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Amazon Web Services has just named the seven finalists for this year’s $100,000 Startup Challenge. The prize will go to the most innovative startup built on Amazon’s cloud-computing infrastructure. The winner will get $50,000 in cash, $50,000 in AWS credits, and maybe even an investment from Amazon. The finalists are:

Encoding.com—Video encoding over the cloud.

Knewton—Online test prep service for standardized tests like the GMAT. Its adaptive testing/adaptive learning engine can be applied to any educational publisher’s content.

MedCommons—”cloud-based Health 2.0 application services for patients and doctors.”

Sonian—Archives and indexes emails that companies need to keep for compliance reasons, making them easy to search later.

Pixily—Document management for both scanned and electronic docuiments.

Yieldex—Online ad optimization engine for Web publishers.

Zephyr —online tool for managing software quality testing

Which one do you think should win? Just based on traffic, it looks like Encoding, Knewton, and Pixily are the strongest contenders. (Last year’s winner was Ooyala, which edged out Justin.TV).

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Source: Erick Schonfeld

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If you are one of the recipients of the 1,330 business method patents issued in the U.S. last year, or the thousands more that have been issued rampantly and indiscriminately over the past decade, you are probably out of luck. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. ruled today that business methods are not patentable unless they meet fairly narrow rules. What this means for Internet companies and patent trolls alike is that many of their existing patents may be invalid—at least until the case is heard by the Supreme Court, assuming it is appealed.

Mike Masnick at TechDirt has a good overview of the issues in the case and the stricter rules to be applied to these sorts of patents. He writes:

The summary is that the court has said that there’s a two-pronged test to determine whether a software of business method process patent is valid: (1) it is tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or (2) it transforms a particular article into a different state or thing. In other words, pure software or business method patents that are neither tied to a specific machine nor change something into a different state are not patentable.

The most famous business method patent is Amazon’s One-Click patent, but that is not what the case was about. (It deals with a proposed patent for a method to manage the risks associated with energy cost fluctuations that was rejected). But even the validity of Amazon’s One-Click patent could be questioned if it does not meet the new test. And that would depend on what you consider to be the definition of a “machine.” Is the Amazon store the machine in question (in which case that particular patent doesn’t have any particular value beyond Amazon’s own operations), or is it any online store (in which case, it might be too far reaching)?

This ruling raises a ton of questions like that across literally thousands of patents. And it is a good thing too because business-method patents tend to be overly broad and abused.

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Source: Erick Schonfeld

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Filed under: Laptops

It’s hardly a scientific test, but when a Cnet editor’s 8 year old daughter was given the choice between an OLPC XO laptop running Windows XP or the Linux-based Sugar UI, Sugar was the winner. As Cnet points out, either OS when properly incorporated into the teaching curriculum should serve the children of developing nations equally well. Only one, however, promises to prepare our youth for middle management.

P.S. Amazon’s Give One, Get One program will be limited to Linux according to Cnet and confirmed in the OLPC Wiki — no dual-boot for you Santa.

[Thanks, Justin G.]

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Source: Thomas Ricker

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var digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/gadgets/Official_Amazon_MP3_comes_on_G1_Android_phone’; It’s true, Amazon just announced that its MP3 music store will be pre-loaded as an application on the T-Mobile G1. Users will be able to search, download, buy and play music from Amazon MP3 — that’s a selection of 6 million DRM-free MP3 songs from all four major labels and many independents. The pre-loaded Amazon MP3 application provides G1 owners with a phone-optimised view of the Amazon MP3 store — WiFi is required to download music, but searching, browsing, and listening to samples can be done over 3G “the T-Mobile network.” Tracks cost around $0.89 with most albums priced between $5.99 and $9.99. How you like them Apples, Apple.

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Source: Thomas Ricker

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

The kids at tgdaily have a hands-on video of Plastic Logic’s biggie e-reader unveiled at DEMO earlier this week. With it, they’ve also nabbed a bit more information on this potential subscription-based, Kindle killer. The 7-mm thin reader connects via micro-USB to a PC to charge the unit or transfer documents. Documents can also be transferred over WiFi or Bluetooth (no cellular radio?) — the reader can even communicate wirelessly with other readers to transfer documents. The 8.5- x 11-inch touchscreen allows for gesture control, as we heard, with the added bonus of quick and easy on-screen annotation of any supported media type such as Word docs, PowerPoint slides, or PDFs. Plastic Logic says they don’t plan to compete with Kindle directly, instead, it’s targeting business mobile professionals with “a lot of documents already,” not those who will get all their content from the Amazon store.

