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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Seattle-based Movaya Wireless, a mobile software startup, has been acquired by Digby, a mobile commerce firm based in Austin, TX. Financial terms were not announced. Movaya was founded in 2006 by Phil Yerkes and Stanley Wang, and recently has been focused on making digital goods storefront applications for the iPhone, Android, and other mobile Web platforms. The company has a development team in China that will serve as the basis for Digby’s operations in Asia.

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It was a quiet week for deals in the Northwest, but we dug up some important ones in business software, wireless, and biotech.

—Seattle-based Amazon’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) acquisition of Zappos, the online apparel and shoe seller based in Las Vegas, has closed. The deal, first announced back in July, is valued at $1.2 billion in Amazon stock.

—Bellevue, WA-based Onehub has raised $1.3 million in Series A funding from Ignition Partners and angel investors. The company was founded in 2007 and makes Web-based software for business collaboration and file-sharing.

—We took a close look at small financing deals in the Northwest, worth between $100,000 and $1 million, that have flown under most people’s radar in the past month. According to stats from ChubbyBrain, a New York-based information and data services company tracking the innovation economy, the following companies raised a small amount of equity in September: Acucela, Adometry, BallLogic, InEnTec, Inson Medical Systems, Second Porch, Site 9, SynapticMash, Smilebox, Vantos, and WA 32609.

—Seattle-based Kineta, a biotech firm developing drugs to fight autoimmune diseases, has formed a strategic alliance with MPI Research, based in Michigan, as Luke reported. Financial terms of the deal weren’t given, but Kineta said it will receive support for animal studies that will enable the company to begin clinical trials next year.

—Portland, OR-based RF Arrays raised $6.5 million in equity, options, warrants, and/or other rights to acquire securities, according to a regulatory filing. The investors were not disclosed, but New York-based New Science Ventures has previously backed RF Arrays, which develops wireless communications technology.

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Seattle-based Amazon has started a mobile payments service that allows consumers to make purchases from their mobile devices using their Amazon accounts, according to a statement released today. More significantly, the service also gives developers, retailers, and distributors of mobile applications a way to process mobile payments from customers using Amazon’s online checkout system—without having to ask for their credit card numbers, which Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) already has.

It’s a bold strategic move for the e-commerce giant, which has been relatively quiet in the mobile space up to this point. It also puts Amazon directly up against big competitors like PayPal, Apple’s iTunes store, and Google’s Checkout service. One of the first mobile content distributors to use Amazon’s Mobile Payments Service is Kansas City, MO-based Handmark, which sells mobile games, applications, ringtones, and the like. By forming partnerships with other online stores like Handmark, Amazon could potentially reach a very broad mobile market since its payment service should work on many different types of devices and carrier networks.

Amazon has been diversifying across Internet retail lately. In recent months, it has made strong thrusts into shoes and clothing (with its acquisition of Zappos), electronics, and, of course, digital books with new variations of the Kindle. It would seem well-positioned to open, or buy, its own mobile app store in the future. Perhaps today’s announcement is a first step in exploring such a strategy.

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For some reason, it has been even harder than usual to keep up with Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) this month. Here’s a quick roundup of the week’s most interesting news regarding the Internet giant’s place in the e-book and retail world.

—Every day, it seems like a new e-book reader comes on the market to compete with Amazon’s Kindle—and further complicate the options and proprietary format issues for consumers. A New York Times piece this week examines Amazon’s strategy of pushing its own Kindle format while also acquiring Mobipocket and Lexcycle, companies that sell e-books and reader software for smartphones. The piece quotes Neelan Choksi, Lexcycle’s co-founder who’s now based in Seattle, about giving e-book consumers options.

—Last week, TechFlash published a graphic entitled “E-Book Universe,” which maps out the role of the various players in reader devices, content providers, mobile applications, and wireless carriers, and how they all relate to one another. It’s not a comprehensive chart, but it gives you an immediate sense of how convoluted the industry has become.

