To attract tech companies building server farms, Washington state will give tax breaks to companies that build data centers in rural counties. Both sides of the state Legislature passed the tax break this week in Olympia.

Last year, the state rejected a proposed tax break, which prompted Microsoft to move its cloud computing platform Azure out of Washington state to another U.S. data center. The news was distressing to the town of Quincy, where Yahoo, Microsoft and Intuit have built large server farms, drawn to Grant County's cheap and green hydropower.

Since then, Facebook and Amazon.com have both chosen to build data centers in Oregon instead of Washington, said Patrick Boss, director of public affairs for the Port of Quincy.

The new tax exemption applies to:

• Sales of server equipment that will be installed in a data center.

• Labor and service charges for installing servers, and to sales of power infrastructure equipment.

• Sales of power infrastructure.

• Labor and services for construction of power infrastructure.

To be eligible for the break, businesses must create at least 35 family-wage jobs in a data center and provide health insurance. Data centers have to be at least 100,000 square feet to qualify and construction must begin between March 31. 2010, and July 1, 2011.

"Already in the past couple of days we’ve had a couple of companies inquiring" about building data centers in Quincy," Boss said. "The passage has definitely stimulated interest. We’re definitely excited abut being on the level playing ground with other states, especially Oregon."

The state Senate passed bill 6789 on Tuesday, by a 39-4 vote, and the house passed it by a 91-2 vote on Wednesday. Here is the link to the legislative bill history.

Here is the Microsoft blog that mentioned the tax break in 2009.

LAS VEGAS -- Bill Buxton is the Doc Brown of Microsoft - a mane of white hair, high energy on stage, a mind that flutters like butterfly from topic to topic that somehow ends up landing back on his message, which is about designing technology for humans. He spoke to Web designers and developers at MIX on Tuesday, and sat down Monday for an interview.

"My job is to say, 'How do you avoid the tail of technology wagging the head of the human?' " Buxton said in an interview.

Buxton, a principal researcher for Microsoft Research based in Toronto, Canada, spends 25 percent of his time working with product teams across the whole company. At the more theoretical level, he discusses technology as a human prosthesis, but he favors metaphors that are as far away from technology as possible.

Here are some of Buxton's more memorable metaphors from his MIX keynote, workshop and interview:

The violin bow and the mouse. "There's a huge history with instrument design. People say you can't build a mouse for over $15. People won't pay for it," Buxton said in his Tuesday keynote speech. "But the bow of this violin costs over $10,000. These are people who don't make any money. They're musicians, not developers or computer scientists. But the value is there." Buxton said to the audience of Web developers and designers, "Soyez un luthier." Translated: Be a lute builder.

The Catalan flag and multitouch. Multitouch is the touch-screen technology that allows you to put two fingers on an iPhone and pinch or pull to zoom in and out. During his Tuesday keynote, Buxton credits it to the Count of Barcelona Wilfred the Hairy in 897. During a battle, King Charles the Bald dipped his fingers into Wilfred's war wounds and dragged his fingers down a golden shield, leaving blood streaks on the shield. Red bars across a yellow background became the flag of Catalan, which is now part of Spain. Buxton called it the first case of multitouch.

The Seattle Public Library and software building. How the team of architects, engineers and finance experts worked together to build the cantilevered, glass Seattle Public Central Library building should serve as a model of building technology products, Buxton said in an afternoon workshop Tuesday. He calls it BXT - business, experience and technology.

iPad reviews and ski reviews. Buxton said at a Tuesday workshop he's frequently asked what he thinks of Apple's iPad. First, Buxton said, it wouldn't be appropriate for him to talk about it because he works for Microsoft. Second, he can't say anything about it anyway without trying it out first hand. "Would you evaluate a ski resort from watching ski videos and review it? If you were a theatre reviewer for the New York Times, would you review a play if you just saw a video?"

Book reviews and tech reviews. Buxton said in his Tuesday workshop that technology needs to be reviewed with the same attention to social context as any book, play or movie. "If you reviewed a book by Margaret Atwood the way we review digital technologies, [you would say,] 'It has a very nice cover, it fits in my pocket, nice 12-point font, look at those serifs, by the way, look at that color.' "

The Fosbury Flop and innovation. Dick Fosbury was the track athlete who pioneered doing the high jump head first and won the gold at the 1968 Olympics. Buxton said in an interview Monday, "He redefined [high] jumping. He didn't just win, he creamed the competition. He literally set the bar," Buxton said. "That's worthy of anything we're doing today. ... When I look at innovation, there's two approaches: One is accelerated evolution. ... The other is Fosbury. It's surprising obviousness."

