Speaking at the CTIA Wireless convention in Las Vegas this morning, Microsoft’s Robbie Bach started not by touting Windows Mobile but by talking about computers — specifically, netbooks. His comments, via webcast, demonstrated how much the tiny, Web-oriented machines are blending the worlds of personal computers and mobile phones.

Bach said Microsoft foresees more netbook PCs being offered with wireless access plans that let them connect to the Internet using mobile broadband. He predicted that, by 2012, a third of netbooks will be sold by mobile operators.

"One of the things we’ve seen is that many of our operator partners have now taken on the idea that they can sell these netbook PCs in many ways much like they do phones," Bach said, calling it "a very interesting trend and a very big shift."

The upcoming Windows 7 has been better-tuned to work with netbooks, and one Microsoft representative predicted that the new operating system will expand wireless 3G usage in the same way that Windows XP boosted WiFi usage.

Bach noted that the economy is driving the trend toward the lower-priced netbooks. But he glossed over the business impact on Microsoft, citing the rising sales of Windows on netbooks without noting that the company gets a lower average selling price for those copies of the operating system than it does on traditional computers.

That’s one of the reasons netbooks are seen as risky for Microsoft’s revenue. The question over time is whether netbooks will expand the market overall or cannibalize traditional PC sales. Bach, for one, sounded an optimistic note, pointing out that many netbooks are used as second machines, supplementing primary computers.

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and Amazon adds data crunching to cloud compute services  Amazon.com started its cloud computing business with the basic storage (S3) and computing functions (EC2). But it’s been slowly adding new products to the mix. The latest: Amazon Elastic MapReduce, which lets developers crunch "vast amounts of data" in the cloud. The service runs on Hadoop software on EC2.

Amazon says Elastic MapReduce can help with "data-intensive tasks for distributed applications such as web indexing, data mining, log file analysis, machine learning, financial analysis, scientific simulation, and bioinformatics research."

Here’s more from the release:

“Some researchers and developers already run Hadoop on Amazon EC2, and many of them have asked for even simpler tools for large-scale data analysis,” said Adam Selipsky, Vice President of Product Management and Developer Relations for Amazon Web Services. “Amazon Elastic MapReduce makes crunching in the cloud much easier as it dramatically reduces the time, effort, complexity and cost of performing data-intensive tasks.”

Interestingly, Amazon’s announcement of the new service contains a glowing reference from Netflix, one of Amazon’s main competitors in the DVD and video-streaming business:

“Netflix is continually pursuing new technologies that extend our ability to deliver the best movie rental experience to our more than 10 million subscribers. Amazon Elastic MapReduce provides a powerful capability on top of the already robust Amazon Web Services technology platform. We’re enthused about the potential for this new technology to provide an even better experience to our members,” said Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt.

As TechCrunch notes, Amazon’s Elastic MapReduce is an open-source version of MapReduce, a "data processing framework Google created to index and search the Web." Amazon’s rollout of the service may complicate life for Cloudera, a startup that also offers Hadoop-based data processing on top of EC2.

Elastic MapReduce joins a growing suite of Amazon Web Services and products, including SimpleDB (database management), CloudFront (content delivery network), SQS (message storing), and the AWS management console.

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and Seattle 2.0 nominees announced  

Who is the best blogger, venture capitalist, angel investor and startup CEO in Seattle? You’ll have a chance to vote for your favorites in those categories and more in the first annual Seattle 2.0 Awards. Founder Marcelo Calbucci said he wanted to create a new ceremony to celebrate the Seattle startup community, bringing attention to the innovative  entrepreneurs, developers, designers and investors who live and work here.

I served as judge during the nomination process, but did not participate in the blog category since TechFlash was nominated for an award. Now, I am pleased to learn that we are one of three finalists along with Xconomy and Startup Whisper. Thanks  for the nomination, and for reading TechFlash.

See all nominees below, or go to Seattle 2.0 to cast your vote.

Best Startup

Dreambox Learning (Online education service)

Picnik (Online picture editing service)

Redfin (Online real estate brokerage service)

Wetpaint (Wiki service)

Best Boot-strapped Startup

Appature (Enterprise marketing solution for the health industry)

BigOven (Share and find cooking recipes)

Picnik (Online picture editing service)

Urbanspoon (Find restaurants)

Best Startup CEO

Andy Liu (CEO and co-founder of BuddyTV)

Glenn Kelman (CEO of Redfin)

Jonathan Sposato (CEO of Picnik)

Matt Hulett (CEO of mPire/Widgetbucks)

Best Startup Technologist

Chris Hahn (CTO and co-founder of Appature)

Greg Harrison (CTO and co-founder of mPire/Widgetbucks)

Joe Heitzeberg (VP of Engineering of WhitePages)

Nat Brown (CTO of iLike)

Best Startup Product Designer

Jenny Lam (Co-founder at Jackson Fish Market)

Keith Harper (Art Director at Inkd)

Peter Roman (Lead Designer at Picnik)

Best Venture Capitalist

Bill Bryant (Venture Partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson)

Bill McAleer (Managing Director at Voyager Capital)

Matt McIlwain (Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group)

Nick Hanauer (Partner at Second Avenue Partners)

Best Angel Investor

Andy Sack (Co-founder and Partner at Founders Co-Op)

Bill Bryant (Venture Partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson)

Geoff Entress (Venture Partner at Voyager Capital)

Mike Koss (Founder of Startpad)

Best Service Provider to Startups

Adam Philipp (Patent Attorney at AXIOS Law Group)

Craig Sherman (Corporate Attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati)

Shannon Swift (President & CEO of Swift HR Solutions)

Best Blog from/about Startup

Startup Whisperer by Matt Hulett

TechFlash by John Cook

Xconomy Seattle by Greg Huang

Best Social Event for Startups

Ignite Seattle by Brady Forrest

Lunch 2.0 by Josh Maher

nPost Networking by Nathan Kaiser

Open Coffee by Andy Sack

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