It’s been a busy week around here for the big tech companies. At Xconomy, we don’t usually report on things like product releases from Microsoft or sales figures from Amazon—our main focus is on new ideas, models, and companies—but readers need to understand where the big players are heading so they can see the gaps and opportunities for new businesses. So, for each of these pieces of mainstream tech news, I’ll tell you why savvy innovators and business leaders should care.

—Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) demonstrated its Web-based Chrome operating system for the first time in public yesterday. It won’t be available for another year, but the tech community is scrambling to understand all the implications. (Google’s Seattle engineers have contributed technology to the Chrome Web browser, helping to boost security—one potential advantage of a cloud-based operating system).

Sure, a fully cloud-based OS is a direct threat to Microsoft’s business model and the ecosystem of companies that support Windows. But more than that, it could reshape the landscape of online advertising by providing a new platform for launching ads on mobile devices, video channels (YouTube), and Internet TV. Perhaps the only thing that can slow down Google’s dominance on the Web is the federal government. In other words, this could get ugly.

—Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has teamed up with LinkedIn to provide info about your business contacts within Outlook e-mail. It’s all part of Microsoft’s Outlook Social Connector, an add-in that feeds you data from your social networks. Integrating e-mail with social networks and search is a fast-growing area, with startups like Gist in Seattle (backed by Paul Allen and Foundry Group) helping lead the way. Gist’s CEO T.A. McCann told TechFlash that he’s known about Microsoft’s effort for a while and doesn’t see it as a direct challenge. Gist’s offering is more advanced, he said, and it includes features like integrating with Salesforce.com and the iPhone. But startups and investors beware: if you’re in this crowded space, you better have a product that cuts through the noise and has a way to attract customers fast.

—RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK) is in discussions with Viacom’s MTV Networks to sell off at least some of its stake in the Rhapsody music service, as first reported by PaidContent. In a regulatory filing, prompted by a tender offer to issue new stock, Real said it is in talks to reorganize the management structure and/or corporate governance of the division, which might mean giving up its majority ownership stake (51 percent) in Rhapsody. Back in September, digital-media guru Bill Baxter (now at Seattle-based Cozi) wrote in Xconomy about Rhapsody’s fierce competition with Pandora, iTunes, and piracy. Message to startups: the world of digital music services is probably not where you want to be.

—Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has been busy ramping up operations ahead of the holiday shopping season. Its billion-dollar acquisition of Zappos is helping it expand into shoes and apparel, and its Kindle sales look poised to take off, especially now that Barnes & Noble’s competing e-book reader, the Nook, has sold out until January. Amazon has really become the business and technology model to follow in online retail and product search. While there is still room for e-commerce startups to compete in various niches, they would be wise to study how Amazon built its brand and customer relationships before branching out to the wider world of retail.

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Working for the man. It’s what most entrepreneurs want to avoid at all costs. But if their startup gets bought by a big company, that’s often just what happens—at least for a while.

Although the acquisitions market for tech startups has been relatively soft during the recession, there have been a few recent local examples to draw from. I took a highly unscientific sample of how three Seattle startups are doing post-acquisition. I wanted to hear about the cultural fit, the level of autonomy, and so forth. Not surprisingly, the ones I talked to said their transitions have gone very smoothly. Maybe the surprising thing is that I believe them (well, mostly—they did have to be pretty vague about future plans).

Here’s an update on the three startups and their founders:

Ethan Lowry, Urbanspoon (acquired by IAC in February 2009, announced in April)

The transition has been “remarkably uneventful,” Lowry says. “They’ve been very hands off.” He says IAC (NASDAQ: IACI) has been very supportive of Urbanspoon’s restaurant site, and that his team touches base with the mother ship once a week. “There’s all sorts of discussions before you get acquired. They say you’ll run your own ship…you’re kind of nodding, but what’s it really going to be like?” Lowry says. “I’ve been through other acquisitions that left you feeling more ripped out of your culture.”

He does say, half-jokingly, that Urbanspoon has gone through a “huge shift for us”—growing from three to five employees (adding a developer and a customer service person), and relocating to an office with a better view of Lake Union in Fremont, about a mile away from the old digs on Eastlake Avenue.

Last week, Urbanspoon introduced its “Scope” feature for its iPhone app, which lets you discover restaurants on the street around you by adding visual info to the camera feed on the screen. “In the beginning of summer, ‘augmented reality’ got a little bit of buzz,” Lowry says. “We thought, ‘This is cool, but seems super-gimmicky.’ We started prototyping something, and quickly discovered it’s entertaining. It’s fun, but can solve a real problem.” He adds that Urbanspoon has about 7 million installs of its iPhone app, making the Scope the biggest augmented reality app so far.

