A local businessman makes good for one of our city's museums, proving that philanthropy isn't dead, and if you build a cool enough museum, donors will follow suit. more ›

Hey, Seattlest doesn't have any bestsellers, gay or straight, banned or otherwise, but "software glitch?" C'mon. Even if it wasn't a deliberate wardrobe malfunction, Amazon's response was just pitiful, akin to the woman in charge of snowplows leaving town during December's storm. Twitter's out there pushing conspiracy theories, and Amazon's all "Nevermind." You'd think the company that pioneered online book sales would do a better job of managing an online crisis. Jeff Bezos, where are you? more ›

Amazon head honcho Jeff Bezos, with his cueball head and giraffe neck, appeared on the Daily Show last night to shill for his high-falutin' e-book reader:
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The above clip features the Amazon guru's appearance on last night's episode of The Simpsons, in which Bezos pisses himself at Billionaire Camp. We know, Jeff, we're nervous about the economy too. more ›

When we read that the Seattle Times had a large feature on the top paid CEOs in the Pacific Northwest, we wondered what the point was. Everyone knows Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Jeff Bezos—all local CEOs—are richer than God. And it turns out everyone, this Seattlest included, is wrong. According to the Times piece, the best paid local CEO in 2007 was James Voelker, who runs Bellevue's InfoSpace—a company we've never heard of. Despite its public anonymity (outside of technology circles) Voelker was handsomely paid (okay, obscenely paid) for his work. In 2007, he raked in $38,143,383...a salary we would be pleased to have 1/64th of on our greediest days. more ›

(For example to measure the sin of "wrath" the magazine used murder rates for cities.) more ›

Generally after the warm, fuzzy glow of our New Year's hangover wears off, Seattlest is left staring into the abyss of January without much to cling to, except our quickly fading memories of the resolutions we made and the knowledge that tax season is fast approaching. more ›

Turns out Amazon.com's customer service department isn't staffed by computers -- just sarcasm-savvy people who use computers. Consumerist broke the story: Amazon Sends "Best Customer Service E-mail I've Ever Received". We'll summarize: One of Amazon.com's Black Friday deals was the chance to win a $1000 laptop for $299. Many people entered; most of them were unsuccessful. Some theorized that Amazon employees had snatched up all the good deals, since no one they knew had won... more ›

Amazon says it's going to launch an online music store sometime this year and we say it's about time. We've been putting up with iTunes forever now while secretly hoping that someone in town would come up with a competitor. Microsoft has something, but, c'mon, a Microsoft music store? Obviously no. If they'd ever done a thing online we'd have been on the lookout for Starbucks launching a store, but their inexperience in online retail seems to have prevented the coffee maker from inflicting an easy listening media hub upon the world so far. And, oh yeah, Real has something already as well, but we've never tried it. That leaves Amazon, but for no reason at all we kinda figured they'd do it wrong. From what we've read so far they're doing it right. more ›

Seattle has more than it's share of space privateers, as we've noted in the past. Paul Allen and Vulcan have been making progress and it's not a secret, but we haven't heard much about Jeff Bezos and his company Blue Origin in quite some time. Until today, actually, when we found out that Blue Origin completed a test flight in November in Texas. Yeah, Texas - They have a research facility here in Kent or somewhere nearby, but it's very Area 51 - No one who works there talks about what goes on inside or even admits to working there at all. No doubt aliens are involved and have graciously awarded the Amazon founder with the gift of intergalactic travel as a reward for his successes in online retail. more ›

According to Forbes there are nine billionaires in Washington. Damn, nine! Would you believe that of those nine not a single one are Seattlest or a friend, acquaintance or associate of Seattlest? We would. Stay tuned next week when Seattlest compiles a list of Washington's nine poorest residents which may actually include Seattlest and/or friends, acquaintances or associates of Seattlest. more ›

Seattlest isn't exactly rolling in 'N Synch money, but we're pretty convinced that we'll be looking down on the state of Washington from space one day. Yeah, we met a Russian guy the other day who knows a guy who knows a guy and, long story short, he says someone's cousin works for the caterers who pack up the freeze-dried piroshky and could totally get us stowed away in a space box of them. If it comes to that, yeah, we're in. That's not our only plan, though. There are a lot of hometown avenues to try before we buy tickets for Baikonur. more ›