—Amazon has always been about more than just books (digital or not). Last weekend, the company launched its own line of electronics accessories, called Amazon Basics, as reported by The Wall Street Journal and other outlets. For now, the product line will focus on inexpensive items like blank DVDs and audio-video cables. “We saw an opportunity to create a line of consumer electronics basics that combine quality and low prices for an overall focus on value,” said Paul Ryder, Amazon’s vice president of consumer electronics, in a statement.

—In a feature published last Sunday, The New York Times asks whether the company will become the “Wal-Mart of the Web.” The article points out that Amazon threatens to put big retailers out of business the same way it has outcompeted independent booksellers and other stores. The Times notes that in the quarter ending in June, Amazon’s worldwide sales of books, music, videos, and other media grew 1 percent, to $2.4 billion, while its sales of everything else (electronics and general merchandise) grew by 35 percent to $2.07 billion, and are projected to take the lead later this year.

As Xconomy has reported previously, large retailers like Target, Borders, and Toys ‘R’ Us have ended their Web partnerships with Amazon in an effort to better compete with the Internet giant, which is now in the process of integrating its biggest acquisition to date—online clothing and shoe store Zappos.

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It was another fairly quiet week for Northwest deals, as summer officially winds down. Activity in wireless, software, and biotech led the way.

—The Oregon Angel Fund, based in Portland, said it has closed a new $3 million fund this summer, raised from 60 individual investors and the Oregon Growth Account, a state-run fund dedicated to startups. The angel group has made three new investments with its fund, putting $500,000 into Vancouver, WA-based ClearAccess, committing to invest $500,000 in Portland-based Giftango, and investing $405,000 in Portland-based Wicked Quick.

—Kirkland, WA-based Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) signed a collaborative agreement with UQ Communications of Japan and Yota of Russia to support international roaming between the three WiMax operators. Financial details weren’t given. Clearwire is rolling out WiMax, a next-generation wireless broadband service, in cities across the U.S.

—Mukilteo, WA-based CombiMatrix (NASDAQ: CBMX) received a $1.5 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to develop automated tools that can detect biological, chemical, and environmental hazards, as Luke reported. CombiMatrix makes genetic analysis tools, and has developed other products for the military.

—Plum, a social media sharing and messaging service backed by Seattle’s Vulcan Capital and Levensohn Venture Partners in San Francisco, was acquired by Finnish mobile giant Nokia (NYSE: NOK). Financial details were not disclosed. Plum has about 10 employees in Boston and San Francisco.

—Seattle-based Uptake Medical raised $3.4 million out of a total equity offering worth $13.3 million, as Luke reported. The investors were not disclosed. Uptake Medical is developing a device that seals off access to diseased parts of the lung where air gets trapped, without leaving any implantable device behind.

—Redmond, WA-based Smilebox, a photo services startup, acquired Preclick, a Seattle and New Jersey-based maker of photo software for retailers like Walmart, Costco, and Walgreens, for an undisclosed price. Smilebox launched its service, which lets people create electronic greeting cards, photo albums, and slideshows, in 2006.

—Venture capitalists invested $25 million in four companies headquartered in Washington state last month, according to data from ChubbyBrain, a New York-based firm that develops tools for investors, startups, and entrepreneurs. Bellevue, WA-based Apptio led the way with its $14 million Series B financing from Madrona Venture Group, Greylock Partners, and new investors Shasta Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz Fund.

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Angel capital just might be alive and well—at least in Oregon. Following up on Rick Turoczy’s guest post about Portland, OR, startups on Friday, we’ve learned that the Oregon Angel Fund has closed a new $3 million fund this summer, made up of 60 individual investors who each contributed $25,000, plus $1.5 million from the Oregon Growth Account, a state-run fund dedicated to Oregon startups and supported by proceeds from the state lottery.

The Oregon Angel Fund was co-founded in 2007 by investor Eric Rosenfeld of Capybara Ventures. Rosenfeld says the angel group’s new fund, which closed in July, is its third and largest fund. The group’s previous investments include Elemental Technologies, RNA Networks, and other prominent Portland-area startups.