IAC’s future plans for the company are under wraps, but Lowry says Urbanspoon is …Next Page »

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In his 2006 run for the Massachusetts governor’s office, Deval Patrick campaigned on the need to make the most of the state’s “creative economy,” meaning industries such as advertising, architecture, design, digital media, film, gaming, marketing, music, publishing, tourism, and the arts. It’s a sector that employs at least 100,000 people in the state, and that has long been one of the Boston area’s strengths. But Patrick’s point was that putting even more emphasis on these industries, through public and private investment, could help to counteract declines in other fields such as manufacturing, bring in more high-paying jobs, and maybe even make life more interesting.

Well, the recession that set in shortly after Patrick took office and the state government’s resulting financial woes have pretty much ruled out significant new public spending on creative-economy programs. There’s even a movement to roll back the state’s one major economic initiative in the arts, the costly film tax credit enacted under Governor Mitt Romney in 2005 and expanded under Patrick in 2007. But Patrick has made good on his campaign promise in other ways, notably by launching a new Creative Economy Council to identify the biggest needs in the creative sectors and appointing a full-time “creative economy industry director” within the Massachusetts Office of Business Development to work directly with companies in these sectors.

The man who fills those shoes—and, so far as Xconomy can tell, the only person in any U.S. state agency explicitly tasked with helping local creative industries—is 33-year-old Jason Schupbach. While peers at the MOBD cover areas such as life sciences and defense, Schupbach’s primary job is to help for-profit businesses in the creative sector find the resources they need to grow in the state. (The MOBD is part of the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development; last month we published an extensive two-part interview with Greg Bialecki, who heads that office.) Schupbach is also pinch-hitting right now as acting technology industry director while that title’s usual holder, Tito Jackson, is on leave to run for an at-large seat on the Boston City Council.

Schupbach seems omnipresent in the entrepreneurship community lately. If you’ve been to recent events such as the TechStars Investor Evening on September 11, the Tech Tuesday game-industry meetup on September 15, or the MassTLC gaming panel at the UK Consulate on September 24, you’ve probably run into him or seen him speak. His oft-repeated refrain at these events is that the Patrick Administration cares about the state’s innovators, and is ready to promote their work in any way it can. One recent mark of that recognition was Patrick’s proclamation of September 9, 2009 (the day Harmonix Music released Beatles: Rock Band) as “Video Game Innovation Day”; Schupbach showed off the signed, leather-bound proclamation at several local meetups.

A 2003 graduate of MIT’s Master in City Planning program, Schupbach studied under the late J. Mark Schuster, a well-known proponent for cultural policies in urban planning. “I was really interested in how the arts and culture and creative fields fit into the design of a city,” Schupbach told me in an interview late last month. “I wanted to be a city designer, but I wasn’t very good at the design part, so I ended up writing my thesis about the trend of cities trying to bring artists into their downtowns.” He won the best thesis award—and went on to do exactly what he had written about, working for New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and then for the Ford Foundation’s Artist Link project, which promotes affordable urban housing for artists.

In our interview, snippets of which are highlighted below, I asked Schupbach to describe his more recent role at MOBD and to talk about the office’s biggest creative-economy initiatives. While the state’s revenue crunch means that his job is largely about directing businesses to existing resources, along with a good measure of cheerleading, Schupbach says a recession is actually a good time to think and plan (that’s one of the roles of the Creative Economy Council, which he coordinates). “The state budget will come back. Things are cyclical,” Schupbach says. “This is the time to plan and write law for when there is money around.”

On the state’s new focus on retaining local innovators:

We are never going to be the state that pays a zillion dollars to move Boeing here. We don’t have oil money like Louisiana. What we have is an enormous amount of talent that’s here already, and we have to figure out the best way to get them to stay here so that we’ll have the next billion-dollar company here. That’s why you see us trying to …Next Page »

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It’s not getting any easier to write and perform great music. But for up-and-coming artists, it is getting easier to build a fan base—especially if they can get their fans to do part of the work for them.

