12/19/08

Ex-Jobster’s Firm Sold for $7.5M

Seattle-based Jobster’s co-founder and former CEO, Jason Goldberg, has sold his new startup, Socialmedian, to Hamburg, Germany-based Xing for about $7.5 million. Socialmedian is a New York-based news-filtering service that works well with social sites like Xing, which is focused on professional networking. Goldberg, who left Jobster a year ago, will be moving to Germany as vice president of Xing’s applications platform division.

12/18/08

Insilicos Nabs $900K Grant From NIH

Insilicos, a Seattle-based company that makes software for drug researchers, said today it has won a $900,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health. The money will be used to study “ensemble learning,” which uses a blend of statistical models to make a more accurate prediction about a biological experiment than a single model. Insilicos is also working on improving diagnostic tests for cardiovascular disease.

Gates Foundation Gives $7M to IDRI

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a three-year, $7 million grant to the Seattle-based Infectious Disease Research Institute to develop improved ways to diagnose and care for patients in Africa infected with visceral leishmaniasis. The infection, caused by a parasite, affects about 500,000 people each year and is deadly in about one in 10 cases when it isn’t detected early enough, IDRI said in a statement.

12/17/08

Ex-Entellium Execs Plead Guilty to Fraud

Seattle-based Entellium’s former CFO, Parrish Jones, pled guilty to one count of wire fraud in U.S. District Court today, as reported by the Seattle Times and TechFlash. Jones faces 33 to 41 months in prison for his alleged role in falsifying company revenues. Last week, Entellium’s former CEO Paul Johnston also pled guilty to fraud, and could face four to five years in prison. Both men will be sentenced on March 13.

Foodista Unveils Social Cooking Site

Seattle-based Foodista has opened up a cooking website that everyone can edit, wiki-style. Billed as an online cooking encyclopedia, the site includes information on food, recipes, techniques, and tools, and allows users to share their knowledge by posting comments, editing content, and uploading photos. The site is run by former Amazon veterans Barnaby Dorfman and Sheri Wetherell.

12/16/08

PressOK, Movaya Team Up for Mobile Games

Seattle-based Movaya and PressOK Entertainment announced today they are joining forces to develop mobile games. Financial terms and impact of the deal were not disclosed. PressOK was formed by the merger of mobile-gaming companies Reaxion and Mobliss in September. Reaxion’s development teams are in Russia and Belarus, while Movaya’s team is in China.

EMC Appoints Leader for Decho, Cloud Services

Storage giant EMC (NYSC: EMC) of Hopkinton, MA, said today that veteran software executive Harel Kodesh has been appointed president of the company’s Cloud Infrastructure division and CEO of Decho, a new subsidiary formed in November from the combination of EMC’s Mozy and Pi divisions. Kodesh is the former chief products officer at Missouri-based telecommunications billing provider Amdocs, and helped to create the Windows CE embedded operating system for Microsoft as vice president of its Information Appliances Division. As Greg reported in November, Decho will focus on cloud-computing-based approaches to managing individuals’ digital information.

Arch Names Two New Partners

Arch Venture Partners, which has its Northwest offices in Seattle, says that it has named Kristina Burow and Paul Thurk as partners. Burow is a co-founder and director of Seattle-based domestic crude oil firm Sapphire Energy and is based at Arch’s San Francisco office. Thurk, who began his career in the firm’s Austin office, co-founded solar cell developer Innovalight, based in Sunnyvale, CA, and another cleantech company that Arch is incubating.

12/15/08

InFocus Cuts 30 Percent of Staff

Wilsonville, OR-based InFocus (NASDAQ: INFS), a maker of digital projectors, announced today it is reducing its global workforce by 30 percent, as part of a company restructuring that will span all of 2009. The staff cuts will be effective next month. InFocus president and CEO Bob O’Malley cited the economic downturn and reduced demand for projectors as reasons for the restructuring. The company says it is spending around $1.3 million on severance payments and some $4 million to vacate facility space in Wilsonville. No word yet on exactly how many jobs will be cut.

Zumobi, REI Do Ski Reports

Seattle-based Zumobi and Recreational Equipment, Inc. have teamed up to release the REI Snow Report, a free software application for the iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile devices that lets consumers get information about ski-resort conditions. Zumobi, a mobile software startup, was founded in 2006 and is backed by Oak Investment Partners and Hunt Ventures.

