Angel investors and venture capitalists spend a lot of their time beating the bushes for that next great tech genius and entrepreneur who is destined to change the world. This seems like a pretty good place to get some super-early scouting done: the Washington Technology Industry Association’s award for Technology Leader of Tomorrow.

As a part of the WTIA Industry Achievement Awards, the public actually gets to vote on which one of the student finalists will win a scholarship. This year, the competition focused on building a little Web-based video game—you can play all three of the entries and vote for your favorite at the WTIA’s site.

You’ll need to be at a keyboard to test them out, using the arrow keys to navigate the little characters around. The objective in each is to collect points by running into the icons you do want, while avoiding the enemies who will sap your score.

The finalists are Pablo’s Underwater Adventure by Amanze Oleru and Joanna Wong; The Skateboard King by Biruk Araya and Tyler Lam; and Get Rich by Gizan Gando, who actually won last year’s competition.

Here’s the list of finalists for the boring old adult side of the competition—that voting is done by judges, and the awards will be given out March 15 at what is usually one of the biggest events of the year for the regional tech scene.

Best Early Stage Company:
- Appature
- BigDoor
- GreenCupboards

Best Seed Stage Company:
- Simply Measured
- Spiral Genetics
- Zipline Games

Consumer Product or Service of the Year:
- DocuSign
- Parallels
- Zillow

Commercial Product or Service of the Year:
- EagleView Technologies
- SEOMoz
- Skytap

Service Provider of the Year:
- Founder’s Co-Op
- Lighter Capital
- Opscode

CEO of the Year:
- Ben Huh, Cheezburger
- Steve Singh, Concur
- Bryan Mistele, INRIX

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It was 1993 when the San Diego chapter of the American Electronics Association organized its first high tech industry awards to recognize local companies for their business excellence, technology innovation, community involvement, and sometimes simply for persevering in the face of adversity.

Since then, the nationwide organization that HP founder David Packard helped form in 1943 as the West Coast Electronics Manufacturers Association has morphed into the AeA, (in 2001) and TechAmerica (2009). Recently Tech America San Diego named the winners of its Eighteenth Annual High Tech Awards. The industry group handed out 10 awards in nine distinct categories:

—Software: Oceanhouse Media

—Internet/Web Commerce: Sorenson Media

—Computers and Related Products (two awards): AgigA Tech and One Stop Systems

—Communications Products and Services: MicroPower Technologies

—Software as a Service/Cloud-based Computing: ServiceNow

—Semiconductors, Industrial & Analytical Instrumentation: Creative Electron

—Cleantech: EcoATM

—Outstanding Emerging Growth: FieldLogix

—IT Service/Contract Services: Outsource Manufacturing-Made in San Diego

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Connect, the San Diego nonprofit group for innovation and entrepreneurship, says it has selected three finalists in eight categories for the region’s 24th annual Most Innovative New Product (MIP) Awards competition. The 24 finalists were culled from more than 140 nominations submitted, according to a statement from Connect. The finalists in each category are evaluated by San Diego experts and business executives in that category. Winners will be announced at an awards luncheon, set for Dec. 9 at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines.

The finalists in each category are:

Clean Technology

Genomatica, for Process that produces high-volume industrial chemicals from renewable feedstocks.

Noble Environmental Technologies, for proprietary ECOR process to produce environmentally friendly building materials.

Wildcat Discovery Technologies, for electrolytic process that makes environmentally friendly materials.

Communications and IT

Ethertronics, for its Ether 1.2.1 technology for embedded antennas in mobile devices.

Kyocera Communications for Kyocera Echo, a dual-touchscreen smartphone.

Swarmology for Swarm.it, real-time contextual search and marketing technology.

Life Science – Diagnostics and Research Tools

Biocept, for OncoCEE-BR diagnostic screening technology to detect circulating tumor cells.

Life Technologies, for Ion Personal Genome Machine, technology for semiconductor-based DNA sequencing.

Targeson, for ultrasound contrast imaging of VEGFR2 receptor on lining of blood vessels.

Life Science – Medical Products

Hypnoz Therapeutic Devices, for Jaw Elevation Device used to maintain open airway during medical procedures.

IOS Technologies, for technology that enables dental professionals to create digital impressions and 3-D models.

Optimer Pharmaceuticals, for fidaxomicin (DIFICID), a new antibiotic treatment for C. difficile.

Software

FICO, for Falcon Fraud Manager 6 Analytics, used to detect payment card fraud.

MOGL for MOGL, online restaurant mobile rewards program.

