Mobile industry leaders are looking for big moves in 2012 from the Seattle area’s two technology heavyweights, taking the lead from a surge by Google’s Android operating system, according to a new survey from Issaquah, WA-based Chetan Sharma Consulting.

Sharma’s 2012 Mobile Industry Predictions Survey, compiled from about 150 responses through the consulting firm’s global mailing list of industry insiders, also predicts that mobile payments and commerce will remain a big focus for businesses and consumers alike, further roiling the waters for retailers.

When asked what the biggest storyline of 2012 would be, survey respondents put Amazon’s entry into mobile in second place, with a Microsoft and Nokia “resurgence” close behind in third (the top story was the continued growth of mobile data usage worldwide).

The interest in Amazon certainly owes a lot to the newness of the e-commerce pioneer’s move into mobile computing, with the late 2011 debut of the Kindle Fire tablet. So there’s clearly a lot more room for Jeff Bezos and company to grow.

The company is also pretty well-regarded for its focus, and it has shown an ability to execute very well with Amazon Web Services, another business not directly tied to its Internet retailing niche.

Sharma says the extension into tablets, and perhaps a mobile phone in the near future, is just part of Amazon growing to become a “super-retailer for everything. They are already into groceries. Electronics is very heavy—they sell a lot of phones online.”

Amazon’s newly unveiled business model with tablets, which (at least currently) sells the device at a small loss and makes up the margin on content sales, is very hard for other companies to replicate, Sharma says. And the company’s retailing expertise means it knows shoppers’ tastes better than almost any other company.

“Amazon is very, very well placed, and they’re just starting to show their hand as to what their ambitions are,” Sharma says. “I think they’re sitting very pretty for many years to come.”

Microsoft’s role in the future of mobile has a lot to do with the success of Nokia, its main hardware partner for the refreshed Windows Phone operating system. The immediate stakes are higher for the Swedish phone-maker than they are for Microsoft, Sharma says, because cash-rich Microsoft can afford to play a bit longer game with the mobile market. But he notes that initial response for new Nokia phones has been “tepid” in Europe so far, and needs to show much better response when devices start hitting the U.S. market.

“If they don’t do that successfully by Q4, then definitely they’re in trouble—some of the same trouble that RIM is in,” Sharma says. Without success selling newer handsets, he adds, ”Nokia might not survive, or it might have to morph into something else.”

That possibility was surely on the minds of survey respondents who placed Microsoft No. 1 among the companies expected to make the biggest mobile acquisitions of 2012, with more than a quarter of the responses. Google and network operators broadly grouped together were in second and third place, with Amazon thought to be the fourth most likely to make a big M&A splash.

Sharma said one response that surprised him was the low rank given to Windows in the tablet sector. The latest version of Windows for tablets isn’t a reality for consumers yet, but Sharma asked respondents to look out two years—and they still saw Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platform taking most of the market.

“People still didn’t think Windows would make a big dent. That was surprising,” he says. “I think they can have a decent impact on the marketplace, because in the enterprise especially, there you have to have create tablets versus consume tablets,” the difference between filing out a spreadsheet and watching a YouTube video, for instance.

“Mobile is starting to become very important for Microsoft longer-term,” Sharma says. “Even if they are not doing that well today, five years out they have to be doing really well.”

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Another day, another (wholly unscientific) survey from Men’s Health indicating Detroit is a crappy place to live. This time, they’ve named the Motor City the second saddest city in the United States; in August, the lad mag skewered residents of our fair city for not buying iPads fast enough.

This time around, they’ve created their list of top “frown towns” by culling suicide-rate data from the Centers for Disease Control and unemployment figures through June 2011 from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. They also used SimplyMap to determine the percentage of households that use antidepressants, as well as the number of people who report feeling blue all or most of the time. So which cities, according to the Men’s Health methodology, were the happiest? Honolulu; Manchester, NH; and Fargo, ND.

Since this Detroiter, for one, doesn’t care to dwell in the negative, let’s take a look at some of the other headlines floating around lately:

• Last week, the Associated Press found that Michigan’s drop in unemployment during October 2011 was one of the highest in the nation.
• The Business Journals reported that Ann Arbor, MI is the smartest U.S. city with 100,000 or more residents. In Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan, a whopping 72 percent of all adults age 25 or older hold a bachelor’s degree. (Incidentally, Ann Arbor beat out two other Xconomy towns—Cambridge, MA and Berkeley, CA—for brainiest city honors.)
• Forbes called Detroit the 40th best place in the nation to land a tech job. I know what you’re thinking. “40th? Big whoop!” Maybe, but the magazine also had this to say: “How about other potential up and comers for the coming decade? … The first: Detroit. Though the Motor City area lost 20 percent of its tech jobs in the past decade (ranking 40th on our list), it still boasts one of the nation’s largest concentrations of tech workers, nearly 50 percent above the national average. In the past two years, the region has experienced a solid 7.7 percent increase in technology jobs, the second highest rate of any metro area. The Motor City region seems to have some real high-tech mojo. According to the website Dice.com, Detroit has led the nation with the fastest growth in technology job offerings since February—at 101 percent. This can be traced to the rejuvenated auto industry, which is increasingly dependent on high-tech skills. Manufacturing is increasingly prodigious driver of tech jobs; games and dot-coms are not the only path to technical employment growth.”
• According to a recent U-M forecast, Michigan is on target to end 2011 with a net gain of jobs—something that hasn’t happened in more than a decade.

