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Month: February 2008

paidContent and mocoNews mobilized by FreeRange

Rick Turoczy on February 29, 2008

Portland-based FreeRange Communications has announced a partnership with ContentNext Media that will have FreeRange designing and delivering mobile versions of paidContent and mocoNews, currently the 439th and 4,146th most authoritative blogs in the world according to Technorati.

Justifiably classified as “must reads” by FreeRange CEO Jon Maroney, the mobile content for paidContent and mocoNews will be available at http://paid.mwap.at and http://moco.mwap.at, respectively.

Why FreeRange?

“The FreeRange platform gives our readers the latest breaking news with an attractive interface and quick load time,” said Ted Rupp, Director of Business Development at ContentNext. “FreeRange app’s vastly improve the mobile web experience, and provide an excellent outlet for sponsors as well.”

ContentNext chose FreeRange for two specific reasons. First, the FreeRange system updates feeds and content in the background, ensuring that the content is always updated and accessible—even if the phone is out of tower range. Second—and perhaps more importantly—the FreeRange mobile widgets are designed to run on practically all mobile systems, ensuring the widest reader base possible for the ContentNext sites.

And straight from the paidContent post:

The key benefits: all four feeds from our four sites are in one place, and are updated in real time so you get the freshest news. You can view the feeds at your leisure, even when you’re offline. Also, it can serve as your default mobile RSS reader, as you can add your own feeds and even your local weather. The app works on the majority of mobile devices with a data connection besides BlackBerry.

For more information on the ContentNext partnership, see the FreeRange release.

FreeRange Communications enables media companies and consumer brands to deliver their content and advertising to mobile phones in a way that is fast and easy to read. The FreeRange Mobile Publishing Platform allows publishers to have mobile widgets that work on nearly all mobile phones, extending their business models and content to mobile phone screens around the world. For more information on FreeRange and its mobile services, visit FreeRange.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Rick Turoczy on February 29, 2008

Sometimes, a link says more than I could ever say. Here are some fragrant little buds I’ve found recently, courtesy of ma.gnolia.

Lunch 2.0 » Portland Lunch 2.0 Launches

Yesterday, about 50 geeks and non-geeks gathered at AboutUs.org in their sweet, newly-remodeled space in the Olympic Mills Commerce Center for the inaugural Portland Lunch 2.0. The event felt very Portland with no formal agenda and no presentations, just a good lunch with good people.

PDX Tech Calendar: RSVP for March 1 Code Sprint

Another code sprint for the calagator.org project has been scheduled for Saturday, March 1. If you’re interested in joining in on the fun, make sure to RSVP here.

Beer and Blog – Update your blog software at Lucky Labrador Brew Pub (Friday, February 29, 2008) – Upcoming

It’s already time for another Beer and Blog. This week’s topic? Update your blog software – how to put your CMS on a SVN or similar automagic updating system.

March 1st is Calagator Code Sprint Time

Possible tasks for this week include: finally getting that iCalendar import working, sending polite emails to organizations that don’t currently provide a calendar feed, and drafting ideas for the full event listing UI. Programmers, designers, and other tech community members are all welcome.

GoLife Mobile framework and the imminent Apple iPhone SDK

The GoLife team are fans of Apple’s device and we’re excited by the opportunity to develop for it. The SDK poses a distinct opportunities for GoLife Mobile and developers who support our framework. Application portability benefits everyone from the developer down. Developers can devote time and resources to one medium and won’t have to worry about supporting multiple platforms. That’s the beauty of a mobile framework and thats the beauty of GoLife Mobile.

SplashCast creates “Open Gym” application for Converse (Nike)

SplashCast has announced the launch of the Converse splashcast application this week to promote the mega-sport brands’ cross-media campaign called “Open Gym”. The campaign is all about bringing great basketball facilities and equipment to urban centers across the country. Old gyms will be renovated and the kids will get free shoes and equipment for the courts. The initial Open Gym cities include Miami, Chicago, and Philadelphia.In other news, being a grammar geek, I’ve noticed some new SplashCast additions to the English language. SplashCast (proper noun) is the company while splashcast (noun) refers to the player in which the media resides, which of course makes splashcasting (verb) the act of playing media through the splashcast from SplashCast.

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Meet: SEMpdx Searchfest 2008 is March 10

Rick Turoczy on February 28, 2008

Just like developers’ language- and framework-specific gatherings, there are other tangential practices and events that can play an important role for Web startups, blogs, and the like, here in Portland.

One of those tangential practices is search-engine marketing (SEM). And Portland is one of the leading cities for professionals who are exploring and extending the white-hat techniques of this oft-maligned marketing communications practice.

So, it makes sense that Portland also plays host to one of the premiere national events for SEM, SEMpdx Searchfest.

