Academy members get to vote on the movies to determine who wins. But in order to see all of the movies, the Academy members have to get “screeners.” It’s like the Academy member’s own private Netflix of Oscar nominated films. But as with any distributed media, with distribution comes the potential for piracy.

Well, Portland’s Andy Baio has been keeping track of this whole trend. For 10 years. And this year? He’s got some interesting news to reveal: the MPAA seems to be winning.

For the last 10 years, I’ve tracked the online distribution of Oscar-nominated films, going back to 2003. Using a number of sources (see below for methodology), I’ve compiled a massive spreadsheet, now updated to include 310 films.

This year, for the first time, I’m calling it: after three years of declines, the MPAA seems to be winning the battle to stop screener leaks. But why?

Andy provides a whole bunch of interesting detail. So if you’re even remotely curious about the piracy of Oscar films, take a moment to read “Pirating the Oscars 2012: Ten Years of Data.”

Side note: When I worked at Digimarc, this was a project we were tackling. Was it possible to use digital watermarking to track Oscar screeners effectively?

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Well anyway, right on the heels of launching eight new startups into the Portland startup scene, PIE (Portland Incubator Experiment) has announced that they have opened applications for the next class of participants.

The application form is now available on the PIE site. It features many of the standard incubator/accelerator questions about the awesome product you’re building and the dream team you’ve assembled to bring it to fruition. It even asks a few questions about why you think you’re the perfect fit within PIE, itself.

As an added bonus, this time around, PIE is offering you the opportunity to provide a PIE alum, mentor, or investor as a reference for your startup idea.

What’s PIE, you ask?

The Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE) is a partnership among leading brands, technology innovators, and Wieden+Kennedy — the largest privately held advertising and communications company in the world. It serves as a hub for community, entrepreneurship, and creative thinking.

It was also an early home to companies like Urban Airship, Simple, and Appfog. And it helped accelerate companies like Athletepath, Cloudability, DailyPath, MoPix, Revisu, spotsi, Stayhound, and VendScreen. So any one of those folks might be good a good candidate for you to hit up for a reference (hint, hint).

Whatever the case, if you’re currently sitting there, burning the midnight oil, working to make your dream a reality, you owe it to yourself to throw your hat into the ring for the next class of PIE. It could be that push you need to make your startup fantasy into a reality.

Plus, it would make the Portland startup scene just that much more awesome to have you more deeply involved.

So get to applying already.

[Editor: Full disclosure: I work for PIE. But, I'd also like to see your bright and shining entrepreneurial face, day in and day out and in the wee small hours, for three months---especially when it means you're on the path to launching your dream.]

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And that’s why it was great to see the Keiretsu Forum Northwest championing their investment in a couple of Oregon tech startups, 4-tell and CrowdCompass.

“In has been a banner year for Keiretsu Forum Northwest,” said Nathan McDonald, President of Keiretsu Forum Northwest, in a press release. “We are pleased to be steadily growing our membership and due diligence resources to provide vital funding to growing companies.”

Portland Seed Fund alum 4-tell and Portland startup CrowdCompass were among those mentioned in the press release.

Technology companies received 30% of the funding, real estate funds received 38%, consumer/retail received 16%, alternative investment funds received 11% and life sciences the remaining four percent. Keiretsu Forum Northwest now has facilitated over $89 million for 149 companies since founding the first northwest chapter in the fall of 2005. The organization has also seen membership growth with 78 new members added in the northwest chapters during 2011.

For more information, visit Keiretsu Forum Northwest.

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If you want, you can catch all of the PIE pitches in their entirety. But if you’d like a Cliff’s Notes version, the folks at Meet the Startup are happy to oblige.

For more information, visit PIE, follow @PIEpdx on Twitter, or like PIE on Facebook.

For more interviews, subscribe to Meet the Startup on YouTube, follow @MeettheStartup or like Meet the Startup on Facebook.

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• Meet the Startup: Finding the story on spotsi (6)

The new accelerator takes the typical startup accelerator models—like Portland Seed Fund, Upstart Labs, and PIE—in a different direction. Like 180 degrees different.

Now, before I say anything more, it’s important to note that I work for a startup accelerator (PIE). And I’m a big fan of anything that helps startups. Also, I don’t see VentureBox as a competitor. And I’m sincerely hoping that they help the Bend area startup scene. The more the merrier, quite frankly.

That said, what jumped out at me—and others—was the way that they had tweaked the model. You see, to participate in this accelerator the startups don’t get capital. They pay the mentors, ala the university system.