That’s the idea behind MyStore, a new Facebook application launched last week by Framingham, MA-based Nimbit. The five-year-old startup builds online tools that help artists sell and market their music directly to fans, with no need for a middleman like a recording label or a promoter. Up to now, that’s mainly taken the form of a Web-based platform that bands can plug into their websites or blogs, allowing them to do things like track fans, promote concerts, and sell digital downloads, tickets, CDs, and other merchandise. But with MyStore, Nimbit has transplanted its marketing and e-commerce engine into the world’s largest social networking site—which means every transaction a band or artist conducts can potentially be magnified many times over by the power of its fans’ social connections.

Once an artist or a band joins Nimbit and sets up a MyStore tab in their Facebook profile, Facebook’s own networking tools swing into action on their behalf. Every time a fan plays a song from the MyStore, or buys a download, or leaves a comment, that action shows up on their wall for all of their friends to see. If a Facebook member recommends a band to a friend, the recommendation will lead them back to the band’s MyStore. And nobody ever has to leave Facebook to make a purchase—the store provides a shopping cart, credit-card processing, the whole e-commerce shebang.

It’s a big step for Nimbit, whose main previous venture into the social networking world was an “online merchandise table” widget for MySpace. The 14-employee company, which has angel funding from Lexington, MA-based CommonAngels, was already growing fast, with 10,000 artists and labels signed up as users and 50 percent year-over-year revenue growth, according to co-founder and CEO Patrick Faucher, himself a professional trumpet player and vocalist. With Facebook’s population zooming past 300 million users (and MySpace’s plummeting at a similar rate) the MyStore integration could become an important new selling point for Nimbit. I talked last week with Faucher, and had a chance to ask him how the MyStore app can help artists, how social networking fits into the company’s vision, and what it was like to work with Facebook. An edited version of our conversation follows.

Xconomy: Obviously most serious bands have a MySpace presence. Is there a lot of music discovery going on through the other social networking sites?

Patrick Faucher: It depends on the genre and the demographic. Some might do well on MySpace, some might do well on traditional radio, and some are still basically out there doing regional touring, and that’s where they are generating exposure. But at some point in every artist’s process for marketing and promotion, there is an opportunity for a fan to interact with them online, whether that happens to be on MySpace or on their own official website or on Facebook. That is the point at which we maximize that interaction, by making sure the artists can capture their fans, engage them with product offers, and give them a rewarding way to buy directly from them.

X: If you’re an artist or a band, why go to the trouble of building a store inside Facebook—what’s wrong with iTunes?

PF: If the fan has taken the time to find you and you have them right there in front of you, why send them down the street to buy from someone else? We act as a transparent layer between the artist and the fan. Our job is to …Next Page »

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It can’t hurt for Rhapsody to offer an iPhone app. However, they are going to have to compete with rampant iTunes, Pandora, and rampant piracy. While Pandora has a paid option, their free option satisfies many of the needs mobile users have for music. If RealNetworks offers a similar “free” option, it could provide a natural up-sell path to a paid subscription. Further, having such a free version, combined with MP3 music download micro-purchases, could boost the sales of both their subscription services and their MP3 sales. That would be goodness.

As I see it, subscription services for music, while viable, is going to be a relatively small niche of the music business. Users are pursuing music across multiple devices, and the burden to carry DRM [digital rights management] along with the music creates adoption hurdles that limit the size of the total addressable market.

If you look at Rhapsody subscription growth, it is largely driven by inorganic customer acquisition. The integration of Yahoo! Music Unlimited customers and Verizon Wireless probably accounted for all the growth, possibly offsetting declines that would have otherwise occurred. I think this is a mixed signal. On the one hand, at best there has been little to no growth in the business in the prior six months. On the other, adding new modes of consumption, like Verizon Wireless mobile devices, has resulted in some growth. Though they did not split-out the latter in their last quarterly report, I suspect that most of the growth in the six month period ending on June 30th was probably the result of the Yahoo! Music Unlimited integration.

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Rhapsody, the online music service run by Seattle-based RealNetworks, is now available as an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It is the first time Apple has allowed on-demand music streaming on its mobile devices in the U.S. Rhapsody customers will have access to some 8 million songs for a monthly fee of about $15. RealNetworks is also working to bring Rhapsody to other mobile devices, such as Google Android phones.

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It’s a banner day for the Boston-area gaming industry. In what’s either a bizarre coincidence, a piece of arcane marketing numerology, or just a sign that the enormous PAX gaming conference in Seattle has ended, three local companies in the console and online gaming markets picked 09/09/09 to take the lid off big new products.

