Mar. 26--Excerpts

from the blog

The Washington Technology Industry Association shook things up this year for its annual awards event.

Instead of using a committee of executives, investors and academics to choose the state's top tech companies, the trade group held an online poll.

The winners, announced at a gala event Wednesday night at the Paramount Theatre, also marked the group's 25th anniversary:

Commercial Product or Service of the Year: Visible Technologies for its TruCast social-media analysis platform.

Consumer Product or Service of the Year: Wetpaint and its platform for creating "socially published" Web sites.

Breakthrough Startup of the Year: Ontela for Ontela PicDeck, a one-click system for distributing camera-phone pictures.

Service Provider of the Year: AdReady, which offers a service that simplifies the creation and management of online display-ad campaigns.

Best Use of Technology in Government, Non-Profit or Education: Snohomish County Planning & Development Services for its "inspection improvement project."

Technology Innovator of the Year: Darrin Massena, co-founder and chief technology officer of Picnik, which provides free online photo-editing tools.

Technology Leader of Tomorrow: Israel Zemeadim, an eighth-grader at Washington Middle School.

GridNetworks' future

Seattle's GridNetworks is being sold, a knowledgeable source told me Wednesday, confirming rumors that surfaced earlier in the week.

The announcement will be made in about two weeks, just before the big National Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas. Consolidation was inevitable in the online video market; I wonder if other mergers will surface around the NAB show.

The buyer's identity hasn't been disclosed, but Businessofvideo.com said it was a New York-based desktop video company when it first reported Tuesday night that a sale was near.

Grid will continue to have a significant presence in Seattle, according to my source. It recently employed close to 30 people.

Grid developed a heavy-duty network for broadcasting high-definition online video content to televisions connected directly to the Web or via devices such as Microsoft's Xbox 360 or Sony's PlayStation 3.

The company was founded in 2005 by former RealNetworks broadcast general manager Jeff Payne. Payne's now the chief technology officer and Tony Naughtin, a co-founder of InterNap, is chief executive.

In late 2007, the company received $9.5 million from investors Panorama Capital, Cisco and Comcast.