Silicon Florist

Dear Portland startups: You’re a rising star and you’re cool. Why not prove it at the Oregon Technology Awards?

Rick Turoczy — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:07:01 +0000

No doubt, running a startup and being an entrepreneur is all about hard work. Heads down, rolled up sleeves, “eyes on the prize” hard work. It’s why you do what you do.

But I’ve got to tell you, people. Every once in awhile, you need to stop, poke your head up, and let people know how incredibly cool your pursuits are. Trust me on this one. It will only help you. And here’s on opportunity to do just that: the Oregon Technology Awards.

There are two particular categories that I think you’ve got a chance to win.

Rising Star: Presented to the company that has made significant progress in the past year. This technology company’s growth in the past year puts it on track to make a positive impact in their markets and on the regional technology community.

Cool Product of the Year: Presented to the company that has developed, and/or introduced a cool product some time in the most recent 18 months, and had a significant demonstrate-able success in the past 12 months. The product can be a hardware, software, or technology-service product which is innovative and has created significant new opportunity for the company.

I mean, those sound just like what you’re doing, right? They do, don’t they? So why don’t you apply, silly goose? I know you could win. I just know it.

Why? Well because Jive Software won the Rising Star, last year. And GadgetTrak won the Cool Product.

And honestly? I’d like to see you get some of that same recognition. Because you deserve it. You’re doing some amazing stuff.

But you’ve got to hurry. Nominations are due February 12. That’s this Friday. So head on over to the Oregon Technology Awards and start filling out your application.

Still not sold? Well maybe you’d like to spend some time of the Oregon Technology Awards site. Or you could always follow ORTechAwards on Twitter. But whatever you do, I’d still like to encourage you to apply. If you don’t play, you can’t win. And I know you could win.

Startup Weekend Portland: It’s back! (March 5-7, 2010)

Rick Turoczy — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:11:05 +0000

If there’s one thing people in Portland love to do, it’s muck with technology. Sometimes, that mucking results in something interesting. Sometimes, that something interesting has enough potential that it could become a full-fledged company. But then there’s difficult transitional period. How do you find co-founders? How do you get the idea off the ground? What is going to force you to actually make something happen?

All good questions. And you might find the answers to them at Startup Weekend Portland.

That’s right. After a little hiatus from Portland, last year—and a stop in Corvallis near the end of last year—everyone’s favorite startup starting sprint is headed back to Portland. The event will be held March 5-7 at NedSpace Old Town. Tickets are $75 each.

Hold the phone. What’s Startup Weekend, you ask?

Startup Weekend is a 54-hour startup event that provides networking, resources, and incentives for individuals and teams to go from idea to launch. Get connected with local developers, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Build community. Start companies. No talk. All action.

In other words, it’s an intensive bootcamp for helping you bring your startup idea to fruition with other like-minded folks.

What kinds of companies come out of startup weekend? Well, the most impressive alumnus of Startup Weekend Portland has to be Portland-based Mugasha, the best way to listen to electronica online. And there were a number of other Portland projects started that still may become going concerns one day.

But arguably, launching companies may be secondary to gaining the experience and making connections with peers whom you might not otherwise meet. So if you’ve got an idea, definitely show up. And if you don’t have an idea yet? Definitely show up.

Still looking for more details? Stay tuned to Startup Weekend Portland, join the Startup Weekend community, or follow Startup Weekend on Twitter. I’ll keep you up-to-date as more details emerge.

Urban Airship: More than 100 million push notifications served

Rick Turoczy — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:20:24 +0000

Startups need milestones. They need goals. And indicators of progress. And sometimes, they need to take a moment to stop and revel in some ridiculously huge numbers that remind them that what they’re doing might—just maybe—have hit upon that idea that will change the world.

For Portland-based Urban Airship, this is one of those times.

Last night around 5 PM, Urban Airship hit one of those ridiculously huge numbers that make you stop and think. It happened when their Apple Push Notification Service odometer rolled over to 100 million push notifications served.

That’s right. One hundred million.

Hmm. Your jaw didn’t drop quite the way mine did. Maybe I should provide you with a little more context?

Again, Urban Airship has now delivered more than 100 million messages—to more than 10 million mobile devices. Why is that a big deal? Well, this whole 100 million thing becomes a lot more impressive when you have a little more detail.

