storm)

Sponsoring a professional sports team is as much a gamble as it is an investment, with the ultimate exposure for the sponsor's brand depending on the number of fans that turn out and the length of the team's season. In that way, Microsoft's decision to sponsor the Seattle Storm this year turned out to be a very good bet.

With the Bing logo across their jerseys, Lauren Jackson, Sue Bird and the rest of the Seattle Storm completed an emphatic march to the WNBA title last night with an 87-84 win over the Atlanta Dream.

About the only down side for Microsoft was the fact that the team was almost too good -- going undefeated in the playoffs and therefore minimizing the number of games in which Bing received exposure.

You've heard of the campaigns against texting and talking on cell phones while driving. Now there may be a new slogan: don't Kindle and drive. A Portland, Ore. bus driver is in a heap of trouble after a passenger took a video of him apparently reading a Kindle on his dashboard while driving through town. City transportation officials are not amused. The Amazon Kindle tweeted: "We don't recommend this."

Buuteeq, a stealthy Seattle upstart which is creating mobile applications for hotels, has raised $1.1 million in new financing, according to a filing with the SEC. Buuteeq is led by Adam Brownstein, who previously worked on the Surface team at Microsoft and in the marketing department at Sony.

Not much is known about Buuteeq at this time, and we couldn't immediately connect with Brownstein. The company has published at least two applications to the iPhone App Store, including one for the Li-An Lodge in Guilin, China and another for the Garden Court Hotel in Palo Alto, California. It is also doing work for the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat in China.

Sorry, all you aspiring mobile porn moguls, looks like Windows Phone 7 won't be the platform for you.

The latest version of Microsoft's Application Certification requirements, made public this week with the release of the Windows Phone 7 developer tools, confirms that the company will be turning down sexually explicit and gratuitously violent apps submitted for inclusion in its mobile marketplace (PDF).

As with most tech-related porn news, the details of the Windows Phone policy are making lots of headlines today, but it's actually not much of a revelation. Microsoft has banned this kind of content for a while, dating back at least to the launch of its mobile marketplace for Windows Mobile 6.5 devices (PDF).

Seattle-based Attachmate and Palo Alto, California-based VMware are looking to buy pieces of Novell, according to a report today in The Wall Street Journal. VMware is considering purchasing Novell's SUSE Linux operating system business, while Attachmate is investigating the assets of the remainder of the Waltham, Massachusetts company. A spokeswoman at Attachmate declined to comment on the report.

A potential acquisition of Novell could pose an interesting situation for Microsoft, which partnered with the Linux vendor on virtualization technologies in 2006. But VMware, led by former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz, inked a key partnership with Novell earlier this year which sparked strong negative reactions from the Microsoft brass.

The Amazon.com unit that developed the hardware for the Kindle e-reader has made some interesting new hires lately that may give a hint of its future technology plans.

The Seattle-based ecommerce giant this month hired Howard Look as vice president of software at its Lab126 unit, according to Look’s LinkedIn profile. Look was previously senior vice president of consumer applications at Linden Lab, developer of the 3D virtual world Second Life, and held executive-level positions at Pixar Animation Studios and TiVo Inc., his profile on LinkedIn indicates.

That background in video and animation could prove useful to Amazon as it explores new digital products and devices.

Strings.com has a simple goal: to help Internet users find relevant content. The 12-person Bellevue startup -- created by former Microsoft engineer and BeComm founder Edward Balassanian -- organizes content flowing across multiple online accounts into categories related to music, movies, news articles and more. We chatted with Balassanian for the latest installment of Startup of the Week.

What’s your elevator pitch... Strings is an online service that helps consumers discover interesting and relevant content based on their expressed personalities. By connecting their online shopping, entertainment, news, and leisure accounts to Strings, consumers can organize all their online activity, share their tastes, and discover personalized content.

As we reported earlier this week, Livemocha is expanding into the U.S. market as it looks to uproot rival Rosetta Stone. As part of the big push, the three-year-old Bellevue online language learning company is kicking off its first television ad campaign.

The ad is pretty clever, promoting how Livemocha's users can practice Spanish, German or other languages with native speakers. I also couldn't help but think that the two cut-out characters in the beginning looked a bit like Rosetta Stone's yellow packaged software boxes. (Livemocha CEO Michael Schutzler assured me that they are not).

Microsoft expects sales of its new Kinect game controller to surpass 3 million units this year, according to a Wall Street Journal report this afternoon that quotes Microsoft's top video-game executive.

Don Mattrick, head of the company's Interactive Entertainment Business, told the WSJ that he expects the motion-detecting, camera-based system to lift Microsoft to its "biggest holidays ever." Kinect debuts in November.

It may be tough times in the overall economy. But not every startup is running out of gas. Take for instance the online project management startup Smartsheet. The Bellevue company says that revenue, cash flow and customer acquisition have exceeded expectations so far this year. And now Smartsheet -- led by former Onyx Software execs Mark Mader and Brent Frei -- is looking to add a little rocket fuel as they get ready for 2011.

The maker of the sales tracking and online collaboration service today announced an additional $1.5 million in financing from existing investors, with Madrona Venture Group leading the round.