The cost to go through the VentureLanch is $1,500 per company. You will need to incorporate a company during the semester, which will cost money, and you may have other business expenses. VentureBox works to reduce the cost of launching a new business by working with our sponsors to help create scholarships for our Founders. There is a good chance an organization in the Central Oregon community will step up to provide a scholarship for you so don’t let the tuition cost keep you from applying.

So $1,500 to get in. And when you graduate? You provide 2% equity of your company to VentureBox, too.

If an enrolled Founder graduates or continues to the last 30 days of the program, the enrolled Founder is asked to contribute two additional fees. First, the Founder is asked to grant a warrant for 2.0% of their company stock to join a Bonus Pool of shared equity upside with VentureBox’s Mentors and Staff.

In a day and age when the most successful accelerators—Y Combinator and TechStars—are finding ways to give their startups more funding and more funding, this approach seems, well, backwards.

But maybe that’s just me.

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Over the last few months there have been major releases, advances, and products delivered around Node.js. From increased support across dozens of platforms, integration into PaaS… even full Windows Server and Windows Azure support from our noodly masters up north, Microsoft.

With all these advances there have been a number of conferences that have sprung up such as Node Summit and NodeConf which provide businesses, enterprises and other entities the chance to discover what Node.js is all about.

NodePDX, however, is focused almost solely on the developer. We’re focused on technology first. Of course business interest is invaluable but we there are products to build, code to write and services to run—so we’ve put together a conference here in Portland for just that.

NodePDX is an independent grassroots technology conference for the Portland Node.js and Javascript communities. The two-day conference will bring together local professionals from the Portland/Pacific Northwest area who are working with Node.js and Javascript to create highly-scalable, bleeding-edge internet/web-based applications.

This conference will be focused on technology and software development (as opposed to business/product development) and will draw an audience of extremely talented engineers who are passionate about pushing forward the latest and greatest advancements in web application development, cloud computing and a variety of related technologies.

So get your code on and come join in this February 11th and 12th for code, demoes, presentations, and battle bots!

For more information, visit NodePDX or RSVP on Lanyrd.

[Editor: Thanks to Adron Hall for writing this up!]

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Well, now, Angel List has released an API. And that means that whether you’re a member of the AngelList community or not, you can keep an eye on Portland startups.

The reasoning behind this tool? Here’s the gist of Startup Data Trends:

Our hope is that startupdatatrends.com will help foster a discussion about market transparency in some traditionally hidden areas (round size and price) and create a new view for the AL platform that is less about social proof and more about market + product. While imperfect and simplistic, the location and market data does take a small step forward towards understanding what an early round of financing may look like based on recent data. The thought, planning and strategy that can come from that will hopefully help people raise their own bar and make those initial discussions with investors a little easier.

To get to mucking with the data yourself, visit Startup Data Trends.

(Hat tip Mat Ellis)

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Yep, Portland’s Gramfeed gets a mention. And Vizify gets a nod in that list of 50 for their work on Tweetsheet. Right there among the likes of Card Munch, Hipmunk, and Path, to name a few.

GramFeed (free): Instagram has put all of its eggs in the mobile basket. But some Instragram fanatics want to see images on something larger than a smartphone screen. GramFeed is the closest thing I’ve seen to a Google search experience for those gorgeous filtered Instagram pics.

Tweetsheet (free): This very cool Web tool from Vizify pulls together an instant infographic of your personal Twitter universe: retweet info, geographic impact, best followers, a word cloud of your tweets and more.

For the other 48, read 50 new tech tools you should know about.

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That’s right. Every startup’s favorite way to practice their pitch in front of their peers—and to get the feedback they need to hone their stories.

Want to practice your startup pitch in front of people who’ve done it before? Crave the harsh criticism of your peers? Need the validation of seeing what works and what doesn’t in other pitches?

Bring your 3 minute pitch. Put your name in a hat and if it gets picked, you’re on. Leave your Powerpoint at home—just pitch. Then, answer questions and listen to painfully honest feedback from a panel of so-called experts.

You up for it? Head on over to PIE, Thursday night at 6. For more information, see Calagator.

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But there are a few things you might not know about Jefferson, including his view on the Portland startup community.

For more information on Jefferson and the campaign, visit Jefferson’s site, follow @jeffersondsmith on Twitter, or like Forward with Jefferson Smith on Facebook.

For more interviews, subscribe to Meet the Startup on YouTube, follow @MeettheStartup or like Meet the Startup on Facebook.

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