What’s more, Rosenfeld tells me the group has already made three startup investments out of its newest fund. Here’s an update, and a little bit about each company:

—Vancouver, WA-based ClearAccess makes software that enables Internet service providers to remotely manage their customers’ residential and office broadband networks. In June, the Oregon Angel Fund invested $500,000 in ClearAccess, part of the company’s Series B financing of a little over $6 million that was announced last month. ClearAccess has about 30 employees and is led by CEO and co-founder Ken Hood.

—Portland-based Giftango makes online gift card systems for hotels, restaurants, spas, retail stores, and other merchants. The Oregon Angel Fund has committed to invest $500,000 in Giftango this month and lead the company’s series A financing. CEO and founder David Nelsen, a former project manager at Intel, leads Giftango. Bob Greenberg, an investor and Pixelworks co-founder, will join the company’s board.

—Portland-based Wicked Quick is a fast-growing clothing and apparel brand, founded by former executives and designers from Nike, No Fear, and Bain & Company. The Oregon Angel Fund invested $405,000 in Wicked Quick last month, and led the company’s Series A financing, which is fully subscribed at $1.1 million. Wicked Quick is led by founder and CEO Tarran Pitschka and chief operating officer Eric Happel. Rob Stewart, an investor and former Xerox consumer products executive, has joined the company’s board.

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Seattle-area e-commerce startup Valu Valu has made a strategic shift in the past few months. Instead of continuing to pitch its service primarily to bargain-hunting consumers and resellers, Valu Valu relaunched two weeks ago as an online price monitoring site geared toward businesses. The idea is to give Internet retailers and small businesses an efficient way to monitor the prices of consumer goods—everything from displays and GPS devices to bicycles and snowboards—and to analyze trends and predict the prices of such products up to 30 days in advance. It’s all aimed at helping businesses position themselves in the marketplace and boost their revenues.

Last February, we reported that Valu Valu was releasing its software in a beta trial to focus on consumers buying and selling used video games online. This month’s shift to a business-to-business model looks like an effort to gain traction and new paying customers in a broader (and more promising) market. “Classifieds and consumer businesses often face a chicken-and-egg problem,” says Valu Valu co-founder Emmanuel Marot, whose previous company, the mobile search startup MotionBridge, was bought by Microsoft in 2006. “Here we bring value to businesses from Day One.”

Marot says his company’s approach is a bit like what Salesforce.com did for customer relationship management, but focused on revenue management. The concept of tracking prices also has similarities to Seattle-based Farecast (now Bing Travel), but for consumer goods instead of airfares. As Marot explains, big companies like Amazon or Wal-Mart have dedicated teams that track competitors’ prices, but small and medium-size businesses don’t. At the same time, Valu Valu tries to provide better data, history, and trends than price comparison sites like Shopping.com.

Valu Valu currently has some 20,000 consumer products and counting in its price-tracking inventory. The technology behind the startup is called “scientific pricing.” It uses artificial intelligence techniques and statistical methods to analyze trends and make predictions about market prices and fluctuations. The company’s basic service, which includes price monitoring for up to 10 products (you supply the UPC codes), is free; more sophisticated analysis and forecasting of prices for up to 100, 1,000, or 10,000 products is available for a pay-as-you-go monthly fee (from $19.99 to $399).

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In one of the Seattle area’s biggest tech financings this year, Bellevue, WA-based Smith & Tinker has raised a total of $29 million in venture funding to deliver and market a hybrid game for kids that bridges the online and offline worlds. The latest funding round was led by new investor DCM, based in Silicon Valley, with existing investors Vulcan Capital, Foundry Group, Alsop Louie Partners, and Leo Capital Holdings also participating. The amount of new funding, which closed in July, was not announced—the $29 million also includes seed and first-round funding raised by the company since its inception in 2007.

