Barnes & Noble’s Nook adds Pearson as investor, warns of weak holiday sales

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Barnes & Noble’s Nook Media e-reading and tablet subsidiary this morning announced a new investor, the Pearson education and publishing company, and separately warned that holiday sales are coming in below its projections. Pearson, which includes the Financial Times Group and Penguin publishing company, will invest $89.5 million in cash for a 5 percent stake in Nook… Read More…

Amazon is growing so fast it just hired a former member of the Presidents of the United States of America

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Nope, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton aren’t joining Amazon.com. But the fast-growing Seattle tech juggernaut recently hired another former President. Dave Dederer, one of the founding members of Seattle rock band The Presidents of the United States of America, has joined Amazon.com as MP3 content lead. Dederer is being a bit elusive as to what… Read More…

Is the free ride over on I-90? State to consider tolls on second floating bridge

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The free ride may be over for thousands of geeks who cross Lake Washington each day on Interstate 90, one of two Lake Washington floating bridges that connect Seattle to the tech-heavy suburbs of Redmond, Bellevue and Kirkland. For the past year, drivers have had a clear choice: Jump on the state route 520 bridge… Read More…

RIM cast-off NewBay acquired in $55.5 million deal

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Well, that didn’t last too long. RIM has decided to cut ties with NewBay Software, selling the provider of mobile content delivery technologies to publicly-traded Synchronoss Technologies. As it turns out, RIM is taking a bit of a bath on the deal, selling NewBay for $55.5 million in cash. That’s about half the $100 million price… Read More…

How the ‘Internet of Things’ helped one parent keep Christmas gifts under wraps

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Attention parents: File this one away as advice for next year. Microsoft’s Steve Clayton positioned a Twine sensor under the tree prior to Christmas and then set it up to send him a text message if it was moved — thereby alerting him if anyone in the house attempted to get a sneak peek at the presents. Welcome… Read More…

Hey, ‘disrupt’ this! 5 tech terms to banish in 2013

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The New Year is a time for us to reflect on the past, make adjustments for the future and — in tech — to clean up our language. Every few years, I whip myself into a linguistic frenzy and create a list. In writing (as well as marketing), the most-effective words are specific, staking a… Read More…

Study: E-book reading in U.S. jumps to 23% in 2012

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Good news for Amazon’s Kindle business: The number of people who read e-books rose to 23 percent in 2012 — up from 16 percent the previous year — among Americans ages 16 and older, according to the results of a new study released this morning by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Borrowing… Read More…

Windows Phone adds 75,000 apps and games in 2012

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Microsoft’s Windows Phone more than doubled the size of its app catalog in 2012, adding more than 75,000 new apps and games from third-party developers, according to a Microsoft blog post published overnight. Todd Brix of Microsoft writes in the post, “We literally set a new foundation this year with the deployment of all-new infrastructure… Read More…

Trulia takes aim at Zillow patent suit: ‘Abstract ideas and principles are not patentable’

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San Francisco online real estate company Trulia has filed its initial response to Zillow’s patent lawsuit, arguing that the case should be dismissed because the business method in question — Zillow’s online home valuation tool known as the Zestimate — is not patentable. The Zestimate utilizes multiple factors in order to assign automated home values… Read More…

Amazon reigns, Apple slips in customer ratings for online holiday shopping

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For the eighth consecutive year, Amazon.com has come out on top in the Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index from research firm ForeSee, holding steady with a customer satisfaction score of 88 out of 100. The numbers, released overnight, show Apple’s online store slipping 4 points to a score of 80, falling out of the top 5…. Read More…

Fast-growing Avalara opens new Seattle office at Pier 55

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Avalara appears to be cornering the market on office space near the ferry terminals in the Puget Sound region. The maker of sales tax automation technologies, which recently moved into a new 17,500-square foot headquarters building on Bainbridge Island, is expanding along Seattle’s waterfront with new offices at Pier 55. It is the company’s second… Read More…

MOD Systems founder wins reversal on mail fraud conviction, loses in other areas

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The continuing saga of MOD Systems co-founder Mark E. Phillips, who was sentenced to four years in prison in July 2011 on fraud and money laundering charges, has taken another unusual turn. According to court documents released this week, Phillips has won a reversal of the mail fraud charge that he was originally convicted on…. Read More…

POLL: Help this 22-year-old find his next smartphone

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UPDATE, Jan. 10: Click here to find out what smartphone I decided on ——————— I’ve arrived at the biggest dilemma known to humankind: Apple or Samsung? OK, maybe not humankind. But it’s certainly a raging debate in the smartphone world (in the courtroom, too, but we’ll save that for another day). My two-year-old HTC G2 seems ancient now… Read More…

Looking for a job at Google? Better know Microsoft Office

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Google’s momentum vs. Microsoft Office is in the news today: The New York Times reports that Google has scored “an impressive string of wins” during the past year with big companies opting for Google Apps and ditching Microsoft Office. The story highlights problems for Microsoft including higher prices and complex licensing. IDC analyst Melissa Webster tells the… Read More…

Why did Amazon Instant Video keep going, while Netflix sputtered?

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Last month, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings separately took the stage at the Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas and touted the significance of Netflix as a proud customer of Amazon Web Services. Both suggested that the alliance symbolized the importance of how two companies — which compete head-to-head in streaming of… Read More…

Mark Cuban: Nokia’s Windows Phone ‘crushes’ iPhone 5

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High-profile investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban gave Microsoft and Nokia a nice little holiday gift in the form of a plug for the new Nokia Windows Phone during an “Ask Me Anything” Q&A on Reddit on Christmas Eve. The Nokia phone “crushes the IPhone 5. not even close,” wrote Cuban. His answer came in response… Read More…

Startups 101: Advice from 63 entrepreneurs in the trenches

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Sometimes when you’re running a startup, it can feel like the world is stacked against you, with nowhere to turn and no one to talk to. Well, at the very least, you know others are experiencing the same thing. That’s one of the reasons we love putting together the regular Startup Spotlight feature on GeekWire…. Read More…

Microsoft announces its first six retail stores of 2013

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer opens the company's Bellevue Square store in November, 2011.

With the holiday shopping season wrapped up, Microsoft this morning announced six locations in the U.S. where the company plans to open its first retail stores of 2013. It’s part of a broader effort by the company to increase its retail footprint as a marketing and distribution strategy, to have more direct interaction with consumers…. Read More…

Merry Christmas to me: I just got to inbox zero!

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I just gave myself a wonderful Christmas gift, one that I never thought I’d ever achieve. As of 9 a.m. today, I officially got my GeekWire email account — john@geekwire.com — down to zero email messages. That’s no small achievement given the daily barrage of email that hits technology journalists like us. On any given day,… Read More…