There’s Turbine, which is smashing down the old subscription wall around its Dungeons & Dragons Online title; Quick Hit, which is kicking off its online football simulation; and Harmonix Music Systems, which will take console gamers on a magical mystery tour with The Beatles: Rock Band. And oh yeah, there’s a little company out west that’s mounting a big media event today around a gadget called the iPod.

Here’s the full scoop:

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited

As we reported last month, Westwood, MA-based Turbine has decided to take a big gamble with one of its premier titles, Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO). Formerly available only to subscribers who paid $14.99 per month, DDO today becomes the first major online fantasy game from an American game publisher to go “free-to-play.” It’s been a successful model for many Asian game publishers such as South Korea’s Nexon, whose free virtual world Maple Story has 15 million users. But for Turbine to avoid losing money on the changeover, which has been in the works for almost two years, it will need to entice users of the role-playing game to engage in microtransactions at the new DDO Store, where they can equip their avatars with everything from armor to healing potions to—in the company’s words—”massive cans of kick-ass.”

The currency at the DDO Store is Turbine Points, which players can obtain by putting in time online or by paying real cash. For the benefit of users who prefer the old model, the revamped game world, called Eberron, includes new areas or “adventure packs” that are open only to subscribers; these “VIPs” get a monthly cache of free Turbine Points to spend at the store.

Fernando Paiz, the executive producer of Eberron Unlimited, told me that Turbine hopes that the free-to-play model will draw more casual users into the DDO world. “One of the top barriers to any massively multiplayer online game today is the subscription,” he says. “People will say, ‘I like role-playing games or online games but I just don’t play enough to sign up for a $15 monthly subscription.’ We didn’t want that to be a barrier.”

The company is hoping, of course, that some free players will end up spending $15 or more per month on Turbine Points. Behavioral economists might call this a good bet: experiments have shown that consumers are more averse to losing money, even if it’s on something intangible like an unused game subscription, than they are to spending the same amount for a more visible and immediate reward.

“The DDO Unlimited Beta program has been a huge success and the initial response to the game from both press and players has been nothing short of phenomenal,” Turbine CEO Jim Crowley said in a press announcement today. “In response, we have already more than doubled our capacity to handle the increased demand.”

Quick Hit

[Delay of game! -- Quick Hit (see comment below) has just let us know it is putting off opening the site to the public while it works on last-minute adjustments. No word on the new kickoff time as of yet.] My sports-fan friends inform me that the official NFL season gets underway tomorrow night with a game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Tennessee Titans. But if you just can’t wait another day, you can try Quick Hit, an online football game that melds elements of fantasy sports, role-playing games, and console games into a …Next Page »

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It was a bit of a quiet week for Northwest deals, with some local venture dollars going to other parts of the country. Nevertheless, there was activity in gaming, music, robotics, biotech, and cleantech.

—Seattle-based Tuusso Energy completed a $2 million financing round led by Pivotal Investments, based in Portland, OR. The deal was made in partnership with Akula Energy Ventures, which will co-invest in Tuusso’s development of utility-scale solar power plants in the western U.S.

—Bellevue, WA-based Smith & Tinker said it has raised a total of $29 million in venture funding from DCM, Vulcan Capital, Foundry Group, Alsop Louie Partners, and Leo Capital Holdings. The gaming company was founded in 2007 and closed its most recent funding round last month. It is now promoting its new hybrid online/offline game, called Nanovor.

—Kirkland, WA-based OVP Venture Partners participated in a $45 million financing round for Complete Genomics, based in Mountain View, CA, as Luke reported. Enterprise Partners Venture Capital, Prospect Venture Partners, Highland Capital Management, Essex Woodlands Health Ventures, and OrbiMed Advisors also contributed. It’s the fourth round of funding for Complete Genomics (for a total of $90 million-plus), which is building a commercial human genome sequencing center in Silicon Valley.

—ProFibrix, a Netherlands-based medical company with a Seattle subsidiary, raised $11 million in a Series B financing from new investor Gilde Healthcare Partners and existing investor Index Ventures. The company makes a dry powder topical tissue sealant that stops bleeding during or after surgery.

—Seattle-based Bezos Expeditions, the venture investing operation of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, has invested in Heartland Robotics, a Cambridge, MA-based startup led by MIT computer scientist Rod Brooks. Wade reported that the industrial robotics company has raised just over $7 million in an equity offering in which Bezos Expeditions participated. Other investors were not disclosed.

—Bothell, WA-based AVI Biopharma raised another $30 million through a stock offering underwritten by Jefferies & Company, as Luke reported. AVI (NASDAQ: AVII), which recently moved headquarters from Portland to Bothell, is developing experimental RNA therapies for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and Ebola virus.

