SO, that all said, something new: Today in the paper version of the Sunday Times, a new section called “Around the Sound” debuts, featuring quick blurbs from some of their partner sites. The first version includes one they chose from WSB, a short mention of park safety on the agenda of last Tuesday’s West Seattle Crime Prevention Council meeting (here’s the full story, with video, if you missed it). Just thought we’d mention it in case you read the Sunday Times but missed this (which is on page B3 – here’s a PDF version). They decide what to feature, same way we decide what – and if – to feature any Times content here, but once in a while, you just might see something from our peninsula go by.

Story and photos by Keri DeTore
West Seattle Blog contributor

Did you notice the lights and cameras set up at Cupcake Royale in The Junction on Monday?

That was a crew from Bellevue-based Expedia, interviewing local travel writers who have applied their storytelling and outreach skills to fundraising for international projects.

West Seattleites Beth Whitman (photo left) and Pam Mandel (photo right), along with Debbie Dubrow (center, from Mount Baker), are longtime travelers and writers who publish blog-format sites where they share their experiences, and their tips and tricks for smarter, easier travel. Along with Michelle Duffy (not pictured), they found each other through their writing, and began meeting regularly at Cupcake Royale to share stories and support.

At one point, they wondered, “What MORE can we do?” They wanted a way to bring together the travel-blog community, and unite it around a cause. After doing some research, realizing that others in that community wanted “something to latch onto,” and finding other groups with strong fundraising models, the four women created Passports with Purpose.

PwP is an all-volunteer effort identifying and partnering with local organizations in developing countries to focus on building sustainable education infrastructure, such as schools and libraries. They use a “sweepstakes” model for fundraising (similar to a raffle) – they and other travel writers secure an item to offer; it’s posted on the Passports with Purpose site; and participants offer $10 donations to bid on the items. When the sweepstakes is over, they use a computerized system to pick the winner out of all the “bids.”

In 2008, the first year of Passports with Purpose, they raised $7,400 (with only three weeks of planning!) for Heifer International. Their second year, when they decided to ask for $15,000 to build a school in Cambodia, they “blew past” that goal in the first two days, ultimately reaching $30,000, allowing them to add a computer and teachers to the school with the extra money. Since then, they’ve increased their fundraising goals and have been broadening their outreach.

Now – this is where the Expedia crew comes in.

Passports with Purpose’s capacity to broaden its outreach has just grown, literally, globally. Thanks to an effort by PR director Sarah Keeling, Expedia is joining forces with the travel writers to share their stories and their efforts to help international communities. That means the Passports with Purpose group will be able to visit their most recent project — building libraries in Zambia — together, something they’ve never been able to do before. Says Keeling, “Working with (PwP) is a natural fit for us.”

This partnership will also allow the PwP organization to identify writers in other countries where Expedia has a presence and develop “Global Ambassadors” — others in the travel-blog community who will set up fundraising systems for international assistance using the same model as Passports with Purpose.

They are currently accepting applications online for their next project. Says Beth Whitman, “It needs to fit into our budget, AND be tangible and resonate with our emotional side.” Their fundraising goal for this year is $120,000; the recipient will be announced in June at the 2012 TBEX Conference in Colorado, where the Expedia video segment will also be shown.

To follow these writers’ adventures, you can find Beth Whitman at wanderlustandlipstick.com, Pam Mandel at nerdseyeview.com, Debbie Dubrow at deliciousbaby.com (“Making Travel With Kids Fun!”), and Michelle Duffy at wandermom.com. (And watch for PwP’s next fundraiser later this year.)

Pam adds: “Being able to travel the world and see how other people live is a privilege …Travel is the way to make the world a better place.”

Mayor Mike McGinn today announced that Bill Schrier is retiring from City service as the city of Seattle’s chief technology officer after 30 years.

“Bill Schrier has been an effective and innovative leader in helping Seattle use technology to support our residents, our businesses, and an open government,” said Mayor McGinn. “Under his leadership Seattle has begun to connect more of our neighborhoods to high-speed fiber broadband, set national standards for accessing information online, and helped create and improve other innovative and effective ways to get the people of Seattle better engaged with their government.”

During Schrier’s tenure as chief technology officer and head of the Department of Information Technology (DoIT), the city of Seattle was named as the best large city government website in the nation by “Best of the Web” in 2001, 2006 and 2011. Schrier led the development of data.seattle.gov, an award-winning website that increases access to datasets generated by various departments of Seattle city government. DoIT also oversees the city’s television station, the Seattle Channel, which was named best municipal TV station for large cities in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2010.