So forget you, Men’s Health. I was stuck in Fargo for a day in the 1990s during a road trip from Michigan to Montana. What I remember about Fargo is the dearth of open prarie, ghost town streets, and that the best meal I ate there came from Subway. I think I’ll stay in Detroit.

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As more people turn to social networks for a video game fix, they’re also getting friendlier with the idea of forking over real cash for in-game virtual currency and items, according to a study commissioned by Seattle’s PopCap Games—the recent Electronic Arts acquisition that’s providing a lot of fuel for EA’s transition into more online and mobile games.

Digital transactions are the key to making money in social gaming, where free-to-play games are very common and revenue comes from charging for add-ons and extras that bring a player some special status, abilities, or even just decorations.

The online survey, conducted by pollster Information Solutions Group, shows two compelling statistics: First, more people are buying digital currency this year, compared with a similar survey in 2010. That measure went from 14 percent in last year’s survey to 26 percent in this year’s version, which is based on responses from roughly 1,200 social gamers in the U.S. and U.K.

If you extrapolate that response out to the broader population, Information Solutions Group says you’ve got about 31 million players buying virtual currency.

And secondly, people seem to be warming up to the idea—even if they haven’t taken the plunge in buying digital items yet. When asked how likely they were to pay for virtual items, about 46 percent said they were “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to open up their wallets. That’s up from about 32 percent of respondents in the 2010 survey.

Also significantly, the staunch holdouts who said they were “very unlikely” to pay for digital items showed a significant drop: In the 2010 survey, 47 percent of respondents showed that level of resistance. But in this year’s edition of the survey, the “very unlikely” fraction was down to 33 percent.

All the usual caveats about surveys apply, and fellow polling geeks can read the detailed methodology statement from the pollsters here. But this would generally track with what the games industry is chasing as it evolves from a fixed-production studio model into a digital-service industry with different revenue streams.

Exhibit A in that transformation is Zynga, which has rocketed from founding in 2007 to the verge of a $1 billion IPO. Zynga’s games, largely tied to Facebook, have traditionally made money by getting players to pay for little accoutrements that gussy up their game-play—so if you’re building digital barns in FarmVille, you might buy the nails and lumber to complete that project.

The lucrative potential for this revenue stream is a big reason why Facebook insisted that Zynga and other developers use its proprietary Credits system for such purchases, with Facebook getting a 30 percent cut. Facebook is now testing those credits outside the social network proper, with the GameHouse division of Seattle’s RealNetworks serving as a a key guinea pig.

This overall consumer trend shows why Redwood Shores, CA-based EA was willing to pay $750 million in cash and stock up front for PopCap (with earn-outs, the price could reach $1.3 billion). EA is a pioneer and longtime leader in traditional, hardcore console gaming, but is charging after Zynga in the digital sector, with acquisitions like PopCap providing a lot of the fuel.

When it bought PopCap, EA cited analyst figures showing that worldwide social game revenue would grow from about $2.4 billion in 2010 to $7.5 billion in 2014. PopCap’s 2010 revenue was just over $100 million, and EA recently said the unit’s sales  would grow more than 30 percent for 2011.

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A few years ago, it dawned on me that I was driving to Detroit—80 miles each way–nearly every weekend. Why? Because there was nothing to freaking do in the city I lived in and Detroit seemed to have it all: concerts of every size and genre, live professional sporting events, awesome bars and restaurants.

I mean, I once went to a show in the basement of a small club and stood there, mouth agape, watching Questlove on the turntables as Black Thought rapped along on the mic while the rest of the Roots Crew sat smirking at a nearby table, all in the company of only about 100 other people. (In case you’re wondering who Questlove, Black Thought, and the rest of the Roots are, you may know them better as the house band for “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.”) That kind of magical musical experience never happened to me in all my extensive travels: not in New York, or Chicago, or Miami, or Toronto.

Then, a month later, a similar thing happened, only this time it involved the rapper Common. (Disclaimer: I’m a huge fan of hip-hop.) “Wow,” I thought. “It’s official. Detroit is the coolest city I’ve ever been to!”

So, to heck with it, I thought. I’m moving to Detroit. Yes, Dad—DETROIT. Detroit can be a hard sell to melanin-deficient Michiganders who cling to perceptions rooted in 1967 and its aftermath. But, as I tell everyone—in fact, it may even be part of my official Xconomy bio—moving to Detroit was the best decision I made in a decade.

I love my job. My neighborhood is off-the-wall just the way I like it, full of artists, students, and all-around colorful characters. I can walk or bike to my bank, my hair salon, my bakery, my dive bar of choice, and my favorite music venue. I met a nice man a block from my apartment, fell in love, and moved with him to a bigger apartment down the street. Detroit has been very, very good to me.

It seems I’m not the only one feeling the love. Forbes reports that, according to Careerbliss.com, Detroit is the sixth happiest city in the United States. It earned points based on data from thousands of employee-generated reviews between 2010 and 2011. Young professionals, defined by CareerBliss as employees with less than 10 years’ experience in a full-time position, were asked to rate eight factors that affect workplace happiness, including growth opportunities, compensation, benefits, work-life balance, career advancement, senior management, job security, and whether they would recommend their employer to others.

It’s not too late for you to join the party down here in Detroit. Although you missed Quicken Loan’s career fair last weekend, there are more job fairs coming soon. Don’t forget: Detroit has more tech jobs than almost anywhere in the nation.

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Amid the doom and gloom of downgraded bond ratings, debt ceilings and unemployment figures, a rare bit of good news poked through the muck last week like a crocus in springtime: According to a report by Bloomberg/BusinessWeek, Detroit ranks second in the nation for cities with the most new technology jobs.

