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Month: February 2008

Portland on Fire: Slow social networking

Rick Turoczy on February 18, 2008

Some people get married and then push everyone else to get married. Some people do the same thing with having kids. Me? I submitted my Portland on Fire profile, and now I expect everyone else in town to do it, too.

What’s Portland on Fire? I’m glad you asked.

Portland On Fire is a daily discovery of PDX people. The site introduces you to a person in the Portland, Oregon (PDX), area every day. Reach out and connect. The site was created by Raven Zachary and launched on January 1st, 2008. Early profiles [focused] on individuals in the tech and creative arts communities in Portland, but there is no reason why it must stay focused in these areas. The talent pool in Portland is large and diverse, and this site hopes to make this fact evident.

Portland on Fire has been described as “slow social networking.” A profile a day. That’s not really too much to ask, is it?

And I have to admit, it’s really working for me. Here are some of the interesting folks that I’ve met (all virtually and some in person), thanks to Portland on Fire:

  • Jessica Neuman Beck
    Designer, writer, crafter, geek
  • Paul Bingman
    Web programmer, film junkie, railroad movie consultant
  • Ben Bradley
    Soon to be the former Captain Bradley
  • Larissa Brown
    Mommy, knitter, knit designer, author, artist, runner, friend
  • Bill Burcham
    Technologist, craftsman, inventor
  • Joel Burslem
    Founder of the Future of Real Estate Marketing blog
  • Jennifer Cloer
    Information junkie, wife, friend, sister, daughter, aunt and colleague
  • Mara Collins
    Mother, Wife, Philosopher, Blogger
  • Serena Davidson
    Free-Range People Photographer, Geek Magnet, Entreprenuer, Chocolate Fiend
  • Selena Deckelmann
    Sysadmin, Event Organizer, Chicken Keeper
  • Melissa Delzio
    Designer, Artist – can sing greek alphabet, has squeaky hicupps
  • Kurt Deutscher
    Chief Technology Evangelist, Portland Native, Jazz Drummer
  • Audrey Eschright
    Crafty geek
  • Daniel Etra
    Nourishing complexity + digging deep for real solutions
  • Sioux Fleming
    Technologist, computer threat security evangelist, avid camper, cat person
  • Dawn Foster
    Community Manager, Event Organizer, Blogger, Podcaster, Vegan, and Technology Enthusiast
  • Adrienne Fritze
    Mom, artist, social entrepreneur, risk taker, passion monger, creative freak
  • Lyza Danger Gardner
    Introspective, Inquisitive and Surly: Portland Native Eschews the Humdrum
  • Sarah Gilbert
    Finance blog editor, writer, photographer, knitter, mama
  • Mark Gross
    Linux kernel engineer, open source tinkerer, robot builder, intellectual wanderer
  • Hideshi Hamaguchi
    Concept creator, strategist + designer who cannot draw pictures
  • China Z. Hamilton
    Artist & world traveler turned advertising student
  • Sam Keen
    Coder, Event Organizer, Open Source Enthusiast, Geek
  • Justin Kistner
    Online marketing strategist, web designer, and Rock Band drummer
  • Sam Lawrence
    Chief Marketing Officer, Jive Software
  • Kent Lewis
    Search engine marketing guru, recovering entrepreneur and family guy
  • Steve Libbey
    Novelist, guitarist, personist
  • Melissa Lion
    Professional Writer: Fiction, Food and Sex
  • Jadene Mayla
    Plant-lover, artist, zombie movie fan, ecstatic dancer, and writer
  • Kathleen Mazzocco
    Independent public relations consultant
  • Aaron Meyers
    Level 1 Dad LFG PST
  • Todd Mintz
    Eclectic Search Engine Marketing / Internet Marketing Specialist
  • Wende Morgaine
    Educator. Connector. Innovator.
  • Steve Morris
    Entrepreneur, startup coach, hobbyist technologist, former DJ
  • Matt Navarre
    Relational database developer, guitar nut
  • Lynne Joy Nesbit
    Relentlessly curious, business owner, artist, psychotherapist, mother, feminist, believer
  • Chris O’Rourke
    Father, husband, geek and general nuisance to computer problems
  • Bram Pitoyo
    Account planner, creative researcher, brand strategist & most other things
  • Paige Saez
    Interaction designer who likes ubicomp, conceptual art, painting, digital anthropology
  • Craig Schwartz
    Entrepreneur, raconteur, agent provocateur, bon-vivant, gadfly, sapient primate
  • Eva Schweber
    Cat herder, baker, recipe whisperer and dairy goat herder (retired)
  • Urban Scout
    Post-apocalyptic anti hero… With a blog!
  • Greg Sorber
    A technical writer who is decidedly non-technical
  • Gary Walter
    Quintessential 5th gen Portlander on a road not taken
  • Amy Sample Ward
    Lover, blogger, activist, biker, dreamer, worrier, lover
  • Raven Zachary
    Technologist, open source industry analyst, event organizer
  • Nick Zolotko
    Star Wars nerd with a hint of normality

But, honestly, for as interesting as all of these folks are? I’d still like to meet you. So why don’t you head over and fill out a profile? I’m looking forward to reading about you, soon.

