E Ink Gets Colorful, Akamai Loses Netflix, Five Startups Are Hiring, and More Tech Tidbits

This is one of those weeks when it feels like we’ve been overrun by news. Nothing really major, but a lot of things to think about. To get caught up, here’s a sampling of what’s been going on in the Boston tech community today:

—E Ink, the technology maker behind many popular e-reader displays, said that Beijing-based Hanvon Technology will be the first company to sell a color display based on E Ink, starting in March. The New York Times and other media outlets reported the news. The color display, which E Ink told us about a few months ago, works by putting a color filter over E Ink’s standard black-and-white display. Amazon (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AMZN]]), Sony (NYSE: [[ticker:SNE]]), and other big e-reader makers—not to mention Apple (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AAPL]])—aren’t using the technology yet, but are watching closely.

—Akamai (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AKAM]]) is losing Netflix (NASDAQ: [[ticker:NFLX]]) as a video-streaming customer (to competitors Level 3 and Limelight), according to Dan Rayburn of StreamingMedia.com and Frost & Sullivan. Rayburn estimates that Netflix’s business is worth $10-15 million to Akamai, and that the change will occur over the coming months.

—Rob Go, the co-founder of NextView Ventures (formerly of Spark Capital), has posted a “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Boston Tech Community.” It’s a quick guide for new entrepreneurs in town. One highlight: Go gives his list of five “scaling companies to watch (i.e., probably hiring)”—Gemvara, CSN Stores, SCVNGR, HubSpot, and DataXu.

—Cambridge, MA-based Backupify, an online data management startup, has released a backup and archiving service for Facebook Fan Pages. The service is geared towards businesses and other organizations that need to keep records of all of their activity on Facebook and other social media sites.

—Boston-based Goby, an activity-based search engine startup, has hired Mike Bennett as its first chief revenue officer. Bennett is a social media entrepreneur and sales and marketing exec who has previously worked at Cheapflights.com, Healthetreatment.com, and Monster.com. (Revenue is a good thing, so hiring a chief revenue officer must be too.)

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.