—MySpace confirmed its acquisition of Seattle-based iLike, as Eric reported. Financial terms were not disclosed, but the widely rumored price was $20 million. iLike will remain in Seattle, with its 26 employees joining the MySpace team, according to Owen Van Natta, the CEO of MySpace.

—Seattle-based Cell Therapeutics (NASDAQ: CTIC), the cancer drug developer, raised $30 million by selling preferred stock and warrants to purchase shares of its common stock to a single institutional investor, as Eric reported. Cell Therapeutics will use the money as operating capital.

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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 crazy busy week for deals in the Northwest. Just when we thought the flow might slow down before the end of summer, we saw tons of activity in software, Internet, mobile, gaming, and materials.

—Bellevue, WA-based Apptio, the IT cost management startup led by CEO Sunny Gupta, raised $14 million in Series B funding from Madrona Venture Group, Greylock Partners, Shasta Ventures, and the Andreessen Horowitz Fund. The money will allow Apptio to aggressively expand its sales and product development. Gupta also had some telling things to say about his company’s culture.

—Seattle-based Impinj has teamed up with Coca-Cola to provide radio frequency identification tags and readers for the soda giant’s new Freestyle drink dispensers. Financial terms were not given. The Impinj technology will allow Coke to track and monitor its dispenser operations and customer preferences in real time.

—Hillsboro, OR-based AISI, maker of a testing system for semiconductor memory manufacturing, closed a Series B financing round worth $11 million, as Eric reported. Investors in this round included OVP Venture Partners, TL Ventures, and Intel Capital.

—Seattle and San Francisco-based Jambool raised $5 million in venture funding, led by Madrona Venture Group. Bay Partners also participated in the financing round. Jambool has developed a micropayments and virtual currency system for social online games.

—Vancouver, WA-based ClearAccess raised about $6 million in Series B funding from Blade Ventures, Buerk Dale Victor, and DFJ Frontier, as Eric reported. ClearAccess provides data services and broadband device management for Internet service providers.

—Kirkland, WA-based OVP Venture Partners led a $14 million Series B financing round for Boston-based Novomer, a green materials startup, as Wade reported. Physic Venture Partners, Flagship Venture Partners, and DSM Venturing also participated in the round.

—Seattle-based iLike is rumored to be bought by MySpace for some $20 million, as Eric reported. The deal could close by the end of this week. Founded in 2002, iLike is an Internet music company that helps people find new music and concerts and create playlists.

—Seattle-based NewPath Networks, a provider of wireless carrier network technologies, announced a new $10 million line of credit from Square 1 Bank. Back in April, NewPath raised $30 million from New York-based Charterhouse Group and Denver-based Meritage Funds. NewPath designs and operates antenna systems for wireless networks.

—Seattle Genetics (NASDAQ: SGEN), a Bothell, WA-based developer of antibody drugs for cancer, raised $136 million in a stock sale, as Luke reported. JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs led the offering. Seattle Genetics is six months ahead of schedule in a pivotal study of its experimental drug for Hodgkin’s disease.

—Seattle-based Z2Live, a mobile social games startup, has raised $3 million from Madrona Venture Group, according to a report in TechCrunch. Z2Live has developed a free, multiplayer platform for social and casual games on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

—Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) announced an alliance that will create adaptations of Microsoft programs, like Office, for Nokia smartphones. Financial terms weren’t given, but the two companies will jointly market the products they create together. Nokia’s Symbian mobile operating system has been a major competitor to Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform.

—Lastly, we provided some more in-depth analysis of Microsoft’s sale of Seattle-based Razorfish to Publicis for $530 million, from Cascadia Capital’s Warren Gouk, an expert on mergers and Internet strategy. Gouk said Microsoft stands to gain a lot if the deal drives its search and display advertising business, while Razorfish could expand its international market.

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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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Seattle-based iLike, a popular music service company that helps people find new music, create playlists, and plan for concerts, has launched a new iPhone and iPod Touch application today that will scan music on the device and send a personalized local concert listing based on what it finds, according to an announcement today. iLike also announced that more than 250 musicians have created personalized iPhone apps using iLike’s artist iPhone app platform. The company has adapted its application for platforms including iTunes and Facebook as well as its own iPhone app. iLike currently has more than 50 million registered users.

