Librarians and Kindles; Ambric's assets; iLike and more

Library Journal reports that some librarians are interested in lending out Kindle electronic readers, but says they're getting mixed messages from Amazon.com about whether they're allowed to do that.

Amazon.com is restricting the number of sellers allowed to offer "Collectible" books on its retail site. "When a book is listed as 'Collectible,' customers should be confident that the offer has been accurately graded and described and that the book has qualities that make it valuable to a collector," Amazon wrote in a seller forum. The new policy follows Amazon's acquisition of AbeBooks, a seller of rare and out-of-print books, late last year.

Global Market Insite, an online market research company, has named Sean O'Neill, Joel Rosenberger and Dave Sampson to executive and management positions. O'Neill, who previously worked at uTango, will serve as vice president of product and program management. Rosenbarger, who previously worked at Amazon Web Services, has been named vice president of engineering. And Sampson, who previously worked at Sampa, will serve as vice president of demand operation and customer experience.

Nethra Imaging has purchased the asset of Ambric, the Beaverton, Oregon semiconductor company that raised capital from OVP Venture Partners, ComVentures and others before falling on hard times.

Seattle online music startup iLike has reached cash flow positive and last quarter was the company's best on record, CEO Ali Partovi tells VentureBeat.

Bellevue mobile software developer UIEvolution is working with Samsung to develop new applications for Samsung's TouchWiz touchscreen phones, with UIEvolution CEO Chris Ruff saying that they are building a platform so that third party developers and entertainment brands can develop rich consumer applications.

Seattle area startup incubator Atlas Accelerator said that it made $2.3 million in seed investments last year, with plans to increase that amount this year. The 37-person organization also said three of its companies were acquired last year: Coffee Equipment Company (sold to Starbucks), International Titanium Powder (sold to Crystal Global), and RVM Scientific (sold to Agilent).

Boost eLearning has signed a deal to provide its Google search training tools to The Boeing Company, with CEO Victor Alhadeff saying the online learning solution will help Boeing employees save time when searching the corporate intranet or public Internet.

Headline of the day comes via BusinessWeek: "After IBM, What Now for Sun?"

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