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Month: October 2008

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 31

Rick Turoczy on October 31, 2008

Open Source Bridge: Our First Presentation

Via the Open Source Bridge blog “The Open Source Bridge team gave their first presentation to a large group at CubeSpace on October 30, 2008. Enthusiasm far exceeded my expectations, and I came away feeling confident that we’re going to make Open Source Bridge a reality together.”

Thrive – PDX at Kells Irish Restaurant & Pub (Tuesday November 11, 2008) – Upcoming

We want to open dialogue between all members of the tech community – corporate & indie, young & old, geek & nerd – to help figure out how we build a community that will survive & thrive during this economic downturn.

Standalone Applications with CouchDB – Daytime Running Lights

Chris Anderson writes “Over the last few days I’ve polished up my notion that CouchDB can be a perfectly viable application host, all on its own, without any 3rd tier between database and client. That is, CouchDB is capable of serving standalone applications. These standalone CouchDB applications can be deployed to any working CouchDB node and used from any browser.”

Get Naked

Via Needmore Designs “We just wrapped up production on our submission for Do Something for a Cause, a calendar fundraiser featuring Portland media/tech folks baring their flesh to bring community awareness and raise funds for local charities and educational groups. This year’s recipients include p:ear and girls inc, among others. I know they are still looking for a couple more participants and sponsors, so please do let them know if you’d be interested in helping out!”

Keeping a Large Scale Open Source Conference in Portland

Amber Case writes “We have everything in Portland. We have Linus, we have biking, we have Open Source, and we have an amazing Portland Tech community. Up until recently, we also had O’Reilly’s OSCON.”

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Have a Happy Halloween at Beer… err Bat & Blog

Rick Turoczy on October 31, 2008

Bat and BlogEvery week around this time, a group of Portland blogging and tech types gather at the Green Dragon to end the week on a good note with Beer and Blog.

This week, it just so happens that Beer and Blog falls on Halloween which has it—like a victim of an unfortunate zombie bite—transforming into the ghoulishly clever “Bat and Blog.”

But wait, there’s more:

Now, if you are like me (meaning, not into intricate costumes that involve actual planning) you may find yourself dressing up as yourself again this year (meaning, sans costume). All that thinking ahead for costume ideas really bums me out, so I usually skip the whole thing.

This year, however, I came up with an easy-to-create Halloween getup of the non-lame variety that lets you participate in the celebrated tradition of being someone else for a day. The best part is that this costume idea is of someone we all admire, whom men and women alike want to emulate. Someone smart, popular, good looking and super-dooper nice, who supports and promotes the Portland tech scene with unwavering love. A bona fide tour de force.

Who are they describing? You’ll just have to head over to the blog and see.

Suffice it to say, I’m buying. But you’ll have to show up to find out if that’s a trick or a treat.

An evening of Color, Final Cut Studio Color, that is

Rick Turoczy on October 31, 2008

[Editor’s note: Thanks to Rebecca Gerendasy for this guest post. Looks like a very cool event!]

If you’ve been struggling with or wondering about the amazingly cool software, Final Cut Studio Color—Apple’s new professional color grading application—this is the meeting for you!

Jack Chavez is going to be here in town to give us a tour. Jack is a Creative Director and Producer at Intel Corporation where he has worked in-house for eight years. He was an early adopter of the software program that came to be known as Apple Color and has mostly recovered from the trauma of trying to finish high visibility videos with flaky beta software. Jack believes the future looks bright for Color.

And we’re excited to have Jack here to share some of his expertise and enthusiasm at the next Portland Final Cut Pro User Group.

If you create any type of media—be it for the web, mobile, or more traditional outlet—this meeting might hold the spark you are looking for to help your images stand out. Color is a professional color grading application. Once costing mid-5 digit range as a stand alone, it now comes packaged with Final Cut Studio 2. Once again, the tools are within our grasp, but how to use them and use them well. Whether you have Color in your arsenal of video applications or not, this will be a meeting worth coming to just to get a taste of the possibilities.

