Live concerts are about the experience: the music, the dancing, the crowd. What doesnt add to the experience are hundreds of people with their smartphones in the air blocking your view as they try to record the concert. And the truth is that when those amateur videographers try to relive the moment a few days…

A few months ago, I timidly signed up for Startup Weekend, 54 hours during which innovative startup enthusiasts gather to work together on business ideas and present to a panel of judges. I thought it would be a resume builder or an interesting experience at best. The idea of winning never crossed my mind. Just…

The boom in video use online presents huge opportunities for professional videographers, but also many challenges. Filmmakers often have to use separate services to store their videos, manage them, and handle sales and licensing. Zach McIntosh and Eric Harrison cofounded Seattle-based Nimia (nimia.com) so video and media professionals can gain access to all these services…

It’s been called the final frontier, but space has always lacked the feature that enticed people to frontiers of the past: the promise of getting rich. Everything about space is expensive, conventional wisdom says, and nothing about it has seemed profitable. A number of companies have sprung up to challenge that assumption. Funded by some…

Kineta is an unusual biotech company that does not want to get much bigger but wants to make a profit by staying lean and boosting the speed of drug development for others. With about $40 million in financing, the Seattle startup has five compounds in its pipeline and sells investors on early returns rather than…

Each year, the advances are more impressive, the benefits more far-reaching. All the more reason to continue celebrating the creators and purveyors of technological innovations that affect how we live and do business. On the following pages, Seattle Business magazine salutes the honorees of the 2013 Tech Impact Awards and recognizes the sort of outstanding…

WINNER: Smartsheet.com Location: Bellevue | Employees: smartsheet.com Spreadsheets have always been about numbers, first as a way of totaling accounts and later as a means of managing innumerable tasks. This growing Bellevue company takes the humble spreadsheet to the cloud so that fast-changing information can be easily shared through this very familiar form. Using Smartsheet.com,…

WINNER: Skytap Location: Seattle | Employees: > 70 | skytap.com According to SKYTAPs new CEO, Thor Culverhouse, the companys real impact on cloud computing has barely begun. The market today [for cloud services] is very, very noisy, he observes, with most IT managers uncertain how to use them effectively and securely. Enterprises are learning what…

WINNER: Clarity Health Services Location: Seattle | Employees: 40 | clarityhealth.com While the overall costs of health care remain a concern, Clarity Health Services works to lower them in one important area. Through its web-based patient referral system, it hopes to eliminate much of the estimated $50 billion spent on avoidable readmission to hospital emergency…

WINNER: Microsoft Windows Server Location: Redmond | Employees: > 90,000 | microsoft.com Microsoft may be losing ground among consumers, but when it comes to enterprise computing, it remains a powerhouse. The Server & Tools division pulled in $20.3 billion in revenues in fiscal 2013. Windows Server, one of the divisions flagship products, dominates its market,…

WINNER: TABLEAU SOFTWARE Location: Seattle | Employees: > 900 | tableausoftware.com Show, dont tell, goes the oft-quoted phrase, and its the chief principle behind Tableau Software, which went public in May with a stock valuation of nearly $2 billion. Tableau provides a set of tools to turn data sets into graphics that can be clicked…