You see, Urban Airship was founded in May 2009. Founded! In May! That’s like nine months ago. When they started. Square one. And they’ve now sent more than 100 million messages. With a team of four people.

Just take a second to think about that. That’s nine figures. In nine months.

So forgive me if I’m a bit effusive. But I think that’s kind of a big deal. I mean, I don’t know how long it took McDonald’s to serve 100 million burgers, but something tells me it took a little longer than nine months and a few more folks than four people.

Yeah. I know. I hear you. They might be on to something here.

So a huge congratulations to the Urban Airship team. This is definitely a milestone worth celebrating.

And here’s looking forward to the next 100 million messages coming a great deal more quickly.

For more information, visit Urban Airship, follow Urban Airship on Twitter, or read the Silicon Florist post I wrote about Urban Airship in June 2009.

Strange Love Live: Watch Christine Kistner now, then watch Nate “@xolotl” Angell tonight

Rick Turoczy — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:16:50 +0000

It’s Friday. And that means it’s time for another installment of Strange Love Live tonight at 10 PM. But maybe you can’t wait that long. Maybe you’re a little antsy. I mean, seriously. When you know that Nate “@xolotl” Angell is going to be on, it’s really really difficult to wait.

Well, have no fear. I’ve got something to distract you. It’s last week’s episode of SLL, featuring Christine Kistner. And I promise, it will tide you over until this evening. So kick back. Slide into Friday afternoon. And spend an hour getting to know more about Christine.

So let’s get to it.

Like what you saw there? Well, there’s more. You can subscribe to Strange Love Live and get new episodes delivered right to you with no additional effort. Almost magically. What’s that? You’re more into the whole audio thing? No worries. You can subscribe to the SLL audio feed too.

Want to see your favorite DJs live? Mugasha brings live electronica to you through the magic of livestreaming

Rick Turoczy — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:40:49 +0000

While listening to recordings of DJ sets is great, nothing beats hearing a DJ spinning a set live. But for many of us, getting out to the spots where that’s occurring—where the DJs are doing their thing—can be challenging at best. What’s not quite as challenging, however, is finding time to sit in front of a laptop.

If only there were some way to combine sitting in front of a screen with seeing a DJ live. Well get ready to be happy. Because the folks at Portland-based Mugasha are working to bring some of your favorite DJs to your favorite Web browser—live.

That’s right. You’re already used to going to Mugasha to find great electronica. Now, you can start visiting the site to see and hear that electronica as it’s being created in clubs around the world.

Thursday night, Mugasha streamed the Tritonal show from Ruby Skye in San Francisco. And tonight, they’ll be bringing you the Myon & Shane 54 set live from Washington, DC, starting at 7 PM Pacific time.

Sound interesting? Make sure to swing by the Mugasha Live area of their site tonight for the live set. And stay tuned for future concerts as Mugasha continues to step into more of a promotional role for these up and coming artists.

memePDX 023: Open Source Bridge, Portland Mayor Sam Adams on Twitter, Oregon Film Lunch 2.0, Ustream funding, and Facebook

Rick Turoczy — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:16:13 +0000

Hey all of you Portland tech types. It’s Thursday again. And you know what that means, right? It means it’s time for another riveting episode of memePDX, where we cover the hottest tech stories in Portland… and beyond.

This week, Cami Kaos and I discuss Open Source Bridge’s dates and volunteer sprint, Portland Mayor Sam Adams on Twitter, Oregon Film hosting Portland Lunch 2.0, Ustream getting a ton of funding, and Marshall Kirkpatrick pontificating on Facebook’s future as a news reader.

But, as the sage Mr. T often says, “Enough jibber jabber!” Let’s get to it.

Want to subject yourself to this torture on a regular basis subscribe to this podcast? Get the video feed or the iTunes feed for the video of memePDX. We’re also on Vimeo, because of the whole Portland connection. And of course, if you’re interested in staying in touch, you can always follow memePDX on Twitter. Or you can become a fan of memePDX on Facebook.

(NOTE: For those audiophiles, iTunes finally booted the broken memePDX audio podcast out of the store. And that’s good news. Because now we can fix it. Stay tuned.)

