Zippy technology company names for Bellevue-based startups must be getting harder to come by. Two newer startups are Zango and Twango, not to be confused with Dwango, which died last summer. Zango is the new name for 180Solutions, an online media and advertising company that last week agreed to pay the Federal Trade Commission $3 million in penalties for deceptive practices. Twango does something completely different and offers a media sharing product a la YouTube and Flickr. It's really quite nifty and worth a look for anyone wanting to share wedding pictures, travel videos and more. Ba da bim, ba da bango.

-posted by Rachel

The Sundance Film Festival last week acknowledged mobile phone video as a viable film genre with its first pilot project calling for short 3-5 minute clips specifically for the small (really small) screen. Submitted films will be showcased in Barcelona next year at the 3GSM World Congress. Academia have too extended a warm embrace to the emerging mobile video market. In September, Boston University announced the first "mobile-phone movie-making" course in which students explore mobile phone/device filmmaking methodology. Who knows, maybe BU will churn out the lucky winner.

-posted by Lindsay

Seattle-based Mpire today announced the launch of eBay Pop, a free service that publishes eBay sales trends (complete with interactive games, editorial comments and a blog to complement the informative data). With eBay Pop, online Christmas shoppers can compare their wishlists with this year's most popular items featured on eBay and the average prices they fetch. How much, for instance, does a Tickle Me Elmo go for this year? Or a PlayStation 3? Visit eBay Pop to find out.

-posted by Mallory

Come January, Digeo, Inc. will head down to Las Vegas for the prestigious Emmy® Awards. The Kirkland-based company today announced that it has been nominated for an award in the Science, Technology & Engineering for Broadband & Personal Television category. Digeo has received two Emmy's in the past for their innovative Moxi™ program guide. This year's nomination honors their successful video-on-demand integration, which puts top movie titles at users' fingertips in an easy-to-browse, select and order format.

-posted by Mallory

Congrats to our friends at Pure Networks on the announcement of a formal partnership with Symantec to distribute its home networking software. We first heard about this strategic move last spring...which seems to be on par with how long it takes to develop these types of definitive agreements. Remember the days when two entrepreneurs would meet at a networking event, realize that they have mutually advantageous business plans and quickly move to collaborate? In our world today, clients can take months to resolve the smallest talking point in an agreement. But if you want to go to a place where you can still informally meet entrepreneurs and boost your business, try the nPost.com Entrepreneur Networking Event on Tuesday, November 14 at The Great Nabob in Seattle.

-posted by Rachel

Another interesting company I didn't know about: Seattle-based BigOven, which has won a slew of awards for its recipe software, including PC World's pick as a top 15 download last year. The company announced some product improvements earlier this week including my personal favorite, Leftover Wizard, which lets you enter available ingredients online to get an answer of what you can make for dinner. Of course, it only works if you have more than leftover Halloween candy and pumpkin seeds to work with.

-posted by Rachel

A posting on CNET’s Blogma today reminded me of two things. Firstly, the fact that I might be the only person in my peer group that has not yet created a MySpace page and secondly, nothing in the world is free (for very long). Using music license sniffer software from Gracenote, MySpace will now be cracking down on users uploading illegal music. Repeat offenders will even be booted. So the next time your "friend" has gone missing, you can probably guess why.

-posted by Lindsay

The Vancouver Sun recently reported that B.C.-based Monro Communications is capturing the attention of education enthusiasts with its online movie software product that allows users to assemble images, sounds and film clips from Internet resources into motion pictures. The content, which never leaves the company’s server, allows teachers to add audio-visual components to traditional book-based lessons without worrying about copyright infringement.

-posted by Lindsay