Library Journal reports that some librarians are interested in lending out Kindle electronic readers, but says they’re getting mixed messages from Amazon.com about whether they’re allowed to do that.

Amazon.com is restricting the number of sellers allowed to offer "Collectible" books on its retail site. "When a book is listed as ‘Collectible,’ customers should be confident that the offer has been accurately graded and described and that the book has qualities that make it valuable to a collector," Amazon wrote in a seller forum. The new policy follows Amazon’s acquisition of AbeBooks, a seller of rare and out-of-print books, late last year.

Global Market Insite, an online market research company, has named Sean O’Neill, Joel Rosenberger and Dave Sampson to executive and management positions. O’Neill, who previously worked at uTango, will serve as vice president of product and program management. Rosenbarger, who previously worked at Amazon Web Services, has been named vice president of engineering. And Sampson, who previously worked at Sampa, will serve as vice president of demand operation and customer experience.

Nethra Imaging has purchased the asset of Ambric, the Beaverton, Oregon semiconductor company that raised capital from OVP Venture Partners, ComVentures and others before falling on hard times.

Seattle online music startup iLike has reached cash flow positive and last quarter was the company’s best on record, CEO Ali Partovi tells VentureBeat.

Bellevue mobile software developer UIEvolution is working with Samsung to develop new applications for Samsung’s TouchWiz touchscreen phones, with UIEvolution CEO Chris Ruff saying that they are building a platform so that third party developers and entertainment brands can develop rich consumer applications.

Seattle area startup incubator Atlas Accelerator said that it made $2.3 million in seed investments last year, with plans to increase that amount this year. The 37-person organization also said three of its companies were acquired last year: Coffee Equipment Company (sold to Starbucks), International Titanium Powder (sold to Crystal Global), and RVM Scientific (sold to Agilent).

Boost eLearning has signed a deal to provide its Google search training tools to The Boeing Company, with CEO Victor Alhadeff saying the online learning solution will help Boeing employees save time when searching the corporate intranet or public Internet.

Headline of the day comes via BusinessWeek: "After IBM, What Now for Sun?"

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and Google CEO tells newspapers how they’ll make money online  

Speaking to the Newspaper Association of America annual convention today, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt discussed trends including the boom in user-generated content, the trend toward real-time information, and the role of specialized devices such as Amazon’s Kindle electronic reader.

But the central question, of course, is how newspapers will make money on this whole Internet thing.

Nowhere is that question more pertinent than in Seattle, where Hearst is currently pressing ahead with an online-only SeattlePI.com after shutting down the print edition. After his speech, Schmidt was asked for his thoughts on the models of advertising, micropayments and online subscriptions. Via webcast, here’s an excerpt from his remarks.

"I think you’re going to end up with all three. An analogy I would offer is television. There’s free television, over-the-air television, there’s cable television and there’s pay television. And they have smaller markets as you go from free to more highly paid. And that structure looks to us like roughly the structure of all of these businesses.

"Today there are very effective subscription-based models but there are not very good micropayment systems. Micropayment meaning, 1 cent, 3 cent kinds of systems. They clearly need to be developed by the industry. So I think from your perspective you should assume that your information — that there’s a category of information you all produce that you’ll want to distribute free — freely — there’s a category that you’ll want to have a per-click basis, and then there’s some that you’ll want subscription for.

"The reality is that in this new model, the vast majority of people will only deal with the free model. So you’ll be forced, whether we like it or not, to have a significant advertising component, as well as a micropayment and an additional payment system. The technology around micropayments is getting to be possible now. The transaction costs were so high before, you couldn’t do the 1 cent, 3 cent kind of a model, but it looks like the new technologies around aggregation will allow that at the payment level."

For more on Google and micropayments, see this archived TechFlash guest post by Paul Andrews: Imagining a penny-a-click Web — with Google smack in the middle.

