TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Artists have never before had so many options to sell their handmade crafts. And now they have another creative online outlet. It's called Meylah, and it is the brainchild of Ram Dutt, Jason Dirks and Courtney Dirks. We chatted with Dutt for the latest installment of Startup of the Week to find out how the Sammamish startup plans to stand out from a crowded field that includes Etsy and Bonanza.

What is your elevator pitch: Meylah enables artists and crafters to build effective online storefronts that save them time and money. (Our) powerful online storefronts are not only easy to use, but they also allow artists and crafters to be found easily, sell more effectively and manage their business online all-in-one-place.

Here's one from the "it's about time" file: The Amtrak Cascades line is getting free WiFi service starting today, allowing passengers to connect to the Internet as they ride anywhere between Vancouver, B.C., and Eugene, Ore.

The Washington State Department of Transportation announced the news today. Officials call it the most requested amenity from Amtrak Cascades passengers, which isn't a surprise given the tech-savvy region served by the train.

Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, was not on board the helicopter that made an emergency landing in waters off Argentina this morning, a spokesman for his Seattle-based Vulcan investment firm confirms.

The incident, involving a helicopter from Allen's yacht, the Octopus, is making international headlines today. At the time of the incident, Allen was separately en route to the yacht for a private expedition to Antarctica, said Vulcan spokesman David Postman via phone this morning.

Tableau Software finished 2010 with an impressive growth spurt, adding more than 100 employees and doubling revenue to nearly $40 million. Now, the Seattle maker of business intelligence software has bigger plans for this year. The company, led by former venture capitalist Christian Chabot, said it plans to add 150 employees worldwide this year. It is also planning to open a new office in Kirkland with capacity for more than 100 employees.

Tableau's headquarters will remain in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, but the new office on the eastside of Lake Washington will allow the the company to hire engineers, developers and other workers who live in the suburbs. It becomes the latest technology company to split offices between Seattle and the eastside, joining other firms such as Microsoft and Google which have operations on both sides of the lake.

Microsoft knew going in that Windows Phone 7 didn't have a shot of taking down Google's Android or Apple's iPhone in its debut quarter. But it turns out the company also faced some healthy competition from itself.

In a surprise twist, smartphones running Microsoft's old mobile operating system grabbed more market share than new Windows Phone 7 devices did in the U.S. in the fourth quarter, according to data released by the NPD Group research firm this morning. Devices running the legacy Windows Mobile registered 4 percent of the U.S. consumer market in the quarter, down from 7 percent a year earlier.

Windows Phone 7 debuted at 2 percent.

Chalk it up, in part, to the fact that Windows Mobile remained available at all four major U.S. carriers during the quarter, while the new Windows Phone debuted only at T-Mobile and AT&T. Timing was also a factor, as Windows Phone 7 devices didn't come out until the quarter was already under way.

Dave Roberts

We've been waiting a long time for the IPO market to heat up for Seattle area tech companies. Could a zombie maker help lead the way?

All Things D reports today that PopCap Games -- maker of the blockbuster games Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies -- is ready to go public in 2011. CEO Dave Roberts tells Tricia Duryee that the company -- with $100 million in sales last year -- could go public "if we think it makes sense."

There's certainly a lot of wiggle room in that statement, and it doesn't necessarily mean that a public offering will happen. It is also not too far off from what Roberts told me last September when I asked a similar question about exits.

Judy's Book has rolled out a new service called Snappd.it which allows small merchants to build deeper alliances with their customers via social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Snappd.it, which is free during a trial period, allows restaurants, auto dealers, spas and other small businesses to create a mobile Web site. It also includes a printable flyer which allows users to scan a QR code in order to get reviews and other information about the business.

That sounds an awful lot like Sparqcode, the Seattle startup which also helps businesses build their social media presence via printable flyers with special codes.

Bellevue-based Motricity has entered into an agreement to pay $100 million for Adenyo, a Canadian mobile advertising software company whose clients include Paramount, Ogilvy, Orange, Ford Motor Company and others.

“The power of highly targeted mobile advertising, combined with highly targeted mobile commerce solutions is going to transform the mobile data industry,” said Ryan Wuerch, chief executive officer of Motricity, in a statement. “Adenyo’s technology, mobile marketing and advertising expertise and their long-standing relationships with powerful enterprise customers will significantly strengthen our position in the mobile data services ecosystem.”

