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The final stop of the North American on AIR Bus Tour is tonight in Chicago in the shadow of the MAX conference tomorrow. If you’ve flow in early for MAX, it’s worth checking out. We’re all pretty relaxed now that the tour is over and so tonight is going to be a fun nostalgic celebration […]

When news of the Gee announcement came the other day, some comments here suggested the company could have benefited from a PR campaign after the takeover. We found a company, MD Johnson Inc., that is using the whole sad story as a teaching example, suggesting Gee also could have benefited from “financial advisory services” […]

Man I am behind. The bus tour is always awesome but it’s really difficult to keep up on the news and sit down to write blog posts. There are a ton of cool companies I want to write about and a lot of news that I’ve missed out on writing about. With MAX around […]

Just out of the inbox: the bicycling education/coaching company Cycle University is expanding into West Seattle, moving into space at the Senior Center. Its founder, pro rider Craig Undem, is based in WS. Full press release, including pricing details:
Cycle University expands ‘InCycle’ to West Seattle, brings outdoor training indoors!

Cycle University is pleased to announce the […]

We all know .mp3 and .avi, but have you heard of .mkv?

I checked Mininova this morning to find a torrent of the first episode of the brand new (and final?) season of Smallville. To my surprise, one of the search results had “720p HDTV” in the title, so I decided to download it. It was a little over a gigabyte in size (compared to roughly 350 megabytes for most normal episode torrents), so I let the download sit all day, and it was finished by the time I got home from work.

When I tried to play the file, though, I realized that it had an .mkv extension that I had not encountered before. It didn’t take long to find AfterDawn.com’s guide to .mkv files, which explained that .mkv files are “Matroska files” and pointed me to the Combined Community Codec Pack, a pack of media codecs that would allow me to watch .mkv files in Windows Media Player.

After installing the codec pack, the .mkv file was immediately associated with WMP and I was able to play it. What I saw was what I expected and hoped for: the first episode of the new season of Smallville in glorious, crystal clear HD.

Long live BitTorrent and long live technology!

Thanks to Christy at On Focus Photo for sharing this picture of what she calls “the local bald eagle” keeping watch at Seacrest at sunset tonight:

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(photo from one of those foggy mornings earlier this week) As mentioned in the latest edition of the WSB West Seattle Weekend Lineup, this is the final full weekend of the Water Taxi, till next year. We told you 2 weeks ago about the plan to stretch its season out a month — after Sunday, the WT goes to a Monday-Friday commute-hours […]

This goal by the Brazil women’s soccer team’s Marta has to be the best I’ve ever seen, period.

It made the U.S. women’s excruciating loss to Brazil in the Women’s World Cup this week a little less excruciating.

It’s pretty much true.

It pains me to see potentially high-profile websites (or sites that aspire to be high-profile) that suffer from really bad web design. Take a look at this page to get an example of what I mean. The page is only one among millions, but it’s a relevant reminder, to me at least, that good web design should be appreciated whenever encountered — it really is a rare thing. It’s just a shame it has to be that way.