This year’s event, SEMpdx Searchfest 2008, to be held March 10 at the Oregon Zoo, will consist of:

[A] full-day search engine marketing conference featuring multiple learning sessions and expert panels to help you leverage search engine marketing (SEM) in your organization. Whether you are an SEM professional, work in an advertising agency or part of an in-house marketing department, SearchFest 2008 will connect you with the leading thinkers and practioners in SEM today.

I’ve also been advised that the event has taken a decidedly strategic turn, designed to help folks understand the benefits of adopting—and strategies for incorporating—search engine marketing into the broader strategies for the business.

Sound interesting? You’re can still get the early-bird discount if you register before March 1. And if you want an additional discount of $40, the Silicon Florist is happy to comply:

How to get the discount:

  1. Register for SearchFest at http://www.searchfest.org
  2. Enter the code SEMBD in the “Coupons/Gift Certificates” text box and click “Add.” (This is at step 3 of the shopping cart)
  3. Enjoy your day at SearchFest

For more information, visit SEMpdx. Interested in attending? Or, take the opportunity to register for SEMpdx Searchfest 2008.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Rick Turoczy on February 28, 2008

Sometimes, a link says more than I could ever say. Here are some fragrant little buds I’ve found recently, courtesy of ma.gnolia.

Portland Lunch 2.0: Tasty

Today was the first Portland Lunch 2.0 event, a lunchtime gathering for a group of mostly-techie Portlanders to enjoy some good food and talk with others from the community. The idea is that the event will rotate around with different companies sponsoring the lunch in their space.

Jive Talks: We’ve donated an iPhone to the DataPortability logo contest

Jive’s Sam Lawrence writes, “Earlier this week, the DataPortability WorkGroup was sent a Cease and Desist order by Red Hat to stop using their logo. Opting to take the high road, Chris Saad and the crew decided to hold a logo contest to rebrand the DataPortability WorkGroup. To show our support and to get the prize bandwagon moving, Jive was the first to donate a prize, which was an iPhone.”

Are you going to Startupalooza?

It’s brought to you by the same people who put on IgnitePortland so you know it is going to be good. Best of all–it’s FREE!

iovation Hires Sales, Technology Vice Presidents

Internet security specialist iovation reported Wednesday that it has hired two new vice presidents. The Portland, Ore.-based company said Chris Reid will step in as vice president of sales while Emmett Zahn will serve as vice president of technology.

Recipe for a High-Tech Hub

To get there, a city needs three things. Money, big companies and good weather. That last one isn’t a joke; quality of life is important. For example, many people want to live in Austin, while few want to live in Houston. So even though there are a lot of huge companies, money, and a real effort by folks at places like the Houston Technology Center and Startup Houston, building an information economy there is going to be a challenge. Blame it on the humidity. The same goes for places like Tulsa, Okla., Detroit and even Chicago, where weather or other factors such as crime make it hard to convince people to live there. (Note to the Chambers of Commerce in named cities: I said hard, not impossible).

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Portland Lunch 2.0: Filling and good for you, too

Rick Turoczy on February 27, 2008

The inaugural Portland Lunch 2.0 kicked off, today, at the AboutUs offices in the still-being-renovated Olympic Mills Commerce Center. And after pouring through a number of tweets about the topic, this afternoon, I can confidently say that Lunch 2.0 was a definite success.

The Lunch 2.0 concept started with folks in Silicon Valley as a means of staying in touch with friends and former coworkers, while getting the chance to gawk at everyone else’s office spaces and to try out the food in the cafeteria.

And there was much gawking to be had at the new AboutUs build-out. The space was perfect for the crowd. And, by midway through the event, it was easily filled to capacity with a wide variety of folks from startups around the area.

Since its start in the Valley, Lunch 2.0 has popped up all over the map, from Amsterdam to Bangalore to (my personal favorite) Lunch Five-0 in Hawaii. Portland’s version of Lunch 2.0 was brought to town by Jake Kuramoto with help from Dawn Foster.

Thinking about attending a future Lunch 2.0? Please bear in mind that part of the appeal of Lunch 2.0 is its progressive nature of moving from one location to another—so you can start scheming about how to cowork in their space you get to see the cool spaces in town where smart people do their work. If you’re interested in having a group of hungry startup types invade your office space during a lunch hour, please comment below.

As a reminder for those of you who were taking pictures and who have plans to upload them to flickr, tagging them “lunch20” will ensure they appear in the flickr widget on the official Lunch 2.0 site.

Jive Software nearly doubles customer base in 2007

Rick Turoczy on February 26, 2008

I knew Portland-based Jive Software was hot. I knew they were award winning. And I knew that they had taken an unassailable lead in the “Most Want Ads in the Portland Area” race.

But, even with all of this purported knowledge of mine, it’s always nice to have some numbers to back me up.

