A day after announcing that it was cutting 900 jobs in a broad restructuring, T-Mobile USA today is revising the number downward.

The layoff happening now involves 900 job cuts nationally.

But today the company said it is also planning to add 550 new jobs through the rest of 2012, so the net reduction at year-end will be 350 positions.

The Puget Sound region could end up gaining. Most of the layoffs are happening outside the region, but the majority of the 550 new jobs will be created locally, where T-Mobile now employs around 4,800.

The 550 jobs won't be added at once, though. They'll be added over the remainder of the year.

The results are in from the survey by Ask.com, about "the most popular wish" of Seattle-area residents.

Ask.com promised to fund the top wish chosen by an online vote, which drew thousands of responses during the promotional campaign that ran May 1 through 15 at SeattleAsks.com.

Seattleites chose "Save the Wading Pools" with 58 percent of the vote, so Ask.com will pay to re-open three Seattle wading pools that were closed as a result of budget cutbacks.

Ask.com is funding Saturday operations at the East Queen Anne, Powell Barnett and Wallingford pools through the summer season that begins the last week of June.

But that's not all. Ask.com decided to go ahead and fund the other priorities as well.

To "Minimize Stadium Traffic," Ask.com will hire a fleet of pedicabs to provide free rides after several Mariners games.

The pedicabs be available starting June 16 and during several games in early July. The pedicbs will be "ready and willing to whisk game-goers to their destination of choice, be that home, or the next bar," Ask.com said in its release. I wonder if that includes homes in Federal Way.

Ask.com is also going to "Ease the Morning Commute" and "brighten up" the morning commute after Memorial Day. It will do this by providing free Caffe Vita coffee -- in take-home travel mugs -- at a handful of park and rides on the morning of Tuesday, May 29. The free coffee will be provided at the Northgate, Tukwila, Burien, South Kirkland, Issaquah-Highlands and Kent-Des Moines park and ride sites.

Oakland, Calif.-based Ask.com provides an online question-and-answer search service.

Maybe next time it can ask Seattle about funding a new basketball arena.

Here's an infographic the company prepared, showing the results:

More evidence of the new era for wireless phone companies is coming from Verizon Wireless.

A top Verizon executive said the company is ending its $30 per month unlimited 4G data plan this summer, phasing out an option it had provided to 3G customers since the company moved to tiered pricing last year.

Those customers will have to move to tiered pricing when they move to 4G LTE service.

The change was disclosed by Chief Financial Officer Francis Shammo, whose comments at a J.P. Morgan conference were reported by Fierce Wireless. A recording of his presentation is available here and a webcast is here.

Shammo said the move will make it easier for families and businesses with multiple devices, according to the report.

This tracks with earlier reports of Verizon's plans to offer family data plans this summer.

Shammo also said Verizon plans to start measuring and reporting revenue per account, rather than the traditional metric of average revenue per user.

T-Mobile USA Chief Executive Philipp Humm warned employees a few months ago that more layoffs would happen by the end of May. It's happening right on schedule.

Today, the company is informing employees of "a series of organizational changes," a spokeswoman said.

A net loss of about 900 jobs will result. But even more jobs are likely affected by the changes, which include layoffs and shifts to outsource more work.

These layoffs are a major blow to the largest remaining wireless company in the Seattle area after a series of mergers over the last two decades.

The industry took off after McCaw Cellular established the first national cell network in the 1980s. It was sold to AT&T in 1994, and the cluster spawned other carriers that became T-Mobile.

Even if the layoffs restore T-Mobile's footing, its future remains unclear, especially given the likelihood of further consolidation in the wireless industry.

T-Mobile's parent company, Deutsche Telekom, is looking at combining T-Mobile with MetroPCS or perhaps spinning it off as a public company, according to a Bloomberg report last week. T-Mobile is the nation's fourth-largest carrier and MetroPCS is the fifth.

Reducing costs through layoffs and outsourcing could better position T-Mobile for another merger attempt or improve its balance sheet for presentation to potential investors.

Industry consultant Chetan Sharma expects industry shuffling in the next 18 to 24 months as the carriers adjust to slowing growth of pre-paid subscriptions in a saturated market and challenged economy.

"My theory is the market is desperately asking for consolidation," he said.

If T-Mobile is able to cut its costs and keep its network upgrades on track, "they still have a fairly good shot at being competitive," said Issaquah-based Sharma, who is not consulting for T-Mobile.

It's unclear how many of the affected jobs are at the company's Bellevue headquarters. It employs around 4,800 people in the area. Nationwide the company employs around 36,000.

The state Employment Security Department had not yet received notification of a mass layoff at T-Mobile on Tuesday afternoon. Such notifications are required before 50 or more employees are laid off in a single location.

The layoffs are in addition to the 3,300 call center layoffs announced in March as part of the company's effort to improve profitability after customer declines while the company was in the limbo of AT&T's attempted merger last year.

The new layoffs are affecting "all departments," spokeswoman Michelle Taylerson said via e-mail.

