It was a big holiday weekend, so I'm coming to this a bit late, but I thought it worthwhile posting something in honor of Memorial Day. "In 1904, disgusted by the aftermath of the Spanish-American War and the subsequent Philippine-American War, Mark Twain wrote a short anti-war prose poem called "The War Prayer." His family begged him not to publish it, his friends advised him to bury it, and his publisher rejected it, thinking it too inflammatory for the times. Twain agreed, but instructed that it be published after his death, saying famously:

'None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.'

"The War Prayer" was eventually published after World War I, when its message was more in tune with the times."

The Washington Monthly has created a video of the prayer, narrated by Peter Coyote. The English Major in me finds it fascinating because this is a piece of Twain's work that I wasn't familiar with. That, and the fact that it is a powerful comment on today's political climate. So: The War Prayer.

-posted by Paul

Congrats to our friend, Bryan Starbuck, on the public launch of his startup, TalentSpring. Formerly code-named Nimblebee, TalentSpring got a very nice writeup on TechCrunch for its public debut. The company mashes up social networking with personnel recruiting, enabling users to rank their peers – potentially a useful piece of information for prospective employers. What the site really needs now is for folks to populate it by entering their resumes.

-posted by Rachel

For anyone interested in search engine optimization and marketing (and who isn't these days?), there's a conference coming to town June 4-5. SMX, or Search Marketing Expo has more speakers than you can shake a stick at, including Search Engine Land editor Danny Sullivan, industry guru Rand Fishkin, Google's Vanessa Fox, Scott Greenberg of Marchex and John Kim of Yahoo! Search Marketing, to name a few.

-posted by Rachel

VOXUS client Intoto is taking aim at the middle market with a disruptive new model that offers free network-centric security software downloads. First out of the gate at Interop is IntruPro IPS, an intrusion prevention system. It's the first free server offering (free desktop offerings have been available) and it's the good stuff - unthrottled, high-end fuctionality - the same thing Intoto currently delivers to the OEM market serving many of the world's biggest enterprises. So why do businesses need IPS? According to Charles Kolodgy at IDC, "IPS systems are the next generation firewalls."

-posted by Adrienne

A new GPS-enabled cell phone/dog collar from Pets Mobility has hit the market that will allow owners to locate lost pets and talk (yes, talk) to them or the kind stranger that finds them through a two-way cell phone. The new technology, featured in Wired, is just one of the latest digital doggie products aimed to improve a pet owner's life.

-posted by Lindsay

A little Friday humor before the long weekend...

-posted by Paul

As PR professionals, we often hear that reporters are beseiged with story pitches...and while I know that's true, here's the proof. One of the video clips making the rounds on YouTube right now documents an intrepid filmmaker's impromptu visit to the newsroom at the Seattle P-I in order to pitch a story. And what's his idea? Nothing less than the 100th clip he's producing for the YouTube site -- which he believes (?) is breaking news. Major props to the reporter covering the Internet beat, Monica Guzman, for the way she handled being ambushed at her desk. I would have laughed him out of the building.

-posted by Rachel

You wouldn't think a small Seattle-based company like Logos Bible Software would take on the U.S. Postal Service... but then again, maybe it has the ear of you-know-who working in its favor. The company's director of marketing, Dan Pritchett, has figured out a legal way around the First Class mail rate hike that took effect May 14. It's actually a very clever idea, and writing about it here wouldn't be nearly as entertaining as reading the original explanation in the Logos blog. Highly recommend that you click on over and learn more.

-posted by Rachel

Here we grow again... Amazon.com has once again pushed the boundaries of retailing with the launch of the Amazon Podcast Network. Its channels include such offerings as the "Significant Seven," a monthly podcast where Amazon book editors talk about upcoming book releases before they hit the shelves (or in this case, the web). The Amazon Podcast Network also has an affiliation with Tivo, so that consumers can have new programs delivered to their TV set. It's not just books, either – there's a lot of music-related videos, songs and interviews. Pretty impressive.

-posted by Rachel

Hard to believe that there's room in the online flea market business for another vendor other than the megalithic eBay, but Issaquah-based iCantu Technologies launched CozyBug earlier this month. It's differentiation is that it localizes online shopping to eliminate shipping charges – kind of a mashup of the "for sale" category on Craigslist within a more trusted setting. It'll be interesting to see how the company plans to get buyers and sellers to utilize this site – it'll be critical to its success.

-posted by Rachel

Our client Attenex has three marketing jobs open – so if you or someone you know has a marketing bent, drop them a line. Attenex is a fast-growing software company in a hot market (legal discovery) and needs good people quickly.
 
Here are the openings:
 
Marketing coordinator

Marketing communications manager

Product marketing manager

Happy hunting.

-posted by Paul

Need help organizing your notes? A new beta service from DropJott promises to help folks store, view and edit notes more efficiently. Briefly mentioned in Forbes, this company allows users to apply some sophistication (and a pretty interface) to what is a rather mundane process of collecting notes and creating to-do lists. Like online social debt management company, BillMonk, DropJott is the latest organization to pop up in the free online personal management space.

-posted by Lindsay

Every once in a while we like to head back down memory lane and revisit past relationships. This week, Rumblefish, the ubercool online music company designed for big business. In brief, the company licenses music for use by business, kind of like stock photos, but with music. They've signed thousands of bands and now have a very impressive catalog, not to mention some impressive clients, such as Adidas, North Face, Pabst and Red Bull. Back in the day, they weren't quite ready for a PR agency, but now it appears their business model is finally going platinum. Check out this recent new story on CNBC.

-posted by Justin

Avvo, a stealthy startup that raised $10 million in funding earlier this month, and Illumita, an early stage startup being incubated at the Unviersity of Washington, are just two of the many young companies around town that have chosen corporate names with double letters. I'm not sure why this is important, but it's a random factoid that caught my interest: Nimblebee, Ookla, Attenex, Accessline... the list goes on. It probably doesn't mean anything except that entrepreneurs are having increasing difficulty in finding unique domain names that can be registered. But then again...

So much for my mid-week musings.

-posted by Rachel

AirMagnet's wireless security and performance troubleshooting solution, Laptop Analyzer, outperformed the competition in Network World’s recently released Clear Choice Test of WLAN analyzers (WLAN analyzers come of age, 2007, Network World). Laptop Analyzer received the highest score in all test categories – including features, identifying security and performance threats, documentation, reporting capabilities, management and ease of use, installation and set up – overshadowing products from Fluke Networks, Network General and WildPackets.

Here's a little text bite from the review: “After subjecting the latest products to several problem-identification tests, we found that AirMagnet Laptop is still the one to beat, as it excels at 802.11-specific analysis. Its rapid analysis and accuracy is clearly at the top of the list,” according to the Network World review. The entire review is available here.

-posted by Justin