ORBlogs releases iPhone interface

Rick Turoczy on February 18, 2008

Corvallis-based ORBlogs, the Oregon-focused blog aggregator, has announced the release of an iPhone interface. Interested users can access the simplified iPhone version via m.orblogs.com. (You can access that URL via a Web browser, as well, if you’re interested in a really big interface.)

ORBlogs’ new interface provides a stripped down view of its site content:

[Y]ou can browse all posts, Oregon-related posts, popular posts, and the top 15 topics from the last seven days. Clicking a post excerpt will take you directly to the post on the original blog.

iPhone users will also be happy to know that there is a custom icon for your iPhone desktop, if you choose to add it as a Web clip.

More is planned for the m.orblogs.com, including city-focused pages similar to those found on the ORBlogs site.

ORBlogs is run by Paul Bausch, one of the original developers on Blogger. An admitted side-project, ORBlogs provides a valuable resource to all Oregon-based bloggers by aggregating stories from across the state. For more information, visit ORBlogs.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Rick Turoczy on February 17, 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.

Love At First Bite

Vimeo and Citysearch team up for Love at First Bite, “Do you have a love affair with food? Grab a camera and tell us why. We want to know what food you crave. Whether it’s the slurping of udon noodles or the crunch of double-fried fries, send us a video up to 30 seconds in length of you biting into your favorite food, and you could win a $1,000 American Express card to indulge your dining fantasies.”

Kurt Deutscher to demo ExpressionEngine at Startupalooza

Kurt Deutscher will give us a a special preview of ExpressionEngine 2.0, the flexible, feature-rich content management system that empowers thousands of individuals, organizations, and companies around the world to easily manage their website.

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Rick Turoczy on February 16, 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.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! Beer and Blog

For one week only, Beer and Blog, the weekly knowledge sharing get-together for Portland bloggers, will be held on Sunday from 2-4 at the eastside Lucky Lab. (Which is a little late for me to tell you, if you tried to attend on Friday and are reading this on Saturday.) This week? Using dashboards for tracking and managing information.

Hyperlocal News

Brooks Jordan on getting hyperlocal in your focus. An interesting read. And the underlying reasoning behind the blog you happen to be reading right now.

Portland Start-up Index – February 2008

A ranking of Portland-area companies and products based on their Alexa and Compete rankings.

NetworthIQ: The median balance sheet

The following is the initial findings of the data for all “current users” in the US. Nothing too interesting yet, but it’s a start. I have a hunch this is mainly because our user base skews to the under 30 crowd. It will get more interesting as it’s broken out by the demographic categories and presented as part of the comparison report feature.

Congratulations to ENDoutdoor, winner of OEN’s Seed Oregon

ENDoutdoor won OEN’s Seed Oregon Finale, landing them the opportunity to present at Angel Oregon 2008 on March 5th to vie for the grand investment prize. Other competitors in the final round of Seed Oregon were OsoEco and Greenlite Motors.

Vimeo Turns 3 Years Old

Portland-based Dalas Verdugo of Vimeo announces that February 16 will mark Vimeo’s third birthday.

Northwest Startup Events

Anthony Stevens writes, “I’ve been getting a lot of information lately on startup and entrepreneurship events in the Northwest area, so I thought I’d take a moment to compile them. This list is not exhaustive and I’d love to hear about more in the comments section!”

Portland State University Presents “Internet Strategies Workshops”

Designed for CEOs, managers, marketing professionals, strategists, and online developers with an identified customer base, this series provides the most current curriculum in Web analysis and management. Kent Lewis is one of several distinguished teachers that will lead these Portland State workshops.

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Portland Start-up Index: February 2008

Rick Turoczy on February 15, 2008

As promised, Techvibes [Full disclosure: I contribute Portland articles to Techvibes] has released its monthly update to the Portland Start-up Index, which has now increased to 50 companies.

And that’s not all that has changed. Now, the index has some movement indicators, showing who was where and where they’ve gone—up or down.

New additions include Kongregate (didn’t realize they had a Portland office), Rocketbook, Iterasi [Full disclosure: Client of mine], Active Reload, WeoGeo (recently relocated from Florida), VocalNation.net, GoLife Mobile, and Worldwide Nest.

As far as movers go, ChoiceA, Lunarr, and MomHub saw the biggest upticks. As expected, number of folks were sent screaming down the list with the addition of the new companies.

The mixture of companies and products on the index are ranked by the average of their Alexa and Compete rankings.