Date: Wednesday, November 5th
Meeting Time: 6:00 – 8:30p
Location: PCC/Cascade Campus MAHB, Room 104
Cost: Free to members & students w/ID. $5 for non-members
For more info: http://www.pdxfcpug.com/meetings.html

Portland Final Cut Pro User Group is an ongoing educational meeting the first Wednesday of the month at PCC/Cascade Campus. The meetings are geared toward learning about different aspects of editing, filmmaking, and also to give another opportunity to network with others in the film community. Our membership ranges from beginners to veteran professionals. For more information, or to be added to the monthly eNewsletter, drop us a note at: info@pdxfcpug.com

Open Source Bridge: Get involved in bridging the gap

Rick Turoczy on October 30, 2008

We—and I’m using the royal “we”—were all a bit taken aback when O’Reilly decided to pull the plug on OSCON in Portland.

Was it something we said? Did we no longer have the “open source” cred? What did we do? Why hast thou forsaken us?

Confusion reined.

But it was only a momentary lapse.

You see, if there’s one thing I love about Portland, it’s our entrepreneurial spirit. We weren’t just going to sit around and cry in our microbrewed beers about it. We Portlanders are going to figure out how to do something else. We’ll show them.

And true to form, here’s Open Source Bridge, a new grassroots-organized open-source-developer-oriented conference that’s slated to be held in Portland, next summer.

What are we planning? I’m glad you asked. Let me let some of the Open Source Bridge organizers tell the story:

Selena Deckelmann writes:

I love conferences. And I love Portland. Maybe you can guess what’s coming next.

During an intense brainstorming session at Side Project To Startup, a group of concerned Portlanders drew together a plan for a new conference. We packed a tiny room, and had a heated discussion about what we wanted, what Portland needed, and how we might do it. By the end of the session, Audrey Eschright and I agreed to co-chair. And with the support of Portland’s incredible tech community, we knew we could make it happen.

Audrey Eschright writes:

I am excited to be co-chairing this event. Portland is a fabulous place to be working on open source projects, and we’re the ideal community to build an inclusive, diverse conference that focuses on developers’ interests and needs.

Dawn Foster offers:

Were you sad and dismayed to hear that OSCON was moving out of Portland? Are you looking for more open source events to attend? Would you like an open source conference organized by the community? Want one more tech event to attend in July? Need an excuse (any excuse) to visit lovely Portland, Oregon in July? Do you like to help organize events for fun in your spare time?

If you answered yes to any of my obnoxious questions above, I have a great solution for you: The Open Source Bridge event.

Oh, yes. It’s on, my friend.

I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in some of the early planning. And there’s a great team working to make things happen.

Who?

Well Reid Beels, Professor Bart Massy, Jake Kuramoto, Kelly Guimont, Adam Duvander, and of course the folks quoted above. And the team is growing, adding Ward Cunningham, Irene Schwarting, Harvey Mathews, and Clay Neal (from the City of Portland) since our initial meetings.

Now, we need some help from you.

That’s right. You. We need you.

If this sounds like an interesting concept and you’re interested in contributing some of your time, join us at CubeSpace tonight (October 30) at 7:30 PM to take part in the Town Hall.

The Town Hall will give the organizers a chance to chat with you about the proposed event. And give you a chance to voice your opinions on what you’d like to see. It will also likely give us a chance to guilt you into helping convince you to join the cause and volunteer some time.

Can’t make it? No worries. Just make sure to let one of us know how you’d like to help.

Open Source Bridge is going to be an amazing event. I can tell, already. And I’m already looking forward to seeing you there. Even though I’m not even really sure where there is yet.

At the very least, I hope to see you at CubeSpace on Thursday, October 30.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 29

Rick Turoczy on October 29, 2008

Alltop – Top Bacon News

Alltop features all the Bacon news and headlines from across the web, a topic near and dear to many a Portlander heart.

One year later… the future of mobile looks even better

Via the Strands blog “This year in mobile has been an exciting one, but what the future will bring is even more exciting. In fact, the future is today: with so many possibilities open to developers to build cool services for iPhone, Nokia (S60), BlackBerry and soon Android, the future for mobile users looks great. And we will be making some great announcements soon. Stay tuned!”

