VOXUS client Perlego recently used a brilliant visual to explain its company and product. The company participated in the Zino Zillionaire Investment Forum this week where, during a quick elevator pitch for investment funds, company honcho Todd Ostrander dropped a cell phone into a Coke. This action probably explained better than words that the company's product backs up information on mobile devices so that, if lost or stolen, owners can easily retrieve it. Bravo, Todd!

-posted by Rachel

What a great idea! Seven Seattle-area startups are holding a job fair in the lobby of one of the participants, Redfin, on Thursday, September 28 from 5:30-8:00 p.m. If you've always wanted to work for a startup, don't miss Startupalooza. Other companies participating in the networking event are Bag, Borrow or Steal, Blue Dot, Exbiblio, Farecast, Mercent and Mpire. We've blogged about several of these companies in the past, so they've been around for awhile -- in other words, they might just present the job you've been looking for.

-posted by Rachel

Our friends at ISOMEDIA have completed their headquarters move from Redmond to the heart of Downtown Seattle. Now comes the hard part: remembering which box holds whatever it is you're looking for! Congratulations on the new digs.

-posted by Rachel

VOXUS client AccessLine Communications noted that most VoIP service providers are willing to talk about cost savings and advanced features, but gloss over the problem of the length of time required to initiate service for a business. Last week the company announced it had developed Service Builder, a component of its SmartProvisioning 2.0, that helps resellers and agents reduce order provisioning by as much as 90 percent. We'll be interested to see if this generates any additional chatter within the industry, or if AccessLine competitors will continue to ignore a significant deployment problem.

-posted by Rachel

There's an interesting company in the Portland area that's working hard to make in-store shopping a more complete experience...kind of an antidote to the ease of online shopping. Healthnotes dubs itself the "hub of healthy living" in the marketplace, albeit the grocery store, pharmacy or natural products shop. Through its interactive kiosks found in appropriate aisles, Healthnotes can do neat things such as suggest wine pairings and deliver recipes (and the requisite shopping list). The company is announcing the debut of Healthnotes Connect 2007.

-posted by Rachel

InfoWorld reported a great story on Friday concerning the recent data theft at AT&T. Here are the facts:

-AT&T website hacked
-Perpetrators get personal data on 19k customers
-AT&T shuts down site and contacts authorities
-Perpetrators use information for phishing scam and contact most of the 19k via email
-AT&T decides to notify customers several days later via email about the theft

Ted Sampson of InfoWorld makes a good point here about email: "Real nice, guys. Sending such an important message to your customers via e-mail, which could easily be confused as spam or, hey, a phishing attempt, is simply irresponsible. Rather, I think the company should have been forthcoming and let the media do its job in helping alert customers to what was happening to their data. Yes, it would have taken some lumps in the process, but now, I'd say it's in for a few more."

My take: Is there irony here -- shouldn't a phone company have called its customers??? And perhaps Ted's a little too high on his horse. You couldn't pay me enough money to rely on the media to keep me informed with objective useful information. Sure, this article was great, after the fact. If AT&T officials had reported this to the press looking for a helping hand, what headline do you think would have snagged more readers (remember it's not about doing the right thing, it's about readership):

"AT&T Neglects Web Security - Loses 19k Personal Customer Records"

or

"Alert AT&T Customers - Your personal data may have been stolen"

-posted by Justin

One of our clients, Centennial Software – a developer of IT security and asset management solutions – has seen the demand for security information associated with USB threats rise dramatically since the arrival of new U3 applications to the marketplace. If you're not aware of U3, it's a self-activating technology that enables portable devices (flash drives, iPods, PDAs, etc.) to autorun applications the moment they are plugged into a PC. This drastically raises the level of risk associated with these devices on a corporate network. However, information on the risks associated with this new technology has been scarce.

Recently, Centennial posted information on its website related to the threats surrounding the latest self-activating U3 technology and the number of ongoing visitors has since risen by more than 200 percent (with approximately 16,000 unique visitors in the first 24 hours following the post -- which is AMAZING), and references in the blogosphere has sent the Centennial-based URL to number one on link-sharing site del.icio.us.

Centennial also ranked the latest USB hacks......drum roll please:

1. Slurp: a podslurping application that can copy vast amounts of company files in seconds
2. John the Ripper: detects and cracks weak passwords
3. Nmap: can explore an entire network and identify vulnerabilities or security technology
4. Ethereal: allows the user to see all traffic passing over a network – originally used for troubleshooting
5. Showtraf: continuously monitors and displays network traffic
6. TCPDump: enables the user to display and intercept TCP/IP addresses travelling across a network
7. Nemisis: intentionally to test intrusion detection systems, can enable the bypassing of security measures
8. Netpass: recovers passwords on various guarded areas of the network

If you want a great resource for data theft and portable storage device vulnerabilities, please visit www.watchyourend.com.

-posted by Justin

nPost.com, an organization that enables entrepreneurs to brainstorm with other like minded individuals AND successful CEOs of high-tech companies, has found the perfect place to host its next after-work mingle. Interested parties will be gathering at The Great Nabob in Queen Anne on Wednesday, September 20 from 6-8 p.m. It's free, but you must sign up to attend. Your next opportunity will be on Tuesday, October 17. Visit the website for more information.

-posted by Rachel

Our friends at Bellevue-based Wireless Services Corporation not only grabbed an additional $30 Million in financing recently...it's got a new name. It's now known as SinglePoint to reflect the company's new focus through its acquisition of Mobile Media North America. SinglePoint was formerly the name of Wireless Services Corporation's flagship product, a comprehensive portfolio of advanced data services for carriers. Now, SinglePoint is offering a much more powerful platform for delivering media content, thanks to the strength of Mobile Media. We definitely like the new tagline: "Move the message with SinglePoint."

-posted by Rachel

Just a few more unusual startup names that have grabbed my attention lately...if you're playing along, try to figure out what these companies do before going to their websites: Jookster, Cozi, Kerika and BlueDot. I was especially fascinated by Jookster since it helpfully added an explanation for the name on its website: "Jook is a term that inner city basketball players use when they fake out their opponent on their way to scoring a basket." OK, I'm still a bit dazed and confused, but it's a cool name.

-posted by Rachel

Amazon.com's newest web service, Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), aims to make server capacity a bottomless pit... if you unexpectedly max out yours, multiple server rentals will be available online to immediately expand your web-based power. With the new service, Amazon hopes to simplify and decrease the cost of web-scale development. Amazon Machine Image (yet to be created) will potentially house the new service's applications and essential data and will be integrated into the existing S3 solution. Amazon is not the first to offer a server rental solution, but is unique in its proposed fee system, proportional to the hours and bandwidth used rather than a flat rate. The service is currently available exclusively to trial users.

-posted by Mallory