Since each revision of the index replaces the previous one, I’ve captured the list, for posterity:

  1. AboutUs
  2. Discogs
  3. Kongregate
  4. MyOpenID
  5. Splashcast
  6. Earth Class Mail (now located in Seattle)
  7. Jive Software
  8. Sandy
  9. Gone Raw
  10. Cliq
  11. Stikkit
  12. NetworthIQ
  13. Grabbit
  14. Walker Tracker
  15. Pibb
  16. Attensa
  17. UrbanDrinks
  18. Rocketbook
  19. Iterasi
  20. Active Reload
  21. ChoiceA
  22. fmyi
  23. Lunarr
  24. GadgetTrak
  25. Iovation
  26. KnitMap
  27. WeoGeo
  28. FreeRange
  29. Picktastic
  30. Goboz
  31. Imindi
  32. Art Face Off
  33. MomHub
  34. Avnera
  35. VocalNation.net
  36. Box Populi
  37. Pheedo
  38. GoLife Mobile
  39. Workplace2go
  40. Techchex
  41. Kryptiq
  42. Jama Software
  43. Lumeno.us
  44. GoSeeTell
  45. Lightfleet
  46. Cendix
  47. Worldwide Nest
  48. YourList
  49. IDP Solutions
  50. Kumquat

For the complete listing, metrics, and movement indicators, please visit Techvibes.

Startupalooza: Start making your plans to attend

Rick Turoczy on February 15, 2008

Portland’s Startupalooza, the March 29th bootcamp for startups—both existing and planned, continues to expand its roster of speakers. And it’s shaping up to be quite a gathering of local startup talent.

As part of the continuing build-out of its schedule, Starupalooza has announced the addition of a Toonlet demo, a Vidoop demo, and the formation of a “Technopreneur” panel featuring Sarah Gilbert of Cafemama, et al., Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWrite Web, Justin Kistner of Metafluence, and some other guy.

Startupalooza is an interactive forum for the Portland tech startup community. Find out about cool tech startups, learn from successful tech entrepreneurs and meet local tech-business people in a candid, no-BS environment. Admission is free.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Rick Turoczy on February 15, 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.

iReport.com

CNN has launched a new “unfiltered” news site for user-generated news reports. What does that have to do with Portland startups? It’s built on Portland-based Jive Software’s product, Clearspace.

OTBC Lunch & Learn (Feb 19): RSS with Marshall Kirkpatrick

Marshall Kirkpatrick is one of only two people who have written for two Top 15 most linked to blogs on the internet (TechCrunch and now ReadWriteWeb) and is a consultant specializing in bringing advanced RSS practices to businesses. These days, Marshall is both a lead writer at Read/Write Web , one of the world’s top web 2.0 news blogs, and a consultant in new online software and marketing.

Calagator: Next Code Sprint: Saturday 2/16

The Calagator team will be having its next work meeting this Saturday at CubeSpace, starting at 10AM. There’s lots of work for coders, designers, documentation writers, and calendar users. Come help them implement iCalendar imports and make sense of event venue info.

Metroblogging Portland: OLPC meetup

Dieselboi of Metroblogging Portland describes his encounter with the “One Laptop Per Child” machine: “The OLPC is a great little machine. I was able to play with one for a few minutes. It comes with two antennae – one for wireless 802.11 and the other or a radio network specific to the OLPC. It has a mapping utility that shows where other OLPCs are, wifi hotspots and other items on the network. The radio antenna can also be used as a bridge/repeater to extend the mesh network. It even had PONG!”

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Mobile Portland getting mobilized

Rick Turoczy on February 14, 2008

Jason Grigsby, who authored the first Silicon Florist guest editorial on Mobile earlier this week, has some more exciting Mobile news to share: the formation of Mobile Portland, a new user group for folks working and developing in the Mobile space.

The idea for Mobile Portland came from our desire to have a place to share what we’re learning and collaborate with other mobile developers. The idea took hold when during a conversation with Jon Maroney of Free Range Communications after the recent PAF panel on mobile marketing.

In addition to Free Range, early enthusiastic collaborators for a local mobile user group include individuals from eROI, GoLife Mobile and bBoing (a.k.a., Summit Projects). We’re pleased that we’ve got a group of people interested in making this happen.

For more information, see the Cloud Four blog. Or visit Mobile Portland to add your email to their contact list.

Prerequisite Valentine’s Day post

Rick Turoczy on February 14, 2008

COLOURLovers | Fight for love in the color revolutionIn case you hadn’t heard, it’s Valentine’s Day. And while other florists are generally overwhelmed on this day, this florist is searching desperately for something interesting to tell you, gentle reader.

I mean, aside from “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

Thanks to Portland-based Colourlovers, I have something more interesting than that.

Started by Darius A Monsef IV, Colourlovers is well-established social network for creatives that focuses on the creation and sharing of color palettes. And today, pinks and reds are among the palettes of choice.

COLOURlovers is a welcoming, creative and supportive community and we want to hear you shout your love from the mountain tops for color. We want you to stand outside the tree in the front yard, late at night in the rain until color opens the bedroom window and tells you it loves you too. (Please don’t actually wait outside our bedrooms…)

For more, visit Colourlovers.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Rick Turoczy on February 14, 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.

Jason Grigsby on the Mobile Web: Where are we Going?

One of Grigsby’s major points was that the mobile web space is currently in a situation similar to that of the general web in the mid 90’s. Standards are absent. Most people aren’t yet on the platform, but it’s quickly growing. There are many browsers. Each browser renders content differently. Nobody is sure who will “win” the browser wars. Nobody knows the direction the mobile web will take.

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

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