Incidentally, my dad did the high jump in high school in Hong Kong before Fosbury changed the sport. Later, when he moved to New York and I was still in diapers, he decided he wanted to high jump a tennis court net with the old scissors jump technique. Surprisingly, obviously a bad idea. He tripped and broke his leg.

Photo of Bill Buxton at MIX: Microsoft

LAS VEGAS -- The MIX conference for Web developers wrapped up Wednesday afternoon but here is what a random sampling of attendees had to say about Microsoft products such as Silverlight and the Windows Phone 7 Series. Eyeballing the crowd, it looked like attendance was about 1,000.

Francisco Loureiro, a Web designer and developer for environmental engineering firm Brown and Caldwell in the Bay Area, develops in Adobe Flash, but he said Silverlight, the competitor from Microsoft, is appealing. "Silverlight has a lot of promise," he said. "Adobe really dropped the ball on delivery of multiple platforms," especially mobile devices.

After seeing the demos of the Windows Phone, he said, "I'm ready to switch. I've had an iPhone for a few years. I'm sick of it." He liked the Windows Phone layout, the "sophisticated" design, the interface and "how fluid everything looks."

He also appreciated the conference's emphasis on usability and design, especially Microsoft research Bill Buxton's keynote speech on design. "The applications I develop internally have to have quick adoption. If I don't consider usability, the application will fail."

Chandu Dondeti, a communications manager and Webmaster at the University of Rhode Island, came to figure out which way technology is moving, both for his job and his personal development. "I try to take in as much as possible so I can play around with new technology and build new stuff," he said.

He was particularly interested in OData, which Microsoft built for developers to make Web services that pull information from databases.

Dondeti was unsure about the demos he saw of the Windows Phone. The phone didn't look responsive on stage, he said. But he liked the other demos of potential mobile apps that could be built on it.

"The demos like the cannon, those were awesome," he said. "It's way, way better than what they had before. ... The biggest advantage is you don't have to learn a new language, whereas if you take Android or iPhone, you need a specialized SDK (software development kit)," he said.

Jeff Hoffer, an entrepreneur from Los Angeles, came to network and meet potential partners and was possibly the only guy at the conference wearing a tie. After getting laid off from a software company last year, he wants to start a new business that would provide a framework and development tools for building mobile apps and content Web sites.

"Windows Azure is very intriguing from a startup perspective," said Hoffer, who writes a blog called www.theguywithatie.com. "It probably provides $100,000 in infrastructure that I don't need to find funding for. I don't need to hire a network guy." He also liked where Silverlight was going as a platform for three screens and a cloud. The screens are the PC, the phone and the TV.

Overall, he said, "the shift Microsoft has made to UI [user interface] and user experience is impressive."

LAS VEGAS -- Todd Brix, senior director of mbile platform product management at Microsoft, sat down Monday to answer some questions about how Microsoft and developers can make money on the new Windows Phone.

The phone is Microsoft's answer to Apple's iPhone, and the Windows Phone 7 Series is expected to start selling at the end of the year. When the phone launches, Microsoft wants to have a wide world of apps that would compel people to buy the new phone.

"What we would like is everybody to walk in a store and say I want a Windows Phone," Brix said. "Just like today they say, 'I want a PC.' That's a great model. It allows the user to have high confidence."

How Microsoft will make money from Windows Phone:

The business model is similar to how Microsoft sells the Windows operating system. Microsoft will make the software for Windows Phones, and phone makers such as Asus, Samsung and LG will pay Microsoft a license fee for each device they ship. Brix said Microsoft has not announced license pricing yet.

Unlike in the past, Microsoft is also going to dictate some hardware requirements, such as touch-screen technology, a built-in camera and screen size. Microsoft will also build more of the software that phone makers have built in the past, such as the software that runs phone dialing and key input.

"We are taking more accountability for software," said Brix. "So you can focus on development at the hardware level in a much more structured way. We think this has worked well in the PC model."

How developers can make money from Windows Phones:

Developers can make money by building apps and selling them in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Microsoft will certify all apps before they are added to the app store. Developers can offer free apps, such as ad-supported apps; sell apps by the download like the iPhone app model; and a "freemium" model in which they could offer free-trial app with an option to buy an upgrade.