Fueling this hiring boom, says Dice.com, the technology employment website that analyzed the data, is the auto industry’s need for workers familiar with the ever-more-sophisticated software and systems intregral to domestic automakers’ cutting-edge new vehicle platforms. The survey estimated July 2011 tech-job growth in Detroit at 66 percent above July 2010 levels.

Men’s Health takes a different, decidedly less optimistic view of why there are so many open tech jobs in Detroit: Because we’re a city lousy with luddites and late adopters. According to the magazine’s September issue, Detroit is one of the least iPad-friendly cities in America—beating only Toledo, OH, and Ft. Wayne, IN.

According to the magazine, to determine the rankings, editors looked at tablet use based on ad impressions from the mobile ad network Chitika, the number of Apple and Best Buy stores per capita, and the percentage of households that own tablets, notebooks or laptops, according to Mediamark Research.

Ok, so we’re not quite Silicon Valley … yet. But at least we’re not Toledo.

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It was not a week for a lot of life sciences news, but what we’ve got is pretty interesting. Judge for yourselves; our roundup begins now.

—A global survey of venture capitalists released this week reveals substantial pessimism among VCs about venture investment levels in U.S. life sciences startups over the next five years. The annual survey by The National Venture Capital Association and Deloitte shows that 81 percent of the VCs polled expect biopharmaceutical investments in the U.S. to stay the same (51 percent) or decrease (30 percent) through 2016. In the medical device and equipment sector, 76 percent anticipate funding will stay the same (52 percent) or drop (24 percent). Their attitude toward China is just the opposite; with 100 percent of the VCs polled saying biopharmaceutical investments in China will rise (83 percent) or stay the same (17 percent). Nobody thought biopharma funding will decline in China. On medical devices and equipment, 93 percent anticipate investment levels will increase (77 percent) or stay the same (16 percent.)

—European Union drug regulators approved the once-weekly injectable version of exenatide (Bydureon) for treating type-2 diabetes, providing a shot in the arm to San Diego’s Amylin Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AMLN) and its partners-Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly (NYSE: LLY) and Waltham, MA-based Alkermes (NASDAQ: ALKS). The FDA declined to approve Bydureon for the U.S. market eight months ago, asking the companies to run a thorough study that evaluated effects of bigger doses on patients’ heart rates.

—Peppi Prasit, who left Amira Pharmaceuticals in November, appears to have started another San Diego biotech, Inception 1, which has raised $5 million in venture funding, according to a recent regulatory filing. Prasit, who was Amira’s co-founder and chief scientific officer, is identified in the filing as an executive and director. There isn’t much additional information disclosed. Versant Ventures partner Bradley Bolzon is listed as a director and San Diego’s Thomas Coll is listed as an executive.

—San Diego’s industrial biotech, Genomatica, received the EPA’s annual Green Chemistry Challenge Award. Genomatica has genetically engineered a type of bacteria to consume sugar in fermentation tanks and produce 1,4-Butanediol (BDO), an intermediate “building block” chemical needed to make spandex and various plastics.

—Carlsbad, CA-based GenMark Diagnostics (NASDAQ: GNMK) said it arranged a secondary offering of its stock to the public at a price of $4.25 a share that was intended to raise at lease $30 million. The company makes automated DNA and RNA diagnostics testing systems.

—San Diego’s Anaphore named former Fate Therapeutics CEO and Sanderling Ventures managing director Paul Grayson as its new CEO. He replaces founding CEO Kathy Bowdish, who will stay on as an Anaphore consultant.

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There were 394 software buyouts and mergers around the world during the first three months of 2011, with the cumulative value of all deals totaling $8.3 billion, according to a M&A tracking report from the San Diego-based Software Equity Group.

That was down from the 421 M&A deals that amounted to a total value of $12.7 billion during the previous quarter. But the total value of M&A activity during the first quarter was an improvement compared to the first quarter of 2010, when the Software Equity Group counted 431 transactions and a cumulative total of just $4.6 billion. Average valuations were roughly twice as high, year-over-year, while the number of deals was nearly 8.6 percent lower.

The firm’s quarterly software industry equity report is viewed as a key barometer for global M&A activity by some industry investors who closely follow company valuations. The quarterly report, which can be downloaded for free, is put together by the Software Equity Group, a boutique investment-banking firm and M&A advisory serving the software and technology sectors. The firm also prepares a more comprehensive annual report, which costs almost $600 per copy.

The quarterly report includes indexes that track the value of public software companies, public Internet companies (so it doesn’t include Facebook), and public software-as-a-service companies. The median valuation of public software companies during the first quarter was 2.7 times trailing 12-month revenue—the sixth consecutive quarter that the median valuation of all companies in the index has been at or above two times 12 months revenue, according to Brad Weekes, a Software Equity Group associate.

Some other highlights that Weekes points out:

—Trailing 12-month revenue growth for the overall index during the first quarter was 13.5 percent—the highest growth rate since the fourth quarter of 2007.

—EBITDA margins, which the financial industry defines as Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization, edged down slightly to 18.8 percent as public software companies reinvested in sales, marketing, and operations to capitalize on growth opportunities of the improving economy.

—The median valuation of public software-as-a-service companies was 4.8 times trailing 12-month revenue—the highest median valuation among SaaS companies since the second quarter of 2008. The median growth rate for trailing 12-month revenue among SaaS companies jumped to 19.6 percent in the first quarter, from 16.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010.

