One of the higher profile games out of the Seattle area next year may be "Lord of the Rings: War in the North," which Bothell's Snowblind Studios is making for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

The 2011 release was announced today by Snowblind's parent company, Warner Brothers, and will be on the cover of PlayStation Magazine's May edition.

Warner is calling it a "mature," epic, multiplayer action-role playing game based on the novels by J.R.R. Tolkien.

"In 'The Lord of the Rings: War in the North,' Snowblind will deliver an action RPG for core gamers featuring authentic narrative and environmental locations from J.R.R. Tolkien's original 'The Lord of the Rings,' " Snowblind founder and studio head Ryan Geithman said in the release. "This game is a natural evolution of the acclaimed RPG gameplay that Snowblind has consistently delivered over the past years. Players and fans will experience an innovative approach to online co-op gameplay, woven throughout every facet of the game in a way that only Snowblind can deliver."

It was a lovely day to walk down the street and poke around Amazon.com's new headquarters campus that it will begin to occupy next month.

Builders working for developer Paul Allen are putting finishing touches on the centerpiece, a cluster of buildings around an open amphitheater built into the historic Van Vorst building, which used to be a stable for the Frederick & Nelson delivery horses.

Approaching the facade from Boren:

A path to the amphitheater/courtyard:

Looking the other direction (eastward):

Move the story about Clearwire and T-Mobile USA hooking from "rumor" to "maybe."

Speaking to investors in Frankfurt today, T-Mobile Chief Executive Robert Dotson confirmed the company's been talking to Clearwire and other companies about joint ventures that would give T-Mobile additional spectrum, Reuters reported.

"We continue to look at JV opportunities for additional spectrum... there are a number of different options we look at, (we) have been talking with cable companies, with Clearwire," Dotson said.

Bloomberg reported in September that T-Mobile's parent, Deutsche Telekom, was in talks with Clearwire and others, but it was using unnamed sources and the companies would not comment at the time.

In clarifying the status today, Dotson also downplayed the chances of a merger with Sprint, saying, "What you never want to do is take one company that is going through challenges and take another company going through challenges."

Seattle lawyer rating and referral startup Avvo raised another $10 million to boost its growth.

The 35-person venture is verging on profitability with strong ad sales lately. But it opted to take the funding to grow more aggressively, Chief Executive Mark Britton said.

"To actually have revenue is something I think investors appreciate in this financing environment," he said.

DAG Ventures of Palo Alto, Calif., led the funding, with earlier Avvo backers Ignition Partners and Benchmark Capital contributing. Altogether the company has raised $23 million since it was conceived in 2006.

Britton said Avvo will use the proceeds for hiring and to expand its service. It lists ratings for 90 percent of U.S. lawyers and 50,000 of them actively participate in the site, including one out of three in Washington, he said.

"Ultimately we feel that there's such an opportunity in legal that now was the time to be more aggressive," he said.

Zillow's hit mobile real estate search application is coming to the Android platform Thursday, the company announced.

The iPhone version of the application has been downloaded more than 1 million times since it debuted last April, Zillow chief operating officer, Spencer Rascoff, said in the release.

The Android version uses GPS to find and follow users' location and displays Google Street View images of houses, along with sales information and estimated values for 95 million homes in the U.S. It also takes advantage of Android's voice search capability, so users can say an address, neighborhood, Zip code or city to call up that map location.

Zillow is offering the Android app free through the Android Market.

Two weeks after being sued by Apple for patent infringement, Taiwanese phone maker HTC is responding with a formal statement defending itself against the allegations.

The company's statement is a prelude to a legal response, still being drafted, that challenges the patent suit Apple filed in federal court, as well as a complaint it made to the International Trade Commission.

An HTC executive at its U.S. headquarters in Bellevue said the company has the support of partners such as Google. That reinforces the notion that Apple's suit is part of a bigger feud under way between tech giants that are all building roughly similar touchscreen smartphones.

"HTC strongly disagrees with Apple's actions," said Jason Mackenzie, vice president of HTC America in Bellevue. "We plan to use all of the legal tools that are at our disposal to both defend ourselves and set the record straight to the general public."