Earlier this month, Smith & Tinker launched its flagship game, Nanovor—sort of a cross between a collectible card game (like the original Pokemon) and a massively multiplayer online game, only different. I recently visited co-founders Jordan Weisman and Joe Lawandus at company headquarters (pictured above), to see the Nanovor game up-close and to talk about the 50-person company’s intriguing strategy for marketing it in the U.S. and abroad.

“This is billed originally as a hybrid, across two $21 billion industries,” says Weisman, Smith & Tinker’s CEO. “It’s targeted for ages 6-12. The idea is to merge their online lives with their face-to-face lives.”

The industries he’s referring to are video games and traditional toys—and their respective market sizes in the U.S. If anyone can penetrate and bridge those ultra-competitive worlds, it’s probably Smith & Tinker. Weisman is a renowned entrepreneur in gaming, with a long record of founding successful companies including FASA, Virtual World Entertainment, WizKids, and 42 Entertainment. He came to Seattle when Microsoft bought FASA Interactive in 1999. Lawandus, for his part, was a former executive with Cranium, Disney, and Hasbro, so he knows a thing or two about product management, sales, and marketing for toys and games. Together, they seem to have their real and virtual bases covered.

“Our vision is something that takes the best of both of those worlds,” says Lawandus, Smith & Tinker’s president. “We’re reinventing play for the connected generation. We believe there’s nothing as cool to a kid as another kid in the room.”

It’s a noble concept, at a time when kids—and adults alike—seem to spend more time looking at screens than each other. Here’s how it works, in a nutshell: On a website, you choose and create …Next Page »

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The online grocery business famously flamed out earlier this decade, after hundreds of millions of dollars were pumped into companies like HomeGrocer.com and Webvan. But online grocery sales and advertising have been making a comeback in recent years, and one of the industry survivors, MyWebGrocer, based in Colchester, VT, has raised a healthy $13 million this month to fuel its growth in this promising Internet market.

MyWebGrocer—which provides online commerce software and digital media services to more than 90 grocery store companies including A&P, Food Lion, and other regional and national outfits—has seen its own fortunes grow this year. New York-based Stripes Group provided the financing on August 5, according to a company statement. MyWebGrocer now plans to use the money to roll out some new iPhone apps for consumers to do their grocery shopping, and to boost its staff from about 70 today to 110 over the next year, the company’s founder and CEO Rich Tarrant tells Xconomy.

MyWebGrocer appears to be well positioned to capitalize on the growing desire among grocery retailers and consumer goods providers to attract customers on the Web. For one, the firm’s e-commerce software and other Web products are designed to enable regional and national grocery stores to gain more online customers and revenue. Secondly, its growing advertising network caters to consumer goods companies that want to put their wares in front of online shoppers. Yet the firm faces significant competition, especially in attracting ad revenue from consumer goods providers, which have a wide variety of online advertising venues to choose from.

The good news is that more online ad dollars from consumer packaged goods companies are going to firms like MyWebGrocer. Packaged goods companies spent $156.2 million on online advertising in the first quarter—up more than 50 percent over the same period two years ago, according to Nielsen NetRatings. Also, frugal shoppers are going to the Web to find online-only coupons on grocery items to save money.

For its part, MyWebGrocer wants to expand the reach of online grocery shopping to the mobile world, Tarrant says. The firm’s first iPhone app—scheduled for release next month— is designed to …Next Page »

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Last month I wrote about the Daily Grommet, an e-commerce startup in Lexington, MA, whose website features one cool new product or service—a “grommet,” to use the company’s term—every weekday. Far from being yet another automated online store, the Daily Grommet puts its own staff members on camera to record short, homey, informally edited videos explaining what’s compelling about each day’s product, including their creators’ backstories. Yesterday’s grommet, for example, was an “athlete-engineered” sunscreen that doesn’t sting your eyes, developed by a former Apprentice competitor named Josh Shaw. In the video, Daily Grommet CEO Jules Pieri and chief discovery officer Joanne Domeniconi sit in the squinty-bright sunlight outside the company’s headquarters and demonstrate the product’s non-stinging, non-greasy credentials on their own skin.