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Chelmsford, MA-based OurStage, which runs monthly contests where bands upload their music and videos to its website to compete for cash and other prizes, is among a number of Web startups in the Boston area that cater to music fans and bands. But the company has also managed to attract a paying corporate audience—providing a needed financial boost during the economic recession, CEO Ben Campbell tells Xconomy.

Before the economic meltdown began last September, OurStage had $6 million worth of investment commitments for its second round of financing, Campbell says. But all of those commitments had vanished by October 2008, when investors pulled out amid concerns about the ailing economy. To stay in business, the firm shrank its staff from 38 to 17 people. It also adjusted its strategy to generate more visibility among music fans—not to mention cash flow—through sponsorships and other partnerships with large corporations.

OurStage now has 18 employees and has scraped together $4 million of the $6 million it seeks for its Series B round of equity financing. It names among its corporate sponsors or partners AOL Music, MTV2, JetBlue, and Radio One. (In July, we reported the first $3 million the firm raised in the round. It has now raised $21 million altogether from a combination of angel investors and other backers.) These big names and others have paid OurStage to sponsor the firm’s musical contests, which enable fans to have a say in who becomes the next big stars and gives the sponsors like MTV some insight into which talents will catch on with their target audiences.

Though there’s no shortage of online venues that allow listeners to pick and listen to musical acts they enjoy most, OurStage is worth noting as a local firm that has generated revenue (and perhaps someday profits) from this type of service. The company, which got its start in 2007 to focus on bringing online listeners the best new music and talents, is moving ahead with several approaches to make the site a moneymaker.

“Our approach is to partner with as many [industry] giants as possible,” Campbell says.

This approach serves the company on at least a couple of fronts, according to Campbell. In July, the startup ran separate fan-judged contests sponsored by MTV2 and Radio One. The contests not only generated sponsorship revenue, but both companies promoted the contests to their own viewers and listeners, helping to send more than 3.5 million unique visitors to OurStage.com for the month. Campbell says that the number of visitors to the site has a direct impact on how much money it receives from sponsors and advertisers. And though the company had a good traffic month in July, Campbell says that he won’t be satisfied that his company’s site is reaching a mainstream audience until the audience hits 10 million unique visitors per month.

In addition to sponsorships and advertisements, OurStage is developing two other means of generating revenue: …Next Page »

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The rock and roll moment of the night came when James Dixon broke a bass string during the first song from his hard-driving metal band Juda’s Wake. Let me tell you, it’s not that easy to break a bass string unless you really shred it. It’s also not easy to describe Juda’s Wake beyond killer metal chops, extreme volume, and tremendous hair (from a Microsoft band no less). “We’re here to piss some people off,” Dixon said, to the crowd’s delight.

Five bands competed in the Xconomy Battle of the Tech Bands, hosted at the Washington Technology Industry Association’s annual summer celebration at the Pyramid Alehouse in Seattle. Five bands left as winners in my book. From the first act, the quirky and inimitable Afraid of Figs (representing MorphoTrak and Robert Half Technology), to the closers, the powerful alt-rockers Between These Lines (representing Hewlett-Packard), these performers left it all out on the stage. Check out the comprehensive review of the show from Gene Stout, the former Seattle P-I pop music critic, in TechFlash.

In the end, we gave out two official prizes. Melodic and laid-back rockers Indigo Soul (see photo below), led by Mark Protus of Caiman Consulting (the band also represented Microsoft), took home the Audience Favorite prize—a year of promotional services from Nimbit, a renowned Boston-area firm.

And the Most Innovative Band award, decided by our panel of judges, went to hip-hop rockers Lions Ambition (representing Boeing), for their inspired rhythms and stratospheric vocals—they received free studio time from The Hive Recording Studio in SeaTac.

But I would go see any of these bands again in a heartbeat. And in fact, three of them are playing shows in the area tonight. Afraid of Figs is at the Mix in Georgetown; Lions Ambition is at El Corazon in Seattle; and Between These Lines is at the Manette Saloon in Bremerton.

Great thanks to WTIA for co-organizing the event with us. And thanks to headliner sponsor Lionfish Creative, live-voting sponsor SinglePoint, drink-ticket sponsor Nyhus Communications, and supporting sponsors CCS Printing and ServerLogic, as well as all our raffle prize donors (proceeds went to Technology Access Foundation and Jack Straw Productions). Finally, the show would not have gone on without the hard work of CarToys, Stageworks Productions, and Pyramid to handle the logistics.

We had a great time, and hope you all did too. Drop us a line if you have any feedback on the event. See you next year!

