Business Week has named Seattle's Amazon.com as the best performing tech company in the world in its 2008 list Infotech 100 list.

The on-line retailer's rating was based on its finish in four categories, shareholder return, return on equity, total revenues and revenue growth.

The list appears in the June 2 edition of Business Week.

Apple was second on the list and a company with strong Washington State connections, Nintendo was fourth. Nintendo of America is headquartered in Redmond. Its parent company is based in Japan.

Amazon's revenues ranked 23rd of the 100. Its revenue growth was 29th; its return on equity ranked 22nd, and its shareholder return was 29th.

Redmond's Microsoft ranked 23rd on the list.

By now, you'd think that gas prices might be losing some of their upward momentum. But new price surveys show that prices are continuing their upward path and even accelerating.

Historically, gas prices peak around Memorial Day and prices soften as refineries add summertime production.

Not so this year. AAA Washington's latest survey shows average regular unleaded prices in Tacoma hit another record today at $4.162 a gallon. That's up from $4.03 a week ago and $3.916 two weeks ago. A month ago, gas was selling for a relative bargain $3.732 in Tacoma. A year ago, the price was $3.342.

Highest prices in the state were in Bellingham where a gallon of regular cost $4.204 on average today.

Statewide, the average price of a gallon of regular was $4.145. Twelve states and the District of Columbia have average gas prices over $4 a gallon, according to the AAA.

At the top of the list is Alaska where average unleaded regular prices are $4.26 a gallon. Washington is fifth.

Last on the price list is South Carolina with a price of $3.794 a gallon.

At the top of the list is Alaska with a price of $4.26 a gallon. Washington is fifth.

I ran across some info today at industry magazine Stores about baby boomers that paints a nuanced and complex picture of the generation and how best to market to them. It's information unlikely to help anyone looking to simplify this group and who they are. But there's some interesting stuff, such as:

Single boomers bring as much money to the table as married ones. This is a person-per-household stat, but it shakes the notion that couples and families always have more money to spend than their single counterparts.

They like their iPods, Internet shopping and instant messaging. But they also like morning radio and reading a newspaper, too.

It's Bob Dylan vs. Bruce Springsteen. The story makes the case that there is an intra-generational divide, comprising of those born between 1946 to 1954 and 1955 to 1964.

Hey, boomers, recognize yourself or anyone you know here? Find the whole story here.

By today, that old-time currency of the airline business, the paper ticket, is supposed to be history.

The change took effect Sunday. That's the day the International Air Transport Association, which had operated a clearinghouse for paper tickets, quit accepting those tickets.

A few paper tickets may still exist in small, isolated airlines around the world, but the major and minor airlines worldwide now rely on electronic ticketing.

The IATA says it will save the equivalent of 50,000 trees a year because airlines won't be issuing those stiff stiff paper tickets anymore.

But that doesn't count the trees felled to provide the paper on which we print those electronic tickets at home or at airport kiosks.

The IATA and its airline members initiated the conversion to electronic tickets in 2004 because tracking tickets electronically saves the airlines about 65 percent of the cost of sorting and reconciling the transactions made on paper tickets.

Two items in the news today that show that even the most disturbing news may not be as negative as it seems.

The first is the news in today's Wall Street Journal that says that the delays in delivery of both the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus superjumbo A380 may be good for the airline industry.

Those delays come at the same time business and leisure travel numbers are eroding as world economies weaken.

If the airlines scheduled to receive those new fuel-efficient planes were planning to retire old fuel-guzzling planes of equal capacity, then the news would not be so good. But in many cases, the airlines involved were planning new routes with the new aircraft, adding to the glut of capacity.

The second item is that Seattle's Aviation Partners Boeing expects a brisk market for its fuel-saving winglets for the 767-300ER. The company has already sold 121 sets of those vertical winglets to airlines even before their certification by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The winglets, vertical wing extensions that curve upward from the aircraft wing tips, breakup drag-inducing wingtip vortices, saving fuel, allowing shorter takeoffs, longer trips and lower noise profiles.

The 767-300ER winglets are supposed to cut fuel consumption of the twin-aisle 767-300ER by six percent.

The winglets, if they become an option on factory-new 767s as well as add-ons for existing planes, could prolong the life of the 767 until the 787 production, now 15 months behind schedule, ramps up to full speed.

JP Morgan analyst Jamie Baker says Southwest and Alaska airlines are the least likely of the major domestic airlines to file for bankruptcy.

Baker, in a report to investors, raised his rating on Alaska from underweight to neutral.

"There will be blood," Baker wrote referring to the rough financial times most airlines are facing. He predicted the domestic airline industry will lose some $7.2 billion this year, worse than its record after the 9-11 terrorist tragedies.

Airlines are being squeezed by astronomically higher fuel costs and economic slowdowns that are diminishing the number of high fare business tickets they're selling.

Baker listed US Airways as the most likely bankruptcy candidate followed by Northwest Airlines, United, American, JetBlue, Continental, AirTran, Delta, Alaska and Southwest.

The Boeing Co. continues hiring at a steady pace in Washington as jetliner orders continue to pour in.

As of the end of April, the company had 74,971 on its Evergreen State payrolls. That's 875 more than Boeing's Washington workforce was at the end of January.

For most other companies, such an increase would be a spectacular addition, but for Boeing, the increases are fairly conservative considering how the payroll during other boom times in the aerospace business increased.

Just before the turn to the 21st century, Boeing had more than 100,000 workers on its Washington payrolls. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, those payrolls dropped nearly 40 percent here.

If airliner orders continue at their present pace -- the company has won more than 400 orders through the end of May -- the company will add more than 900 planes to its backlog this year.

Boeing already has enough airliners on back order to keep its Washington production lines moving at the present pace for up to seven years without another order in the interim.

The fuel crisis is causing some airlines to postpone orders, but the company's conservation production pace can be sustained for years even if orders begin melting away.

Orlando's AirTran Airways, pressured by high fuel costs, says it will delay delivery of 18 Boeing 737-700 jetliners, to save cash.

The airline will delay those deliveries of the Renton-built planes by up to five years.

The AirTran delay is similar to one announced last week by New York's JetBlue Airways. JetBlue said it will defer delivery of 21 Airbus jetliners by four to five years.

AirTran had been scheduled to receive the planes beginning next year and continuing through 2011. The new delivery dates will be in 2013 and 2014.

The deferrals won't mean a total halt to AirTran's growth.
The airline will receive 23 737s between 2009 and 2011.

AirTran flies from SeaTac to its hub in Atlanta and to Milwaukee and Baltimore.