That personal approach, along with the staff’s discriminating tastes, is winning the company a lot of fans. “If I buy [products] via Daily Grommet, I know that Jules’s team has tested them and determined that they’re actually excellent,” comments Dan Weinreb, a software engineer at Cambridge, MA-based ITA Software who is a repeat customer.

Pieri says the hands-on approach won’t keep the company from scaling up. She has plans to launch up to a dozen topic-specific versions of the Daily Grommet that would focus on sports gear, food and kitchen products, garden accessories, and the like; each such “vertical” could ultimately earn $25 million a year, she calculates. That’s ambitious for an angel-funded company that’s less than a year old, but it might not be too far-fetched. There’s growing buzz (and venture activity) around the category of so-called “curated marketplaces,” from Woot to Gilt Groupe, which seem to attract a more loyal following than typical e-commerce sites.

In a lengthy interview on July 7, I asked Pieri for the whole story behind the company— why she started it, how the product selection process works, how the company hopes to make money, and what it’s like to be a woman technology entrepreneur in New England. Here, as promised, is a complete (well, slightly pared down, but still pretty long) version of our talk.

Xconomy: What’s it like to be running an e-commerce company in the Boston area, rather than Silicon Valley or some other more likely place?

Jules Pieri: At the end of the day, I do think people form their impressions of an area by the products that come out of it. With Tokyo you might think of consumer electronics, with Detroit you think of cars, with the West Coast you do think of consumer Internet. I made a decision to locate the company in a place that isn’t broadly known for consumer Internet, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be and shouldn’t be. We obviously have the education resources and the technology credibility and the workforce to use technology effectively. And we have some consumer businesses—VistaPrint and Zipcar are well known, and there is a long list of not-so-well-known ones.

X: Can you tell me a little about your own background, and how you came to start an e-commerce company?

JP: I grew up in Detroit, on the wrong side of the tracks, definitively. At the University of Michigan I studied industrial design, graphic design, and French. Right out of college I went to Paris and worked as an intern, then got a job as an industrial designer for Burroughs, before it was Unisys, and then Data General here locally, where I designed computers and packaging for computers. Then I went to Harvard Business School, followed by a stint in Dublin, Ireland, from 2001 to 2005. My husband and I wanted our family to have an overseas experience, so we …Next Page »

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Akademos, a Norwalk, CT-based startup that sells used college textbooks and course materials through online bookstores, has raised $2.5 million in equity funding, according to documents filed August 4 with the Securities and Exhange Commission. Kohlberg Ventures of Portola Valley, CA, provided the funding, according to a press release circulated today, and Kohlberg partner Bill Youstra has joined Akademos’ board, along with former eHarmony marketing executive Scott Eagle. $190,000 of the $2.5 million found will go to repay debt owed by Akademos to its CEO, Brian Jacobs, according to the filing.

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Target, the Minneapolis, MN-based chain retail store announced today in a press release that it plans to build its own online store platform, ending its deal with Seattle-based Amazon.com, which has managed Target’s online sales since 2001.  The current contract between the two companies extends until 2011. Target will launch its proprietary management system in anticipation of the 2011 holiday season, generally a time of very strong sales for online retailers.

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Amazon.com, the Seattle-based colossus of online retail, announced in a press release today that it has launched an application for Android, Google’s mobile operating system. The application allows users to shop on their Android smartphone, as well as take pictures or scan barcodes of products and search for them on Amazon’s website. Taking a photo and matching it with a product was the main technology acquired by Amazon when it purchased Palo Alto, CA-based Snaptell last month.

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Amazon.com has bought online clothing and footwear provider Zappos.com for about $850 million according to a press release by Amazon today. Most of the money comes from around 10 million shares of Amazon stock. Based in Henderson, NV, Zappos will maintain its management team and brand name. The deal is expected to close this fall after several months of negotiation, according to an email to employees sent by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.