SwoopThat, for online technology that helps college students find cheapest online price for every book they need to buy.

Hardware and General Technology

Aculon, for Aculon AL-X and Aculon H1-X products, nano-scale films and coatings for a variety of survaces.

LifeProof, for LifeProof case for the iPhone 4.

Memjet, for high-speed inkjet printing technology.

Action and Sport Technologies

Hydroflex, for flexing surfboard design.

KVA Stainless, for technology to produce seamless stainless steel tubing, pipes, stamping, and forming.

TaylorMade Golf, for R11 Driver with movable weight than enables golfers to customize to their swings more precisely.

Aerospace and Security Technologies

Geodetics, for positioning and navigation technology for dynamic platforms offering a variety of processing, global positioning system (GPS) and inertial measurement unit (IMU) options that can be configured to cover a broad performance spectrum.

Langford & Carmichael, for ScenGen, a software program that generates all possible scenarios for a given situation at a very high speed.

MicroPower Technologies, for MPT2500 Rugged-i, solar-powered wireless video surveilance camera technology.

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When Dr. Yukiko Yamashita’s cell phone rang with the news that she’d been named a MacArthur Fellow, she ignored the call.

“Nobody important calls me on that phone, only my family,” Yamashita says. “I held the phone for 10 full seconds wondering if I should answer or not.”

Deciding that it was a wrong number, she chose not to answer. When her office phone rang a few minutes later from the same phone number, she decided to pick up. She was then informed that she had won the prestigious honor—which comes with $500,000 in no-strings-attached support–for her pioneering work on stem cell research.

Time to crack the bubbly and celebrate, right? Not so fast. Yamashita was still in shock, so she called her husband.

“I really couldn’t believe it,” Yamashita says. “Of course, I didn’t know I was nominated. I called my husband, and he said if they ask for your bank account and pin number, don’t give it to them.”

But it was no phone scam. Yamashita, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute and an assistant professor of cell and developmental biology at U-M’s medical school, will indeed receive funding over the next five years from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Fellows are selected based on three criteria: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.

“Yukiko is one of the most fabulous scientists I know,” said Alan Saltiel, director of the Life Sciences Institute (and an Xconomist), in a statement. “Her lively enthusiasm and impatient curiosity about scientific matters is contagious, and it is terrific to have her on our faculty. This recognition is fitting, and I have no doubt that with this award she will continue to explore and develop important new biological insights.”

Yamashita plans to use the money she will receive to pay for research on how adult stem cells maintain tissue stability.

“I have some ideas that would be very difficult to fund through traditional sources, like the National Institutes of Health,” Yamashita says. “It’s a long shot that anything I find will come to be of practical use to a patient, but I believe understanding is the first step.”

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University of Washington professor Shwetak Patel, best known for his work on developing sensor networks that can be used to monitor power use in buildings, has been named a MacArthur Fellow—the award commonly known as the “genius grant,” which comes with a $500,000 cash prize that recipients can use however they want.

Patel, 29, is well-known around the Pacific Northwest innovation community as a researcher, teacher, and entrepreneur—last year, his company Zensi was purchased by Belkin for undisclosed terms. Now, a lot more folks are going to learn about his work.

There’s a bit of theater involved in the MacArthur Fellow awards. Winners are nominated without their knowledge by someone who is asked to serve as one of the award’s rotating board of nominators. If all goes as planned, winners don’t know they’re even up for consideration until someone from the foundation calls to deliver the news. (Patel was nominated by Henry Levy, chairman of the UW’s computer science and engineering department.) The money is paid out quarterly over five years.

In July, Patel was also named a Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow, after being nominated by the university. That honor noted that Patel’s sensor research was being used not just for energy efficiency, but also in “elder care, home safety, and the creation of new approaches for natural user interfaces.”

Patel was traveling as the awards were announced and couldn’t be reached for any comment. Ed Lazowska, the UW’s Bill and Melinda Gates chairman of computer science and engineering, called Patel “an incredibly creative young person” and “the sweetest guy in the world.” Patel works jointly for the computer science and electrical engineering departments, and leads the school’s Ubiquitous Computing Lab.

“The ‘sustainability sensing’ that Shwetak is doing will have huge impact. You can determine exactly how much power each device in your home is consuming, from a single inexpensive device that you plug into any wall outlet,” Lazowska wrote in an email tonight. “He also has extremely low power sensors whose batteries can last for decades—you can toss a few under your refrigerator and it alerts you if your ice maker starts leaking on your hardwood floor, before damage is done.”

