TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Facebook Inc. stock showed signs that it might pull out of its debut dive Wednesday, but questions about the initial public offering look like they will stick around.

Official inquiries have begun and lawsuits have been filed after two days of stock drops that lowered the market cap of the social networking company by nearly $18 billion to a cap of $86.4 billion at the end of trading Tuesday.

Shares of the company (NASDAQ:FB) had risen by about 3 percent in afternoon trading on Wednesday. They closed Tuesday at $31 after selling for $38 in the IPO.

Amazon.com announced today it signed a deal with Paramount Pictures that will bring hundreds of older "legacy" films to its streaming video site, Amazon Prime Instant Video.

Customers can rent and purchase movies and television shows on Amazon’s streaming service, which launched a little more than year ago and is similar to the popular Netflix streaming service. The site boasts that it has more than 120,000 titles available for rent or buy, and Amazon has been steadily adding to that, signing a deal with Viacom earlier this year for popular Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon shows.

The Prime Instant Service is a $79 per year subscription service that lets customers choose from 17,000 streaming videos and television shows.

Netflix, which first made streaming video popular, has several competing options, including a streaming-only option for $7.99 a month (or $95.88 per year) and, for an additional $7.99 per month, new releases delivered by mail.

Ever had trouble setting up that new Ikea furniture, or needed eggs for a Sunday morning omelet but didn’t want to run to the store in your jammies?

Well, TaskRabbit has an answer to your dilemma: Hire a TaskRabbit runner to do it for you.

The national errand and task company is opening a Seattle branch May 29 and has hundreds of TaskRabbit runners poised to pick up your groceries or weed your garden.

All you have to do is name your price, and the runners will bid on doing your task for you. You choose the winner and the job gets done. The runner doesn’t get paid until you report the job is completed to your satisfaction.

“We were overwhelmed with requests to come to Seattle,” TaskRabbit founder Leah Busque said.

The company, which Busque started in 2008, already has services in Boston, New York, San Francisco, Austin and other major cities.

If you're in the market right now for a PC and want to buy one with Windows 7, Microsoft Corp. will charge $15 to upgrade to the Windows Pro 8 operating system, when it becomes available later this year.

The Wall Street Journal's All Things D reports the upgrade is important because some back-to-school computer buyers may be considering alternatives to a Windows 7 PC, even though the PCs are Windows 8-ready, instead of waiting for one equipped with Windows 8, the system that's expected to be officially released in November.

Microvision Inc. said it's received a letter from the NASDAQ stock exchange, saying its shares were in danger of being delisted from the exchange because the company's market cap doesn't meet minimum requirements.

The Redmond maker of ultra-miniature projection display technology currently has a market cap of about $25 million, below the NASDAQ Global Market exchange requirement of $50 million. The company has until Nov. 12 to regain compliance.

Facebook stock dropped again by nearly 9 percent on Tuesday, its third day of trading as a public company.

The Menlo Park company's shares closed at $31, down more than 18 percent from the $38 a share price they sold for in their initial public offering.

The Oatmeal

The Oatmeal's Tesla-Edison comic has generated an online debate

Are you Team Tesla or Team Edison?

Seattle web comic artist Matthew Inman — or, as he’s better known, The Oatmeal — wrote a blog post last week heralding early 20^th Century inventor Nikola Tesla as “the greatest geek who ever lived.”

In the long comic, The Oatmeal argued that Tesla invented alternating electrical current, allowed another inventor, Gugliemo Marconi, to freely use his patents in developing long distance radio, and came up with the idea for radar, among other things.

The comic also villainizes Thomas Edison as a pet-electrocuting, misguided, evil man who poisoned his assistant with radiation while testing early X-rays.

Alex Knapp, a social media editor and staff writer for Forbes, wasn’t about to let The Oatmeal’s version of history be the end of the conversation.

Movie-by-mail and video streaming business Netflix Inc. has created the new position of vice president of original content and has moved a 10-year veteran of the company into the job, where she will oversee original programming.

Cindy Holland, a Stanford University graduate who's worked 10 years at Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), was in charge of licensing television shows in the United States for the company. She started out at Netflix buying DVDs for the company.

Jason Ropell, a former NBCUniversal Inc. vice president who's worked at Netflix for a year on acquiring shows in Canada and Latin America, will take over Holland's former responsibilities in the United States. He'll keep Canada, but someone else will be put in charge of Latin America.

Microsoft Corp. says there will be 350 million devices sold this year that use its Windows 7 software.

Bloomberg reports Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer said Windows is the "most popular" software system, sparked by corporate demand for programs with Windows 7.

Apple is the world's most valuable brand, according to a study.

Starbucks Corp. shot up 30 places on the world's most valuable brand list, ending up at No. 42, while Amazon.com Inc. fell four places to No. 18 and Microsoft Corp. stayed at No. 5.

Apple Inc. stayed at No. 1, with an estimated brand value of about $183 billion, according to Millward Brown's 2012 BrandZ Top 100 list.

Former Yahoo Inc. CEO Scott Thompson has stepped down from the board of directors of F5 Networks Inc., according to a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Kinect for Windows blog

Microsoft's new Kinect for Windows software will track facial features and allow seated interaction.

Today in news about technology you thought only existed in the movies: Microsoft is rolling out face recognition software for Windows Kinect devices.

The motion-sensing cameras, which have recently been made available for computers in addition to the Xbox, will now be able to track and respond to facial features and movements.

Microsoft recently patented a way to use that facial recognition data to better target advertising to users. Now, the technology is available for developers who want to use it in Kinect + Windows software. Previous versions of the software had skeletal tracking systems, but did not have the real-time 3D facial feature tracking software.

Seattle startup LocalBonus has created a frequent flyer-style program for the "buy local" movement. Customers who shop at local businesses are rewarded with points every time they shop or buy a meal at participating restaurants and stores. Unlike most reward systems, there's no special card or smartphone app to fire up every time you buy something. You just use the credit or debit card you've connected to your LocalBonus account. You accumulate points and get cash back (10,000 point

LocalBonus founder and CEO Derek Webster recently took a few minutes to answer some questions about the company.

What is your elevator pitch?

LocalBonus allows you to use your existing credit or debit card to earn rewards from hundreds of local businesses. For merchants, we offer a great way to attract and retain customers without having to offer deals or discounts, and without having to set up and manage their own loyalty programs. We are now live in five cities (including Seattle and Portland) with over 800 merchants.

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now the world's 26th-richest person, with a net worth of $19.4 billion after his company went public last week, according to the latest ranking of the world's billionaires.

Bloomberg's ranking of billionaires indicates that Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates remains at No. 2 at $59.1 billion, behind Mexican mogul Carlos Slim at $65.5 billion. Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos is the world's 23rd wealthiest billionaire, with a net worth of $20 billion.

Microsoft Corp. has quietly launched a new social network aimed at students and called So.cl.

Forbes reports that Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) So.cl isn't targeted at Facebook Inc. as much as it's designed to compete with Google Inc.'s, Google+. Microsoft's So.cl offering is supposed to combine social networking and search functions.