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Tekna designs has released a free Seattle Bike Parking app that helps you find the 2,230 rack locations in the city and has bike map routes as well. See the details here or look for it on iTunes.

The 2013-2014 Proposed Budget totals $4 billion, including the City’s $951 million General Fund. Four years after the start of the Great Recession and three years following its lackadaisical conclusion, the City of Seattle is starting to see some easing on the General Fund budget constraints. While still not back to pre-recession levels, strength in the local economy relative to national trends, vigilant financial management over the past two years and continued efforts to find new and more efficient ways of doing business are giving the City a bit more flexibility than in recent years to make investments in emerging needs. Nonetheless, in this post-Great Recession climate, the need for financial restraint remains as revenue growth continues to be relatively subdued. Read all about it here.

q&a

Have a question for Mayor Mike McGinn? Join the conversation with Seattle Channel host Brian Callanan as he sits down with the Mayor on Wednesday, October 24, at 7 PM for Ask the Mayor. Call (206) 681-8821 between 7:00 and 8:00 PM or email your questions. Also, follow their conversation on Twitter or Facebook with the Seattle Channel’s accounts. You can also submit questions through Twitter and Facebook as well.

Follow the Seattle Channel on Twitter.com/SeattleChannel and become a fan of the Seattle Channel on Facebook! Friends and followers get up to the minute info on new programs, behind the scene pictures of shoots and interviews and more!

Free cable broadband Internet service is available for organizations providing technology training to community members. The free service is offered within the Seattle city limits, based on the City's cable franchise agreements with Comcast and Broadstripe (Millennium). For more information and to download a short form to make application, go to our tech web. If you have questions, email Derrick Hall or call (206) 233-5061.

Back issues of Brainstorm including techtips and linkage are now available in our online archives. Previous TechTips and Linkage are also available. Click to revisit all previous issues.

To subscribe or unsubscribe to Brainstorm, please email us, and we'll add you to our email notification list, or subtract you per your request. If you have ideas for future stories, please let us know and we'll try to accommodate them. We encourage you to visit the City of Seattle's Community Tech pages, seattle.gov/tech.

King County Exec Dow Constantine (left) tours the apps from the 20 finalists.

Ready to bookmark and load some exciting tools? Watch out for Which Bus, Living Voters Guide, Trash Backwards, Alike, Seattle Rainwatch, and Food Inspector! These new civic apps were chosen from twenty finalists in the first Evergreen Apps Challenge. Mayor Mike McGinn and King County Executive Dow Constantine joined judges, developers and Conrad Saam of Urban Spoon at City Hall to celebrate the winners and award $75,000 in pizes. See more about the awards and contest. Take a look at the winners and links to the awesome apps.

Tony Benton and Dwele backstage at Aki Kurose Middle School.

Grammy nominated neo-soul singer Dwele joined local Musica Entertainment host Tony Benton for a guest appearance at Aki Kurose Middle School in south Seattle to talk tech, entertainment and education. TonyB revved everyone up with cheers of "Access, Literacy and Content," the themes of digital equity. He emphasized the need for low-income residents and people of color to get online, not fall behind. Dwele shared how he uses the Internet to exchange songs in progress and benefits from the lower cost opportunities to get the word out about his music and videos. He also posts to Instagram to stay in touch with fans. Dwele was in Seattle appearing at Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley. Dwele won a lot a new fans with an encore performance of his singing with backup dancing from Aki’s students.

City Club and the University of Washington have pioneered a community-generated online voters' guide on statewide ballot measures and initiatives. Its purpose is to foster voter education, deliberation and civil discourse in uncivil times. Used by nearly 25,000 state voters over two election cycles, Living Voters Guide offers promise as a tool to promote digital democracy and elicit broad public input for policy development.

The Living Voters Guide invites all Washingtonians to discuss vital ballot measures together, to explore one another's positions, and to build a personal, customized platform that will inform their final votes. This voters' guide is co-created by everyone who participates. It evolves as you and neighbors across our state consider the trade offs for each measure.