As Jeremy Jaech recently wrote in an Xconomy guest column, “Patel’s sensors are hidden inside a wall or under a water heater to detect and alert a homeowner, or an insurance company, when a sensor detects water leaks, fire or carbon monoxide. These sensors will be able to save the lives of many homeowners, and save insurers hundreds of millions of dollars; water damage claims now surpass fire claims and natural disasters and are very expensive to settle.”

This is the second MacArthur Fellow connected to the UW’s computer science and engineering department—Lazowska notes that Yoky Matsuoka was named a fellow in 2007 for her work in neurorobotics.

Here’s a video from the MacArthur Foundation about Patel, which is from this profile page about him.

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It was a little over a year ago that Xconomy broke the news that a movement was underway to bring an Entrepreneur Walk of Fame to Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA, modeled after its Hollywood namesake.

The idea makes a lot of sense: If we celebrate movie stars and athletes, why not the top innovators and business leaders of all time? The goal is to inspire young people to make a big impact on the world. As for a location for the Walk of Fame, why not historic Kendall Square, which arguably sits in the densest cluster of technology and life sciences organizations and companies in the world?

Lo and behold, it’s really happening. Today the Entrepreneur Walk of Fame will be unveiled at a 1 pm ceremony in the newly paved plaza in front of the Marriott Hotel in Kendall Square. To get to this point took the collaborative efforts of a lot of people from MIT, the City of Cambridge, the Kauffman Foundation, and several community and private organizations.

Here is the inaugural class of seven inductees (and who will present the awards at the ceremony, which is almost as interesting):

—Thomas Edison (1847-1931), founder of General Electric. Probably America’s most famous inventor, he is credited with pioneering the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the commercial light bulb. But it’s his contributions to industry that got him in here. (Presented by David Edison Sloane, Edison’s great-grandson.)

—Bill Hewlett (1913-2001), co-founder and CEO of Hewlett-Packard. He was a Stanford and MIT grad. (Presented by Howard Anderson of MIT Sloan School of Management, formerly of Yankee Group and Battery Ventures, and an Xconomist.)

—David Packard (1912-1996), co-founder, CEO, and chairman of Hewlett-Packard. A Stanford grad and General Electric veteran who supplied the garage that housed the early HP. Rumor has it they called it “HP,” rather than “PH,” based on a coin flip. (Also presented by Howard Anderson.)

—Bob Swanson (1947-1999), co-founder, CEO, and chairman of Genentech. He was an MIT undergrad and MIT Sloan grad, as well as a founding board member of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center. (Presented by Tyler Jacks of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.)

—Bill Gates (1955- ), co-founder, chairman, and former CEO of Microsoft; co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He is probably Harvard’s most famous dropout, and one of the world’s richest men. (Presented by Dan Bricklin, co-creator of VisiCalc, the PC spreadsheet.)

—Steve Jobs (1955- ), co-founder, chairman, and former CEO of Apple. On his resume: the Apple II, Mac, Pixar, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad…need we say more? (Presented by Dan Lyons, better known as Fake Steve Jobs.)

—Mitch Kapor (1950- ), founder of Lotus Development, creator of Lotus 1-2-3, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Kapor is the one inductee who will be present at today’s ceremony and will speak for himself. Rumor has it there will also be lots of ex-Lotus employees on hand wearing vintage Lotus 1-2-3 shirts.

“This is a hall of fame” for entrepreneurs, says Bill Aulet of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, who spearheaded the overall effort. “The event itself is kind of like The Breakfast Club. These people are coming together who fought at different times.” (He was talking about Gates, Jobs, and Kapor in particular.)

Each inductee gets a granite star on a 4-foot by 1.5-foot tile that has the entrepreneur’s name, title, and one of his inspirational quotes inscribed. (See photo, left, of the Steve Jobs tile, next to an MIT beaver mascot.) The tiles sit in the plaza next to the Kendall T stop, close to the sidewalk, on either side of the new grassy knoll. As of yesterday morning, about a dozen workmen were sweating to put the finishing touches on the construction in the plaza.

Of course, with any list like this, it’s easy to nitpick or ask why someone is or isn’t on the list. The whole selection process was probably subject to all the usual politics that plague any … Next Page »

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today gave its Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award in five categories, including one to San Diego’s Genomatica, a startup industrial biotech using genetically engineered microbes to produce intermediate chemicals.

Genomatica has engineered a bacterium that consumes sugars in a fermentation tank to make 1,4-Butanediol (BDO), a “building block” chemical needed to make spandex and plastic that was previously produced only in industrial petrochemical plants. The EPA says that Genomatica’s “Bio-BDO,” when produced at commercial scale, will be less expensive, require about 60 percent less energy to produce, and generate 70 percent less carbon dioxide emissions than conventional BDO made from natural gas.

