Last week marked the debut of Portland Web Innovators “Demolicious,” an opportunity for folks to provide a quick demo of some of the new apps and side projects on which they’ve been working.
The event was well attended and has been extremely well covered by Amber Case, Doug Coleman, organizer Adam DuVander, Dawn Foster, and Bram Pitoyo.
So I’m going to do what I do best and steal round-up their content:
Matt King demoed the Interface Content Management Framework (Pre-release)
- Matt King: “It’s a content management system for content management systems.”
- Amber Case: “Watching King make a website is like watching a chef make something, put it in the oven, pause the camera, and take it out again, completely finished. Except there’s no baking time.”
- Doug Coleman: “For someone like myself that is interested in building content managed sites, this is cool. It should make my life easier. I will look for it when it is released.”
- Dawn Foster: “It’s a pretty slick DIY, highly customizable CMS.”
Don Park demoed Do-it-yourself Friendfeed: An XFN spider. (Early release)
- Amber Case: “He’s working on solving the problem that everyone faces when they join social networks and have to re-enter all of their social connections.”
- Adam DuVander: “Try your Twitter page and see where it takes you.”
- Dawn Foster: “The spider is pretty cool, and I’m going to have to take a closer look at this. It also reminded me to finish adding my rel=”me” tags; I added a couple a while ago, but was distracted by something shiny and never finished adding them.”
Lev Tsypin demoed Green Renter (Available)
I’ve had the opportunity to cover Green Renter before. It’s a service that helps people find green housing options in the Portland area.
- Amber Case: “The founders also own greenowner.com and are looking into develop that, but feel it is more important to really nail down a niche before going on to develop other things.”
- Doug Coleman: “Once again, Portlanders are leading the way in the whole ‘green’ movement.”
- Dawn Foster: “The goal is to be the resource for sustainable buildings starting in Portland, but expanding out to other areas.”
Kevin Chen demoed Metroseeq (Available)
Metroseeq automatically find deals and coupons from local restaurants. The Wheel of Meals alone makes it worth a visit. And the recalibrating search algorithm makes is pretty cool, too.
- Amber Case: “The ability for users to be able to find information from both offline and online sources effectively is the difference between Citysearch and Yelp.”
- Doug Coleman: “Any product that grew from a college student’s free food association is alright in my book.”
Mounir Shita demoed GoLife Mobile (Available)
GoLife Mobile allows developers to build apps for use on any Java-enabled mobile handset using GoLife’s framework.
- Amber Case: “It’s as semantic as a roving a meeting maker that negotiates meetups across dynamic time and space, as if the entire geography were a mobile, roaming office.”
- Doug Coleman: “Their built-in advertising generator automatically generates revenue for your applications and objects and shares it with you.”
- Dawn Foster: “It’s an object-oriented development framework with a revenue share built in to give developers a way to monetize their applications.”
And the most important part?
“As always, I am blown away by the things that are happening in the Portland Web Community,” wrote Amber Case. “Something amazing is happening in Portland. I’ve never seen anything like it. Everyone I meet is always working on something so interesting, and has an positive and innovative mindset on their shoulders. I’m eager to see what’s next.”
Doug Coleman echoes her response. “There are so many exciting things happening in Portland,” he writes. “I am happy to be part of such a thriving, creative and nurturing scene. I am looking forward to the next event put on by PDX Web Innovators.”
It’s like I always say. Everyone here has at least one side project; a side project that—anywhere else—would be a fully funded full-time job.
Cool stuff happening, to be sure. And that’s why I eagerly await the next Demolicious.