We're a nominee for this year's Mobile Village awards. More details to come...

Some time ago, ad and marketing guru John Follis coined the term "G-cred" for Google credibilty. In other words, if someone puts your name, business or product into a search engine such as Google, does it float to the top of the list? It's a measure of how far we've advanced as an Internet-based society that G-cred equates with legitimacy. I'm happy to report that if you Google "voxus," we're number one. A year ago, the top links were for "a somewhat obscure heathen music project from Germany." Ahem.

-posted by Rachel

Last Tuesday evening, Bothell-based casual gaming company (and VOXUS client) Sandlot Games hosted a party at Club Venom in Seattle in conjunction with the Casual Gaming Association conference. In attendance were various members of press, gaming industry notables, and a woman dressed as Cake Mania's heroine Jill, complete with a freshly frosted cake and a robot-like walk. Cake Mania was the top casual game of 2006 and a major hit for Sandlot; at the party, Sandlot founder and CEO Daniel Bernstein gave the first glimpse of Cake Mania 2 (out in August) during a 10-minute run through of the game on Venom's huge projection screens. Needless to say, the party was a "treat" for all who attended.

-posted by Stephanie

According to reports in the New York Times and on Forbes.com, business publishing mainstay Business 2.0 magazine's September issue could be its last. Even though the tech industry is cranking and start-ups proliferating, some of our favorite print publications (e.g. Red Herring) are not benefitting. On the upside though, sites such as GigaOm and PaidContent are growing. Nothing (yet) quite compares though to landing, and literally touching, that Business 2.0 cover story. If it's true, we'll miss you.

-posted by Adrienne

VOXUS client Nextrials was selected for this year's AlwaysOn 100 list of top private Internet-related technology companies. There were also a number of Seattle-based startups that made this year's list, including our friends at Verdiem, SeaMobile, Pluggd and Payscale, to name a few. Congratulations to all of the designees. For the complete list, go here.

-posted by Rachel

Seattle startup Exbiblio is developing a product that will allow users to find electronic copies of printed materials online. Due out in the Fall, the company's product will enable users to scan printed text and phrases to easily find full text matches online. According to a Puget Sound Business Journal story, "...the company aims to partner with a mobile-phone maker, to embed Exbiblio technology in handsets ..." Company founder, Martin King, is one of the creators of Tegic's ubiquitous T9 software.

-posted by Lindsay

Here's a startup that I enthusiastically hope makes it. Noonhat is like speed dating for business people interested in networking. You simply sign on to the site, indicate how far you're willing to travel for lunch, and...presto!...Noonhat hooks you up. All it needs now is for a lot of folks to utilize the free membership.

-posted by Rachel

We're looking forward to the Casual Connect 2007 conference in Seattle next week. The event will bring together developers, publishers and distributors within the casual games industry (which is, by the way, the fastest growing segement of the video game industry). It should be a great event with speakers from companies such as MTV and Google, as well as local favorites Sandlot Games, PopCap Games, Big Fish Games and PlayFirst.

-posted by Adrienne

Sprung from The Music Genome Project which assembled literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.
Check it out!

-posted by Shawnna

How often do you open your email and find the majority of the mail is spam?

Under a Washington state law enacted in March 1998 and amended in May 1999, it is illegal to send a commercial e-mail message that uses a third party's domain name without permission; that contains false or missing routing information; or with a false or misleading subject line. The law applies if a message is sent from within Washington; if the sender knows that the recipient is a Washington resident; or if the registrant of the domain name contained in the recipient's address will confirm upon request that the recipient is a Washington resident.

Read on to find out how one Washington resident made $31,575 by suing spammers.

-posted by Shawnna

Fake Steve Jobs offered up some interesting commentary on media manipulation around the iphone introduction:

Our biggest trick -- and it's not really a big stroke of genius or anything -- is simply to make a huge and dramatic presentation and then not let anyone actually see the phone. That way everyone can project their hopes and desires onto the object and build it up in their imagination as some great special unique magical device. We call it the Obama Maneuver. This creates a deadly combination: loads of demand and very little actual information.

After which he goes on to explain how Apple manipulates reviewers. You can argue the accuracy of this, but clearly it wouldn't work for companies without the star power of Apple. Still, one can dream...

