Articles from TechFlash

Google's stock will lose nearly 20 percent of its value. One of Seattle's casual game companies -- Big Fish, PopCap or WildTangent -- will go public. And look for Android to be the hot mobile operating system of 2010, as Microsoft buys RIM in order to compete. Those are among the predictions from a group of Seattle area soothsayers who offered their forecasts for 2010 in our annual venture capital predictions column. Take a gander at their responses below. How do you think they'll do? (Read Full Article)

Microsoft's engineers have always liked to keep their servers for testing and building software close at hand, in the buildings where they work. But the company has begun to change that practice -- opening a new facility eight miles from its main campus where it plans to shift much of that computing workload. The company says it wants to save energy, and space, by consolidating the servers into one facility designed from the ground up to be efficient. Old-school Microsofties might be tempted to drive to the facility to fiddle with their servers in person, but the new setup is meant to let them restart, administer, test and debug servers using remote management tools, from the main campus or anywhere else. (Read Full Article)

Maybe clean tech venture deals come in waves. No sooner did I complete the post on the funding for biodiesel startup Bio Architecture Lab that another Seattle area alternative energy company announced the close of its series A financing.Blue Marble Energy Corp. -- which is developing ways to convert algae, plants and food waste into fuel -- didn't disclose the size of the round in a press release. But in a SEC filing from April, the company indicated that it had raised $1 million of a $2 million round."With the tightness in the financing markets, it is very gratifying to see the faith that the market is placing in our vision of the future of biochemicals and renewable energy from waste biomass," Blue Marble CEO Kelly Ogilvie said in a statement. (Read Full Article)