In naming Genomatica, the judges (an independent panel of technical experts convened by the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute) broke with tradition and moved Genomatica from the small business category into the “greener synthetic pathways” category, according to a statement from the company. Last year’s award in the same category went to technology developed jointly by BASF and Dow; other winners have included Eastman Chemical Co., Archer, Daniels Midland, and Monsanto.

Genomatica production facility

The EPA created the green chemistry awards 16 years ago to recognize chemistry that prevents pollution, uses cleaner processes and safer raw materials, reduces costs, and produces safer, better products.

The EPA also bestowed its green chemistry awards on: U.C. Santa Barbara scientist Bruce Lipshutz for developing new chemical processes that eliminate or reduce solvents; BioAmber of Plymouth, MN, for developing a new bio-industrial process to make succinic acid; Krayton Performance Polymers of Houston, TX, to develop a process for using less solvent to make reverse osmosis membranes; and Sherwin-Williams of Cleveland, OH, for developing water-based acrylic alkyd paints with low volatile organic compounds.

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Ernst & Young, the global consulting and accounting firm, selected six San Diego executives for its 2011 Entrepreneur of the Year awards on the 25th anniversary of the program, which has expanded to recognize business leaders and entrepreneurs in more than 140 cities and more than 50 countries. The firm also bestowed its San Diego Lifetime Achievement Award to Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs.

The six categories and winners, who were named Thursday at an E&Y dinner event, are: Life Sciences, Millennium Laboratories CEO James Slattery; Technology, Service-now CEO Fred Luddy; Engineering Services, Fyfe Co. President Edward Fyfe; Earth Sciences, Dos Gringos President Jason Levin; Consumer Products, Stone Brewing CEO Greg Koch; and Master Entrepreneur, Life Technologies CEO Greg Lucier.

All of the regional winners will be invited to the Entrepreneur Of The Year National Awards gala, hosted in Palm Springs, CA, by Jay Leno, on November 12.

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Cloud computing was my big theme last week, but we also covered stories about renewable energy, and we brought back a report from the future (the way the Churchill Club sees it, anyway).

—I profiled Heroku, the Y Combinator-backed Ruby on Rails platform that was acquired by Salesforce.com last December for $212 million. Co-founder Adam Wiggins shared previously undisclosed details about the company’s crucial “pivot” prior to the acquisition, from training ground for Ruby on Rails programers to true application hosting company. Coincidentally, Heroku today announced a major upgrade of its cloud-based services.

—Speaking of cloud computing, I took a look at Emergence Capital, the San Mateo venture firm known for being one of the earliest and most active investors in Software-as-a-Service-based startups, including Salesforce.com (which brought it an 80x return when it went public in 2004).

—I attended the annual Churchill Club “Top 10 Tech Trends” dinner in Santa Clara, and came back with a post-game report summarizing this year’s featured trends and the reactions from the audience and from panelists Aneesh Chopra, Paul Saffo, Steve Jurvetson, and Ajay Royan. One of the highest ranked trends: the emergence of trusted social networks to supplement Facebook.

—In my Friday column, I wrote about the economic impact of “ephemeralization,” including the tendency of software and hardware makers to distill the functions of many old devices into just a few new ones such as smartphones and tablet computers. Ephemeralization (and its cousin, efficiency) are probably net destroyers of jobs, I acknowledged, but I listed a few reasons why there may be room for optimism about the long-term employment picture.

—Ford Motor Company listed the San Francisco Bay Area as one of the 25 regions in the country best prepared for an influx of electric vehicles, when it comes to the availability of charging stations and other infrastructure, my colleague Bruce reported.

—South San Francisco-based Solazyme (NASDAQ: SZYM), which is developing technology to turn plant sugars into hydrocarbon fuel, saw its stock price shoot up after its initial public offering last Thursday night, as Luke reported. Solazyme shares rose more than 16 percent on Friday and are up another 8 percent in trading today.

—We compiled details about four summer competitions open to startups, including the Kauffman Foundation’s Startup Open, Morgenthaler Ventures’ Health IT Startup Showcase, Evernote’s developer competition, and Kaggle’s dark matter competition.

—Google bought Sparkbuy, a Seattle-based electronics shopping startup that had just launched last November, as my colleague Curt reported. At first it looked like a classic case of Google “acqhiring” a team of talented engineers, but Google later commented that it intends to foster the Sparkbuy  business within Google.

