But The Clymb, which is announcing today that it has raised $2 million in capital, is focused on backpacks and crampons.

The Portland, Ore.-based company said investors in its Series A round include three angels: J Allard, Xbox creator and former CTO of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division; Art Berliner, founder of Walden Venture Capital; and Drew Smith, who represents the Oregon Angel Fund.

The outdoorsy focus doesn’t necessarily mean a smaller opportunity. Just think about it for a second: The latest in kayaking, skiing or mountain-biking gear can easily run you as much, if not more, than a pair of Louis Vuitton pumps. Gortex isn’t cheap!

Another significant difference between The Clymb and other flash sales sites, such as Gilt Groupe, Rue La La and Amazon’s My Habit, is that it is for members only. While other sites may make that claim, The Clymb actually has a waiting list for people wanting to sign up for its daily email of offers. Others pretty much let everyone else in immediately.

As an example of the company’s offers, today The Clymb was selling sleeping bags and tents from Sierra Designs for half off; men’s and women’s performance clothing from thriv at a discount; and a wide variety of stainless steel water bottles from Waterbox.

In the coming months, the company plans to add a broader range of outdoor gear; expand the number of social features it has with reviews and other elements; and offer other deals that allow you to put the gear to use in the outdoors.

Here’s a list of The Clymb’s achievements since launching in 2009:

• A membership base of several hundred thousand
• More than one million monthly unique visits
• Partnerships with more than 150 brands, including Arc’teryx, Burton, KEEN Footwear, Mountain Hardwear and Salomon

Today, the tech duo launched the all-new GeekWire, after quietly giving notice to the business journal last Thursday.

Cook says he will serve as the co-founder, CEO and Seattle editor focused on covering startups and venture capital, while Bishop, who is co-founder, president and national editor, will be tasked with covering Microsoft, Google, Apple and other publicly held companies.

The two reporters turned entrepreneurs, who were former tech reporters at the Hearst-owned Seattle Post-Intelligencer, are known locally for their solid and consistent startup reporting, and even for the occasional national scoops, such as Bishop’s exclusive interviews with Microsoft’s Robbie Bach and J Allard the day their departures were announced.

The two are also known for bringing the tech community together by hosting an annual awards and other regular tech meet-ups, including one that even BoomTown’s own Kara Swisher attended.

So, why the departure?

Cook said after spending so many years reporting on entrepreneurs, it was time for him to be one.

“We feel like there’s a real need for a tech news source that’s based out of Seattle, rather than Silicon Valley or New York. That’s always been a niche that Todd and I have pursued,” he said.

Cook said they have secured enough funding from an angel investor to get the venture off the ground and to keep both his family and Bishop’s fed.  And, in true startup form, Cook declined to discuss how much capital the two raised or from whom, but said to expect an announcement soon.

The sudden departure of Cook and Bishop from TechFlash leaves the site’s fate a little bit up in the air.

Emory Thomas Jr., the publisher of the Puget Sound Business Journal and TechFlash, said he is committed to rebuilding the site after losing its two original employees.

“I’m comfortable with ability to move forward and go beyond where we’ve taken TechFlash today, and I’m not just saying that,” he told us.

In a post announcing their departure, Thomas disclosed that the site was profitable, and said in the interim, the whole PSBJ staff, led by reporter Greg Lamm, will write and edit the blog.

Cook said the entire site was created over the weekend after they gave notice on Thursday with the help of  a number of Seattle-based companies that provided legal advice, web development, design and hosting services.

“Please, put my headcount and that cardkey “invitation” to good use. Find a college student that claims we don’t get it and blogs tirelessly about our lack of agility. Track down an EE that has been focusing on fuel cells and has radical thoughts about power management. Or a social networking whiz who is tired of building little islands that go hot and cold and can’t break the mainstream. Hire a designer who’s given shape to 2 decades of beautiful automobiles and thinks we can sculpt technology to better connect to users. Infuse them with our purpose. Give them the tools. Give them lots of rope. Learn from them. Support where they take you.

Decide. Change. Reinvent.”

– J Allard on leaving Microsoft

Bach is said to be retiring; Allard, who has been on sabbatical recently, is simply moving on, though he’ll remain an adviser to the company.

Interestingly, Microsoft (MSFT) isn’t replacing Bach. Instead, the company is splitting his responsibilities between Senior VPs Andy Lees and Don Mattrick, who will oversee the company’s gaming and mobile businesses, respectively. Mattrick and Lees will report directly to CEO Steve Ballmer, who is evidently taking on more of a role in Microsoft’s consumer devices efforts, which, with the exception of the Xbox 360, have stumbled in recent years.

News of the shake-up was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The full text of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s memo announcing the moves below; further details to follow:

From: Steve Ballmer
To: Microsoft – All Employees
Subject: Executive Leadership Transitions

After almost 22 years with the company, Robbie Bach has decided to retire from Microsoft. I have worked with Robbie during his entire tenure at Microsoft, and count him as both a friend and a great business partner and leader. Robbie has always had great timing, and is going out on a high note–this has been a phenomenal year for E&D overall, and with the coming launches of both Windows Phone 7 and “Project Natal,” the rest of the year looks stupendous as well. While we are announcing Robbie’s retirement today, he will remain here through the fall, ensuring we have a smooth transition.