"The restructuring was based on a thorough review of our entire organization, at all levels. The degree and nature of impact varies - but every function was reviewed," she said.

The cuts won't affect technicians in engineering, customer-service representatives in remaining call centers or "front-line" retail employees in T-Mobile-owned stores.

Details of which jobs are being outsourced isn't being provided.

"In developing the new structure, we evaluated every aspect of our business - including which activities would be best reassigned to outside business partners that are experts in their given fields," Taylerson said.

T-Mobile's business picked up last quarter, when it added 187,000 subscribers. That was a sharp reversal from the holiday season when it lost 526,000 customers.

Simultaneously, T-Mobile has been hiring about 1,000 people to pursue more business customers while spending $4 billion on its upgrade to 4G LTE network technology.

But there will still be the net reduction in employees.

"It's not going to be easy," Sharma said, "but they can survive."

The company issued the following statement:

"T-Mobile previously announced its intent to restructure and optimize operations throughout the company in order to best reposition the company, given today's demanding and rapidly evolving marketplace.

This week we are communicating to our employees a series of additional organizational changes to best position T-Mobile to powerfully compete and return to growth.

We are restructuring the organization and optimizing operations so that we can make critical decisions better and faster in response to market and customer demands. Further, by reducing our cost structure and streamlining operations, T-Mobile will be able to invest in areas where we anticipate the strongest return: modernizing our 4G network; aggressively pursuing the B2B segment; and re-launching our brand.

These changes resulted in a restructuring of key functions and departments across the company including the elimination of some positions and the outsourcing of others. While difficult choices had to be made, restructuring our organization will help us better respond to market and customer demands and bring opportunity for continued career development and growth for many of our employees. We appreciate the contributions of our affected colleagues and will provide them with assistance and support during this transition."

There's now a flock of startups in South Lake Union:

The bigger ones are affecting traffic in the area:

Technology veterans are advising them to pivot before it's too late:

Seattle health information startup Medify didn't take long to find its exit.

Medify is being acquired by Salt Lake City-based Alliance Health Networks, which operates more than 50 health-oriented social networks used by more than 1.5 million people. The companies are announcing the deal today but aren't disclosing terms of the sale.

Medify was formed in 2010 and last July launched a health information portal that compiles medical research. It raised $1.8 million from Voyager Capital and angel investors.

Alliance plans to keep the 10-person Medify team in Seattle and may expand the operation. Co-founders Derek Streat and Jay Bartot are becoming Alliance senior vice presidents.

Streat was an early executive at Classmates Online and co-founder of Adready and Bartot co-founded AdRelevance and Farecast, the travel site sold to Microsoft's Bing.

Amazon.com may be preparing to release a new Kindle with built-in lighting in July, according to a Reuters report.

Although Amazon's Kindle is the leading e-book reader, it's facing tough new competition at the lower end of the market from a new Nook with a "GlowLight" feature that illuminates the black and white E Ink display.

Adding an internal light source would decrease the battery life of the Kindle but wouldn't add much to the cost, the report said.

I've been using one of the GlowLight Nooks for more than a week on a single charge. By pressing the home button for several seconds, it activates an adjustable light that makes the E Ink device usable in the dark or poor lighting.

Lighting is key for books, especially electronic ones. Barnes & Noble said its surveys found about two-thirds of Americans read in bed, and one in four read in bed five to seven nights a week.

To address the Kindle lighting challenge, Amazon introduced an accessory cover in 2010 that has a pop-up reading light.

Amazon also is preparing a 9-inch Kindle Fire tablet to launch closer to the holiday season, according to the Reuters report, which credits a source who has seen a prototype.

The truly inside story of starting the Xbox and Zune businesses at Microsoft was shared in a remarkable lecture Friday by Robbie Bach, the retired president of the company's entertainment and devices business.

Bach shared his unique perspective on why the Xbox was a success and the Zune was not during a presentation on intrapreneurship, or how to operate like a startup and launch new ventures within a large, existing business.

The lecture included advice for companies looking to foster entrepreneurial culture, and for all sorts of entrepreneurs entering competitive new markets. It was a breakfast event held by the Northwest Entrepreneur Network in South Lake Union.

Bach described the corporate retreats where the Xbox business was hatched and how Sony fumbled its lead and gave Microsoft the opportunity to get ahead in the console business.

"When the luck happens, you take advantage of it and run with it," he said.

It also helped that Bach's startup had $5 billion to $7 billion in funding available, he joked.

That wasn't enough to help the Zune, though. Bach admitted that Microsoft quickly realized it was too late to prevail in the portable media player business and in hindsight he would have built a music service rather than devices. Apple executed well and didn't give Microsoft the sort of breaks it had in the console business, he noted.

Bach's now focused on philanthropic organizations, serving on the board of audio gear company Sonos and looking to buy a mid-size family business like the food-service supplies distributor that his father operated in retirement.

Here's a raw video of the event. Apologies for the quality; it was taken with a new smartphone that was supposed to capture high-def video ...: