So I just got back from Key West, where life is definitely on the wacky side, only to find that the Seattle startup community might be trying to emulate that light-heartedness (or just downright craziness). Drumroll, please...in my absence, Seattle welcomed i-booze.com, the brainchild of California escapee Karim Varela. Still in beta, i-booze provides instant gratification for those of you too busy (or too lazy) to leave home to buy an amazing array of -- how shall I put this? -- disparate products that I never thought I'd see on the same shopping list. The catalog includes "Baby Stuff" (diapers, etc.), "Drinking" (including a category for chick drinks), and "Sex Utilities" (you know what I mean) alongside more mundane items such as bongs and nitrous oxide. After I stopped laughing, I wondered if maybe i-booze.com is the poster child of marketing genius, as I bet I'm not the last one to write about it.

-posted by Rachel

The winners of the 2008 Best of Interop Awards were just announced at the Interop Las Vegas show, where VOXUS client AirMagnet won the Best of Interop Award in the Mobile and Wireless category. This is the second year in a row that AirMagnet has won the prestigious award.

You can find the full list of this year's winners at http://www.bestofinterop.com/winners/

-posted by Stephanie

I was surprised to read that Borders has selected Tukwila (really?) as one of the sites for its 14 digital media concept stores. While I don't get to Tukwila often I just might have to go check this out. The new stores, according to USA Today, include digital centers for downloading music and books, burning CDs, ordering photo albums etc.

Like (most) everyone, I love being around books and I love wandering through the aisles of a book store. Adding digital centers is a powerful way to monetize this advantage that physical stores have over their online competitors. Hey Borders, can you light up the Gig Harbor store next?

-posted by Adrienne

In what could be a major milestone for gene therapy, for the first time, researchers have used gene therapy to improve vision in blind patients.

Homegrown (for VOXUS) Seattle’s Targeted Genetics conducted part of the study of six patients with an extremely rare form of blindness called Leber's Congenital Amaurosis. According to the study which appears in the New England Journal of Medicine, four of the six people who received gene therapy had some vision restored. If this test is successful on a larger scale, researchers say it could help people with more common types of blindness. Macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness for those under 20 years old in the United States, affects 1.25 million Americans; the number is expected to grow to 3 million by 2020 as the population continues to age.

Gene therapy involves replacing defective genes with normal versions. The research marks a major milestone for gene therapy, a discipline many scientists find promising but so far has failed to produce a marketable product in the U.S.

-posted by Andrew

Within the telecom expense management (TEM) field, the issue of mobile device management has recently begun to take center stage. In a recent report from ABI Research, mobile device management services are predicted to grow from $583 million in 2007 to a whopping $20 billion by 2013 (a statistic recently highlighted in Gadget Network’s blog entry “Mobile Device Management Services, a $20 Billion Opportunity by 2013. But Who Will Manage?”). Our friends at Perlego Systems have secured a large corner of this market by offering a hosted, over-the-air solution that enable enterprises, carriers, device manufacturers and resellers to quickly deploy and control an entire fleet of mobile devices – regardless of OS platform or carrier.

-posted by Shawnna

It seems like it wasn't that long ago when Seattle was getting slammed for its lack of green tech innovators, so it's nice to see Verdiem continue to make progress. According to PSBJ they've raised an additional $12M bringing total funding to $27M. Verdiem makes software that turns off computers when they are not in use, thereby lowering power consumption. At savings of $20-$60 annually per PC it's obviously a large enterprise play, and they've got some great customers to tout such as the state of Washington, Clear Channel Communications, and Turner Broadcasting. We're a small shop so we'll likely continue our power sucking ways, but we look forward to watching this company grow.

-posted by Adrienne

Have you ever uttered text-speak out loud? I'm guilty of saying "OMG" in social situations and yes, I've received some interesting looks. While I thought that may be a sign of some dysfunction on my own part, the long-term impact of mobile communications on language and society never really crossed my mind. The Economist recently took a hard look at this trend. In the article, experts suggest that "Entire subcultures now define themselves primarily or exclusively through their chosen text-messaging or instant-messaging argot." This can be troubling for younger texters learning language in school and also texting shorthand, a form of communication that oftentimes lacks spelling, punctuation, syntax, and other core language rules.

