Before any big trip, I always make sure I have enough books to read. That used to mean weighing myself down with pounds and pounds of paper, but now I can carry a library in my pocket. The new question is not which books to take, but which e-book reader to choose.

Seattle-based Amazon.com’s Kindle e-reader once stood alone as the choice for electronic literacy. But after facing stiff holiday competition from the just-released Nook by Barnes & Noble, along with a new version of the Sony Reader—not to mention reading software for smartphones and other gadgets—the e-book battle has really just begun. (Of particular interest to readers in Xconomy’s cities: All of the above devices use electronic-paper display technology from Cambridge, MA-based E Ink, which recently merged with Taiwanese firm PVI. And Steve Haber, president of the Digital Reading Division at Sony, is based in San Diego.)

In a bit of a departure toward the consumer review end of things, here are my thoughts on a few of the more popular e-reader options heading into 2010:

Amazon Kindle: Certainly the most popular and recognizable e-book reader (at least until after holiday sales are calculated), the Kindle comes in two varieties. There’s the $259 Kindle, which has been dropping in price all year, and the $489 Kindle DX that comes with a larger screen, slightly more advanced features, and a larger memory. Personally, I like the Kindle for its very easy-to-use interface and fast connection and download speed (through AT&T’s 3G network). However, even a library of 360,000 books won’t necessarily have what I want, and the proprietary e-book format means there’s no way to get them. For those who want a good all-around e-book reader, though, the Kindle works very well. Just keep in mind that, judging from Amazon’s history, it probably won’t be long before a new, better version is released and the price of the current model drops again.

Sony Reader: Even more varied than the Kindle, Sony’s Reader comes in three editions, the $199 Pocket, the $299 Touch, and the $399 Daily. Each hike in price denotes a larger screen and … Next Page »

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It’s been quite a summer here in Seattle, with record droughts and a heat wave that left us all panting in line for an iced coffee. But despite a cool economic climate, Microsoft managed to stay as hot as the temperature outside its Redmond, WA, headquarters, with a series of big deals and other announcements that kept everyone sweating to keep up.

Here’s a rundown of the most important news from the software giant’s eventful summer:

—Microsoft started the season off with a bang, or rather a Bing, when it launched its new search engine at the end of May. Bing didn’t stop making headlines with its launch, forming a partnership with salary comparison technology startup PayScale in June and adding a limited Twitter search feature in early July. As Bing clambered up the search engine ladder, Greg spoke with Harry Shum, the vice president who runs the engineering team that created Bing, about why Bing is already doing so well.

—Bing’s debut had even stronger echoes than might have been expected. It appeared to help close a long-rumored deal with Yahoo in July that puts Bing technology behind Yahoo search for at least a decade. Microsoft had already hired away three search executives from Yahoo at the end of June before the partnership, which leaves Yahoo in charge of sales and distribution of advertising for both websites, as well as receiving a fair chunk of change.

—Microsoft expanded further into a new area this summer: life sciences, with the purchase of the Seattle-based assets of Rosetta Biosoftware from Merck, integrating it into its new Amalga Life Sciences platform. Rosetta’s technology analyzes how genes turn on and off, and will be added to Amalga’s genomic data analysis program. This represents Microsoft’s first real push into biotechnology after years of looking for ways into the market, as Luke reported. In another research-related move, Microsoft unveiled Trident, a scientific analysis tool to help researchers and businesses sort through and make sense of massive amounts of information quickly.

—In a deal as big as any launch this summer, Microsoft sold its digital advertising company Razorfish to French advertising firm Publicis just a few weeks ago for about $530 million, and signed a five-year strategic alliance with Publicis. Razorfish executives are looking forward to the more global reach that Publicis assures them, while Publicis gets a huge leg up in the digital marketing arena since Razorfish is already the largest company of its kind in the world. Online strategy expert Warren Gouk told Greg that the partnership could help out Microsoft a lot too, pushing up its advertising business.

—Microsoft made another European friend this summer, teaming up with Finland-based Nokia to adapt Microsoft programs to Nokia’s smartphones. The Symbian operating system created by Nokia has been a rival to Microsoft’s mobile OS, but putting its programs on Nokia’s phones helps Microsoft compete against Google, whose own mobile productivity programs have been chipping away at Microsoft’s market share.