—In other acquisitions news, Jive Software bought OffiSync, BuyWithMe brought Groop Swoop, and Twitter confirmed that it had purchased Tweetdeck.

—In funding news, Everloop raised $3.3 million, GainSpan raised $10.2 million, VuClip raised $8 million, Revel Systems raised $3.7 million, BlueStacks raised $7.6 million, Zozi raised $7 million, CrowdStar raised $23 million, RelayRides raised $673,000, MobileIron raised $20 million, Intel Capital unveiled a series of four tech-startup investments totaling $24.5 million, Google invested $55 million in wind power company Terra-Gen, and Innovalight won a $3.4 million grant from the Department of Energy.

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You weren’t actually thinking about taking Memorial Day Weekend off, were you? If you’re an entrepreneur and you want some (relatively) easy money or fame, it’s time to get moving on your entry for one of the many startup-oriented competitions underway this summer. Here are just four that have hit my inbox this week.

—Morgenthaler Ventures in Menlo Park, CA, is organizing its second annual “Health IT Startup Showcase.” It’s a search for 10 outstanding startups seeking seed or Series A funding for technology ideas that could improve the quality or cost-effectiveness of healthcare delivery. The finalists will be paired with investors and other startup founders to help them prepare for presentations to an audience of VCs, angels, and entrepreneurs at Morgenthaler’s DC to VC Summit in Mountain View, CA, on September 22. Two categories of startups are eligible: those under two years old with less than $500,000 in funding, and those under three years old with less than $1.5 million in funding. Applications are due August 9; the details are available in this PDF at Morgenthaler’s website.

—Mountain View, CA-based Evernote, maker of a cross-platform system for storing digital notes of all kinds, has organized its first-ever Developer Competition. Aimed to spur the creation of more apps for the “Evernote Trunk” (the company’s third-party app ecosystem), the competition carries $100,000 in prizes, including a $50,000 grand prize, six $5,000 finalist prizes, a $10,000 student prize, and a $10,000 “wildcard prize.” The winners will be showcased at the company’s Evernote Trunk Conference on August 18. The submission deadline is July 15; Evernote published all the details in a May 23 blog post.

—The Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, MO, announced the Startup Open this week. The competition is designed to identify the 50 most promising startups around the world. Any company that has had a “startup moment” since November 22, 2010 is eligible—meaning “any action related to launching a new business, such as incorporating a company; officially opening the doors for business; completing a first sale; or securing outside funding,” according to the foundation. Applications are due September 15. The 50 finalists will be announced on October 15, and those companies will compete for prizes during the foundations’ Global Entrepreneurship Week event in mid-November. Last year’s grand prize winner, Resolute Marine Energy founder Olivier Cebiero, received a trip to Richard Branson’s private island.

—This one’s far out—literally. Kaggle, a Melbourne, Australia-based Web startup that crowdsources scientific data analysis through online competitions, has announced a competition for new computer algorithms that could help to measure the distribution of dark matter in the universe by gauging the apparent ellipticity of images of distant galaxies. The competition is being sponsored by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Royal Astronomical Society, and the winner will be invited to present his or her solution at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The entry deadline is August 18. (Working with the Heritage Provider Network, Kaggle is also running a longer-term “Heritage Health Prize Competition” aimed at eliciting an algorithm that can predict, based solely on insurance claims data, which patients will be admitted to hospitals. You’ve got until April 3, 2013 to enter that one.)

—This one isn’t an organized competition, but it’s great for mobile game startups: San Francisco-based TinyCo, which makes games such as Tiny Zoo and Tiny Chef and is backed by venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, said this week that it has set up a $5 million “TinyFund” to help developers get iOS and Android games to market. TinyCo said it will provide selected teams with up to $500,000 in funding, along with marketing, development, and business support.

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Sunnyvale, CA-based Innovalight, whose “silicon ink” material increases the efficiency of photovoltaic panels, said Friday that it has won a $3.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to speed up production of silicon ink. The award is part of the DOE’s “SunShot” program, which aims to reduce the cost of residential and utility solar power by 75 percent by 2020.

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Updated 4:15 pm with new photo. Anytime you get a few hundred people in a room and add a couple of drink tickets, there are bound to be some interesting moments. And when that crowd is comprised of the techies, entrepreneurs, risk-takers and rich people from the startup scene, you’re starting from some pretty fertile ground for quirkiness.

Last night’s Seattle 2.0 awards didn’t disappoint. From organizer Marcelo Calbucci’s exasperation at the crowd noise to a friendly faceoff between a couple of mascots, these are the moments that stuck out to me. Check out the Seattle 2.0 page for the list of actual winners, along with a few other thank-yous and tidbits that Calbucci called out.

