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.......

Forbes Magazine must have gotten tired of making the same "Richest People in the World" list, because the magazine has moved on to ranking the "Nation's Most Sinful Cities." In order to do so, Forbes came up with measurable methods to rank the proclivity for each of the seven deadly sins in America's urban populations. (For example to measure the sin of "wrath" the magazine used murder rates for cities.) Of course, you're curious, just......

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. This year we're filing as a newly married, first-time independent contractor who bought a home last year and we're mighty worried. We liked the 1040-EZ we'd grab while dropping......

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......

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......

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......

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. Forbes lists 793 billionaires, but that's just the beginning of the money porn list love.......

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......