And by the way, if you haven't checked out the full FSJ blog, you should. Hilarious.

-posted by Paul

One of the sites I visit regularly is John Gruber's Daring Fireball, and I was intrigued by this explanation of why the site is comment-free:

I wanted to write a site for someone it’s meant for. That reader I write for is a second version of me. I’m writing for him. He’s interested in the exact same things I’m interested in; he reads the exact same websites I read. I want him to like this website so much that he reads it from the top to the bottom, and he reads everything. Every single word. The copyright statement, what software I use, he’s read it all.

If I turn comments on, that goes away. It’s not that I don’t like sites with comments on, but when you read a site with comments it automatically puts you, the reader, in a defensive mode where you’re saying, “what’s good in this comment thread? What can I skim?”

It’s totally egotistical. I want Daring Fireball to be a site that you can’t skim if you’re in the target audience for it. You say, “Oh, a new article from John. I need to read it,” and your deadlines go whizzing by because you have to read what I wrote.

If I turn comments on I feel like it’s two different directions. You get to the end of my article and you’re like, “let’s see if there’s anything interesting. Let’s see if there’s any names I know.” That’s really it. Sometimes a design decision is what you don’t put in, as opposed to what you put in.

-posted by Paul

So I know that we tend to write about Northwest-based tech companies, but I just had to pass along crucial information for anyone who has ever thought they needed a mental health day from work, but couldn't take it due to human resources requirements. There's a new website, myexcusedabsence.com, that's dedicated to providing relief to beleaguered workers everywhere. Brought to you by two geniuses in Oklahoma (a state where a doctor's note is frequently a requirement for sick time), for a one-time fee of $25 you get very official-looking notes covering illnesses, emergency room visits, funerals, jury duty, etc. You also get some tools to help manage your absences (i.e., did you already attend grandma's funeral?).

-posted by Rachel

Congratulations to our friends at Centeris for winning an eWeek Excellence Award. The company's Likewise Management Suite product topped the System and Application Management category. You can read more here.

-posted by Rachel

I'm not sure how I feel about the latest Seattle social networking site, MobIncentive, which debuted last week. The brainchild of Andrew Lin and Brian Sabino, MobIncentive's goal is lofty: to share an idea and gain support from others for getting it done. Community funds are the reward. This sounds pretty noble if you're looking for a way to improve or eradicate social ills, but with the present YouTube mentality, you know the majority of challenges are going to be silly. Take the video milk challenge, where if you can drink a gallon of milk in one hour, you can grab the posted funds...or the bounty ($50 and counting) posted on Paris Hilton to put her back in jail . Dunno. Am I just not getting it? What do you think?

-posted by Rachel

Seattle-based start-up mPoria is gaining momentum in its effort to cash in on the m-commerce space. According to IDC and Jupiter Media Metrix the m-commerce market has reached $58.4 billion this year in the United States, up from $29 billion in 2006. This week mPoria announced a deal with PayPal to integrate PayPal's automated mobile payment service into mPoria's m-commerce platform. mPoria converts online retail shopping sites so they can be accessed from mobile phones. Prior to this deal, mPoria funneled payment information to the retailer which then handled the transaction. Now shoppers can select the PayPal option to complete their transaction directly.

-posted by Adrienne

Mattel, the maker of Barbie, is preparing one of its biggest updates of the toy's image; this summer, it will start selling plastic "Barbie Girls," a handheld MP3 player that can be accessorized like a doll and used to unlock special animations, make friends and shop in a virtual world on the Web. The toy is likely to test Mattel's ability to stay relevant in a Digital Age that has changed the way little girls play and socialize.
Read on...

-posted by Shawnna

It was recently announced that Konami Corp. has created a "Dream Skincare" game for the Nintendo DS handheld. The "game" allows players to enter in their body temperature and weight into a graph and answer questions about their skin quality. The result: advice on how to keep skin healthy, including diet and other helpful hints. The game game also includes videos of Chizu Saeki, a Japanese beauty expert, demonstrating facial massages and skin maintenance. "Dream Skincare" is set to go on sale in Japan in October for $37.

-posted by Stephanie