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 28

Rick Turoczy on October 28, 2008

Shizzow Blog · Trick or Treat, Shizzow Style

Via the Shizzow blog “We thought it would be fun to do some trick or treating using Shizzow. Since we’re too old to wander the neighborhoods knocking on doors for free candy, we decided to have our own trick or treat party (costumes are optional). Here’s how it works…”

OpenID usability is not an oxymoron | FactoryCity

Chris Messina writes “Monday last week marked the first ever OpenID UX Summit at Yahoo! in Sunnyvale with over 40 in attendance. Representatives came from MySpace, Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, Vidoop, Janrain, Six Apart, AOL, Chimp, Magnolia, Microsoft, Plaxo, Netmesh, Internet 2 and Liberty Alliance to debate and discuss how best to make implementations of the protocol easier to use and more familiar.”

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Portland team quintessential to new ReadWriteWeb Jobwire

Rick Turoczy on October 28, 2008

ReadWriteWebWith the Portland Twitter types, #afterhours is a bit of a running joke that describes the time where we all wedge in a little extra work while more sane less busy people relax.

Generally, there’s little to publicly show for efforts. But that changed today, thanks to ReadWriteWeb‘s Marshall Kirkpatrick, well, marshaling some Portland talent to help build out a new, heretofore top-secret property for the popular blog.

Over the past few weeks, Doug Coleman, Nate DiNiro, and Dionne Fox—and of course Marshall himself—have been burning the midnight oil… on both ends… or whatever. Suffice it to say, they’ve been putting in a great deal of time and effort on the site.

And now those efforts are seeing the light of day (Still carrying the imagery through. I’m an English major, you know.) Meet ReadWriteWeb Jobwire.

Through a mystical recipe of technological magic that I don’t even comprehend, the RWW Jobwire will provide the latest and greatest info on who’s going where, who’s hiring whom, and what companies are securing the most promising talent.

At a time when a number of popular tech blogs (Silicon Florist included) are bordering on the second coming of F*cked Company, this will be a welcome and interesting addition to the tech scene. And no doubt a better indicator of what’s actually happening with the best and brightest the Web has to offer.

According to RWW:

We’ve been working on it for months, well before the current economic climate unfolded, but we’re hoping that a whole site of good news will serve our readers well in these troubled times. Companies are still hiring, people are still getting cool new jobs, and we’re going to report on it. We invite you to check out the new Jobwire site to meet the Jobwire team, learn about our special guest editors and check out some of the great new jobs people have landed lately!

So, get some good news today! Head on over to see Portland’s handiwork in action at the ReadWriteWeb Jobwire.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 27

Rick Turoczy on October 27, 2008

Shizzow Google Gadget

Via the Shizzow blog “A huge thank you to Matthew Gifford for creating the Shizzow Google Gadget. His reason for creating it was simple…”

Portland Tech Event Extravaganza

Amber Case writes “Looking for something to do this week/month/season in Portland? Itching to get to know more people/minds/ideas? Look no further. I’ve created this list for you of a bunch of Portland tech events for your convenience. Hopefully it is a useful resource.”

Yes, your organization does need a blog.

John Metta writes “Get a blog, people. Really. More and more of your customers are expecting it. They want updates on your humanity to hit their RSS feeds. They want to know that there’s a person there.”

Quiz: Are You the Entrepreneurial “Type”?

Via Get Rich Slowly “So here’s a reliable true/false quiz to test whether you match the typical profile of an entrepreneur. I adapted these questions from a comprehensive new study of entrepreneurship completed earlier this year by Professor Scott A. Shane (on which more later). In this quiz, the word ‘entrepreneur’ is defined as someone starting a new business of any kind, and includes the solo self-employed.”

Microsoft Half-Asses Their OpenID “Support”

Aaron Hockley writes “Lots of folks are excited today because Microsoft has announced that Windows Live IDs can now be used as an OpenID. I’m less than thrilled.”

Relax with CouchDB

Chris Anderson writes “We’ll be soliciting reader feedback as we develop the book and API documentation. The content is freely licensed, so we’ll make it available as we write. Expect to see a few chapters and a some API docs up by the end of the year.”