—Among public Internet companies, the median valuation was 2.8 times trailing 12-month revenue during the first quarter. It was the second consecutive quarter that the median valuation of Internet companies has exceeded the multiple for all public software companies. “We believe this differential will continue and grow for the next four quarters, as investors continue to shift their attention from public on-premise software companies to public Internet and SaaS providers,” Weekes said.

—Internet companies in the Software Equity Group’s Internet Index closed the first quarter with a 21.5 percent median rate of revenue growth. The median EBITDA margin for public Internet companies was 18.1 percent during the quarter, just slightly below the 18.8 percent median EBITDA margin of public software companies, but well above the 10.2 percent median EBITDA of public SaaS companies.

Enterprise Value (EV) is defined as a company’s capitalization minus cash and short-term investments, plus total debt, preferred equity, and total minority interest. TTM is trailing twelve-month revenue. EBITDA is Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization.

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Motista, which runs online market-research surveys for Fortune 1000 customers, said today that it has completed a $4.5 million Series A funding round. El Dorado Ventures was the sole funder in the round, and El Dorado general partner Tom Peterson has joined Motista’s board. At the same time, the company announced that it is relocating from Rockville, MD, to San Mateo, CA. “We’ve been quietly building Motista in close collaboration with some of the world’s top brands,” Motista co-founder and CEO Scott Magids said in a statement. “With El Dorado Ventures’ investment and support, Motista is excited to transform the way all Fortune 1000 marketers use consumer intelligence by getting it in their hands every day.” The company said it’s working behind the scenes on a new version of its consumer survey product, to be released “later in the year.”

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The average salary for U.S. company workers rose throughout 2007 and 2008, fell during 2009, and held fairly steady in 2010. By the fourth quarter of last year, average earnings had leveled off to approximately what they were at the start of 2008. But there were some variations between different parts of the country.

That’s all according to a national survey released today by PayScale, a Seattle-based firm that collects and organizes salary and compensation data across companies, geographies, and industries. The survey tracks total cash compensation for full-time, private industry employees.

The national trend (see gray curve in chart below) shows that U.S. wages grew 5.4 percent from 2006 through the end of 2008. Wages decreased by about 1.4 percent during the recession in 2009, reaching their lowest point in the third quarter of that year. Average U.S. earnings have been pretty flat throughout 2010, roughly matching the level of the first quarter of 2008. (The curves are calculated in terms of PayScale’s “index”—see the methodology here—so the absolute wage numbers aren’t as important as the trend—or the comparisons among different regions of the country, which we’ll get to below.)

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The PayScale Index: Boston Metro Area vs. National (US)

The PayScale Index uses 2006 average total cash compensation as a baseline.

Boston Metro Area National (US)

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Compensation Data Provided by PayScale, Inc.

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The trends for the Boston metro area (red curve above) have tracked the national stats fairly closely. For the first three quarters of 2010, Boston wages trailed the U.S. average (by as much as 0.6 percent); but in the fourth quarter, Boston has caught up.

Here are the wage comparisons for Xconomy’s other metro areas, and some quick observations:

—Seattle-area wages also have matched the national trend, but Seattle’s wages have been consistently higher than the U.S. average by 1-2 percent (see red curve below).

The PayScale Index: Seattle Metro Area vs. National (US)

The PayScale Index uses 2006 average total cash compensation as a baseline.

Seattle Metro Area National (US)

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Compensation Data Provided by PayScale, Inc.

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—Detroit wages fell precipitously in 2009, to more than 3 percent below the national average (which was also falling). The trend since then has been more volatile than the U.S. trend, with another drop during 2010, followed by an upward swing in the most recent quarter (see red curve below).

The PayScale Index: Detroit Metro Area vs. National (US)

The PayScale Index uses 2006 average total cash compensation as a baseline.

Detroit Metro Area National (US)

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Compensation Data Provided by PayScale, Inc.

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—San Diego earnings typically have been above the U.S. average, until the most recent quarter, which showed a big drop. At the end of 2010, wages were 2.2 percent below what they were a year earlier—and the lowest they’ve been in three and a half years (see red curve below).

The PayScale Index: San Diego Metro Area vs. National (US)

The PayScale Index uses 2006 average total cash compensation as a baseline.

San Diego Metro Area National (US)

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Compensation Data Provided by PayScale, Inc.

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—San Francisco Bay Area wages were higher than the U.S. average until the end of 2008, when they started to fall in line with the national stats. In the most recent two quarters, Bay Area wages dropped noticeably and were about 1 percent lower than a year earlier (see red curve below).

The PayScale Index: San Francisco Metro Area vs. National (US)

The PayScale Index uses 2006 average total cash compensation as a baseline.

San Francisco Metro Area National (US)

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Compensation Data Provided by PayScale, Inc.

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Facebook, the Palo Alto, CA-based social networking giant with half a billion users worldwide, has won the highest overall rating of any company in a 2010 survey of U.S. employees. Meanwhile, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg received a 96 percent approval rating from survey respondents, putting him among the top eight CEOs in the country, in the estimation of employees.

The data was released today by Glassdoor, a Sausalito, CA-based job site co-founded by Rich Barton, a venture partner at Benchmark Capital and CEO of Seattle-based Zillow. It was part of Glassdoor’s third annual Employees’ Choice Awards, a list of the top 50 places to work in the eyes of workers themselves. Southwest Airlines, Bain & Company, General Mills, and public relations firm Edelman rounded out the top five companies in Glassdoor’s survey. (See the full list on page 2.)