Trent Dykes

Trent Dykes: As the founder of a startup, one of the first issues you need to address is how to finance your company’s operations. If you are lucky enough to be able to fund your startup out-of-pocket, or through generous family members, congratulations. You can probably skip the rest of this post and get back to building your business.

However, if you are like most founders, you won’t be able to self-fund your company entirely and your revenues won’t exist yet, or won’t be adequate to grow the company. In some instances you may be able to obtain government grants or if you have some type of hard asset or significant accounts receivable to use as collateral, you may be able to borrow from a bank.

This post addresses a common method for financing the growth of a tech startup – by selling stock in your company. What type of investor is right for your company – family and friends, angel investors, venture capitalists, or some combination of these – is something you will want to consider carefully. We’ll save that discussion for another post as it’s an interesting topic on its own.

This week on the TechFlash Podcast, we talk about Amazon.com replacing Microsoft as the Seattle region's economic growth engine; discuss Facebook's acquisition of a Seattle startup; delve into LinkedIn's IPO filing; and get the inside scoop on the CubeDuel co-worker rating service from special guest, co-founder Tony Wright.

Listen above or subscribe to the podcast using this RSS feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/techflashpodcast), or via iTunes or Zune. Access the archive to hear full episodes of the podcast, and continue reading for links related to this week's episode. Here's the MP3 file.

A Seattle area mobile app developer is looking to stop telemarketers in their tracks. Ben Sharpe is the creator Call Control, a BlackBerry and Android app that blocks unwanted phone calls and text messages from thousands of known telemarketers. Call Control works in conjunction with the EveryCall.us community blacklist, a database of more than 250,000 spam callers and telemarketers.

And now Sharpe is winning some kudos for the app. The 29-year-old, who runs the small Seattle Web development shop Kedlin Co., was recently named a finalist in Verizon's Power Your App contest.

I'm in Redmond today with a handful of tech reporters and bloggers attending a Microsoft Office 'Future of Productivity' event, where the company's executives are talking and answering questions about their vision for cloud computing, mobile devices and other trends in the workplace.

The video above, shown during one of the sessions, isn't new. In fact, Microsoft first started showing it publicly a couple years ago to give people a sense for where it believes technology is headed. But what was different today was an update from Chris Pratley, the general manager of Office Labs, on where things stand with the various concepts envisioned in the video.

Moving email mailboxes can be a painful technical challenge. But MigrationWiz believes it has eliminated some of that pain, allowing small and medium-sized businesses to migrate mailboxes between Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, IMAP and POP. We chatted with Dominic Pouzin -- an ex-Microsoft employee who co-founded MigrationWiz with Geeman Yip -- for the latest installment of Startup of the Week.

What's your elevator pitch... MigrationWiz is a large-scale cloud-based enterprise mailbox migration solution. Whether you need to migrate one mailbox or thousands, we make the migration process fast and easy.

Amazon.com may have sold more books for the Kindle than traditional paperbacks. And it may have topped $10 billion in quarterly sales for the first time in its history. But Wall Street doesn't seem to care.

Amazon's stock is getting hammered today after the company on Thursday reported weaker profit margins than some analysts expected. Shares of Amazon.com were down $16.23, an 8.8 percent decline in heavy trading this morning.

Adam Schoenfeld

Adam Schoenfeld: This is the kind of call we've had from accounting departments at a few large customers recently:

Me: "Hello. This is Adam."

Caller: " Hi. [Awkward Pause] I have a $500 charge on my credit card from "Untitled." This number was listed. What the hell is going on here?"

Me: "Let me explain..."

When we set out on this startup journey, we took the name Untitled Startup Inc. It was really the perfect fit given our completely undefined vision about the business and product we wanted to build.

The company was founded with a vision for process, not product or market. We knew that we loved creating simple useful stuff that solved big customer problems and generally we liked the social media/PR space.

Beyond that vague, high level idea, there was no vision about what we wanted to be when we grew up. With that, there was always a question about when we would take a title. When would we have a sufficiently clear focus that Untitled Startup was no longer appropriate?

We didn't have a great answer, but figured that it would be obvious when the time was right. Well, it's obvious now.