Vancouver-based CelleCast, the service that lets you listen to on-demand radio programming via your mobile phone, has announced that CNN-anchor and household-name Lou Dobbs has signed on to distribute his radio show through the service.
“Having America’s Most Influential Independent Voice as an exclusive channel in the CelleCast Network is a big boost for mobile interactive radio to flood the mainstream,” said Andrew Deal, CelleCast founder and CEO. “As a long time and extremely well respected anchor, author, and speaker Lou Dobbs joins some of America’s finest radio programs on the CelleCast system.”
CelleCast, Inc. was launched in November 2007 to bring radio and all things audio to any phone, any time, anywhere. CelleCast is building a network of programming focused on top-tier radio programs. Its current partner networks include Westwood One, Premiere Radio Networks, Advanced Media and Envision Radio Networks.
Yuval Kordov writes “I headed down to Portland last week to check out the happenings at RailsConf 2008. All in all, a good show. Four days of intensive sessions, new ideas, product announcements (woo Rails 2.1!), shmoozing, and frolicking. Thanks to everyone for their involvement, cheers to those we managed to meet up with, and loving kudos to Portland for being such an awesome city.” (Hat tip Bram Pitoyo)
Josh Bancroft writes ” read a LOT. I used to be subscribed to over 1500 RSS feeds. That was WAY too many. About a year ago, I cut it down to around 500 feeds or so. But that was around the same time that Twitter really exploded in my life, proving itself invaluable for not only connecting and talking with people, but as the fastest conduit for breaking news, the most efficient source for answers to questions, and general serendipitous gems of things that were interesting and made me smarter. So I think the overall level of information overload stayed about the same. Today, I decided action was needed. Drastic action, maybe. “
Gia Lyons writes “The idea of social data portability – ‘the option to use your personal data between trusted applications and vendors’ – has been around for some time now. The DataPortability Project is focused on consumer-oriented sites, and not corporate internal use. The Project people even say so.”
Nathan Bell writes “Looking at the GGP’s board of directors it appears to be made up of mostly reps from big business. I’m hoping that there will be opportunities tomorrow to expose this group to the great things that the startup community brings to Portland, as well as what Portland can do to bring more great startups here. If you have any opinions on the matter, or questions you want fished around let me or anyone else on the delegation know.”
This could be the job for you. “We are looking for someone to work part time at the front desk of CubeSpace. The position, however, is far from a typical reception position. As the first person our members see when they walk into our space, you will be the ambassador to our community. You will help create the first impression and set the tone for our members’ and subscribers’ experiences. You will be a critical link in building a thriving workspace community.”
Is this you? “Web application developer to join the UT-NEDSS Core Team. This is an opportunity for a self-starting individual to participate in a ground-breaking effort that combines non-technical subject matter experts with skilled professional developers in a major, well-funded, open source community and project.”
Mike Rogoway writes “Like the swifts coming back to Chapman Elementary, techies are returning to Portland this summer for the usual slate of technology confabs. Here’s my annual rundown of some big ones…”
Greenlight Greater Portland is one of the newest economic development organizations in the Silicon Forest, focusing on Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, region. All told, that covers seven different metropolitan regions.
So when I saw that Greenlight Greater Portland was having a launch party, featuring (ironically enough) Richard Florida, I thought “What better time to make sure that they’re aware of all the cool Web startups in Portland and what they need?”
And with that wild hair, I worked on putting together a little “startup delegation” to attend the Greenlight Greater Portland event being held June 4 at the Portland Art Museum.
Here are some of the local folks who have been gracious enough to attend and help represent the startup angle:
As always, I know that you, gentle reader, have some really good ideas, too. And while I wish we could all be there, there is only so much room.
So, I’d like to hear from you. What questions would you like this group to raise? What concerns should be highlighted? How would you like to see this development organization supporting startups?
Please feel free to use the comments below to raise issues and questions. Or feel free to contact any of the delegates above to bend his or her respective ear with your opinions.
I’ll provide a wrap-up post following the event to let you know how things went.
Much has been said about you as a user being able to use your data more intelligently—making your data portable—among Web 2.0 properties and social networks. But what about all of that data you’re creating—and own—on the corporate side of the firewall? How do we make that type of data portable?
“The benefits of data portability are not confined to consumer social networks,” said Matt Tucker, CTO, Jive. “Corporate users maintain profiles behind the firewall as well as in external communities and third party platforms, and the ability to simply and securely migrate that information as necessary will be a boon to the IT organizations of tomorrow.”