“We’re thrilled to be recognized as the best place to work among the distinguished companies on the list,” Facebook vice president of human resources Lori Goler said in a statement. “At Facebook, every person can have a meaningful impact, and people are empowered to move fast, take risks, and build bold and innovative things. We’re thankful people have embraced this freedom to do great things for Facebook and the people who use Facebook around the world.”

Other companies headquartered in or near Xconomy’s home cities that made Glassdoor’s top-50 list include Boston Consulting Group (no. 6), MITRE (no. 12), Slalom Consulting (no. 8), Shutterfly (no. 14), NetApp (no. 15), Apple (no. 20), Analog Devices (no. 21), Synopsys (no. 25), Chevron (no. 26), MassMutual (no. 29), Google (no. 30), Qualcomm (no. 36), Adobe (no. 39), Salesforce.com (no. 41), Ford Motor (no. 42), Genentech (no. 44), Intel (no. 45), and Nike (no. 47).

Glassdoor’s website offers job listings as well as company ratings compiled through anonymous employee reviews and surveys. The company’s top-50 list is based on cumulative average ratings from employees who participated in a 20-question Glassdoor survey between December 1, 2009 and December 1, 2010. The top-rated companies usually rank highly on factors such as company culture, pay packages, and open communications practices, and also tend to have popular CEOs, according to Glassdoor co-founder and CEO Robert Hohman.

The 10 most respected CEOs on Glassdoor’s list, all of whom earned a 96 percent approval rating or higher, were Ken Powell (General Mills, 100 percent), Steve Ellis (Bain & Company, 99 percent), Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman Sachs, 97 percent), Steve Jobs (Apple, 97 percent), Kelly King (BB&T, 96 percent), Eric Schmidt (Google, 96 percent), … Next Page »

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The Thanksgiving holiday helped to keep activity in San Diego’s life science companies at minimum levels over the past week. Still, what we picked up was interesting reading. Judge for yourself.

—San Diego’s Optimer Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: OPTR) filed a new drug application with the FDA for fidaxomicin, the drug it developed to treat patients with Clostridium difficile infection, the most common cause of diarrhea in hospitals. Optimer also asked for a priority review that takes six months instead of the usual 10. If granted, the FDA could issue a decision as early as the second quarter of 2011.

—San Diego’s Histogen said it has raised $10 million in Series A funding, which has enabled the life sciences startup to mount some mid-stage clinical trials of its regenerative medical treatements. The funding represents a comeback of sorts for Histogen, which was forced to lay off all 36 employees last year after rival SkinMedica of Carlsbad, CA, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the startup.

—A life sciences industry survey by San Diego’s Biocom, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and MassBio found that U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials are becoming more likely to change their position during the latter stage of the product review process. Sixty-three percent of the 50 companies participating in the study said the FDA had changed its position during at least one review, compared to 40 percent who made similar comments in a previous survey conducted in 2006.

—Aileron Therapeutics of Cambridge, MA, got exclusive rights to “click” chemistry technology that Nobel laureate K. Barry Sharpless developed at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. Click chemistry generates substances quickly and reliably by joining small reactive molecular building blocks together selectively to form extremely tight bonds. Financial terms were not disclosed.

—Roche terminated its collaboration and licensing agreement to develop a new treatment for hepatitis C with San Diego’s Ligand Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: LGNDD). Ligand and the Swiss pharmaceutical giant signed the deal two years ago.

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For all the fuss about “super angels” and “angels are the new VCs,” a report out this week from the University of New Hampshire says angel investors are putting less money into companies overall, especially at the seed and startup stages, compared with previous years. Of course, there are many factors at play here.

The numbers cover the first half of 2010, and they come from a report released by the Center for Venture Research at UNH. According to the report, angel investments in this period totaled $8.5 billion, a decrease of 6.5 percent over the same period in 2009. Angel investors put money into a total of 25,200 entrepreneurial ventures in the first half of this year—a 3 percent increase in the number of deals from the first half of 2009. But the number of active individual investors was 125,100, an 11 percent drop from last year.

Perhaps more telling was that only 26 percent of angel investments were classified as seed or startup stage. This continues a downward trend that saw seed/startup investments make up 45 percent of deals in 2008, and 35 percent in 2009.

“Historically angels have been the major source of seed and startup capital for entrepreneurs, and this declining interest in seed and startup capital represent a significant change in the angel market,” said Jeffrey Sohl, director of the UNH Center for Venture Research, in a statement. “This change in investment behavior is likely an indication of both a need to increase investments in existing portfolio companies in order for these portfolio companies to survive the recession and an extended exit horizon.”

So it sounds like angel investors and venture capitalists have similar problems. Part of the explanation, at least on the tech and software side, is that Internet-based companies need much less capital to get started and reach the market these days. So it’s not surprising that angel dollars are down in that sector.

Looking across sectors, angel money was distributed over healthcare and medical devices (24 percent), biotech (20 percent), software (12 percent), industrial/energy (11 percent), retail (9 percent), and media (5 percent). That’s a pretty standard breakdown, and it’s consistent with the lower costs of software.

Although the conclusions of the report are somewhat negative for angel capital, the worst may be over for both investors and startups. “The angel market appears to have reached its nadir in 2009,” Sohl said.

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If you’re feeling squeezed by the recession, you’re obviously not alone. Since the bottom fell out of the economy in 2009, the Detroit metro area in particular has been struggling to regain its footing when it comes to jobs and wages. Now, after a promising start to 2010, things might be heading downhill again.