Developers would get 70 percent of the sales, and Microsoft would keep 30 percent. Phone users could either pay by credit card or through their monthly wireless bill.

There is nothing set up for a business to build corporate mobile apps for its workers. All apps would be downloaded through the Windows Phone Marketplace, which would be available to all users.

The model is not that different from Microsoft's previous efforts with Windows Mobile 6.5. Microsoft says developers have built 1,400 apps for phones running that software. The problem is that those phones come in all shapes and sizes, so the developer has to build apps for many different phone designs. Google's mobile operating system Android is now facing a similar problem. Apple's iPhone succeeded with developers because they were building for one phone.

Microsoft is also touting that development will be familiar and fast. Developers who already build on Silverlight and XNA Framework can use the same platform to build mobile apps and games.

Developers who work for European wireless carrier Orange said at MIX that they like the new phone operating system, and that building apps is taking less time than it took to build apps for the old mobile platform.

"It's really interesting, a fresh start," said Andreas Saudemont, an Orange developer based in Paris. "The reaction is that it's good that Microsoft ditched the old platform. They are trying to avoid fragmentation and having one chassis, one screen size, a known quantity of RAM."

While Orange is continuing to sell Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, it "has few plans to continue working on new features" for the older operating system, Saudemont said.

Photo of AP app running on Windows Phone prototype courtesy of Associated Press

LAS VEGAS -- The shade of blue that Bing uses for links is worth $80 million.

Paul Rey, user experience manager for Bing, said his team intensively researched what kind of blue to use for search results. They sent various users flights of blue shades, including different hues and different saturations.

The blue color used for links in Bing's predecessor, Live Search, was more pale. "Live Search was a faint blue that was like, 'Hey ... here are your results,' " Rey said. "It lacked confidence."

Based on user feedback, the team estimated the best blue color could generate $80 million to $90 million in ad sales.

And the color is ... #0044CC. It's a shade of cornflower with undertones of purple.

"We wanted to try red links or brown links and no color," Rey said. But in this case, the science of clicks and art came together for blue. "It was really hard to argue with the success of this color," he said.

LAS VEGAS -- A developer built a Windows Phone app overnight that enabled tweeting by Morse code on Twitter.

Bill Buxton, principal researcher at Microsoft, speaking this morning at MIX, said he was in a meeting on Monday talking about developer tools for the Windows Phone, the iPhone competitor Microsoft plans to start selling at the end of this year.

"They said, 'Bill what are we missing?' " Buxton said. "I said what we're missing is, with touchscreens you actually have to look when you text." Wouldn't it be great if a 5th grader could text her friend under the desk during class? he said.

At 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, Buxton checked his e-mail and David Yack had sent Buxton the answer: a phone app that lets you tweet by Morse code.

The application features a square tile on the phone screen that the user can tap out code on.

LAS VEGAS -- Microsoft talked up the next version of its Web browser, Internet Explorer 9, at MIX conference this morning.

The company said the new browser will support the HTML5 standard, which Web developers had been pushing for so they can build Web sites with animated graphics on a single standard that works on different browsers.

Microsoft main browser competitor is Mozilla Firefox, as well as smaller players Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Opera.

"Developers want to use the same HTML, the same script and same standards across browsers," said Dean Hachamovich, a general manager at Microsoft, during the day 2 keynote at the Mandalay Bay convention center.

Microsoft said Internet Explorer 9 is available for platform preview starting today. Developers can download it at www.IETestDrive.com. It has developer tools, but has no back button.

"We love HTML5 so much, that we want it to actually work. In IE9, it will," Hachamovitch said.

Steve Sinofsky, Windows president, also came on stage to demo the animation developers can build in the new version of Internet Explorer.

Clippy, the talking paper clip from Office, was briefly resurrected in the demo. His thought bubble read: "Hi Dean, Remember me? Would you like some help with your demo?"

Sinofsky and Hachamovitch played asteroids on stage to show the potential for games in the new version of the browser.

Hachamovitch said Microsoft is committed to providing software upgrades to Internet Explorer 9 every eight weeks.

The keynote is still going on and is being streamed live at live.visitmix.com. You can follow my livetweets at www.twitter.com/sharonpianchan/.