I hear you. “Data port-uh-what?” Let’s step back.
What is Data Portability?
According to the Data Portability Project, “Data Portability is the option to use your personal data between trusted applications and vendors.”
Porting the data relies on standardized and publicly accessible means of transferring that data from service to service, which enables one service to “listen” to another service or “scrape” the data from an existing profile.
Okay, I can feel your eyes rolling back in your head. Enough alphabet soup.
What’s the big deal about Jive, a corporate-side technology, joining a group of the cool kids on the social networking scene?
So what?
In my opinion, Jive’s decision to become the first corporate-side technology company to adopt this standard is momentous and game changing.
Why? Because it shakes the very foundation of what businesses think they own.
Today, most any of you on the corporate side of the firewall have signed some form of agreement. It could be a “noncompete” or simply a contract for employment. If you’re an exempt employee, it’s generally pretty strict in terms of what the company owns.
And generally, most companies will take the opportunity to cast a wide net over your work—claiming the company owns the intellectual property for anything you create while you’re employed by the company.
Anything.
That means your IM, your email, your time on Facebook, your tweets, your voice mail, your iTunes playlist… All corporate property.
Seems a bit at odds with the way things are going, doesn’t it?
And as more and more of the “Web 2.0-esque” technologies find their way behind the corporate firewall, it’s going to seem even more and more wrong.
Even today, we’re beginning to see glimmers of the data we’re generating in public beginning to mesh with the type of data we’re generating at work. (LinkedIn anyone?)
The burgeoning workforce who lives and breathes in this brave new world will expect that the data they create is data they own and can move. And this is at direct odds with what the old school corporation thinks that the business should own.
It’s not going to be a pretty battle. But with this announcement, Jive is taking a step in the right direction—siding with the future instead of the past.
So what will enterprise data portability entail?
Honestly, it’s going to take a little while to figure that out. But Jive has started the ball rolling.
Think about all the bits and pieces of your worklife, strewn about all those different systems: HR systems, skills databases, LDAP directories, employee whitepages, LinkedIn, etc. Wouldn’t it be great if you could manage all that personal data from a single spot? It can live where it lives – I would call it data transparency, though, not data portability. This can already be accomplished by using data mapping tools in market today, but it takes some serious customization muscles to pull off, not to mention many lunches and cocktails to woo the czars in charge of all of those internal systems so they play nice.
In the meantime, we’re interested in working with the Data Portability group to help contribute to these standards as well as new ones as well. Hopefully, the organization is now at a point in its evolution to proceed with formal and elected leadership, a standards body, voting process and the rest of the stuff that makes organizations successful.
Again, a vast project with which to grapple, but one whose time has potentially come.
It will be interesting to see where this one goes, and to see watch Portland’s role blossom—as the de facto hub of open source and as a growing proponent of open standards—in this new way of thinking about who owns what.
Selena Deckelmann writes “PDXPUG PgDay will be on July 20, 2008. This is a one-day conference happening the day before OSCON at the Oregon Convention Center.”
Mike Rogoway writes “For the fifth straight summer, Oregon technology companies are banding together to lure investors and analysts out to the Northwest for a few days of great weather and a crash course on these companies’ businesses. The Oregon Technology Investor Tour runs Aug. 11 and 12…. This year, there are only six companies presenting: ESI, FEI, Mentor Graphics, RadiSys and TriQuint and Pixelworks.” (Too bad it has to be a publicly traded company. Because I know all of us can rattle off a ton of private companies that are doing more way more interesting things and are far more “representational” of Oregon’s technology potential.)
Sam Lawrence writes “Vote now! If you’re reading this, all you have to do it submit a comment and let me know who you think should win. I’ll just add up the comments and announce the winner on this same post. Voting will close this Wednesday at 10pm PST.”
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to go back to Windows as badly as I do right now, having read this from Jaybill McCarthy: “This particular laptop had a bunch of textured black plastic on it that really reminded me of late 70s/early 80s home electronics. It dawned on me that if I just added some woodgrain contact paper, I could make it look kind of like an Atari 2600. It would still be ugly, to be sure, but it would be ugly in a lovable, nostalgic sort of way.”
The Portland Twitter contingent was abuzz over the weekend with news of, well, news. But, I realize that not everyone stays in tune with—or even participates in—the whole Twitter thing. So, in case you missed it, Portland Twitter types were featured in The Oregonian, last Sunday.