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We’re all still running around covering the fine art of innovation this afternoon, but soon we’ll be heading over to the Pyramid Alehouse next to Safeco Field (see map here), where the stage is being put together for tonight’s big event, as we speak.

Xconomy and the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) are partners on this Battle of the Tech Bands in Seattle, which is happening at WTIA’s annual summer celebration. We’re expecting a fantastic crowd, and a rocking competition. Doors open at 5 pm, and the bands kick off at 6 pm (five groups, five different styles), with temperatures expected to be in the upper 80s. So dress accordingly, channel your inner rock geek, and don’t worry—there’ll be plenty of beer to cool you off as the night progresses.

Thanks to The Seattle Times, TechFlash, and nPost for the great event coverage. And former P-I pop music critic Gene Stout will be in the house—enough said. See you there!

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After a scorching week of 90-degree temperatures, what could be better than kicking back with a nice cold one, catching up with friends and colleagues—and seeing five of Seattle’s top rock bands with tech affiliations duke it out for prizes and the adulation of the crowd?

It’s all happening this Thursday evening at Xconomy’s Battle of the Tech Bands, at WTIA’s summer celebration down at the Pyramid Alehouse in Seattle. The Battle will take place from 6-9 pm. Get your tickets online here, by Tuesday 5 pm, as they are going fast…

The bands (listen to their songs here) will be competing for two prizes—Audience Favorite (voted on by the crowd via SMS), which wins one year of band promotional services from Nimbit, and Most Innovative Band (voted on by our judges), which wins free studio time from The Hive Recording Studio. Both winners will also receive free press releases to promote their shows, tours, and albums with traditional and online media outlets, courtesy of Marketwire.

We’ll also be giving out raffle prizes throughout the evening, including a Seattle harbor cruise for four from Argosy Cruises, museum passes and a gift certificate from the Experience Music Project, Guitar Hero III courtesy of Guitar Center, and Seattle Mariners gift packs (see the event site for a complete list). All raffle ticket proceeds are going to our charitable partners, Technology Access Foundation and Jack Straw Productions. Thanks to all for their generous donations.

And last, but not least, check out Paul Allen and Bill Gates in cartoon-land, as they prepare to compete in the Battle. I’m actually starting to believe they might be there, although I don’t know about the costume (that puts it over the top). It’s the latest installment of Protingent Man by David J. Locher, courtesy of Donn Harvey at Protingent Staffing:

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Kashless.org, a free online goods market, has launched its first celebrity donation program, according to a press release today. Seattle-based Kashless is working with Dave Dederer, the former singer and guitarist for The Presidents of the United States of America, for this first program. Dederer is donating a guitar and a set of skis, and users of Kashless will be able to write why they think they should get the items for free. Having a celebrity donate to the site should raise awareness about the environmental good Kashless CEO Martin Tobias hopes the site can do, especially during a time when many people are looking for alternative ways to get rid of (or acquire) goods.

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It’s all about the party. It’s all about the networking. No. For today, at least, it’s all about the rock.

Seattle’s first-ever Battle of the Tech Bands is happening one week from tonight, on July 30, at the Pyramid Alehouse. The music starts at 6 pm. Xconomy is teaming up with WTIA to bring this showcase of bands to our fair city, and it’s going to be one heck of a blast. Tickets are going fast, so be sure to get yours in advance here.

I even know what the prizes are going to be—for the winners of Audience Favorite and Most Innovative Band—but I’m not telling yet. All in good time. For now, I want all your attention on the bands. Why? Because they’re incredibly good, that’s why.

For your listening pleasure, I’ve included one track from each band below, as well as a brief bio from their websites. Enjoy!

Afraid of Figs is a band of talented musicians from previous bands. They share a serious work ethic, off the wall sense of humor, and love of performing. Influences include: Barenaked Ladies, Presidents of the USA, Cake, Ben Folds, and others.

Here’s their incomparable track, “I Ate A Vegan”:

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Between These Lines started rocking in late 2005 as a trio jamming on some of the most popular pop-punk rock songs of recent. In September 2008, Between These Lines began recording their debut EP, Familiar Places, with Producer Brandon Bee in Tacoma, Washington. This highly regarded album has been compared to artists such as Paramore, Acceptance, Jimmy Eat World, and Taking Back Sunday.

The rich and swirling “Confess To Impress”:

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Indigo Soul is the alter-ego of Seattle-based singer/songwriter Mark Protus. Music critics describe the Indigo Soul sound as “very melodic song-based rock that’s in no way enslaved to any current trends.” The band combines smart and thoughtful lyrics with “fresh sounds and catchy and soulful classic-rock styles.”