Shizzow: Side project to startup to side project again

Rick Turoczy — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:49:04 +0000

One of my favorite things about having worked on Silicon Florist for more than two years is watching the progress people are making. And watching how things change. I’ve been lucky enough to watch ideas, events, and companies come and go—and I’ve had the chance to document their stories. It’s never something I intended to do. It just kind of happened.

Sometimes those stories are happy. Sometimes they’re not. But they’re always good stories. The latest story I’ve had the pleasure of documenting as it went full circle? The story of Shizzow.

What’s Shizzow, you ask? Well, it was Portland’s own foray into the world of sharing location information. Back in the day where there was Brightkite and a couple of others. It was a strong competitor to the location sharing services. And a way to be more social by knowing who was where when. Or as it was described in the first post:

Shizzow provides the technology for you to notify your friends of your location, with as little effort as possible, so you can spend more time hanging out with your peeps and less time trying to coordinate bringing them together through phone, email, SMS and IM.

I liked the idea. And I really liked the folks who were working to put it together and make it into something. I can still remember sitting down with Ryan Snyder and Sam Keen when they unveiled the idea. And then hearing Dawn Foster was going to help. And later with Mark Wallaert.

It was just a good group of people trying to build something that had a ton of potential.

I liked them so much, in fact, that I invited them to share their idea with the folks at the Silicon Florist hosted Portland Lunch 2.0 at CubeSpace.

And I wasn’t the only one who thought so. The entire Portland tech community embraced them. And Shizzow, little by little, became a community pursuit. And the Shizzow folks knew it.

I’d like to give knucks to Scott Kevton and Ray King, who served as fabulous advisors; bows of gratitude to the publicity given by Rick Turoczy at the Silicon Florist, Cami Kaos and Dr. Normal at Strange Love Live, Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read Write Web, and Adam Duvander of MapScripting; pint glass clinks to Sue Brown, Matt Gifford, Reid Biels, Bill Jackson, John Nastos, Don Park, Sam Grover, Ken Baer and the other developers who pounded on the Shizzow API; and high fives to Sam Keen, Gus Torres, Carolynn Duncan, Aaron Hockley, Ryan Buchanan, and the countless number of others who have helped along the way.

But it wasn’t all champagne and roses. Like any startup, Shizzow suffered some bumps and setbacks.

For as quickly as Shizzow took off locally, it struggled to find a following in other areas. At the time, that didn’t seem to matter. We loved it. We used it. We knew where people were. And things kept getting better and better. From our perspective.

But then the market changed a bit. Competitors got funding. Platforms grew more prominently. New people and companies began to enter the race with new ideas—and then the game changed.

And then the economy changed. And suddenly it wasn’t so easy to bootstrap a startup and work on some side gigs. And with little capital, there simply weren’t enough hands to get everything done.

New shiny objects came along. Shizzow remained a strong product, but some of the lustre began to fade.

And now, we’ve come to today. When Shizzow announced that the startup—the foray into becoming a full-fledged company—is returning to the realm of side project.

We’ve seen the writing on the wall for some time now, with services like Foursquare and Gowalla pushing forward and securing funding, that the outlook for Shizzow and its future was dim. We’ve had to admit to ourselves, after each of has suffered periods of burnout while attempting to juggle full-time jobs and this startup, that we simply cannot continue to push Shizzow forward with our current lack of resources.

So Shizzow will continue. But not with the speed and effort it once had. And it will return to the realm of side project for Mark. Not shuttered. But maybe a little mothballed.

So what did we learn from Shizzow?

It was a great effort. With many lessons learned by the founders. And many more lessons for all of us to take away for our own edification.

And yeah, it’s a little sad having to write this. But it happens. These are startups.

And while Shizzow didn’t skyrocket to the levels of some of its counterparts, it did manage some things that were far more important. It captured our imagination with its potential. It built community. And it built connection. And it did all of that at a time when those things were desperately needed.

And honestly—quite honestly—Portland is better for it—and the startup community here is better for it—for having had the opportunity to go along for the ride.

Here’s looking forward to the next startup that manages to accomplish as much as Shizzow did.

For more from the source, read the post on Shizzow’s future from Ryan Snyder. And if you appreciate what they managed to accomplish as much as I did, please leave them a comment.

