OK, so it's not the cover of the Rolling Stone. But Ksenia Oustiougova, the founder of the soon-to-be-launched Lilipip, is on the cover of the local Russian newsletter, MIR (available in Seattle Safeways). The boss says I'm obsessed with Lilipip, but I do believe this is a local startup that you should keep your eye on. It expects to emerge from stealth mode before the end of the year.

-posted by Rachel

Our friends at Pure Networks recently conducted a survey that uncovered a disturbing tech habit. Almost half of the respondents did not think it was wrong to piggyback on someone else's WiFi connection. 'Nuff said.

-posted by Rachel

Voxus client SARS Corp. is doing some interesting work with the oil drilling company Rowan by tracking the location of Rowan's oil rigs (offshore and land-based) as well as buoys marking sunken rigs and helicopters transporting crew. As far as we know, this is one of the few industry examples out there of a single telematics service accessing information on three different asset types (actually four if you separate land rigs and offshore rigs) and delivering it to the customer within one single view.

You can also read more about SARS the company in today's Seattle Times article by Tricia Duryee.

-posted by Adrienne

Ho-ho-hold it...yet another new name for a Seattle area tech company. SchoolSoft has become DreamBox Learning. There must be something going on in town, what with new names for BlueDot (Faves), ZenZui (Zumobi), eProject (Daptiv) and God knows how many other startups that I was just getting to know. Marketing and branding companies must be doing well in the Emerald City. If it's still called that.

-posted by Rachel

For all of you gadget heads who didn't rush out and buy the new iPhone, Sprint is launching its BlackBerry Pearl on Black Friday (November 23), according to Gizmodo.

-posted by Rachel

So now there's absolutely no reason for any man (or woman, for that matter) NOT to send flowers for just about any occasion. Jackson Fish Market, that wacky Seattle software development startup that advertises its products as "hand crafted" and that brought us Invitastic as an alternative to eVite, just launched They're Beautiful. You guessed it, virtual flower arrangements. I have to admit, the bouquets are visually arresting, but call me crazy for still wanting the real thing...at least until the JFM folks can add scent to the delivery package.

-posted by Rachel

Yet another startup in Seattle is reworking its name. This time it's BlueDot, now known as Faves. Gaining a dot com extension (as opposed to a dot us extension, which the company previously owned) is reason enough for a social networking site to make the switch.

-posted by Rachel

There was a great turn-out at the recent South Sound PRSA Chapter event which was a panel discussion on the topic of how to leverage user-generated media. Panelists included Nathan Kaiser of nPost, Paul Ellis of Tacoma-Piece County Chamber, Mark Briggs of newstribune.com, and Frank Shaw (one of my most favorite persons on the planet) of Waggener Edstrom.

We had strong audience participation and panelists not only shared tangible advice and examples, they were also damn funny. A few basic themes (for companies interesting in better leveraging new media, or just plain getting started) included:

* know your audience and your communications objective - don't just follow the latest trend
* be authentic, be transparent, or in some cases, per Shaw, be "radically translucent"
* go for it - get out there and experiment, take some risks

For more details, check out Briggs' additional commentary http://blogs.thenewstribune.com/online/

Also check out a few examples of local and non-local companies and bloggers cited by the panelists:
Blendtec
Zillow
Dell
Hotel Morano
Sonos

Thanks again to PRSA, the panelists and audience members for a great event!

-posted by Adrienne

A little late, but congrats to our friends at Portland-based Rumblefish for being the first to license a song on an iPhone. You can read more about it here.

-posted by Rachel

Congrats to Tricia Gross, the new CEO of former client Hubspan. Great to see another woman ascend to the top office of a Seattle-based tech company. Good luck!

-posted by Rachel

What's in a name? Well, quite a lot - and companies don't undertake a name change lightly because it's like throwing money away. So I was surprised to see that eProject has quietly changed its name to Daptiv. eProject's been around for awhile and has a pretty solid collaborative business software...but maybe I'm the only one who knew about it. I'm not so sure that Daptiv is any more descriptive of the company and its product, and, in my opinion, falls dangerously close to those cute and meaningless Web 2.0 names we're seeing these days. But as a play on "adaptive," maybe it does tell the world a bit more than its previous moniker. Dunno, but I hope it works for them.

-posted by Rachel

OK, I know this isn't strictly technology related...but with all of the entrepreneurs out there looking for affordable office space, I wanted to at least mention My Day Office, one of the most interesting startups in town. It's coworking, or community space collaboration, at its best -- Shauna Brennan opened it in Belltown last month. So if you've been holding so many business meetings in area Starbucks that you know all of the differences in decor, you might want to consider an upward move.

-posted by Rachel