—On a lighter note, Microsoft generated a lot of excitement at this year’s E3 expo with the demonstration of Natal, a new motion-capture system for the Xbox 360 that works without needing any goggles or other special equipment. There was also an announcement and demonstration of how players can use Facebook and Twitter on their consoles to communicate with friends while they play.

And looking ahead, Microsoft seems to be just warming up, with the upcoming October launch of Windows 7, which promises to fix Vista’s woes and improve upon its good qualities. It remains to be seen how well the new OS will be received, especially considering the chilly dismissal of Windows 7 as a rival by Apple in its announcement of its own new OS, Snow Leopard, set to launch just a month before Windows.

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Thirteen weeks, 123 stories, and about a million cups of Starbucks’ finest later, my internship at Xconomy in Seattle is over. But as a parting gift, I am going to share some of my favorite articles from the summer here. I hope you enjoy reading them (and my other articles) as much as I enjoyed writing them.

—One of the most memorable opportunities I had was to test-drive not one, but two alternative energy vehicles. In June, I test-drove a hydrogen-powered SUV from Fort Lewis to Seattle, a trip made even more interesting because it was a GM vehicle and took place the day GM declared bankruptcy. Just a few weeks ago, I borrowed a modified hybrid electric car for a few days and got to see what it’s like to treat a car like any other electric appliance at the end of the day. Bottom line: both cars are perfectly satisfactory vehicles; the real issues are, how much does it really help the environment to drive one, and does it ultimately save the driver money?

—Concerns about the economy pervaded everything this summer, but I managed to write about some potential bright spots in the current financial gloom. There are alternatives to using dollars, especially here in the Northwest, and the recession gives companies like Dibspace a boost in demonstrating those alternatives. Whether or not the economy is in recovery, it’s nice to know there’s an easy way to exchange goods and services without needing cash.

—No matter how bad the economy gets, people always want entertainment, and covering Casual Connect, the casual video games expo last month, showed me that there’s more demand than ever for games. Venture capitalists are not blind to the trend, even if some think the best video game business model comes straight out of Dante’s Inferno. For gamers looking for a slightly more refined way to play, you can’t go far wrong with Her Interactive, makers of the Nancy Drew computer game series whose capture of the elusive girl gamer market led me to profile the company in June.

—But no story sums up the summer for me better than the dancing, singing, experimenting high school students at the Student BioExpo in May—one of the first stories I wrote, and a great experience all around. Perhaps the best thing I can take away from my time at Xconomy is the advice Nobel Laureate Mario Capecchi gave: “Always dream big.”

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Northwest tech giants Amazon and Microsoft have joined a coalition of companies, nonprofit groups, and individuals to work against a proposed settlement by Google regarding its thousands of scanned books according to an article in yesterday’s New York Times. The group, which includes new Microsoft ally Yahoo, will work to derail the settlement between Google and groups like the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers about Google’s right to digitize and publish books from libraries online. Google was first sued over its book scanning in 2005. The settlement reached sets up a way for Google to display and sell books online but is of concern to antitrust lawyers including some in the Department of Justice. The coalition against the settlement is tentatively being called the Open Book Alliance.

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This week, the Seattle area has lived up to its reputation as home to the future of technology, with three local (or formerly local) innovators making the national media rounds in Technology Review, the New York Times, and Time Magazine. And not in just one field or sector either—the three span academia (smart sensors), a major online video company, and a pervasive viral humor blog startup.

—Jason Kilar, CEO of online video website Hulu and a former Amazon executive, wrote a personal essay for the New York Times about his journey into the world of Internet startups, including his first meeting with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, back when Bezos could be much more casual in presentation than he could probably get away with now. Kilar left Amazon in 2006 after becoming senior vice president of worldwide application software, to work for Hulu.

—Ben Huh, the Seattle-based owner of wildly successful humor websites like Lolcats (I Can Has Cheezburger) and FAIL Blog, was profiled in a Time Magazine story about his company Pet Holdings’ success with user-generated content. Starting with angel investor money in 2007, Huh bought the original Lolcats website and has since expanded to more than 20 viral humor blogs.

—Shwetak Patel, assistant professor in the departments of electrical engineering and computer science and engineering at the University of Washington made Technology Review’s list of top young innovators for developing a way to tell how people are moving around a house based on how they use electricity, gas, and water. Patel started with simple devices to monitor house utility use, but has since developed devices for sensing when people enter or leave a room based on air pressure. Monitoring resource usage could ideally lead to conservation of those resources, and help with keeping watch on elderly people who live alone. Patel recently co-founded a startup company in Seattle to generate appliance-itemized utility bills for consumers.

