A revamped Seattle PostGlobe--courtesy of those crazy kids at Instivate--has rolled out, and along with it, they've rolled out a refocused mission: to be "the source for economic and local civic news." The ex-P-I crew is divvying up the city thusly: Kathy Mulady is on elections coverage; Larry Lange, transportation issues; and Kery Murakami takes City Hall. Plus they've nabbed PubliCola's Josh Feit for local politics input. But wait there's more! They've got video from KCTS 9 and new reports from KPLU 88.5 FM. We applaud their work integrating local blogs into the site, too. Now to integrate the money... more ›

Online media is ready to eat its young, we see. Paul Constant, Glenn Nelson, and Chuck Taylor have reviews in on the new, online-only Seattle P-I and it's mostly thumbs down. Each of them seems to think the move to an online platform was a planned transition, and that there should have been some "reinvention" to wow everyone on Day One. Our sense was that thanks to Hearst's poker skills, no one at the P-I was sure until a few days ago that they even had jobs, let alone what they were. Someone was working on a simple, clean mobile interface, but a site redesign had to be out of the question. more ›

Only Microsoft could send people fleeing from a free product. But users are abandoning Redmond's free Hotmail service, and they were leaving before the new interface that's got everyone else pissed off: says the P-I, "among the major Web-based mail providers in the United States, Windows Live Hotmail was the only one to experience a fall in traffic in September." (Gmail gained 26K unique visitors, in contrast.) Undeterred, Microsoft is playing stern dad, and forcefully upgrading laggard "classic" users to the new Hotmail interface, like it or not. Ironically, Todd Bishop over at TechFlash has been catching flack from Microsofties for his temporary Gmail address. That's Hotmail's problem! Todd Bishop! more ›

There's talk that Kindle sales have hit a wall recently, so we have a new slogan for Amazon: "RE: Kindle your love of reading." *crickets* Well, we have all sorts of buzz to report, too. First, there's the 8.5" x 11" textbook edition of Kindle. Then there's that $100-off-a-Kindle deal. Finally, there's the Kindle 2.0 rumor-mongering: "[T]he new version is significantly thinner, has a better screen, is more stylish and includes fixes to some of the user interface annoyances with the first version." Now how much would you pay? $249-$299? more ›