Mackenzie noted that HTC introduced touchscreen smartphones long before Apple's iPhone appeared in 2007.

"We started working on the first touchcscreen smartphone way back in 1999," he said.

That work led to the Pocket PC phone launched in 2002 with Bellevue's VoiceStream Wireless, which is now T-Mobile USA.

Since then, HTC has released more than 50 smartphones and worked with all U.S. phone companies, "vs. one single product at one single carrier," Mackenzie said, in another dig at Apple's iPhone business.

"We would not have achieved what we've achieved today -- including the partnerships weve developed with people like Microsoft, Google, all the U.S. operators, Qualcomm -- if we were a company that did not respect intellectual property rights."

Apple accused HTC of making and selling products that "incorporate, without license, many technologies developed by Apple and protected by patents issued to and owned by Apple and its wholly owned subsidiaries, including NeXT."

It asked the trade commission to block the importation of a number of phones, including the Nexus One that HTC makes for Google, the myTouch 3G sold by T-Mobile, the Droid Eris sold by Verizon and the new HD2 based on Windows Mobile.

Apple's suit specifically calls out phones running the Android platform backed by Google. A Google spokesperson referred by HTC, Jill Hazelbaker, didn't say whether the company would participate in HTC's legal defense, but provided a statement praising HTC for helping to make Android a success.

"The Android platform has seen tremendous adoption all over the world, and we are proud of all our partners who have made it such a success," she said via e-mail. "In less than a year and a half since HTC shipped the first Android device, there are now 26 devices with 60 carriers in 49 countries and 19 languages powered by Android."

Mackenzie wouldn't comment specifically on the lawsuit but said Apple's responding to HTC's success.

"We are experiencing more success than we've ever had in the U.S. market today. We've got great products at all the major operators," he said. "We're obviously having this conversation because of that and because of those successes we've had."

So far the lawsuit hasn't had an effect on HTC's business or plans for upcoming phones.

"I haven't seen any impact to our business since this case,'' he said.

Kirkland startup Ceton has finally nailed down a release for its multistream TV tuners for PCs.

The company will begin shipping the four-tuner, $399 PCIe devices on May 31, it announced today. Pre-orders began a few days ago at the several online retailers.

That slipped a bit from the April 1 release date the company announced in January.

Ceton also said the devices will be called "InfiniTV," a name chosen from among more than 1,000 submitted in a "name that tuner card" contest held earlier this year.

London-based mobile app seller GetJar created a stir today by releasing a study saying the mobile apps business will grow to $17.5 billion by 2012.

With 4 billion-plus mobile phone users around the world, that suggests an average of $4 per user generated by mobile apps.

Downloads of mobile apps will grow from 7 billion in 2009 to nearly 50 billion in 2012. The value of apps sold would then be greater than sales of music CDs, the study said.

Also predicted is a continuing shift away from "on deck" apps distributed by phone companies toward downloads from app stores, such as GetJar. The study predicted that on-deck applications' share of sales will fall to 23 percent, from 60 percent in 2009.

By 2012, Europe will be a bigger market for apps than the U.S., spending $8.5 billion versus $6.7 billion.

Asia now accounts for the most downloads, but consumers there spend far less on them than North Americans -- they're spending an average of 10 cents per app, vs. the $1.09 spent in this region.

The study predicts the overall average selling price of apps will fall 29 percent, from its current level around $1.90, but ad revenue from apps is expected to stay flat.

GetJar also predicted a shakeout in the number of app stores, which grew from eight to 38 last year and will continue growing this year.

"This report signifies a battle for survival of the fittest among app stores worldwide -- with app revenue and growth opportunities growing significantly," Chief Executive Ilja Laurs said in the release. "There is no way that this many app stores will survive in the long term and while the value of the global app economy is set to be astoundingly high by 2012, we think only a few app stores will share this revenue."

The study was done for GetJar by Issaquah mobile consultant Chetan Sharma. GetJar has other local ties; its vice president of sales, Bill Scott, is a Seattle native who used to work at InfoSpace.