Results tagged “robotco”

Seattlest emailed a bunch of local tech professionals and asked them for the best of the Seattle tech scene in 2007. They responded and we threw all their suggestions in a list, looked it over, and scrapped 90% of them and then made up a new list off the top of our heads. And, yes, it's too late to talk about the year passed and we're more than ready to look forward, but we didn't manage to get this posted during the holidays.

Microsoft, Amazon, Disney, Nintendo, The Robot Co-Op; the list of big name tech companies in the Puget Sound region includes some of the biggest, which is why we were surprised by the recent bandwidth report that ranked Washington 18th among U.S. states in high-speed internet access. Illinois is 17th, Michigan is 19th. Two fine states but what tech shops do they have? Rhode Island is number one, Kansas 2 and Jersey 3. Apparently the presence of large technology companies has shit to do with the speed of the general interweb in a region. California is 38th (phbbbbttt!) and South Dakota is dead 50th, which should be a warning to us all. Don't be like SD. We take it on faith that a slow internet leads directly to things like full-on abortion bans, although when we tried making a Red State vs Blue State map with these speed rankings it didn't pan out.

So much new stuff! Food critic Bethany over at the Slog tipped us off about Cafe Presse opening not far from our office so we sauntered over for a lunchtime look-see. We spotted it easily because of the yellow sign. It's on the west side of 12th Avenue, on the block south of Madison, forming a French triangle (un triangle français) with Licorous and Lark. Maybe they can all field a soccer team against Stellina and La Spiga.

The other morning we were sitting there in Victrola, and we looked up to see noted local web-experience fashioner Josh there in line. Well, there you go. That's how it is, being Seattlest. Finger on the frickin' pulse.

The internet is both a thing of beauty and a terrible menace and no one knows that better than hapless Erik Benson. Benson left the fold at Amazon.com (specifically and tellingly from the "personalization team") and opened up shop on Capitol Hill as the Robot Co-Op with the site 43 Things. 43 Things enjoyed life briefly as an internet start-up until Monday when Salon.com featured the site in an article about content tags on the internet. To Erik Benson the internet must have been beautiful indeed.