That’s according to a national survey this month conducted by PayScale, a Seattle-based firm focused on collecting and organizing salary and compensation data across companies, geographies, and industries.

The Detroit numbers indicate that the region trailed significantly behind the national trend in wage growth between 2006 and the first quarter of 2008. Then, from the fourth quarter of 2008 to the third quarter of 2009, the average wage in Detroit fell by 3.1 percent (see chart below). Wages improved somewhat at the end of 2009 and through the first quarter of this year, but have fallen again for the past two quarters.

The PayScale Index: National (US) vs. Detroit Metro Area

The PayScale Index uses 2006 average total cash compensation as a baseline.

National (US) Detroit Metro Area

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Compensation Data Provided by PayScale, Inc.

The above curves were calculated in terms of PayScale’s “index” (see the methodology here, which involves tracking total cash compensation for full-time, private industry employees). So the absolute wage numbers aren’t as important as the trend—or the comparisons among different regions of the country (which you can see and interact with here).

Bottom line: Wages might get a little worse before they get better, or at least stabilize, in Detroit.

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[Corrected, see below] “Mounting tensions” would be the journalistic cliche to describe recent relations between traditional Silicon Valley venture capital firms and the growing class of “super angel” investors—groups like Ron Conway’s SV Angel, Mike Maple’s Floodgate Fund, Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, Aydin Senkut’s Felicis Ventures, and Jeff Clavier’s SoftTech VC.

The relationship between these super angels and VCs matters a lot, because it could have an impact on investment for the next generation of small, Internet-based ventures. Thanks to innovations like cloud computing, many of these Internet companies don’t really need the multi-million-dollar rounds traditionally dispensed by venture firms. So, when the super angels aren’t sniping at each other about how to work with entrepreneurs (witness the blizzard of leaked e-mails prompted by TechCrunch’s “AngelGate” kerfuffle), the VCs are circling warily and arguing that big venture firms make better business partners than super angels, thanks to their larger networks and operational experience.

But if traditional venture firms are concerned about losing out on deals, they may have the wrong targets in their sights, judging from survey data released today. Software, Internet, and mobile entrepreneurs raising their first or second round of funding are much more likely to turn to individual angel investors than to either super angels, traditional VC firms, or early-stage VC funds, according to a survey conducted by attorneys in the Palo Alto office of Dorsey & Whitney, which works with numerous venture firms.

The 363 startup founders who responded to the survey said they were mainly looking for investors who will offer attractive deal terms and valuations, who can move quickly on deals, and who won’t push startups to take more money than they need. On all three counts, angels happen to have the perceived advantage. But the entrepreneurs indicated that they cared more about getting deals done than about whether there are big names on the other side of the table. Which means traditional venture firms who don’t want to be locked out of today’s smaller companies probably shouldn’t waste time worrying about super angels (who are arguably evolving into mini-VCs in any case).

“The survey results say that that debate is beside the point,” says Matt Bartus, a partner in Dorsey & Whitney’s corporate group and a co-author of the survey report. “Entrepreneurs are looking for investors to fill their funding needs along with the relevant expertise, and they are pretty much indifferent as to which entity that comes from.”

Bartus conducted the survey with Ted Hollifield, another partner in Dorsey & Whitney’s Palo Alto office. Participants for the online survey (full report here) were recruited through the firm’s internal contact list as well as via blurbs in TechCrunch, Venture Beat, and StartUp Digest. The CEOs who responded were mainly from consumer Internet startups (34 percent), cloud computing or Software as a Service companies (17 percent), and mobile startups (13 percent). A small slice were in energy (3.3 percent) and life sciences (2.7 percent). They were predominantly from the Bay Area (42 percent), with smaller contingents from places like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, Denver/Boulder, and Austin. Some 19 percent were from outside the United States.

All respondents had either raised funds within the last 12 months or were planning to raise funds in the coming 12 months. Most said their firms needed relatively small amounts of money: only 9 percent had raised more than $5 million, and only 12 percent said they’d need more than that in the coming year. A full 58 percent had raised $500,000 or less.

So, who have these CEOs turned to for funding? About 59 percent said they’d already raised money from individual angels or groups of angels. Friends and family represented the next largest group of investors (32 percent), followed by early-stage VC funds such as True Ventures and First Round Capital (19 percent), traditional VC funds (17 percent), incubators such as TechStars and Y Combinator (12 percent), and, way down at the bottom of the list, super angels (9 percent).

[This paragraph corrected with new input from Dorsey & Whitney 10/12/10 9:05 am PDT] Asked who they’d likely turn to in the next 12 months, startup founders gave similar answers—angels (69 percent), super angels and early-stage VC funds (both about 38 percent), friends and family (26 percent), traditional VCs (22 percent), and incubators (12 percent).

“Angels are clearly the largest category by far for this class of investors at the early stage,” says Dorsey’s Hollifield. “They led by a country mile. A large number of entrepreneurs find that … Next Page »

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Spit was Leon Noel’s inspiration for the startup, SocialSci, that caused him and co-founder Harley Trung to leave Yale University just months before graduating.

Well, more broadly, it was the hassle of getting participants for research studies while he was a biological anthropology student at Yale, Noel says. But spitting was part of the ordeal. To gather the necessary data for the scientific studies required by his major, he would plant himself on campus, ask students to spit in a cup, and fill out a 30-minute survey. Not surprisingly, it was challenging to convince participants to share their information, and completing any given study often took more than a year, he says.