-posted by Lindsay

A new Web site was brought to my attention recently -- www.taaz.com. The site allows women to upload their photos and try on new hair and makeup styles. Having seen a few sites like this before that turn women into clowns, I was skeptical, so I decided to try it out. First, the site was extremely easy to use, no tech-savvy computer skills required. Second, the site offered a ton of hair and makeup selections. The toughest part was determining what was the best look. At the close of the session, you're provided with product recommendations -- for free -- that will allow you to achieve your look in real life.

This site would be a hit at stores like Sephora and regular drug stores like Bartells and Rite Aid. For me, it would greatly slim down the amount of time I spend debating in the aisles. For cosmetic companies, I could see this "photorealistic" virtual makeover driving both sales and customer satisfaction by boosting the confidence a customer has in a product and lessening returns.

Good Luck TAAZ -- women of the world need you.

-posted by Lindsay

Our friends at Yapta and Strangeloop Networks made the first cut in this year's Red Herring Top Tech Startups in North America. So did Jott Networks, NanoString Technologies and Teradici Corporation. We'd say this is yet another indication that the Pacific Northwest startup community is thriving. You can see the entire list here.

-posted by Rachel

Seattle-based A Place For Mom has made its debut. The company offers the nation's largest referral service for senior care options. Since I just went through the process of finding a place to live for my fabulous and spunky grandma, this site appealed to me (and because in addition to spunky, my grandma is fickle, hence we're still scouting other options). I did a quick search - the site is easy to navigate and packed full of info.

Backed by Battery Ventures, the company's CEO John Temple was named to the Puget Sound Business Journal’s 2007 40 under 40 list. The company has also received several awards for its growth, including the Inc. 5000 and Entrepreneur Magazine Hot 500.

-posted by Adrienne

Most people have had some iteration of the dream where they show up naked for a final college exam they haven't studied for. The PR version of that dream is jumping on a conference call where you badmouth an editor, only to find out that the editor has been silently listening. If you're interested in knowing how that feels, you can ask the folks over at UK carrier O2, which did exactly that for a call with The Register.

I don't even want to think about this.

-posted by Paul

With all the data loss and identity theft around these days, you'd think the term "flash drive" would make IT professionals, especially security professionals, cringe. BUT, apparently not – do these folks live in an alternate reality! A new survey conducted by SanDisk reports that companies around the world are unaware of the extent to which unsecured flash drives are used in their organization.

Check out these stats from Sandisk:

- 77 per cent of corporate end users use personal flash drives for work-related purposes, but, when asked to estimate what percentage of the workforce uses personal flash drives, corporate IT respondents reckoned only 35 per cent.

- According to SanDisk, people use flash drives to hold customer records (25 per cent), financial information (17 per cent), business plans (15 per cent), employee records (13 per cent), marketing plans (13 per cent), intellectual property (6 per cent), and source code (6 per cent).

- Approximately one in ten (12 per cent) of corporate end users reported finding a flash drive in a public place. And when asked to pick the three most likely actions they would take if they found a flash drive in a public place, 55 per cent said they would check out what was on it.

- Almost half (44 per cent) of end users revealed that, to their knowledge, their organization did not have a policy forbidding the copying of corporate data on personal USB flash drives.

- 41 percent of corporate IT managers report they are at least 'somewhat uncomfortable' with the level of USB flash drive usage in their organizations, revealing a significant level of potential risk.

-posted by Justin

Our friends Byron Acohido (who lives just up the road) and Jon Swartz, two reporters with USA Today, have launched their book, Zero Day Threat. It's got an intriguing subhead: "The Shocking Truth of How Banks and Credit Bureaus Help Cyber Crooks Steal Your Money and Identity." Wired is running an excerpt that explains how Mr. O, a Nigerian national, created the largest data security breach in history when he hacked into the confidential information of 4.3 million individuals held by ChoicePoint. Fascinating stuff.

-posted by Rachel

BBC News: Daily Caffeine Protects Brain

(via DaringFireball)

-posted by Paul