Check in, then check one habit at the door

A Chicago hotelier is helping guests give up the CrackBerry.

Reuters reported last week that Rick Ueno, general manager of the Sheraton Chicago Hotel, offers to lock up guest's e-mail devices in his offices if they are looking for a break.

The program spawned from treatment of his own problem with the popular device made by Research in Motion. He recently switched to a regular cellphone.

"I was really addicted to my BlackBerry. I had an obsession with e-mail," Ueno told Reuters. "Morning and night. There came a time when I didn't think it was healthy. ... I quit cold turkey."

He said he's more effective, feels better and his family likes his post-BlackBerry life.

Guests seeking the same benefits can put their devices in the clink while at the hotel, free of charge.

Bravvo to a name

Finally, someone came up with a name that includes double letters we like.

It's Avvo, the Seattle startup that aims to give consumers tools and information to navigate the complexities of the legal industry.

The company, which announced $3 million in venture money from Benchmark Capital last week, took the name from avvocato, the Italian word for attorney.

Let's review some other double-letter names, to better appreciate Avvo among its peers: Viiv, the digital entertainment platform from Intel; Mixxer, the mobile-phone content provider; Dijji, the Seattle company that finally went belly-up last week; and Wii, the much-maligned name of Nintendo's next video-game console.

Disclosure: The Italophile(s) on staff were warmer to the name Avvo than others, who were reminded of guacamole.

=sum(goog:msft)

Google began testing its online spreadsheet program last week — Google Spreadsheets — sending tech watchers into a frenzy over the potential threat to Microsoft Office.

Rick Sherlund, a Goldman Sachs analyst, threw some cold water on the drama by saying the Google offering isn't for office workers but for consumers who want to share information with others.

Google Spreadsheets allow you to save your work online so that others can see it and work within the file, even at the same time as you.

These are basic spreadsheets with simple formulas — you can save your fancy pivot tables for Excel — and a quick test run showed that unlike some other Google debuts, the program works pretty well.

Perhaps the bigger problem for Google might be convincing users that it can be trusted with the information. As one blogger so succinctly put it: "Would you put your balance sheet on Google's servers?"

Score 2 for nontechs

Is it a trend? Two Seattle tech companies separately announced last week that they've hired marketing executives from old-line, nontech companies.

Trumba announced that Bruce Allenbaugh, former senior marketing vice president at Safeco, was hired as senior vice president of marketing and business development. He's actually been in tech before, at Avenue A and Nextlink Communications, and before that was at Pepsi.

Microsoft said it hired Jeff Bell, vice president of Chrysler product strategy at DaimlerChrysler, to lead global marketing for its interactive entertainment business.

Bell led the Hemi campaign and Dodge's "grab life by the horns" tagline launch.

So watch for Xbox Live ads to go macho, and Trumba's name to appear on a stadium.

Download, a column of news bits, observations and miscellany, is gathered by The Seattle Times technology staff. We can be reached at 206-464-2265 or biztech@seattletimes.com.