AdReady, the Seattle online display advertising company, has named Paul Uhlir as director of client services. He is the founder of the Northwest Internet advertising group and the interactive agency Don’t Blink. Meanwhile, Henry Blodget of Alley Insider discusses why online display ads don’t suck.

The Cobalt Group’s Dealix division has won a contract to supply the car quote and dealer selector tools on Yahoo Autos, with the partnership beginning Aug. 15.

Seattle’s Earth Class Mail and Kansas-based Perfect Output plan to begin selling a new offering that brings together document-processing and mail-management services, with The Portland Business Journal reporting that the two companies have worked together on the system for the past 18 months at Sprint’s Overland Park, Kansas campus.

Redmond-based Microvision has won a $1 million contract from Lockheed Martin Corp. to develop new wearable eyeware displays that soldiers can use to receive visual commands, geographic information and other images.

Seattle engineering firm R.W. Beck has been acquired by Science Applications International Corp. And while the companies didn’t disclose the price, a source tells TechFlash that R.W. Beck — founded in 1942 and employing more than 550 consultants — sold for about $155 million.

TechCrunch reports that hosting provider RackSpace suffered yet another outage today, knocking some sites offline and mirroring the problems we’ve been reporting on after last Thursday night’s Fisher Plaza data center fire. It marks the second major outage at Rackspace in the past week, with TechCrunch asking: "Why do power outages keep taking down a service that so many rely on?" We asked the same question about Fisher Plaza, and here’s what experts said.

Clearwire plans an official launch of its WiMax service in Las Vegas on July 21, adding to Atlanta and Portland.

Headline of the day comes via The Tech Beat: "Made Men: Why Venture Capitalists Sponsor Other VCs."

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and Seeking a dot-com tourist spot  

We’ve been working on a fun project — a Seattle tech tourism guide, spotlighting locations of current and historical interest in the region’s technology community. In addition to some places you might expect, we’ve found some previously undiscovered gems, and we’re excited to roll out the first version. Watch for details in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, we could use some help. We’re looking for some good locations in the region to represent the dot-com boom and bust.

It’s not as easy as you might think. The former FreeInternet.com building in Federal Way is not all that exciting, and it’s a geographic outlier. The longstanding MyLackey.com billboard in Seattle (pictured above) is no longer there. The Speakeasy Cafe, a pioneering Internet cafe, would have been a great place to include in the guide, but it was hit by a fire in 2001 and the building has since been torn down.

Any other ideas? Drop us an email or post a comment below. Feel free also to suggest locations representing other eras of technology.

(Flickr photo: bdorfman)

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and Voting guides go high-tech with new political video messages  

In this era of YouTube and Hulu, it’s about time that the old voting pamphlet gets a bit of a high-tech twist. Beginning later this month, voters in five rural counties in Washington state will be able to access video messages from political candidates discussing issues and their political views.

The technology is being developed by Issaquah-based Democracy Live, which has received a grant to work with students at local colleges to help politicians craft the short video messages. The videos will appear on the county election board’s Web sites.

"The objective of the Democracy Live Video Voter Guide is to offer voters a chance to watch and listen to every candidate appearing on their ballot, regardless of money or resources," said Bryan Finney, executive director of Democracy Live.  "By putting candidates on an equal playing field, allowing voters to click, listen and watch the candidates appearing on their ballot, it will be ideas that matters most, not money."

Finney said the idea is to allow voters to compare and contrast local candidates, including judges and county officials, who may not be well known.

"Hopefully (it) will reduce the impact of simply having more yard signs than the other guy, or more newspaper endorsements," he said.

The participating counties include Kitsap, Grant, Pacific, Pend Oreille and Walla Walla, with Finney noting that the company is in discussions with King County and other counties in the state. 

Finney describes the company as a "non-partisan technology firm" funded by local angel investors on both sides of the political aisle. Voters will be able to see the messages — funded through a grant from Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed — on the Web sites beginning July 20.

John Cook is co-founder of TechFlash. Follow him on Twitter @johnhcook.

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Twitter, Michael Jackson & msnbc  

As the world tunes into the Michael Jackson memorial, Redmond-based msnbc.com is there with live online video. But the coverage has a bit of a twist too. For the first time on a major news event, msnbc.com has integrated a live Twitter stream. As Mariah Carey sang "I’ll be There," the Twitter messages were moving so fast that one could barely keep up.

"WOW… this is so sad. Watching the Michael Jackson memorial. What a wonderful tribute to such an influential man!!!!!," wrote one Twitter user.

"MJ’s memorial is like the most tweeted n watched thing since Obama Day & The Finals," wrote another.

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