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and Lawyer gives up day job to focus efforts on iPhone applications  

Attorney Michael Schneider quit his corporate gig at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati last month to develop iPhone apps. It is hard to say goodbye to a six figure salary — especially in this economic climate. But the Seattle lawyer-turned-iPhone-app-developer said it was the right time to strike out on his own.

He’s now operating a new startup called HiveBrain, with plans to roll out additional applications in the coming weeks. (His latest is an instructional dog training app.) 

"I am heading out on my own to pursue the entrepreneurial dream," said Schneider, who developed 13 iPhone apps prior to leaving the law firm. "I’ve been doing it on the weekends and at night, and so now I will be able to spend my days doing the kinds of stuff that I used to enjoy on the weekends."

Schneider isn’t the only one looking to cash in on the iPhone. Several startups have either formed or repositioned in recent months in order to develop new products for the popular device. In the Seattle area alone, companies such as Mobui, Melodeo, Zumobi and Zero260 are transforming into full-service iPhone development studios.

And The New York Times published a story last week titled "The iPhone Gold Rush" in which it described the how small development shops and individual developers quickly made in excess of $100,000 with their iPhone apps.

With more than 25,000 applications now available in Apple’s app store, it is getting harder to stand out. And that means it’s tougher for the small developer to make money.

"It is still a big opportunity out there, but it is not the gold rush that people think it is," said Schneider. "If (an app) is not in the top 100 in its category or the top 100 overall, people are probably not going to find it. So, I don’t know what the market is going to look like in six months when there are 40,000 apps or something."

Still, Schneider said there’s room to develop high quality products for the iPhone. And he believes that those developers who establish a name for themselves will be able to rise above the clutter.

"It is like the Web. A lot of big companies are going to have to have a presence," said Schneider, who is hoping that HiveBrain can establish a top-notch reputation. "It is just a matter of time before you start seeing a lot of Web site like applications."

Schneider started iPhone application development as a hobby last summer, and quickly discovered that he was good at it. Many of his applications - including TouchType, Private-I and Direct Line — have won critical acclaim from bloggers  and users who like the simple functionality of his inventions.

The 99 cent Direct Line application, for example, allows iPhone users to quickly connect with live customer support agents without getting stuck in a corporation’s automated phone system. Meanwhile, TouchType (also 99 cents) allows iPhone users to turn the device on its side in order to send email messages in the wider landscape mode.

To date, iPhone users have downloaded more than 500,000 of his applications.

Despite the success, Schneider is not giving up entirely on the law. The 34-year-old attorney plans to funnel some of the money from his iPhone apps into a new software-as-a service startup that’s designed to help companies get a better handle on legal bills.

"The iPhone apps are fun and I am going to basically use that to bootstrap this other business, which is more ambitious," he said.

The success of the iPhone apps also gave Schneider the confidence to launch the new business, something he said would have been a lot harder without the cash flow.

"I had the fortunate situaiton that I could leave with some security knowing that I had an income stream," said Schneider, who is now making about the same income as he did as a corporate attorney.

"I figure if I put more time into it, it is bound to have better results," he said.

So what’s next? 

Schneider is working on a casual game and the instructional dog training application, with plans for the latter to launch as early as this week.

Here’s a look at some of Schneider’s iPhone apps, including the relaxation, weight loss and smoking cessation apps that he developed in conjunction with hypnotherapist Andrew Johnson.

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Is Microsoft Surface overpriced?  

The answer to that question, of course, is yes — at least for the consumer market. Even Microsoft acknowledges that its Surface tabletop computers, currently $12,500 a pop, aren’t exactly ready for the living room. But just how much lower could Microsoft go?

That’s what we’re wondering after seeing what the do-it-yourself super-geeks at Maximum PC were able to do with about $350 in parts and a bunch of open-source software. As demonstrated in the video below, the device they created offers very similar functionality, including an immersive multi-touch experience.

See this article for all the details.

Maximum PC’s Multitouch Surface Computer from Maximum PC on Vimeo. [Via Gizmodo]

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