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Seattle-based cancer drug developer Cell Therapeutics (NASDAQ: CTIC) announced in a press release today that it has raised $30 million by selling preferred stock and warrants to purchase shares of its common stock to a single institutional investor. The money will be used as operating capital by the company. The offer is expected to close on Monday.

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MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta confirmed in a press conference call today that the social networking website has purchased Seattle-based music service company iLike. Financial details were not disclosed, but the rumors surrounding the deal point to about $20 million being spent by MySpace for the Seattle startup. According to Van Natta, the company will remain in Seattle, with its 26 employees joining the MySpace team.

iLike is the most popular music application on MySpace’s rival network Facebook, with around 10 million users on the site, and around 50 million users total. The big question now, for analysts and music lovers alike, is what kind of response Facebook will have to its rival acquiring such a popular component of its website.

Van Natta said iLike will remain integrated into the various groups and networks it is part of, but the question remains how comfortable those networks will be now that iLike is an arm of a major company rather than an independent startup. For now, at least, it’s business as usual at iLike, according to a statement made by the company on its website. “The iLike.com website and applications will continue to operate as they always have—except that we’ll be working to make them even better in the weeks and months to come.”

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It was a mixed week of business and science, with a couple of stories on health IT companies to round things out.

—Luke reported on Thursday that Cambridge, MA-based Alnylam (NASDAQ: ALNY) is pushing forward with its Vancouver, BC-based partner Tekmira to create RNA interference drugs to treat cancer. The partnership is focusing on ways of using lipids to protect RNAi drug molecules until they get where they need to be in the body. A drug using this technology to treat liver cancer is currently in clinical trials.

—”Epigenetics”—using proteins and other molecules to turn genes off—may be another way to treat cancer, according to Cambridge, MA-based Constellation Pharmaceuticals, which collected $17.2 million in Series A financing last week . It was the last installment in a $32 million round that the company it raised last year. Epigenetics is also being used to treat infections and neurological disorders, but for now Constellation is focused on cancer, Ryan reported.

—On the business front, Ryan also wrote last week about a Wall Street Journal report that Cambridge, MA-based Momenta Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: MNTA) is facing an ethics complaint from rival Amphastar Pharmaceuticals, of Rancho Cucamonga, CA. Amphastar is alleging that Momenta has had special, unethical access to an FDA evaluator whose approval both firms need in order to manufacture their blood thinner drugs, which are similar.

—In the health IT world, Wade wrote about a Cambridge, MA-based startup, Vitality, whose GlowCaps product is designed to remind people when to take their pills. The system, which can only be bought through Amazon, fits on a standard pill bottle and plays an alarm sound when it’s time to take a pill, then senses whether or not the bottle was opened. If the bottle goes unopened for two hours, the cap sends a message through a wireless internet connection to Vitality, which initiates an automated phone call to the home. Data on how well patients keep to their regimens can be turned into a report for the patient, caregiver, or family member.

—Ryan profiled another Cambridge-based health IT company, Navinet, which runs what is possibly the nation’s largest real-time healthcare communications network. The company provide doctors with instant access to a patient’s insurance information, benefits eligibility and other information over the Internet. The company is also looking to streamline other services for doctors, such as payment collection. The private company was originally funded by venture capitalists but has been profitable for seven years, CEO Bradley Waugh told Ryan.

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Advanced Inquiry Systems, Inc. (AISI) closed Series B financing with $11 million, according to a press release sent out today. The Hillsboro, OR-based company developed a data sensing system for semiconductor memory manufacturing, that allows memory devices to be tested for performance both earlier and for less cost than standard technology allows. Investors in the financing round included OVP Venture Partners, TL Ventures, Intel Capital, Applied Ventures, KT Ventures, and Northwest Ventures.

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Vancouver, WA-based ClearAccess, a broadband device management and data services company, is announcing today that it has closed a Series B financing, raising a little over $6 million. The financing was led by Blade Ventures, Buerk Dale Victor, and DFJ Frontier.