—Rand Fishkin threatens to strip: When it was time for the mingling to stop, Calbucci had to plead—and almost threaten—the crowd to detach itself from the main bar, quit chitchatting, and sit down for the show. It still hadn’t quite settled down when SEOmoz CEO Rand Fishkin—a sponsor of the event—took the stage for a few remarks, so he took matters into his own hands. “I’m about to start taking off my clothing, unless–unless!–you sit down and be quiet,” he said. “This is a threat.”

The tactic may have had the opposite effect, however, because once Fishkin tossed his dress shirt toward the crowd and stood there in a white v-neck T-shirt, someone rushed the stage and appeared to try to tuck money into his waistband.

—Soul-searching: The overall tone of the program was a mix of boosterism and self-criticism that you encounter constantly in Seattle’s tech startup community—on one hand, the town’s instigators are beating the drum about why Seattle is good and how it can be great. On the other, there’s plenty of hand-wringing about why this next-level evolution hasn’t happened yet, and what else could be done to ignite people.

Calbucci hit this sentiment early on with a heartfelt speech in which he compared his Seattle 2.0 website to a community restaurant—it doesn’t make money, and in fact can be a drain on personal resources. But the owner clearly sees that it has value to the community, and worries what would happen otherwise. “If I close it, I fear that no one is going to do what I’m doing right now,” he said.

—Mark Suster, from crowd control to inspiration: Suster, a Southern California entrepreneur-turned-VC, was the keynote speaker. He created a bit of anticipation for the speech by publishing this Seattle-themed piece about building a startup community, and the talk itself didn’t disappoint. It started with Suster over by the bar area, wearing a Tony Robbins-style headset, telling Calbucci that he was going to take another run at shutting up everyone who was still mingling and refreshing their drinks.

Then he waded into the crowd, and gave them a once-over that was broadcast over the PA system: “I was standing right next to Marcelo and it was so fucking hard to concentrate with you guys talking,” Suster said to the surprised patrons.

His speech detailed what he felt was needed to build capacity for more entrepreneurs and startups in a place like Seattle: Get “wantrepreneurs” off the sidelines, get would-be investors off the sidelines, pull the trigger on your big ideas, be cheerleaders for your community, but also don’t believe the hype of what’s hot now (complete with Public Enemy album cover shot).

“Do we need another fucking check-in application for restaurants?” Suster asked. “I like Foursquare—I’m not critical of it. But do we need another deal site?”

—Mascots: Promotional hackery, yes. But mascots do the job (I’m writing about them, aren’t I?). The team from Deal Springer—offering a kind of reverse-Groupon engine that allows local businesses to set and promote their own online discounts—hauled out a blue lycra full-body suit that some unnamed fellow rocked along with all-white sneakers. He startled at least one lady who was not expecting to encounter a shimmering, shrink-wrapped dude, but also got his picture taken plenty of times.

Not to be outdone was the group from Giant Thinkwell, which is building a way for celebrities to engage their fanbase with online and mobile games. They brought a giant squid mascot, complete with glowing orange eyes, that bobbed ominously in front of the stage as Kyle Kesterson accepted his award for best designer.

I didn’t see it happen myself, but Deal Springer’s Nick Huzar sent along the photographic evidence that the pair accepted my earlier Twitter challenge for a mascot confrontation. No word on who dominated.

Update: Giant Thinkwell’s Kesterson sends this additional photo (also shown at top), which may be showing some sort of mascot dance-off in progress.

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Babson College this week announced the results of its first “rocket pitch” competition for students entering the Babson Fast Track MBA program at the college’s SoMa campus in San Francisco. Contestants had three minutes and three slides to explain how they meet Babson’s definition of entrepreneurship as “thinking or acting in a manner that is opportunity obsessed, holistic in approach, and leadership balanced.” The three winners, each of whom will receive a $25,000 merit scholarship, were San Francisco-based Tara Kurland, currently employed by the Air Traffic Control Education Fund; Sammamish, WA-based Rajan Venkitachalam, currently employed by Microsoft; and Oakland, CA-based Delali Attiogbe, currently employed by Genentech.

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It lives! Now that Xconomy Seattle has a full-time tech writer again (yours truly), we’re bringing back a weekly roundup to help our far-too-busy readers catch up with what’s been on our minds and percolating in the Seattle-area scene lately.

