Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect, didn’t make any earth-shaking news at today’s Technology Alliance luncheon in downtown Seattle — despite jokingly pretending at one point that he was pulling a list of Microsoft’s secret projects from his jacket pocket.

He did, however, say some interesting things on a wide range of topics, responding to questions from the University of Washington’s Ed Lazowska. To start, here’s a video clip of Ozzie’s comments on the role of intellectual property at a time of booming online collaboration and open-source projects.

Here’s a clip, below, of Ozzie talking about the difference in approaches at startups and established companies such as Microsoft.

And in this clip, Ozzie references the Amazon Kindle in a discussion about special- vs. general-purpose devices, before commenting on the future of the news business model.

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and New VC fund looks to incubate startups from universities  

Big ideas emerge from research universities, one of the reasons why leaders of the state’s technology industry at the annual Technology Alliance luncheon today called for more support for the University of Washington and Washington State University.

Now, a new Bellevue venture fund called The University Funds is attempting to bankroll and incubate compelling technologies emerging from research institutions, reports PeHub.com’s Connie Loizos. The seed-stage fund is led by WSU grad and former Talyst CEO James Torina, who left the Bellevue pharmacy automation company last year. Als involved are Pat Murphy, a former Mosaix and N2H2 executive; and Len Jessup, a WSU professor and Director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

According to a press release, the directors of The Univesity Funds are looking to raise as much as $50 million in capital. They’ve already lined up relationship with eight universities and research organizations, including the UW, Arizona State, Oregon State and the University of Oregon.

“The model put forward by The University Funds is intriguing and when fully implemented may well provide an efficient commercialization route for some of the truly ground-breaking research being conducted at WSU,” said Keith Jones, executive director at the WSU Research Foundation in a statement.

Torina explained how he came up with the concept in a message on the firm’s Web site.

During my many visits to Washington State University, where I serve as a Foundation Trustee and Advisor to the colleges of Pharmacy and Business, I discovered a market gap in the eco-system for commercializing products developed within many of our nation’s research labs. This led me to further discussions with the leadership at WSU and several other research institutions, that confirmed the need for a new kind of venture partner to develop a repeatable model for driving research innovations out of the lab and into the marketplace.

It is unclear how much capital The University Funds have raised, and Loizos’ story points to a February SEC filing citing plans to raise $5 million.

Of course, raising a first time venture fund in this climate is extremely challening. The firm’s partner institutions certainly could be sources of capital with their endowment pools, but those have been hit along with the rest of the economy in the past eight months.

 

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and Microsoft ending ‘Search & Give’ on June 1 but promising revival  

Microsoft is temporarily ending its Search And Give program, a site that sought to boost usage of its Live Search engine by donating a penny per search to an organization of the user’s choice.

More significant, perhaps, is the date it will end: June 1. It’s the latest piece of evidence suggesting that the long-awaited revamp of Microsoft’s Live Search engine, code-named Kumo, is coming early next month.

"We are revising this program to improve the user experience and plan to release an updated version in the coming months," the company says on an FAQ page about the program.

What does this say about broader plans for a Live Search overhaul? "We have nothing additional to announce today about upcoming plans for Live Search," a Microsoft representative said in response to that question. "With Live Search, we are hard at work on understanding consumer needs and are increasingly finding big opportunities to advance the value that search engines are missing."

Microsoft has been testing an overhauled version of its third-place search engine under the internal code name Kumo, although it hasn’t yet said whether that will be the final name. Earlier this week, LiveSide.net pointed to a Neowin forum post about Kumo clock at Microsoft counting down to June 2, suggesting that’s when the new search engine will be launched.

The Search And Give site says it has donated more than $536,000 since September 2007.

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Investors can ‘double down’ with new angel investment fund  

The Alliance of Angels has established a  $4.3 million "side car fund," a new vehicle designed to drive more angel investments in the state. Madrona Venture Group and Trilogy Equity Partners contributed about $1 million each to the new fund, which will match some investments that are moving through the Alliance of Angels’ network.

"It is going to be fabulous," said Susannah Malarkey, executive director of the Technology Alliance, which oversees the Alliance of Angels. "What this allows us to do is double down on deals." The announcement was made today at the Technology Alliance’s annual luncheon, which featured Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie.

The fund has a pretty simple structure. An entrepreneur who raised $100,000 from members of the Alliance of Angels would have the opportunity to pull in an additional $100,000 in matching dollars from the side car fund.

A three person committee — made up of Madrona’s Tim Porter, Trilogy’s Peter van Oppen and angel investor Gaylord Kellogg — will evaluate those opportunities and decide how much capital to allocate in each instance.

Seattle area angel investors who attended today’s luncheon supported the idea, noting that it could help supercharge angel investing in the state. Last year, members of the Alliance of Angels invested $6.4 million in 36 companies.

"I think it will drive more money for the angel community," said Mark Mecham. "The idea is to get some critical mass there."

Voyager Capital’s Geoff Entress, an angel investor in more than two dozen Seattle area companies and a participant in the new side car fund, said that the fund won’t participate in every Alliance of Angel deal. And he noted that the structure allows for more capital to be deployed, leveraging the due diligence already conducted by the angels.

The $4.3 million fund is set to run for a couple of years, with Entress calling it a "great" way to support new companies. He doesn’t think there will be complications in terms of angel investors putting less money to work, saying angels don’t really think that way.

At the luncheon, the Technology Alliance also released results from a report that bench-marked the performance of the state’s innovation economy.

The state got high marks in entrepreneurship and venture capital investment, with Washington ranking fifth in terms of dollars invested last year. In fact, that segment of the economy got recognition later in remarks from Ozzie who called the state’s venture community "very solid."

However, the benchmark report showed much lower scores in higher education and state support of academic research. (The state ranked last of 10 peer states when it came PhDs awarded in science and engineering and 7th in high school graduation rates.)

And it is not just a problem in Washington state, with Technology Alliance Chair and Verdiem CEO Jeremy Jaech calling the poor rankings for science and math in the U.S. a "national tragedy."

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