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July 3rd, 2009
There’s no doubt that Portland, Oregon, is one of the most beer-o-phile-ish towns in the world. We’ve got our bevy of microbreweries, our randomly stocked beer groceries, our brewers’ festivals, and any number of folks working to keep us informed about just what’s happening in the world of beer.
That said, there’s always room for more beer-oriented stuff around here. Enter Portland’s own Taplister’s new iPhone app Beer Signal—an app that could have more of those beer discussions happening in person.
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July 2nd, 2009
While there was big national news for Portland-based JanRain and OpenID that broke yesterday—with Sears stepping up to adopt OpenID by using JanRain’s RPX—today marks some big JanRain news for us here locally.
You see, Peat Bakke has joined the JanRain team.
“JanRain and I have been flirting for a while,” said Peat in an email. “They have a great team here in Portland, and their products lend themselves to the kind of integration and custom development work that I enjoy. We’ve worked together on some big projects, the business is growing, and the timing was right… so on July 1st we sealed the deal, and I’m heading up the professional services group.”
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July 2nd, 2009
Silicon Florist sucks doesn’t it? I mean, let’s be honest. It’s not perfect. And even though it’s completely a side project, that’s no excuse for it being half-ass. In fact, to quote a good friend, I want to be “using my whole ass.”
And I know you. You’ve got opinions. Ideas about what could be done better. Gripes about what I’m not doing terribly well. Things the blog could do that it doesn’t. Things the blog does that it shouldn’t.
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July 1st, 2009
If you haven’t started to implement OpenID yet, you may be falling a bit behind the curve. You see, thanks to the efforts of Portland-based JanRain, even the good old—and I do mean old—brick and mortar companies like KMart and Sears are jumping on the OpenID bandwagon. Or, as Mike Rogoway at The Oregonian’s Silicon Forest blog put it, “Old economy stalwart Sears announced this morning that it’s adopting OpenID.”
That’s big news for JanRain and for OpenID in general. And as the de facto hub for OpenID, it’s big news for Portland, as well.
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July 1st, 2009
When it comes to figuring out how to make a living off of producing content—especially online content—everyone is scratching their heads. Newspapers, television stations, and of course bloggers. One thing is for sure: ads aren’t quite cutting it, these days.
What to do? Well, the folks over at Portland-based Contenture have been offering up some other ideas for bloggers to get reimbursed for their efforts—by making it up on volume. Today, they’ve launched their latest feature: microsubscriptions.
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July 1st, 2009
Wow. June was a tumultuous month for the Silicon Forest startup scene. There were some big wins like Open Source Bridge and the news of Reductive Labs moving to Portland. But there was quite a bit of sad news, too.
I wanted to give you a look back. Just in case you missed anything. But I didn’t want to just pick topics willy nilly. So here are the top 10 posts according to you—a combination of Web and RSS metrics—from Silicon Florist for June 2009.
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June 30th, 2009
Corvallis-headquartered Strands has always had a definitive focus on the power of recommender technology—a technology that use an amalgamation of personal actions, actions of like-minded individuals, and inferences from those actions to make recommendations. But they’ve struggled a bit finding the appropriate and market worthy applications of that technology. They’ve pursued music, lifestreaming, and—most recently—exercise.
However, if this recent news is any indication, it’s their personal finance recommender pursuits that may be paying off. You see, Strands just signed ING.
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June 30th, 2009
While a number of the folks in the Portland tech community spend time getting together on a regular basis at things like Beer and Blog and Ignite Portland, there are still any number of wildly successful startups, blogs, and companies here in town that rarely get the Oregon cred they so richly deserve.
They’re doing good work. They’re garnering national—and sometimes international—recognition. And they deserve all the Silicon Forest love we can dish out.
So who are they? Let’s take a look. (Listed by the number of times people looked at me with incredulity when I told them they were headquartered in Oregon.)
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June 30th, 2009
When it comes to managing small events, finding a capable event registration system can be a bit of pain. There are any number of systems that provide the features you need but there’s always a drawback. Maybe you can’t muck with the design. Maybe you have problems with your own merchant account. Maybe it’s just a bit too wonky.
Whatever the case, there’s room for improvement. Enter Portland-based eROI with eROI Event, a simple, straightforward, and skinnable event registration service that lets you manage people, pricing, discounts without all the usual headaches.
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June 29th, 2009
It’s just a bit shy of two weeks since we launched the first ever Open Source Bridge—an entirely volunteer run conference for open source citizens—here in Portland. While it was a great event, it was also a bit of a whirlwind. And I wasn’t even terribly involved. I can only imagine how it felt for folks who were presenting and participating.
But that’s why we hire people like Aaron Hockley to take photos. So that we can remember all of those moments.
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June 29th, 2009
Now, it’s rare for me to touch on traditional software around here. But Portland-based Elemental is doing so well, I couldn’t resist.
They’ve already been getting kudos with Badaboom, their consumer-level product that eases the process of encoding video for iPhones and other mobile handsets. And today, they’re making headlines again with their professional-level product Accelerator, which integrates with both NVIDIA video cards and Adobe Creative Suite.
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June 29th, 2009
Interested in the freshest new products from the Portland technology types? Who isn’t? We all love the cutting-edge tech stuff around these parts.
Well, you’re in luck. Because there’s no better place to catch a glimpse of these new products in the wild than Portland Web Innovators’ quarterly Demolicious—an evening of folks demoing products you’ve probably never seen.
Even better news? It’s this week. That’s right! This Wednesday. I know. I can’t wait either.
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June 29th, 2009
For some, the hardest part of building a business plan is simply getting started. For others, it’s like doing taxes. It seems like it should be simple, but they want to make sure they don’t miss any steps. Others don’t even know where to begin.
That’s where products like Eugene-based Palo Alto Software’s Business Plan Pro can help by providing startups with guidance and instruction on building their business plans. And now, for one day only—July 1, 2009—Palo Alto software will be giving you the opportunity to get that assistance for free.
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June 27th, 2009
Slate Technologies will be our host for the 19th iteration of Portland Lunch 2.0 on August 5.
Even though they’re a relatively young company, Slate should already be well known to the community. You may recall Slate introduced itself to Portland by hosting a Beer and Blog back in April and started the campaign to save CubeSpace in May.
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June 26th, 2009
Are you looking for that special someone? Someone to help fill those lonely hours? Someone who complements your personality and skills? Someone who can help you get that startup from vision to reality?
Well, get ready to meet Mr. and/or Mrs. Right Entrepreneur, my friend. OTBC startup speed dating is back.
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June 26th, 2009
Portland-based Urban Airship, the little company that’s going to help iPhone app developers scale in big ways, has announced that they are now accepting participants as part of their beta program for Apple Push Notification Services.
If you’re a developer working on an iPhone app and you want to take advantage of iPhone OS 3.0 features, I’d highly suggest you check it out. Even if you’re not, the whole setup is pretty impressive.
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