ClearAccess developed the ClearVision management system, allowing service providers to remotely manage residential and small business gateways through the Internet. This enables service providers to give services to customers they might not otherwise have. “Examples include content filtering which enables parents to protect family members from harmful websites, and Internet time blocking which can limit when any device on the home network—including gaming consoles—can access the Internet,” said ClearAccess CEO Ken Hood in an e-mail interview. ClearAccess also sells DSL and Ethernet gateways.

“Part of the Series B investment will be used to fund the development of innovative data services that service providers can deploy remotely using the ClearVision Management System,” Hood said. “The remaining portion will be used to increase the reach of our sales and marketing efforts.”

ClearAccess already has more than 40 service providers as customers, with another 35 on a trial basis. “In terms of the ecosystem, we play a very central role and have well established partnerships with the leading access equipment vendors, CPE [customer premises equipment] manufacturers, and home networking companies,” Hood said.

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Seattle-based wireless infrastructure company NewPath Networks announced in a press release today that it has raised a $10 million credit line with Square 1 Bank. NewPath will use the money to expand its fiber-fed distributed antenna systems in the U.S. Just a few months ago, NewPath raised $30 million from venture groups to expand the antenna systems.

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Seattle-based iLike may be acquired by MySpace for $20 million, according to a report today in TechCrunch. iLike is a music service company with Facebook and iPhone programs that help people find new music and create playlists. It recently launched a new iPhone app that finds local concerts based on the music found on a device. According to anonymous sources cited in TechCrunch, MySpace may close the deal with iLike by the end of this week.

iLike has around 10 million Facebook users. If MySpace acquires iLike, it will own an app on an enormous chunk of Facebook music listeners. MySpace is a major rival to Facebook in social networking, and when it comes to music, iLike is by far the most popular Facebook app. MySpace owning it would therefore make for some interesting changes in that rivalry.

iLike was founded in 2002 by Ali Partovi, Hadi Partovi, and Nat Brown. It has raised $16.5 million in funding from the likes of Vinod Khosla and Ticketmaster. Currently, the company has more than 50 million registered users for its website and various platform applications.

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Not many deals made news in San Diego last week, although we had a few national stories that were of local interest.

—Bruce reported on some of the companies from Xconomy cities going to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International conference last week, including three from San Diego. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems gave a presentation on its Predator BUAV, while SAIC discussed using unmanned aircraft over the ocean.

—Bruce also did a more in-depth report on San Diego defense contractor Northrop Grumman and its presentation of robot vehicles at the conference. These include land robots as well as helicopters and its Broad Area Maritime Surveillance UAV program, which is intended help with oceanic intelligence and related concerns for the Navy, at a cost of $1.2 billion.

—Luke reported on a talk by the U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu in Washington State, whose new energy policies could have big repercussions around the country. Chu talked about how national labs can do mission-based science and still make big fundamental discoveries that will push areas like clean energy ahead.

—On a happy note for the suffering newspaper industry, Bruce reported on Wednesday that VMIX, a San Diego-based media company, is growing despite its newspaper focus thanks to the popularity of video on the Internet. The venture-backed startup said it expects big growth in the coming year because of its online video-based strategy.

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Everett, WA-based Fluke Networks, a network service provider company, announced today in a press release that it will acquire Sunnyvale, CA-based AirMagnet a wireless LAN service provicer. Fluke provides for the installation, certification, testing, monitoring and analysis of networks including fiberoptic and wireless. According to the release, adding AirMagnet’s technology will improve the services provided by Fluke for wireless LAN networks, an increasingly popular option for computer networks. Financial details were not disclosed.

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Inc. magazine has released its annual list of the top 500 fastest growing private companies in the U.S. A dozen Washington state consulting or technology-related companies made the list, with the highest-ranked firm, Kirkland-based Revel Consulting, at number 34. The others are: Xtreme Consulting Group, Clarisonic, Sirsai, C&I Engineering, Remote Medical International, Visible Technologies, Audigy Group, Big Fish Games, Winshuttle, Tableau Software, and Adaquest. The companies were chosen based on their percentage increase in revenue from 2005 to 2008.

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In a press conference in New York this morning, Microsoft Business Division president Stephen Elop and Nokia’s executive vice president for devices Kai Öistämö announced that Redmond, WA-based Microsoft and Finland-based Nokia have formed an alliance that will create adaptations of Microsoft programs for Nokia’s smartphones.