Schrier’s retirement from City service will be effective on May 2. Erin Devoto, deputy director of DoIT, will serve as acting chief technology officer until a permanent director is chosen.

According to his Twitter feed, Schrier is at a conference in Minnesota – but we’ll be asking for comment. Via Twitter, of course. (Where he just promised “more in a while.”)

ADDED EARLY WEDNESDAY: Retirement in this case does not mean actual “no more paid career” retirement; here’s where his new job is revealed – deputy director of the Center for Digital Government.

We will be doing maintenance on the vast majority of our service area in West Seattle. The work will take place between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. We anticipate that service will be interrupted for about 5 minutes. The time of the interruption will vary depending on when we do the maintenance work on the equipment serving that neighborhood.

All of the work will take place at our headend facility in Burien and won’t involve construction crews working out in the individual neighborhoods.

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Twitter (human-powered)
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YouTube (where we upload most of the video clips we use in stories)
youtube.com/westseattleblog

If you don’t use any of those services, no worries – you won’t miss anything; WSB on the Web is the main place to be. (With a handy mobile format that automatically kicks in if you check the site via smartphone.) Then, there’s the good old-fashioned stuff – the simplest ways to reach us, whether or not you’re on the other services too:

24/7 phone (text or voice)
206-293-6302

e-mail
editor@westseattleblog.com (news)
patrick@wsbsales.com (advertising)

The occasion: January’s final numbers for WSB readership are in, and it was a record-setting month:

*First month ever with more than 1,100,000 pageviews (final total: 1,165,345 pageviews for January 2012)
*First month ever with more than half a million visits (final total: 500,844 visits for January 2012)

The previous WSB records were set last October, the first month ever with more than a million WSB pageviews, part of a big 2011 that we never just stopped down for a second to mention either:

*2011 WSB pageviews: 11,150,130 (up 20 percent from 2010)
*2011 WSB visits: 4,773,957 (a million more than the year before)

Most important are items for which we don’t have an exact count – the story tips, photos, traffic reports shared by phone, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter; the comments and forum posts (part of what led to the Society of Professional Journalists‘ 2011 “Online Engagement” award); the votes that brought WSB the “Best of Western Washington” award for a second year, and other honors including Seattle Magazine Reader’s Choice and “Best News Website” in the Seattle Weekly’s Seattle Web Awards.

We continue working in hopes of deserving your support, such as adding new features that were requested in our May 2011 survey (like the WSB West Seattle Restaurant Guide and the WSB Weather page). In progress now, we’re upgrading the Events Calendar from text-only to a true calendar with entries including maps, links, and a unique link for each entry so you can share it if you’d like (Speaking of sharing, we recently upgraded “Share This” – the link you can click at the end of any WSB story or page – and it’s a cleaner way to e-mail, Facebook-share, or tweet any WSB story or page, OR to access dozens of other sharing/bookmarking services if they are your fave/s). This is also our fifth year of being there for you on Facebook and Twitter too, and appreciative of your support and participation there, with the odometer about to turn to 6,000 “likes” on the FB page we launched last year after maxing out the original WSB “profile”-style page launched in 2007.)

So again … THANK YOU. And thanks to the local businesses that sponsor WSB, enabling us to stay in business coordinating, uncovering, and publishing community-collaborative news 24/7. Though we’re already well into 2012, it still feels shiny and new – maybe it’s the past few days of sunshine! – and we hope you share our optimism in looking forward to everything else it will bring. – Tracy & Patrick, co-publishers

The City of Seattle’s online map lineup has a new addition. Not only can you find development projects, traffic times, and 911 calls on city maps, you can now look up street trees. For example, if you zoom to 35th SW, you can click on the dark-green tree cluster and find out about the famous European Hornbeams (the trees, shown in our 2009 photo above, just before getting special attention a couple years back from a group of professional arborists who donated their time and talents). The new map (explained here) comes just as the city gets ready to consider a new street-tree ordinance (find it here), as we reported here and here.

Danny McMillin spotted this barred owl during a New Year’s Day walk in Lincoln Park. (Is he/she one of these two? Would take keener eyes than ours to tell!) Thanks for sharing the photo!