MDRNA Gets Tentative FDA Approval

MDRNA (NASDAQ: MRNA), a Bothell, WA-based biotech company, said today it received tentative FDA approval of a generic version of calcitonin nasal spray for osteoporosis. The company can get full FDA approval in June, when a 180-day exclusivity period expires for Apotex, another generic maker. MDRNA now focuses on developing RNA interference drugs, not nasal sprays. It is evaluating options on what to do with the osteoporosis drug.

12/13/08

Yapta Raises $2.7M, Looks for More

Seattle-based Yapta, an online travel service that tracks airfares for consumers, has raised $2.7 million in funding from undisclosed investors, according to a company spokesman. The funding round is still open, so that figure could change in the next month. Yapta launched in May 2007 and is backed by First Round Capital, Voyager Capital, Swiftsure Capital, and Bay Partners.

12/12/08

Melodeo Teams with Salvation Army on iPhone

Seattle-based Melodeo, a digital-music startup, is powering the Salvation Army’s holiday music iPhone application, which was announced yesterday. The software, available from the iPhone Application Store for $2.99, streams a selection of holiday tunes to your phone, with unlimited listening. Proceeds will benefit the Salvation Army charity.

Microvision Lands $750K Eyewear Contract

Redmond, WA-based Microvision, a mobile imaging and display company, announced it has been awarded a $750,000 contract to begin developing a high-definition, see-through eyewear display. The name of the customer was not disclosed. The wearable display is designed to be full-color and transparent to the surroundings.

12/11/08

Gates Gives $1.4M to Local Food Banks

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest philanthropy, said today it is giving $1.4 million to provide emergency food supplies to hungry people in the Pacific Northwest. The money is going to Food Lifeline, Oregon Food Bank, and Second Harvest Food Bank of the Inland Northwest. The money will be able to provide 18 million meals to people in need, the foundation said. Local food banks say thousands of families are asking for food in a time of crisis, the foundation said.

12/10/08

SplashCast Puts TV on MySpace, Facebook

Portland, OR-based SplashCast, an online content-syndication startup, announced it has teamed up with video service Hulu to distribute TV shows and other content on Facebook and MySpace. SplashCast’s “social TV player” software will syndicate new episodes from Hulu directly to viewers’ social-network pages. Twenty shows are currently available, and the company says “dozens more” will be running this month. Founded in 2006, SplashCast has 10 million viewers a month.

Seattle Genetics Drug Passes Safety Test, Trial Continues

Seattle Genetics said today its experimental drug for acute myeloid leukemia passed an interim safety review. The Bothell, WA-based biotech company (NASDAQ: SGEN) said an independent monitoring committee recommended the study continue of lintuzumab (SGN-33). Full results from the trial, which is two-thirds of the way to its enrollment goal of 210 patients, should be available in the first half of 2010, the company said.

12/09/08

Zillow Still Tops Seattle Startup Rankings

Seattle 2.0’s monthly rankings of local tech-startup websites is out for November. Based on traffic estimates compiled by Marcelo Calbucci, Zillow remained #1, though its lead over Pet Holdings (#2) is nominal. Picnik, BigOven, and WidgetBucks continued to climb upward within the top 10, and Athleon, Visible.net, CultureMob, GoGoMo, and Jackson Fish Market also made strong gains in the top 100.

Ontier Lands Investment, Board Members

Portland, OR-based Ontier, a stealthy software startup, announced it has landed new board members and investors Les Fahey, of Fahey Ventures, and Paul Gulick, co-founder of InFocus. The amount of investment was not disclosed. Ontier was founded in early 2008 and is developing software for business communication that tries to fill the gap between e-mail and Web conferences.

Calistoga Drug Shrinks Tumors in Lab Studies

Seattle-based Calistoga Pharmaceuticals said that its lead experimental drug, CAL-101, killed cancer cells in lab studies of multiple blood malignancies. The drug is designed to block a marker inside cells called the PI3 kinase pathway, that is thought to play a key role in tumor cell growth, survival, and migration. The findings were delivered in an oral presentation at the American Society of Hematology meeting in San Francisco.