Twenty Puget Sound innovators, business leaders, doctors and artists will be sharing their “ideas worth spreading” at the first Washington event sponsored by a local group patterned after a national idea-sharing group called TED.

The event is scheduled from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm Tuesday at the Museum of Glass. A two-hour reception will follow. The independently organized event is sponsored by TEDx Tacoma.

Speakers, whose talks will be limited to 18 minutes, include such area idea leaders as Tacoma tech entrepreneur Janine Terrano, Donald Byrd,artistic director of Spectrum Dance Theater and Joe Mirabella, campaign manager at Change.org.

TED is …

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Now’s your chance to help design signs and kiosks to help visitors find their way around downtown Tacoma.

As part of the larger $8 million project to renovate Pacific Avenue, $200,000 has been set aside to finally work on tools to help people find their way around. Such “wayfinding” has been a desire of downtown businesses for years, and staff of the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber have worked on it for quite some time, too.

Those of us familiar with downtown have no trouble getting to our favorite spots. But spend just a few minutes with someone from …

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Serious journalists aren’t supposed to be publicly excited about things, but I think this one is pretty neat.

“Words,” the temporary art installation that was a hit last summer at downtown Tacoma’s Tollefson Plaza, will be back Saturday, the city announced today.

Tacoma artist James Grayson Sinding will drop hundreds of hand-painted wooden letters onto the plaza at 2 p.m. People can create messages until the end of the month.

The installation is supported by Spaceworks Tacoma and the Tacoma Arts Commission’s Tacoma Artists Initiative Program. “Words” is presented in conjunction with the Tacoma Art Museum’s “Free …

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Our journalistic brethren to the north took a broad look today at Tacoma, connecting some of the city’s recent and potential losses downtown and asking whether we’ll ever be able to recover.

I know that if I tried to encompass Seattle’s recent history – what with the collapse of WaMu, $4 an hour parking in some places, turmoil in the school district and that whole viaduct thing – I’d probably miss some subtleties, too. That’s OK. I only noticed two real errors in the story. The Children’s Museum won’t “break ground” on its new space, since …

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CNN Money’s Les Christie has a flashy report out today that Tacoma is one of “10 large metro areas” that will record the biggest housing price gains in 2012.

Specifically he predicts Tacoma home prices will gain 11.8 percent by September of 2012.

While all of us hope for good residential real estate news, it’s unclear how he arrived at that conclusion. The gallery says in very small type at the end that the source of data is “Fiserv, based on cities with a population of 500,000 or more.”

First thought: Tacoma has about 200,000 people; Pierce County has …

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I almost got a parking ticket yesterday in downtown Tacoma while sitting in my running car for five minutes while I sent an e-mail.

First, let me state unequivocally: I violated the law. My running car was in park along the curb at South 9th Street and Pacific Avenue, which is in the paid parking zone. I had an expired parking sticker from earlier in the afternoon on my window, and I did not even think to get out and pay 25 cents for a new one because I planned to sit there for less than five minutes while …

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Boeing has made no secret that it’s unlikely to develop a re-engined version of its most popular airliner the 737. And Boeing Chairman Jim McNerney added strongly to that message today in the company’s fourth quarter earnings call.

“I personally feel that the market will wait for us,” said McNerney talking about whether developing a totally new replacement aircraft for the 737 is the way Boeing should proceed.

Boeing rival Airbus has recently announced it will re-engine its competitor to the 737, the A320. That announcement has triggered several big commitments and orders from airlines for the updated plane called …

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Reports are surfacing again that Boeing will depart from the traditional aluminum tube design for a new version of its most popular model, the 737.

A new patent obtained by Boeing engineers shows an elliptical composite fuselage that accommodates passengers in a twin-aisle configuration with two seats on the outboard sides of the two aisles with three seats between.

The elliptical fuselage, made possible by composite’s ability to be tailored precisely for strength in the proper places, supposedly produces no more aerodynamic drag than the present round aluminum fuselage with three seats on each side of a single aisle.

The …

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