Today, Jive released some of those numbers for FY2007. And they’re impressive, to say the least:

  • Nearly 800 new customers
  • 325% increase in annual sales
  • 15% of the Fortune 500 use a Jive product

Jive attributes its continued success to businesses’ growing need for “a better way to work,” highlighting that the collaborative nature of Jive’s products makes them a compelling platform for improving communications with a “proven, people-centric approach to collaboration.”

For more information on Jive’s numbers, read the press release. For more information on the company, visit Jive.

(Hat tip Northwest Innovation)

Monitoring the pulse of Open Source

Rick Turoczy on February 25, 2008

Impressed by the Pulse of PDX tool that gives anyone—whether they use Twitter or not—a view into what Portland-based Twitter types are saying, Raven Zachary saw an opportunity to provide a similar view into what the Open Source proponents are saying on Twitter.

The result? The Pulse of Open Source.

Lisa Hoover of Download Squad sees it as a stab at Twitter groups and deems the Pulse concept—appropriately—“cool”:

Twitter doesn’t have a grouping feature yet (even though they said 7 months ago it was “at the top of their list”) but that hasn’t stopped a group of open source aficionados from finding a way to form one anyway. Five Twitterers including SourceForge’s Ross Turk and open source analyst extraordinaire Raven Zachary launched The Pulse of Open Source today, calling it a “collective stream of consciousness from the open source community.” We just call it “cool.”

And Portland’s Marshall Kirkpatrick takes the concept even further in his Read/Write Web coverage of the Pulse concept:

With a little editorial judgment, this model could work well for any number of niche topics. Integration to display recent bookmarks on social bookmarking sites and blog posts wouldn’t be difficult either. Think of it as an industry-centric version of social lifestreaming, instead of a user centric one as is more common these days. I think both models are fascinating.

Wouldn’t that be interesting? I think so. And I see Portland continuing to innovate on how Twitter, as a platform, will be used.

GoLife Mobile framework promises true “write once, run anywhere” for mobile, digital-telepathy

Rick Turoczy on February 25, 2008

GoLife MobileI just received word that Hillsboro-based GoLife Mobile, the mobile company focused on turning “dumb” phones into more intelligent platforms, will announce a development partnership with digital-telepathy of San Diego, today, that promises to deliver some of the first major “lifestyle” applications on the new GoLife Mobile framework.

The partnership announcement is a great move for both companies. Because I mean, seriously, a framework without apps? It’s not really going to fly.

[Update: GoLife Mobile posted additional insight on the partnership.]

So I almost stopped there, and you probably would have too. But then I started thinking about the framework. And suddenly, it became clear that this announcement was about more than a simple partnership. It dawned on me that this is actually a big announcement. As partners begin to validate the GoLife Mobile framework, it should have a positive affect on application development in the mobile world.

But you know me. I get really excited about this stuff going on in the Silicon Forest. Before I wax any more hyperbolic utopian fluff, we should start from the beginning.

What is the GoLife Mobile framework?

[It’s] a powerful framework which empowers the rapid creation and distribution of personalized lifestyle widget applications which cross multiple horizontal boundaries. Our Java thin-client runs on virtually any phone, and utilizes a novel on-the-fly application delivery methodology.

The underlying premise of any framework is to remove the common stuff, enabling developers to focus on elements of importance—the innovative leaps that keep apps sharp and make them worth using. GoLife Mobile is proposing to do that for every phone in every pocket.

Not only does the framework expedite development, it’s cross-platform, so developers can build an app once—once—and rest assured that the app is going to run on practically every phone.

Now, that may not sound earth-shattering to some of you. But I’m positive that a few of you have your jaws dropping ever so slightly. And with just a slight bit of envy.

Either that, or you just seriously considered jumping into mobile application development.

What the GoLife Mobile framework offers is the equivalent of building a Web app without having to spend untold hours making sure it renders in every browser on the market. Or, like writing a single application that runs on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, by default.

Write once, run anywhere. Yes, I know we’ve all heard it before. Could this possibly be the first true instance of that happening? Could be. Right here in the Silicon Forest. That’s big.

Long story short, the GoLife framework promises more thoughtful mobile apps, developed more quickly, for every phone.

It’s no wonder that the digital-telepathy folks are eager to jump on-board. And that vote of confidence could be the validation that the GoLife Mobile framework needs.

Jason Grigsby alluded to Portland’s trailing mobile adoption. That may be true, but if the GoLife Mobile framework takes hold, we may have the chance to lead in terms of mobile development.

If you’re a developer interested in working with the GoLife Mobile framework, register for more information at GoLife Mobile’s developer lab for the chance to be invitied to an upcoming developer conference in Portland.

For more information on GoLife and its solutions, visit GoLife Mobile or see the original release on the GoLife Mobile framework. For more on digital-telepathy, visit digital-telepathy and RE3EL.

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