Available on the 2012 Living Voters Guide for dicussion are:

• Referendum 74: Same-sex Marriage
• Initiative 1240: Charter Schools
• Initiative 502: Marijuana Legalization
• Initiative 1185: 2/3 Majority for Tax Increase
• Joint Resolution 8221: State Debt
• Joint Resolution 8223: University Investments
• Advisory Vote 1: Deducations for Banks
• Advisory Bote 2: Petroleum Tax Extension

The September Brainstorm announced Comcast’s initiative to convert to all digital signals. The conversion is expected to only impact customers with older televisions and who are subscribers to Comcast’s Limited Basic cable service.

For the Seattle area, this digital transition is planned to happen in three phases:

1. Greenlake area was converted to fully digital on September 25.
2. West Seattle, Downtown, Georgetown and South Seattle are expected to convert on October 30.
3. Remainder of Seattle areas are expected to convert on January 22, 2013.

For more detailed information on this digital transition, visit Comcast’s overview of the effort, or contact the City’s Office of Cable Communications at (206) 684-8498.

New training materials are available from Communities Connect Network (CCN) training program site. Materials are posted from Financial Fitness: Financial Tips and Tools for Case Managers, Credit Reports and Scores, and Using the Self-sufficiency calculator. Budget templates, credit reports requests and other tools are included there.

The Northwest Justice Project also released its latest video funded through the CCN project. Washington's Fair Tenant Screening Act is also available in Spanish.

Open Doors for Multicultural Families and the STAR Center partnered to create a Youth Job Readiness Training program. See more about this program.

Have you visited the US-CERT, or the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, site lately? Here you can access the latest computer secuity threats, tips and advice on keeping your home and business information secure. You can also sign up for alerts, view bulletins and report any suspicious incidents or software vulnerabilities of which you become aware. Basic tips for keeping your kids safe online, safeguarding your data or debunking common myths can be found here. You can also visit our Information Security Office here.

For more security tips, check out the techtalk blog.

If you are a Wave (formerly Broadstripe) Internet-only customer, read on. This may apply to you.

Under Broadstripe's service packages, customers who wanted Internet-only service were automatically coded to receive limited basic cable television service as well, at no additional cost. However, under Wave's account structure, an Internet-only service option is available and it is not packaged with limited basic cable television service.

During the account transition from Broadstripe to Wave, this difference has resulted in some Broadstripe customers - who only use the Internet service - now also being charged for limited basic cable television service or a "Seattle TV Station Fee."

If you fall into this category and do not want or use the basic cable television service packaged into your original Broadstripe account, contact Wave customer service at (800) 829-2225 and be sure your account is updated to reflect the Internet-only service. It could save you money!

Small and Simple Projects Fund The Small and Simple Projects Fund provides awards up to $20,000 to support community members in building community relationships around a project. Small and Simple Projects Fund activities may be physical projects as well as less tangible but equally significant educational, cultural, and relationship-strengthening activities. All projects must demonstrate its capacity to build a stronger and healthier community, and must: Provide a public benefit and be free and open to all members of the public; emphasize self-help, with project ideas initiated, planned and implemented by the neighbors and community members who will themselves be impacted by the project; demonstrate community match; and occur within the Seattle city limits.

Due date: October 8. 5:00 p.m.

Neighborhood and Community Arts Seattle offers an extraordinary array of arts and cultural events throughout its diverse neighborhoods. The Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs supports creativity at a grassroots level, making investments in dozens of festivals and community cultural projects. The Neighborhood and Community Arts (NCA) program supports Seattle's neighborhood arts councils and community groups that produce events to promote arts and cultural participation and build community. In 2012, the program provided $1,200 each to 39 organizations to support annual public festivals and events.

Due date: October 24, 5:00 p.m.

Henry Jenkins’ great blog on media literacy and pop culture.

Latest FCC Broadband report says 19 million Americans still don’t have broadband, but it has improved. Report predicts by 2016 the average Internet household is projected to generate more than 130 gigabytes of traffic per month.

The Google Fiber Project blog has a positive report on Kansas City neighborhoods signing up for their service and acknowledges issues in low income neighborhoods