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Amazon’s e-book reader, the Kindle, dropped $60 in price today from $359 to $299, only five months after the February debut of the second generation reader.

The price change comes as something of a surprise, after repeated statements from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to the effect that the company could not sell the Kindle for less than $359, given the expense of components such as its electronic-ink screen, made by Cambridge, MA-based E Ink. ”If we could make it cheaper we would. We can’t make it cheaper,” Bezos said in an interview with Reuters in February.

Technology seems to have improved since then. In an e-mail message today, Amazon public relations manager Cinthia Portugal said “We’ve been able to increase the volume of Kindles we’re manufacturing and decrease the cost of doing so. Across our business at Amazon.com, whenever we are able to create cost efficiencies like this, we pass the savings along to our customers.”

Amazon is notorious for being unwilling to share sales information about the Kindle devices or the content they display. But in terms of manufacturing, iSuppli estimated after “tearing down” the Kindle 2 that the cost of the device’s parts totals only $185.

Although still comprising less than one percent of the overall book market, the digital reading market is growing fast, and it seems likely that many consumers will take the Kindle 2 price drop as their signal to try e-books. Amazon’s other e-reader meanwhile, a larger version of the Kindle that launched in June called the Kindle DX, is still retailing for $489 and is sold out for the next three to five weeks.

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Amazon.com has purchased SnapTell, a mobile image matching startup, according to a release by SnapTell yesterday evening.  Amazon bought the company through its Palo Alto, CA-based subsidiary A9 for an undisclosed price.  A9, created by Amazon in 2003, runs advertisements on Amazon as well as providing a search engine and developing technology like OpenSearch.  SnapTell, also based in Palo Alto, was founded in 2006 and is best known for its iPhone application which can match a photo of a product with online retail listings of the product.

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Amazon.com wants your brain. Well, actually it wants your creative ideas for a television advertisement. The “Your Amazon Ad Contest” announced yesterday is giving customers of the Seattle, WA-based internet retail giant a chance to send in their own ads for the website. Two winners, one picked by Amazon and one voted on by people on the site, will win $10,000 in Amazon.com gift cards each. The ads will be shown in a to-be-announced movie festival and may end up on national television.

“User-generated content is the hallmark of Amazon from the very start,” said Steven Shure, the company’s vice president of global marketing, in an interview. He says he considers the contest an expansion of other opportunities customers have to add to the site—if a bit more formal than book reviews. “We believe customers know and care about Amazon,” he says.

It’s unclear how many and what quality of entries Amazon will receive by the July 17 deadline, which is why there is no guarantee that the ads will appear on TV. “We’re not going to air bad ads,” Shure says. If the same ad is picked by both the Amazon jury and the audience vote, its creator will receive the full $20,000—nothing to sneeze at, between Amazon’s constantly growing range of goods and the current economic climate. The prize money was picked as an “amount that would be meaningful to an individual,” Shure says.

Five finalists will be announced on August 24, and people will be able to vote for the audience prize winner until September 6, with the final winners revealed on September 21. (To submit an idea, go to www.amazon.com/yaac.)

Depending on the success of this contest, it may be repeated, Shure says. It also may be adapted for foreign markets, as a global outlook is the overall focus of Amazon’s marketing, he says. “If something works, we’ll keep trying it.”

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Seattle-based MOD Systems, a maker of digital media delivery technologies for retailers, announced today it has opened a subsidiary in Tokyo. MOD Systems Japan will work with the company’s strategic investors, Toshiba and NCR, to drive business development in Japan. MOD raised $35 million from its investors in September, in a deal that has come under scrutiny in an ongoing lawsuit against MOD and its top executives.

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Amazon announced today a new service whereby customers can trade in used video games for store credit on any eligible items—not just games. The move is seen as a challenge to retailers with existing trade-in programs like GameStop, Electronics Boutique, and Toys “R” Us. Last month, Amazon officially entered the downloadable casual games market, launching its own online store.

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