Of course, a variety of leaks have already made it clear that Amazon’s not exactly standing still with its Kindle reader with larger and more, eh hem, attractive models in the works. Sony, too, is planning a special Reader-based event next month. So… is 2009 shaping up to be the death of print? Oh hells, no — but it’s certainly getting a lot more interesting.

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Source: Thomas Ricker

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Earlier today we reported that Amazon had acquired AbeBooks, an online retailer of rare and used books from independent publishers.

AbeBooks held a major (although not majority) stake in a site called LibraryThing, where the literati can list their favorite books and discuss them. Coincidentally, Amazon has put a reported $1 million into Shelfari, one of LibraryThing’s direct competitors (which also include GoodReads, BookJetty and many others). So it might not be surprising to see Amazon try to join the forces of these two modestly sized startups.

But if the history between LibraryThing and Shelfari is any indication, we’re more likely to see Amazon either place its bets on one and divest its shares in the other, or simply maintain a minority investment in both.

Tim Spalding, the founder of LibraryThing, has publicly denounced Shelfari for using dirty marketing tactics such as astroturfing blogs and spamming inboxes. And he hasn’t minced words or backed down from his charge that Shelfari is a “bad actor”, having repeated Gawker’s description of Shelfari as “basically social networking rapists” and criticized Shelfari’s attempts to fix its invitation system.

While Shelfari has publicly addressed the charges of astroturfing (calling it the “unintended work of an unexperienced but well-meaning intern”) and spamming (the unintended result of “explosive growth” and a poorly designed user interface), it hasn’t used its own corporate blog to lash back at LibraryThing. And since most of this drama occurred nearly a year ago, it’s possible that any bad blood as been surmounted. But factor in the fact that these two startups are based on opposite ends of the country (Shelfari in Seattle, Washington and LibraryThing in Portland, Maine), and it appears unlikely that Amazon’s acquisition of AbeBooks will result in any consolidation of the book-centric social networking space.

In any case, Spalding has publicly asserted that LibraryThing will continue to operate as an independent entity, sending only anonymized user data back to AbeBooks. When reached for comment, he did say that he was open to selling the same type of data to Amazon, but he insisted that he would never sell “core user data” to Amazon and that he really doubts anyone “will propose marriage” between his company and Shelfari.

Josh Hug, co-founder and CEO of Shelfari’s parent company Tastemakers, said he had no specific comments about the AbeBooks-Amazon deal, but he did say that “Amazon has been a very supportive investor and we look forward to continuing to work closely with them.”

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Source: Mark Hendrickson

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Filed under: Gaming

A few 60GB Xbox 360s may have already slipped out to retailers (as evidenced above), but if you’re not interested in running around trying to track one down, you can now snag one from Amazon and rest assured that it’ll ship out post haste. If you’ve been following this SKU’s every move, you’ll notice that’s a few days ahead of the August 4th date that Amazon once listed, and the August 6th date that Circuit City still does — but hey, we’re not complaining.

[Thanks, Michael]

Update: Microsoft’s Major Nelson has now confirmed that there is no official street date for the new 60GB model, “they’ll just appear in the retail channels.” Is this what happens when Bill G is out of the picture? Next thing we know Microsoft will start showing up late for parties and asking to sleep on our couch.

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Source: Donald Melanson

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

Back in May, TiVo’s VP of product marketing got all of our hopes up that the next announcement involving it and Amazon would include HD Unbox content. As you can very clearly see, this is most certainly not the case. Instead, we have the immense pleasure of informing internet-connected Series2, Series3 and TiVo HD owners that they can now buy wares from Amazon without leaving their couch. If browsing through Amazon’s extraordinarily huge store with just a remote sounds appealing to you, you’re in luck (and mildly insane). Also of note, the new Product Purchase feature will enable advertisers to “market products sold through Amazon on any broadcast or cable network, any TV show, or via any of TiVo’s extensive interactive advertising features.” In other words, next time you see Dwight using that iconic shredder, you can buy that bad boy right then and there. Take that, Staples.

[Via Zatz Not Funny]

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Source: Darren Murph

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