This is the story that ran in The Seattle Times print paper today.

LAS VEGAS -- To woo developers to build applications for its upcoming mobile phone, Microsoft scattered technology catnip throughout the MIX tech conference Monday -- Twitter, Netflix, Foursquare and, finally, a cannon.

In Monday's keynote presentation at the company's conference for Web developers, Microsoft rolled a cannon on stage, piloted remotely by a prototype Windows Phone, then shot red shirts into the audience of 1,000-plus.

In February, Microsoft announced the Windows Phone 7 Series, a high-end device to compete with Apple's iPhone and other smartphones.

Windows Phone isn't expected to go on sale until the holiday shopping season, but Microsoft continued its pep rally for it in the hopes that developers will populate the world with apps to rival the wide world of iPhone apps.

The applications those developers build for the phone will be a linchpin to how successful the phone will be, as has been the case with iTunes apps for the iPhone.

What's at stake is a battle for mobile users who have flocked to the iPhone, Google's Android and Research In Motion's BlackBerry since Microsoft fell behind with Windows Mobile innovation in the past few years.

Microsoft wants to extend its domination on the PC with Windows to other screens, including the mobile phone and the television.

While much of the talk Monday was about software code, Microsoft also shared information about new features, including a calendar one that alerts everyone you'll be late for a meeting.

Here are some highlights from Day 1 of MIX at the Mandalay Bay convention center.

Anna and Miles, the Adam and Eve of Windows Phone design. In designing the phone, the Microsoft team created personas for the target customer: the couple Anna and Miles.

Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Windows Phone Program Management, said Anna is a part-time public-relations professional in Evanston, Ill., who commutes to Chicago by train. Anna wants to take photos of her son and share them with her parents in Europe.

Miles is a startup entrepreneur who also has to manage his company's IT.

While imaginary, the two are real enough that Belfiore showed photos of them. They're "lifestyle maximizers," average age 38, 76 percent employed, 78 percent in a partnered relationship, Belfiore said.

"Because they have jobs, they have money and are more likely to buy a more expensive phone and load it up with apps," he said.

Developers, developers, developers. Silverlight, Microsoft's Web video and animation software, and XNA Framework, the game-development platform, will also serve as the building blocks of Windows Phone applications.

Silverlight has about 500,000 developers and XNA already has tens of thousands of developers, according to Todd Brix, senior director for Mobile Platform Product Management.

Silverlight 4 is to be finished in April; it reached the release-candidate milestone on Monday.

How developers will make money. Microsoft pushed the message that it would be easy to build apps. Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president for the .NET Developer Platform, said it takes as little as 30 minutes to build an application.

In addition to a pay-per-download model similar to the iPhone app store, the Windows Phone Marketplace will incorporate ad-supported applications and a "freemium" model, where developers can give away free trial software and charge for the full version.

The developer keeps 70 percent of the sales, while Microsoft keeps 30 percent.

The apps must undergo software certification through Microsoft.

Advertising. A prototype application called the AP News Reader built by Archetype hinted at how advertising would work on Windows Phone. In a demo, an animated Ford car rolled onto the bottom of the screen.

Puppet Steve Ballmer. Guthrie made a South Park-like puppet of Steve Ballmer on a Windows Phone during the keynote to demonstrate animation software, dressing him in his trademark red V-neck sweater over a blue-collared shirt. Once animated, puppet Ballmer shouted, "Find developers!"

Office docs on the phone. In a demo, Belfiore pulled up an Excel spreadsheet from the Office Docs hub, and was able to pan around, zoom in and out, search for a specific word or number and do basic management, such as sending files and saving to the phone's memory.

Sync while you sleep. When the phone gets plugged in to charge at night, it will check whether it's on a home Wi-Fi network. If it is, the phone will automatically upload photos from the phone to a PC and download music and video that's been ordered.

Applications coming. Several demos showed apps coming to the Windows Phone. A Netflix app issues an alert that a DVD has arrived in the mailbox and shows a preview on the phone. An app from Seesmic, Twitter client builder, mashes tweets with a map. The AP News Reader app streams top stories, most shared stories and a photos page and has a built-in commenting section. A Foursquare app integrates the Twitter location game into a phone app.

Devices coming. Three devices shown Monday were an Asus touch-screen device, an LG touch-screen device with a slide-out landscape keyboard, and a Samsung "slate" device with a higher-end camera built in the back.