Microsoft and Nokia will begin immediate development of Microsoft Office Mobile, a version of Office for use on Nokia’s Symbian devices. Other programs for productivity, communication and device-management will follow, and will be available for many types of Nokia smartphones. The deal extends beyond just development of the programs—the companies will jointly market the products they create together.

This is the second major recent alliance for Microsoft with a competitor, after making a major search and advertising deal with Yahoo just a couple of weeks ago. Similar to that deal, Nokia has been an important rival to Microsoft with its Symbian mobile OS competing with the Windows Mobile platform. This is the first time Office will be adapted for any mobile system besides Microsoft’s. And both deals help Microsoft compete with Google, whose free productivity applications have been chipping away at Microsoft’s Office dominance. Office is one of the most profitable products for Microsoft, so expanding the customer base seems like a good move for the company.

Nokia is the world’s largest producer of smartphones, but is facing intense competition from products like Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s Blackberry. Putting Microsoft applications on its phones will help Nokia in “addressing the significant opportunity in mobile enterprise productivity,” according to Öistämö in the press release.

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Seattle Genetics (NASDAQ: SGEN) announced today that it will be selling 11 million shares of common stock in an underwritten public offering for $10.75 a share. This is expected to raise about $118.2 million for the Bothell, WA-based developer of antibody cancer drugs. The offering is expected to close by Monday. Seattle Genetics’ stock price was $10.99 at market closing Tuesday, so the new offering gives buyers approximately two percent in savings.

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Manchester, UK-based VirtenSys, which opened up U.S. headquarters in Beaverton, OR, in January, announced in a press release today that it has raised $16 million in a Series C funding round. Investors in the round included Scottish Equity Partners, Celtic House Venture Partners, and Gimv. Virtensys develops virtualization technology for servers in data centers. The money will be used to further expand its operations, including in the U.S.

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Yesterday was a busy day for Razorfish chief strategy officer Jeff Lanctot. With the official announcement that French advertising firm Publicis will acquire Microsoft-owned Razorfish, Lanctot had quite a lot on his plate. Despite his having to fly out from Seattle to another office, I managed to get a few answers from him about the deal and what it may actually mean for Razorfish.

Publicis is buying the digital marketing company from Microsoft for $530 million in cash and stock. “We view this deal [as] accelerating our mission of expanding our global reach and client offerings,” Lanctot said in an e-mail. But he added that even with the change in ownership, Razorfish won’t change unduly, existing as part of Publicis but operating autonomously. “Razorfish will operate as an independent entity under VivaKi, the operating unit of Publicis Groupe,” he said. This means there won’t be any big changes in management either, he added, with Bob Lord staying on as CEO with the rest of the Razorfish managers—at least in the coming weeks and months.

Publicis stands to gain a lot from the deal, with Razorfish already being one of the largest companies of its kind in the world. Acquiring Razorfish “will make Publicis Groupe a leading player in digital communications, including Search and Display,” Lanctot wrote.

Razorfish users don’t need to panic yet, even if they are concerned about how things may change, since the final transaction isn’t expected to conclude until the end of the year. “Until the deal closes, it’s business as usual,” Lanctot said.

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Dendreon (NASDAQ: DNDN), the Seattle-based developer of an immune-boosting drug for prostate cancer, announced today that it has leased property in Atlanta to build a second manufacturing plant for the drug. Rumors about the deal surfaced last month, but Dendreon would not comment before the official announcement. The factory will actually be built in Union City, GA, just southwest of Atlanta, and cover 160,000 square-feet of land. Financial details were not released, but the plant may cost an estimated $80 million and create around 300 jobs for people in the area, according to a report last month in the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

Dendreon’s first factory is in Morris Plains, NJ, but the company expects that extra manufacturing capacity for the drug, sipuleucel-T (Provenge), will be necessary. Concerns over manufacturing limitations have previously been an issue with Dendreon after the clinical trials for the treatment turned out so well. The issue is that sipuleucel-T is not just a pill but a complex treatment. It requires blood to be taken from a patient and processed at a clinic three times a month. It’s extremely important therefore to keep the supply chain uninterrupted.

The FDA is expected to approve Dendreon’s treatment by early next year, but demand is expected to easily outstrip the production capacity of the New Jersey factory. And since most of the estimated 100,000 American candidates for sipuleucel-T live in the eastern corridor of the United States, placing the second plant in Georgia makes a lot of sense.

The state of Georgia plans a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the factory on September 30.

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