Concurrent with Robbie’s retirement, I am making several organization changes to ensure we have the right leaders in the right positions as we set ourselves up for the next big wave of products and services. Effective July 1, Don Mattrick, who leads our interactive entertainment business, and Andy Lees, who leads our mobile communications business, will report directly to me. Don and Andy have built out strong leadership teams and product pipelines, and are well-positioned for the years ahead.

Independent of Robbie’s decision, J Allard (currently serving as senior vice president of Design and Development for E&D), will also be leaving Microsoft. Given his ongoing passion and commitment to Microsoft, he will remain as an advisor to me, helping incubation efforts, looking at design and UI, and providing a cross-company perspective on these and similar topics. With J’s change in role, corporate vice president David Treadwell will join IEB to lead the core technology organization, reporting to Don. David has a great set of accomplishments at Microsoft, most recently working on the Windows Live Platform Services team. Over the next several months, Robbie and I will work together to finalize reporting and structure for the rest of his org.

Now that Office 2010 has been launched to business customers, Antoine Leblond, senior vice president in the Office Productivity Applications Group, will take a new role as senior vice president for the Windows Web Services team. This team brings together the integral Windows services that today deliver updates, solutions, community and depth information for the Windows consumer. Kurt DelBene, senior vice president in the Office Business Productivity Group, will take on all of the engineering responsibilities for the Office business.

Transitions are always hard. Robbie has been an instrumental part of so many key moments in Microsoft history–from the evolution of Office to the decision to create the first Xbox to pushing the company hard in entertainment overall. J as well has had a great impact in the market and on our culture, providing leadership in design, and in creating a passionate and involved Xbox community, and earlier being at the center of our work seizing the importance of the Web for the company. But most important, both have been great team builders with a strong record of attracting, coaching and growing talent. As a result, their teams are primed to continue to step up and deliver great products, great services and great results for the company. Don has led the Interactive Entertainment Business since July 2007, where he’s significantly grown our entertainment footprint as well as our profitability. He can count as successes the evolution of Xbox Live, the launch of blockbusters like “Halo 3” and the much-anticipated “Project Natal.” Previously, Don was president of Electronic Arts Worldwide Studios. Andy has led the Mobile Communications Business since February, 2008, and has been instrumental in reinvigorating our mobility efforts, bringing in new business and development talent and overseeing the creation of both KIN and Windows Phone 7.

As we finalize and ship so many of our key products (“Project Natal,” Windows Phone 7, Office 2010, Windows Live Wave 4 and others) it is a natural time for us to look ahead and make sure we have the right talent in the right roles to fuel our next set of offerings. I am confident that the changes above will set us up well for the months and years ahead.

I want to close by thanking Robbie for the incalculable contributions he has made to Microsoft over the years. He will be greatly missed when he retires this fall, and I am glad that I’ll have the opportunity to continue working closely with him between now and then. And as J makes a similar transition, I look forward to working with him in a new way.

Steve

The Redmond, Wash., software company could announce major organizational changes at its Entertainment & Devices Division as early as this week, those people said. The division includes Microsoft’s Xbox videogame business and Windows Phone, an operating system for mobile phones. The unit accounted for $1.67 billion in sales during the first three months of the year, or about 11 percent of Microsoft’s $14.5 billion in revenue during the period.

One executive in the division, J Allard, the chief experience officer and chief technology officer of the group, is expected to leave that role following Microsoft’s recent decision to shut down a tablet PC development project known internally as Courier, that Mr. Allard was overseeing, people familiar with the matter said.

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In order to build the necessary respect and win the mindshare of the Internet community, I recommend a recipe not unlike the one we’ve used with our TCP/IP efforts: embrace, extend, then innovate. Phase 1 (Embrace): All participants need to establish a solid understanding of the infostructure and the community–determine the needs and the trends of the user base. Only then can we effectively enable Microsoft system products to be great Internet systems. Phase 2 (Extend): Establish relationships with the appropriate organizations and corporations with goals similar to ours. Offer well-integrated tools and services compatible with established and popular standards that have been developed in the Internet community.”

–J Allard, corporate vice president of design and development for the Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division, “Windows: The Next Killer Application on the Internet,” 1994

In February, Microsoft (MSFT) surprised industry watchers and embraced the idea of data portability, throwing its support behind OpenID, a decentralized digital-identity protocol.

This morning came the inevitable extension of that idea, the announcement of a partnership with five social networks on a new data-portability strategy. LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Bebo (TWX) and Facebook have all agreed to use Mirosoft’s Windows Live Contacts API to, in the words of John Richards, director of Microsoft’s Windows Live Platform, “create a safe, secure two-way street for users to move their relationships between our respective services.“

In other words “Windows Live Messenger.” Certainly, it’s hard not to look at Microsoft’s announcement that way, given the simultaneous debut of invite2messenger.net, a new Microsoft Web site through which people can invite friends from participating social networks to join their Windows Live Messenger contact list.

“In completing this two-way street, both Windows Live and our partners have paid special attention to relationship context and privacy management in order to create the best possible user experience,” explains Richards. “We understand that just because people have a friend relationship with a contact on one social network, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they want that same relationship on another network. To preserve the context of the relationship, we are requiring that relationships be re-established in each experience with permission from the friend or contact, rather than automatically storing the data. We encourage you to visit www.invite2messenger.net to see these ideas in action, and to invite your Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, LinkedIn and Tagged friends to join you on the world’s largest instant messaging network, Windows Live Messenger.”