Black Tonic: The tonic for what ails shared online presentations and Web conferencing

Rick Turoczy — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:48:29 +0000

Sometime, somwhere, you’ve tried to share a presentation with someone else. You know you have. And every time you have, you’ve wound up tearing your hair out, haven’t you? It’s okay. You’re among friends. You can be honest.

I know. You’ve tried that Web conferencing stuff. You’ve tried emailing them a PDF. You’ve tried simply calling them to review a hard copy. But it never ever works the way you expect that it should. If only there were a better way….

Well, now there is. Portland-based Black Tonic.

How could it be better, you ask? Well, how about the ability to completely control your presentation, without plugins and without mucking around? Just a Web browser and someone on the other end and you’re good to go.

Well, and a presentation. I mean, it won’t do that part for you. Yet.

[Black Tonic] allows users to create and manage presentations that are delivered online through a secure URL. Using a proprietary HTML broadcasting technology, Black Tonic presenters can modify the presentation material on-the-fly and choose in real-time what the audience sees on the presentation web page.

HTML and Javascript? No Flash? No plugins? You mean it just works? Why am I asking all of these questions? Yes. Black Tonic just works. And because it uses basic technology to work its magic, that means it will even run on an iPhone—for the presenter and the viewer. Which is actually pretty cool.

I mean, I can’t even write any more about the service because it’s just so simple and straightforward. And it works like you expect it to work. You put the presentation up, you send your viewers a URL, and you go. And then you change it midstream if you want. Or advance the slides however you want. Or go back. Or whatever. And they see what you see. Instantaneously.

Oh. I guess I actually could write some more.

But don’t just take my word for it. Listen to what Marshall Kirkpatrick and Jared Smith of ReadWriteWeb have to say about Black Tonic:

We’ve found very few shortcomings in our testing of the app so far and ReadWriteWeb’s own designer Jared Smith enjoyed using it a lot. “It demonstrates an awesome use of standard technologies and real-time technologies,” he says. Existing powerpoint decks will need to be exported as images and uploaded one at a time, but the company says it’s working on changing that.

Long story short, if you’re sharing presentations with clients or coworkers, you should give Black Tonic a shot. I mean, you get a free trial. What have you got to lose? And if you decide to continue, it’s only $15 a month. Which is cheaper than the Hair Club membership you had to buy after tearing your hair out last time.

For more information or to sign up, visit Black Tonic. To keep up with the latest news, follow Black Tonic on Twitter.

Ontier Pixetell now available: Web conference attendees everywhere breathe a sigh of relief (0)

Open Source Bridge 2010: Dates announced (June 1-4), first volunteer sprint to be held this weekend

Rick Turoczy — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:37:16 +0000

After a wildly successful inaugural event, we knew that Open Source Bridge—the all-volunteer run open source conference by open source citizens for open source citizens—was definitely going to be held in Portland again this year. What we didn’t know was when. Until now.

At last week’s town hall, the Open Source Bridge folks announced the dates for this year’s event would be June 1-4, 2010. And now that that cat is out of the proverbial bag, they’re ready to hit the ground running—with a volunteer sprint.

Interested in helping get Open Source Bridge 2010 up and running? Of course you are. So here’s what you do: 1) Grab your laptop, 2) Show up at The Daily Cafe at 9 AM on February 6, and 3) Dive in and help out.

It’s really that easy. Trust me.

With what do they specifically need help?

Marketing/Fundraising:

Contacting user groups with ’save the dates’

Reaching out to potential sponsors

Updating content on the website, wiki

Helping to outline future areas of content we should add, blog post topics

Technical:

Processing audio and video from last year’s event. A copy of Audacity and a laptop would be helpful for this

Work on a pre-conference attendee demographics survey

Research on a Customer Relations Management (CRM) system, testing requirements and presenting results to the OS Bridge team

Collaborate with the Open Conference Ware team on a ticket purchasing system (starting with Google Checkout, probably also Paypal)

Need more details? Check out the Open Source Bridge planning wiki.

Oh, and if you missed the Town Hall, don’t worry. I’ve embedded the slides from the event, below.

Silicon Florist

Dear Portland startups: You’re a rising star and you’re cool. Why not prove it at the Oregon Technology Awards?

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