Highlights from the past week or so:

—Tippr, the Seattle-based group-deals site that emphasizes its intellectual property portfolio, made news for a pair of lawsuits it has going against competitors. A federal patent-infringement claim against both DealOn and BuyWithMe garnered focus, but there was more cloak-and-dagger in the state-court lawsuit against BuyWithMe and a former employee.

In a nutshell, Tippr’s parent company claims BuyWithMe’s founder solicited a bunch of proprietary information from a now-departed Tippr salesman who was job-hunting. A King County Superior Court judge agreed there was enough evidence on hand this month to issue an injunction against BuyWithMe to secure the information at issue. BuyWithMe answered by demanding a jury trial.

—Xconomy San Francisco’s Wade Roush weighed in with the second installment of his Seven Questions about the future of mobile. It’s a good read that gets you thinking, and is a great preview for our big Mobile Madness event next Wednesday at Microsoft’s NERD center in Cambridge, MA. Seattle-area folks from Clearwire, Swype and Ground Truth are participating in the program—keep an eye out for some interesting reports from what everyone there has to say.

— I unloaded some lingering government knowledge from my previous job at The Associated Press in a story that dissected how President Obama’s threatened ban on earmarked spending in the federal budget could affect innovation in Washington state. I was frankly impressed by the tons of cool-sounding projects and programs that were on the list of earmark requests for this fiscal year, but I had to narrow it down to 25 big items just to make it all fit.

—On the fun side, the Washington Technology Industry Association braved another threatened snowstorm to put on its annual Industry Achievement Awards. It was well-attended and a bunch of fun, even though I spent too much time hunched over my laptop. DocuSign and Isilon split Commercial Product or Service of the Year, and Swype nabbed Consumer Product or Service.

—A pair of companies with strong Seattle DNA were among the many making noise at the DEMO conference this week. Pioneer Square-headquartered PhotoRocket, helmed by Amazon and aQuantive alum Scott Lipsky, wants to be the indispensible utility for pushing photos to websites or e-mail contacts. San Francisco-based SocialEyes, with leadership from a pair of former RealNetworks Robs, is aiming for a higher-quality video chat service by blending it with the social graph on Facebook.

—On the cleantech side of things, we dropped by a Washington Clean Technology Alliance briefing with three companies focused on water: Hydrovolts, WaterTectonics, and Halosource. It was kind of a small-medium-large arrangement: Hydrovolts is a kinetic hydropower startup that’s still testing its technology and looking for big buyers, WaterTectonics is an established commercial water-cleaning company making moves in the oil sector, and Halosource is coming off last fall’s $80 million IPO

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Hundreds of techies braved Seattle’s latest snowpocalypse for one of the community’s biggest shindigs: The Washington Technology Industry Association‘s Industry Achievement Awards.

If there was a theme to Thursday’s speeches, I’d say it was a rousing round of yay-Seattle encouragement for other entrepreneurs to start their companies here—which I guess is kind of the point, but it felt totally genuine.

The whole thing was emceed by Luke Burbank of the Too Beautiful To Live podcast.

Here’s the list of winners:

• Commercial Product or Service of the Year: Judges delivered a tie between DocuSign and Isilon Systems. They beat out third finalist thePlatform.

DocuSign has several e-signature products for business and individual customers, specifically DocuSign for Salesforce, DocuSign Enterprise, and DocuSign Realtor Edition. The company made news in December by raising $27 million in a Series C round.

Data-storage company Isilon (NASDAQ: ISLN) was acquired last year for $2.25 billion in cash by Hopkinton, MA-based data storage giant EMC (NYSE: EMC). Just last month, Isilon announced it was moving to Pioneer Square.

• Consumer Product or Service of the Year: Swype, a maker of text-input software for touch screens, which has inked plenty of deals with … Next Page »

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Microsoft Research and the University of Washington each have new members who have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Susan Dumais, who works on interfaces for improved information retrieval at Microsoft, was elected along with Hank Levy, the chairman of UW’s Computer Science and Engineering department. Levy, who has written two books and more than 100 papers on computer systems design, is a technical advisor to Madrona Venture Group, and is a co-founder of Seattle-based Skytap. Dumais and Levy were among nine new members of the academy chosen this year for achievements in computer science, out of a total class of 68 new members.

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Kevin Carroll, executive director of TechAmerica San Diego, sent over the list of winners from the 17th Annual High Tech Awards, which were announced Friday. The industry group (previously known as the AEA) bases its awards on such criteria as technological or business innovation, exceptional products or services, marketplace validation, perseverance, and community involvement. Winners in each category are: Anakam (Software); Anonymizer (Internet/Web Commerce); Z Microsystems (Computers); Entropic Communications (Communications); DefenseWeb Technologies (Defense/IT Services); Quantum Design (Semiconductors); RASIRC (Analytical Instrumentation); GenMark Diagnostics (Medical Technologies); Reaction Design (Clean Technology); D&K Engineering (Contract Services); Seacoast Science (Emerging Growth).