“There has to be a better way to go about doing this,” Noel says he thought at the time. So he and Trung, a computer science major, started working on SocialSci.com in May 2009, as a “way to make the scientific process easier.” Initially, the website mapped the locations where labs and research houses paid for participants to physically come in and donate samples (like spit) or undergo medical tests like MRIs.

By the end of last summer, SocialSci started targeting another pain point in scientific research. “The online scientific survey was really where we could expand,” Noel, the company’s CEO, says. The idea was for a Web-based software platform where users could answer survey questions for social science studies from the convenience of their own computers, without researchers having to flag people down on the street or quad. And the goal was also to make the process fun and lucrative for those participating in the studies (more on that later).

Noel and Trung, SocialSci’s co-founder and chief technology officer, spent most of their senior year developing this side of the platform, but left school in February when they were accepted to this past spring’s installment of TechStars Boston, the startup incubator program.

And it looks like the bet is starting to pay off. They’re launching their private beta today, for 5,000 research participants. Researchers from more than 20 universities have lined up to submit studies to the online pool. (Xconomy readers: 250 of you can sign up here to avoid the wait list for the private beta release).

SocialSci also closed a $500,000 angel funding round earlier this summer, with investments from LaunchCapital, SOSventures, and angel investors like Will Herman and David Cohen. The startup now has six employees and operates out of Polaris Venture Partners’ Dogpatch Labs in Cambridge, MA.

As for related companies, sites like SurveyMonkey have long occupied the space of creating and distributing online surveys. But they … Next Page »

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More newsprint and pixels have been sacrificed to iPad punditry than to any other tech subject in recent memory. I’m responsible for a good deal of the carnage myself (here, here, here, and here). With the device finally hitting stores tomorrow, though, there was no way my column today would be about anything else. The difference this time is that I’m going to highlight the voices of Xconomy readers, rather than my own idisosyncratic opinions or those of my fellow journalists and bloggers. (If you’re dying to see some early iPad reviews, though, you can’t go wrong reading Walt Mossberg, David Pogue, or Ed Baig.)

Earlier this week I posted an online survey asking you, loyal readers, nine questions, ranging from the simple and factual—for example, whether and when you’re planning to get an iPad—to the ideological (what do you think of Apple’s culture of secrecy and control, and how does it influence your behavior as a buyer of Apple products?). A boatload of you responded, and your answers were fascinating and, in some cases, unexpected. The full results are reproduced here. I’m especially grateful to those of you who went beyond the multiple-choice questions and shared your write-in comments; I’ve included the most interesting ones on these pages.

If I had to sum up the attitude captured by the survey in a phrase, it would be “cautiously welcoming.” Overall, a hefty 56 percent of you said that you’re planning to get an iPad at some point, whether that means this weekend or at some point in the future. But you’d like to spend as little as possible—the cheapest version, the 16-GB Wi-Fi model for $499, turns out to be the most popular. And you’re not quite sure whether the device is going to be as groundbreaking as Apple claims. About 46 percent of you called the iPad “evolutionary” while only 35 percent said it was “revolutionary.” (To be fair to Apple, technologies that turn out to be genuinely transformative, such as the Internet, aren’t usually seen as breakthroughs when they first emerge, as my colleague Greg Huang observed this week.)

At the same time, a vehement 25 percent of you said you’d never buy an iPad. And from the comments, it was clear that Apple has a ways to go to convince some critics that the device isn’t just an oversized, overpriced iPod Touch with more “cool factor” than true utility. “I’ve never owned a Mac and have no desire for more over-hyped gadgetry,” one respondent wrote. “In my view Apple fans appear ready to buy anything and everything that Mr. Jobs cares to develop. What’s next, the iToilet?”

Interestingly, more than half of you felt—sight unseen—that the iPad will be a better e-book reader than Amazon Kindle and other devices that use electronic ink displays. Only a small minority predicted that the Kindle will remain the pre-eminent e-book device. Of course, the answers to this question (as with all the others) may have been skewed by a self-selection bias, as it’s possible that Apple fans were more likely to participate in the survey to begin with. Still, Amazon is probably smart to be working on a Kindle iPad app, so it can still sell e-books to people who prefer iPads.

The write-in answers to Question No. 9—”What impact will the iPad have on consumer expectations about personal computing?”—were the most numerous, extensive, and interesting, so I urge you to read all the way to the end. The answers that received the most votes are highlighted in bold. For the items with totals that exceed 100 percent, respondents were invited to pick as many answers as they liked.

CONTINUE TO SURVEY RESULTS >>

Or jump to individual questions:

1. Are you planning to buy an iPad?
2. If you are planning to buy an iPad, which version do you prefer?
3. Which features of the iPad appeal to you most?
4. Which missing iPad features would you most like to see added in a future version?
5. Where do you see yourself using an iPad?
6. Will the iPad be a better e-book reading device than the Amazon Kindle and other electronic-ink-based reading devices?
7. Some observers condemn Apple for the restrictions and secrecy it imposes on third-party app developers. Do you generally agree with this critique?
8. Has your opinion about Apple’s culture of control influenced your decision about buying an iPad?
9. The big picture: What impact will the iPad have on consumer expecations about personal computing?

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With the Apple iPad set to hit stores at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, you can probably guess what my digital media column, World Wide Wade, is going to be about this Friday.

But this time I want to leaven the punditry with some populism—so I’ve put together a quick, 9-question survey at SurveyMonkey. Please head over there and take a few minutes to share your opinions about Apple’s “magical” and “revolutionary” new tablet device.