The haunting harmonies and melodic lines of “Waiting For You”:

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Juda’s Wake is a modern Seattle-based metal power trio. They pull together a penetrating mix of intricate guitar, heavy rhythmic hooks, and edged vocal melodies resulting in a convincing, hard hitting, and articulate noise. Juda’s Wake draws influence from such bands as Tool, Disturbed, Marilyn Manson, Rush, Mudvayne, and Static-X, but has brewed a new take on the aggressive sound.

The awesome head-banging thrashiness of “Loggerhead”:

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Lions Ambition is a hip-hop/rock band based out of Seattle, WA. The band mixes together live instrumentation, soulful vocals, and conscious lyrics to blend together a truly unique sound. The band has played in parts of Canada, California, and Seattle at different venues, festivals, and college events.

The soulful and articulate goodness of “Dreams (Don’t Let Go)”:

That’s it for now. Get your tickets, and see you on the 30th!

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With just under two weeks to go until Seattle’s first-ever Battle of the Tech Bands, I thought I’d give you a quick preview of the event. It’s all taking place on July 30 at the WTIA Summer Celebration, at the Pyramid Alehouse (registration and ticket info here). The music will start at 6pm, and we’ll stick to a pretty tight schedule.

Five bands will compete for two prizes—Audience Favorite (voted on by you, the attendees) and Most Innovative Band (voted on by the event judges). Each of the five finalists will get a 15-minute set. I’ll follow up next week with a more extensive preview of the bands, but for now you can check out their music on their respective sites:

Afraid of Figs
(representing MorphoTrak and Robert Half Technology)

Between These Lines
(representing Hewlett-Packard)

Indigo Soul
(representing Microsoft and Adobe)

Juda’s Wake
(representing Microsoft)

Lions Ambition
(representing Boeing)

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And last, but not least, we have an honorary sixth entrant that will be there in spirit—that is, unless Paul Allen and Bill Gates decide to drop in for an unannounced set (one can always hope…stranger things have happened. OK, maybe not). It’s the Protingent Man comic, the latest installment of which appears below, courtesy of David J. Locher and Donn Harvey of Protingent Staffing:
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And then there were five. Here at Xconomy, we have made our selections for the five finalists who will compete at our inaugural Battle of the Tech Bands in Seattle, to be held on the evening of Thursday, July 30 at the WTIA Summer Celebration at the Pyramid Alehouse. We are looking forward to putting on a spectacular show. (Registration info is here.)

It’s been a long road. We put out the call for bands more than two months ago. We got a couple dozen competitive entrants (thanks to all the bands who applied). We listened to demos, sorted through band bios and websites, consulted our esteemed judges, and listened some more. After a few days of intensive discussions, we arrived at our top picks.

Five finalists, and five words: They are going to rock.

Their mix of musical styles, personalities, and companies represented (each band has at least one member from a Northwest technology firm) is pretty awesome. Most of all, each of them has a legitimate chance to win. In music, as in business, it all comes down to execution, right?

Two awards will be given at the event on July 30. One will be for Audience Favorite, based on voting by all of you, the attendees. The other will be for Most Innovative Band, which will be decided by a select panel of judges, together with Xconomy and WTIA staff.

So here they are—the five bands—along with the tech companies their members represent, my personal impressions of them, and why each has a real shot at winning. Please check out their stuff, come out and support the local tech-music scene, and cast your vote on July 30. We’ll see you there.

Drumroll, please…

Afraid of Figs
(MorphoTrak, Robert Half Technology)
Light, infectious pop rock reminiscent of Barenaked Ladies and Cake.
Why they could win: With a song called “I Ate a Vegan,” anything is possible.

Between These Lines
(Hewlett-Packard)
Contemporary alt-rock quintet with a polished, radio-ready sound.
Why they could win: With expertly crafted songs and strong stage presence, they might be hard to top.

Indigo Soul
(Microsoft, Adobe)
The melodic intersection of classic rock, 80s pop, soulful lyrics, and rocking rhythms.
Why they could win: Their music might be just perfect for a warm, mid-summer evening celebration.

Juda’s Wake
(Microsoft)
Killer metal chops. Need we say more?
Why they could win: This band would have a chance to win any contest they entered—and I mean any.

Lions Ambition
(Boeing)
Energetic hip-hop, rock, and soul with monstrous hooks and catchy lyrics.
Why they could win: The whole city might be dancing after one song.

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