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It was a packed house at the MassChallenge finals last night in Boston’s Seaport District. Business luminaries such as Desh Deshpande, Steve Case, Josh Boger, Brad Feld, and Greg Bialecki were in attendance. And Boston mayor Tom Menino kicked things off by emphasizing that, especially compared with other innovation clusters around the country, “what Boston has is brainpower.”

Case, the co-founder of AOL and chairman and CEO of Revolution, stole the show early. A few gems from his keynote:

—“Big companies mostly play defense. Entrepreneurs create the future of this country…They are, in some sense, American heroes.”

—When Case was an undergrad at Williams College, he applied to Harvard Business School: “They rejected me…No donations headed that way!”

—In the early days of AOL, Case entered an Inc. 500 national competition: “I lost to Outback Steakhouse. The Bloomin’ Onion kicked my butt. So I redoubled my efforts to make AOL the best performing stock of the ‘90s. Which is more than Outback Steakhouse can say.”

—“Think big, and think bold…There’s way too much incremental thinking. The real change [comes from] bigger bets that are harder and take longer. Err on the side of thinking big instead of miniaturizing.”

But the real stars on this evening were the 26 MassChallenge finalists who gave one-minute pitches for their companies. Nobody tried anything particularly daring or unusual in their presentations—which is too bad, because the final awards had already been decided, so they had nothing to lose. Their pitches were pretty conventional (and polished for the most part) spiels for their companies. One of my takeaways is, once you’ve seen enough of these presentations, you can tell most of what you need to know in one minute.

In the end, four startups won $100,000 each, and 12 startups won $50,000 each. The companies were refreshingly diverse in terms of their focus, but there were lots of familiar names; … Next Page »

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The World Economic Forum—the body behind the exclusive annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland—today released its “Technology Pioneers” list for 2011. An unusually large number of the companies on the list (11 out of 31) are located in or near Xconomy’s home cities—see the rundown below.

For the Pioneers list, the WEF singles out companies that “represent the cutting edge in innovation and are poised to have a critical impact on the future of business, industry and society,” in the words of today’s announcement. To be chosen, an honoree “must be involved in the development of a major technology and/or innovation and have the potential for long-term impact on business and society. In addition, it must demonstrate visionary leadership and show all the signs of being a long-standing and sustainable market leader—and its technology must be proven.”

The Technology Pioneers selection committee includes technology and media executives as well as government, NGO, and university officials.

This year’s honorees will receive recognition at the “Summer Davos”—the Annual Meeting of the New Champions—in Tianjin, China, from September 13 to 15.

Boston

Adimab (Lebanon, NH)—Antibody-based drug discovery and optimization.

Digital Lumens (Boston)—Efficient LED-based lighting systems.

Ion Torrent (Gilford, CT)—Rapid semiconductor-based genome sequencing. (Recently acquired by Life Technologies.)

Medicine in Need (Cambridge, MA)—Reformulating drugs and vaccines for delivery in developing countries.

San Diego

On-Ramp Wireless (San Diego)—Low-power monitoring and control for smart grid and industrial applications.

San Francisco

Aster Data (San Carlos, CA)—Rapid analytics for very large datasets.

GetJar Networks (San Mateo, CA)—Cross-platform app store for Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone, and Symbian devices.

OpenDNS (San Francisco)—Domain name system management with built-in security.

ReputationDefender (Redwood City, CA)—Online identity management to protect against identity theft and defamation.

Scribd (San Francisco)—Cross-platform, online publishing and document sharing.

Northwest

Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies (Vancouver, BC)—Converting phosphorus and ammonia in wastewater into fertilizer.

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Carlsbad-based wireless chipmaker MaxLinear (NYSE: MXL) says today that its CEO, Kishore Seendripu, was named last week as the 2010 Ernst & Young “entrepreneur of the year” in the technology category. Other San Diego categories and winners are: Consumer Products, Larry Gilbert of Event Network; Health Sciences, Scott Huennekens, Volcano; Emerging, Russ Mann of Covario; and Construction & Facilities, Tim Penick, T.B. Penick & Sons. All regional winners are invited to Ernst & Young’s national gala, which will be hosted by Jay Leno in Palm Springs on Nov. 13.

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