Depending on which commentator you listen to, the iPad is either going to unleash a huge new wave of entertaining and educational digital content and overturn all of our old notions about personal computing, or destroy the tradition of open software development that has made computers and the Web so powerful.

The reality will probably be somewhere in between—but this week it’s your opinions as tech-savvy consumers of startup and innovation news that we’re interested in. I’ll report back on the survey’s results in my column this Friday.

Here are the questions — please head over to SurveyMonkey to register your answers. And please leave comments in the boxes provided; I’ll excerpt the most interesting answers.

1. Are you planning to buy an iPad?

2. If you are planning to buy an iPad, which version do you prefer?

3. Which features of the iPad appeal to you most?

4. Which missing iPad features would you most like to see added in a future version?

5. Where do you see yourself using an iPad?

6. Will the iPad be a better e-book reading device than the Amazon Kindle and other electronic-ink-based reading devices?

7. Some observers condemn Apple for the restrictions and secrecy it imposes on third-party app developers. Do you generally agree with this critique?

8. Following up on Question 7, has your opinion about Apple’s culture of control influenced your decision about buying an iPad?

9. The big picture: What impact will the iPad have on consumer expecations about personal computing? Choose the answer that comes closest to your view, or write one in.

Go to the survey.

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Even though venture capital funding plunged dramatically in 2009, it was nevertheless encouraging when the VC surveys that came out in January showed an uptick in venture deals during the fourth quarter—like a ski jump into 2010.

Now the Cooley Godward Kronish Venture Financing Report for the fourth quarter of 2009 gives us another piece of the puzzle. One noteworthy aspect of the report, in fact, is how the contours of 2009 fit with 2008.

Venture funding was on a near-record pace during the first three quarters of 2008 before the bottom fell out in the fourth quarter. Last year was like a mirror image. The climate for venture investments during the first nine months was difficult, even scary, before signs of improvement emerged in the fourth quarter—with both the deal count and dollars invested up significantly over the previous quarter.

The real insight of Cooley’s report, though, is in its analysis of deal terms. Cooley says its report is based on an analysis of the 376 venture deals nationwide that its lawyers worked in 2009. Those deals led to venture investments of more than $3.8 billion during the year. One general finding: if you’re an entrepreneur, deal terms during the fourth quarter showed signs of slow improvement, although terms are not as good as they were a few years ago. Some more specific highlights:

—The trend in median pre-money valuations is improving, although still below recent historical annual averages. Cooley says it saw steady increases in median pre-money valuations for all venture investments during the fourth quarter.

—Up rounds (in which the value of investors’ shares has appreciated from one financing to another) increased to 45 percent in the fourth quarter—compared to 26 percent during the first three quarters. But the percentage of down or flat rounds continues to outpace the number of up rounds.

— 58 percent of fourth-quarter deals included fully participating preferred, which are terms that typically benefit investors at the expense of founders. That’s better than the previous three quarters, when 60 percent of the deals were fully participating preferred. But in 2007, just 53 percent of the deals were fully participating preferred. (A great explanation of the term from Brad Feld is here.)

In short, Cooley concludes that while valuations remain below their historical levels, the overall trend looks promising.

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Portland, OR-based research and publishing firm Clean Edge released a report today on job trends in the cleantech and energy industry. The highlights include a survey of salaries across a range of cleantech positions worldwide, performed in partnership with Seattle-based PayScale, the salary comparison firm. For example, the survey tracked median salaries for solar energy installers ($40,000), entry-level wind turbine technicians ($52,600), mid-level LEED-certified green architects ($58,700), and smart-grid hardware design engineers ($87,700). The survey also found that business analysts in green industries earned $61,500—13 percent more than non-green analysts—and senior accountants in green industries earned $67,300, or 16 percent more than their non-green counterparts.

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It’s one of the great mysteries of the modern Internet. How can Web publishers make more money from their content? For everything from blogs and journalism to games and entertainment, publishers and software companies alike have been trying to solve this problem for many years.

Now BigDoor Media, a six-person startup in Bellevue, WA, thinks it has found the right approach, at least for a certain market. Its basic idea is to provide a revenue stream for entertainment publishers that bridges the gap between traditional advertising and subscription models. BigDoor, which is emerging from stealth mode today with a beta version of its software, provides an “offer platform” that acts as a gateway to a website’s premium content. Instead of paying for a game by credit card, say, a consumer can opt to fill out a survey, sign up for a newsletter, or buy an advertiser’s product (like Fiji Water, for instance).

This is not an entirely new idea. And in fact, BigDoor operates in a similar space as many other Seattle-area startups we’ve reported on, including AppBank (for social entertainment applications), DevHub (for creating and hosting websites), Mpire (for online-ad optimization), Wetpaint (for social publishing), and Others Online (for behavioral profiling of audiences), which was acquired this summer by the Rubicon Project. These companies have different customers and revenue models, but they are all fundamentally trying to help Web publishers make more money from their content.

What seems to set BigDoor apart is the experience of its founders. Keith Smith and Jeff Malek spent about 10 years in the online advertising world with Bellevue-based Zango, the controversial “adware” company that closed down earlier this year. Smith was CEO and co-founder of Zango, while Malek was vice president of engineering and products. Zango had success but eventually ran into problems, in part because adware in general—software that tracks which sites you visit and delivers targeted ads—became widely reviled by people who felt it violated their privacy or was just plain annoying.

The key is that Smith and Malek seem to have learned from their mistakes as well as … Next Page »

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