Viewing Habits Online Changing (or, I think it’s time to cancel my cable)

Tom Turnbull writes “In other words, the audience for full length video content online has doubled and is north of 50 million people. That’s far from a niche.”

Dia de los Muertos Breakfast Tweetup at Kenny & Zukes (Thursday October 30, 2008) – Upcoming

The spookiest breakfast of the year takes place at Kenny & Zukes this Thursday. Join Portland Twitter friends for amazing latkes and awesome chats. This is a buy-your-own affair that often spills over into coworking time afterward

Interview with Linus Torvalds of The Linux Foundation | Linux Foundation Events

Mike Rogoway writes “It was invite only, so if you — like me — couldn’t wrangle an invitation, here’s an interview that Portland’s own Linus Torvalds gave at the summit.”

Seeking Gardeners

Via the Calagator blog “We often talk about Calagator as a wiki-like collaborative calendar, so we borrowed an idea from the wiki world, and added event and venue versioning. This way, if someone (human or bot) decides the SAO Poker Night really needs a bunch of links to [insert generic spam topic here], anyone can roll back the entry to the previous version, cleaning it up.”

Building a new Portland ; October 29th Event

Via the WhereCamp PDX blog “There’s a sense of disconnection, on the one hand, from the realm of finance and the direction of the economy. This is linked to confusion, anxiety, and fear that people won’t have basic needs met. And there’s a strong desire, excitement, for there to be major changes in which we all have a role in supporting each other to meet collective goals.”

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Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 24

Rick Turoczy on October 24, 2008

Instant personalized TV entertainment developer, Gravity R&D, winner of the Strands $100k Call for Recommender Start-Ups

Via the Strands blog “Gravity R&D has created IMPRESS, a ‘magic button’ that provides TV viewers with instant personalized entertainment at any given time with relevant program tips instantaneously on customer demand. It automatically schedules recordings with the highest probability based on user’s interest.”

Africans and Their Mobiles, Part 1: Numbers and Usage Patterns » Techcraver.com | Craving tech, craving life!

Jason Harris writes “This post is the first in a two-part series about 1) the African mobile marketplace and how Africans utilize their mobile phones; and 2) how organizations are using social marketing to reach this highly mobile population for social change.”

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Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 23

Rick Turoczy on October 23, 2008

Janrain Blog: OpenID User Experience (UX) Summit

Via the JanRain blog “On Monday of this week over 40 people from Yahoo!, AOL, Google, Microsoft, MySpace, Facebook, Plaxo, JanRain, SixApart, Vidoop, and others came together at an OpenID user experience (UX) summit hosted by Raj Mata and Allen Tom of Yahoo.”

Coffee Deals

Via Around the Sun “Free coffee. Need I say more? With this coupon, you can get a free tall coffee, latte, espresso, cappuccino, or hot tea at Barnes & Noble. The coupon expires on October 31.”

COWPU on Rails

Upcoming COWPU on Rails at McMenamins Old St Francis School (Thursday October 23, 2008)

O’Reilly Media postpones iPhoneLive | raven.me

Raven Zachary writes “As you can imagine, I am disappointed by this decision. I believe the iPhone market to be fundamentally strong and growing rapidly, and Bill Dudney and I have spent a significant amount of time planning this event over the past few months. I plan to continue to work with O’Reilly Media on future iPhone related activities, including the possibility of an iPhone conference in 2009, and more regular blogging about the platform on O’Reilly Radar and Inside iPhone.”

Starting Up in an Economic Downturn

Via Internet Astronauts “I’m no economist, but even I can tell that the world’s finances aren’t in their best shape. Tech blogs are writing about layoffs in startups everywhere, investment advisors are urging their clients to knuckle down for a long, economic winter and news analysts are calling doom and gloom at every turn. So it’s probably a bad time to start your web startup right? Wrong. This may very well be the best time.”

Spreading the news at Finovate 2008

Via the Vidoop blog “Vidoop headed out to the Big Apple last week for Finovate 2008, and after seven minutes of presentation, eleven media interviews, 50+ partner and customer meetings, 12 hours of round-trip flying and 5,000 miles of total travel, Mitch Savage and I are back home in Portland.”

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