#10 – 125 COMMENTS
West Seattle traffic: ‘Worst morning in 5 years’ – but why? (May 11)

#9 – 126 COMMENTS
Close Junction streets for trick-or-treating? Mom’s campaign (November 6)

#8 – 127 COMMENTS
Zippy’s Giant Burgers moving from Highland Park to White Center (February 3)

#7 – 136 COMMENTS
West Seattle speeders: SPD stops a 42 mph bicyclist (July 27)

#6 – 137 COMMENTS
West Seattle traffic: 1st morning of Viaduct-closure workweek (October 24)

#5 – 139 COMMENTS
Update: Amanda Knox back in Seattle, thanks supporters (October 4)

#4 – 155 COMMENTS
West Seattle front-lawn fire truck’s owner ordered to remove it (February 9)

#3 – 160 COMMENTS
Seacrest Boathouse contract-controversy followup: Marination revealed as ‘new operator,’ and more (December 5)

#2 – 161 COMMENTS
Police nab alleged 55 mph driver on Admiral Way – and more (February 3)

#1 – 180 COMMENTS
Bicycle commuter: ‘Never in my life has any other human being so directly and purposefully threatened my life’ (September 21)

POSTSCRIPT: In case you’re wondering … the WSB most-comments record, so far, is held by the 11/22/10 afternoon/evening snow report, with 568 comments, most of them helpful information on road/bridge/bus conditions! Thanks SO much for your ongoing collaboration – not just in comments, but also via e-mail (editor@westseattleblog.com), phone and text (206-293-6302), Facebook (facebook.com/westseattleblog), Twitter (twitter.com/westseattleblog), and the WSB Forums (click the top-right tab) … More 2011-in-review installments to come!

What will the rest of the day bring? You can follow along at twitter.com/seattlepd. Officer Luckie told us calls he answered in the past few days including a man trying to break into a house by using a chain saw. (We’re looking for the report on that one.) He has some ground rules to follow, including no photos of suspects’ faces, but otherwise, he’s the one doing the tweeting (which surprised us – we figured he might have someone from downtown along for the ride, helping out).

First, the new afternoon warning from King County, followed by yesterday’s warning from PSE:

King County is warning of an apparent email scam. The county has received calls from people and businesses within and outside of King County, including individuals from other states and countries, who have reported receiving false confirmation of an online property tax payment made through the King County e-commerce system. These emails were not sent by King County, and the county’s e-commerce system has not been compromised.

“It appears that someone copied our standard payment confirmation email and altered the header in the email so that it appears to be from King County,” said County Chief Information Officer Bill Kehoe. “These messages did not come from King County, and the recipients have not made any payments with us.”

Kehoe added that King County’s e-commerce system is safe. “We have robust protections on all of our information technology systems. The email addresses did not come from our database. Residents can rest easy, knowing that their personal information is secure.”

King County encourages everyone to practice safe computing habits. If you have not made a King County tax payment via the online system, but received an email notification from KingCountyEcommerce@kingcounty.gov, delete it, and do not open any attachments.

King County will also post a message on the property tax payment web site that warns the public about this situation.

Puget Sound Energy has posted an advisory warning its customers and others about a fraudulent email that mimics a bill-payment notification. The bogus email does not affect PSE customer accounts, which are secure.

The email looks like the notice PSE sends to online-billing customers when their utility bill is ready to be viewed and paid. The message contains PSE’s logo and some legitimate links to the utility’s site.

The phony email, which has reached some PSE customers as well as people in other states who never have been a customer of the Washington state utility, is part of a nationwide phishing scam that sends emails claiming to be from several well-recognized companies like PSE.

In its email billing notifications, PSE always addresses its customers by their full name rather than using “Dear Customer,” which is a clue of the fraudulent email. A second indication of the false email is the boldfaced message, “Refer to the attached file.”

PSE’s website (PSE.com) advises customers to take the following steps if they receive an email addressed, “Dear Customer.”

Do not click on the link in the email or open any attachments, which may contain a virus
Delete the email notice immediately

PSE customers should call 1-888-225-5773 if they have questions or need further information.

The game’s developers have serious pedigrees: Hedquist has been an interactive designer for a decade, with past projects for clients from the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum to the BBC. He is a partner at Curio Dept. with Fremont resident and software-industry veteran Scott Dierdorf. D’Amico is the illustrator of the “Ella The Elephant” picture-book series, for which he says a TV series is now in development. He’s also produced illustrations and designs you might have seen on websites for PBS Kids, Nick Jr., and the Disney Channel. Just bring your would-be game-tester to Cupcake Royale between 3 and 6 pm today (during CR’s regular “DIY” decorating party) to give Tiny Tiger a try.