Technology
Secret Ingredients
We have the best seafood and the finest coffee. But lets not fool ourselves. Like the rest of the country, we are actually spending less of our money on fresh, raw ingredients and more on processed convenience foods than ever before. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, American households now spend more on…
Send us a picture that captures the spirit of your company
Take a picture that says something significant about your company and post it with a 75-word description of why you think your company is great. In three weeks we will choose the best entry and publish it in the magazine and on our website. The picture can be of your office, an important product, an…
Tech Impact Awards 2012: Cloud Computing
Amazon Web Services410 Terry Ave. N, SeattleEmployees: 65,000 (Amazon worldwide)aws.amazon.com Amazon doesnt do anything small, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) is no exception. The cloud-based application hosting database, storage and other services the retailer began in 2006 has become so widely used that an analysis by DeepField Networks concluded that one-third of all internet users…
Tech Impact Awards 2012: Consumer/Retail
Zulily2200 First Ave. S, SeattleEmployees: 300+zulily.com This three-year-old online retailer of products for babies, children and moms is the age of a toddler, but it has been growing like an energetic adolescent. Beginning with two cofounders, Zulily now employs more than 300 people to market about 1,400 styles of new products from its 80,000-square-foot brick…
Tech Impact Awards 2012: IT Services
Synapse Product Development1511 Sixth Ave., SeattleEmployees: 200synapse.com At Synapse, something brilliant always seems to be in the works. Its teams of inventors, designers and engineers tackle all sort of problems for clients, whether its creating a GPS sports watch for Nike and TomTom, developing plaque removal technology for Philips Sonicare, DNA field analysis devices for…
Tech Impact Awards 2012: Real Estate
Redfin2025 First Ave., SeattleEmployees: 300redfin.com Information is power, a maxim that online real estate broker Redfin applies to aid the buyers and sellers of homes. Once a disruptive upstart, Redfin has grown to become a partner with and a resource for real estate agents as well as homeowners, effectively using online tools such as mapping…
Tech Impact Awards 2012: Education
Livemocha1011 Western Ave., SeattleEmployees: 35livemocha.com Learning a language is best done through workaday practice and real conversation and this five-year-old company employs the models of social media to do just that. Livemocha combines proven teaching techniques with the power of the internet to connect language learners to other learners from more than 195 countries in…
Tech Impact Awards 2012: Games
PopCap Games2401 Fourth Ave., SeattleEmployees: 400popcap.com The Seattle-based creative leader in casual games is still tops in this market sector that has grown to an estimated $6 billion to $8 billion a year. PopCap Games maintains that position largely through the popularity of its flagship puzzle game, Bejeweled, selling a copy of the classic and…
Tech Impact Awards: Marketing Innovation
SEOmoz119 Pine St., SeattleEmployees: 54seomoz.org If you shout on the internet and no one hears you, do you make a sound? That twist of the Zen koan is the principle of Seomoz, the industrys leading provider of search engine optimization software that can help boost websites to the top set of results returned by Google…
Tech Impact Awards 2012: Mobile
Microsoft (Photosynth)1 Microsoft Way, RedmondEmployees: 94,290 (worldwide)photosynth.net Few mobile applications demonstrate the growing level of computing power and features of todays smartphones as well as Photosynth, an impressive system that combines the web and a mobile app to create a 3D, walk-around view or seamless panorama from multiple photographs. The mobile app uses sophisticated pattern…
Lifetime Achievement Award
John McAdam / F5 Networks401 Elliott Ave. W, SeattleEmployees: 2,800f5.com F5 Networks was named for the most powerful tornado measurement on the Fujita Scale, and since its founding in 1996, this maker of internet traffic management equipment has reaped the whirlwind. Its application delivery controllers, or ADCs, may be invisible to most, but management of…
Valve, a Brilliant Game Maker and Innovative Marketer, Is Also Doing Cutting-Edge Research
We’ve always been impressed by Valve’s games. And it’s been a creative marketer, pricing its games aggressively to undercut piraters, and constantly testing different approaches to marketing around the world, adjusting those deals based on what works. Now the New York Times puts a spotlight on the company’s research efforts. Check out the story here.
Embarrassment for Nokia, Microsoft
No doubt some honchos at Microsoft are a little steamed right now. Nokia has apologized for misleading the media this week when it introduced its new Lumia 920 Windows Phone and showed video that was purportedly shot using the phone’s new image stabilization technology. Turns out the video was a “simulation” of the PureView imaging…