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Month: October 2008

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 15

Rick Turoczy on October 15, 2008

Geek of the Week: Selena Deckelmann

Via .51 “I first met Selena Deckelmann at a Code-n-Splode meeting here in Portland, Oregon. Code-n-Splode is a monthly meeting of women who are programmers. The ‘code’ is obvious; the ‘splode’ is what we do afterward with beer and local grub. Selena was one of the founding members, and she graciously agreed to an interview here on dotFiveOne.”

Portland Tech Twitter

Via AboutUs “It’s no secret that Portland has one of the most dynamic Twitter communities in the country, if not the world. The multitude of interesting conversations, absorbing events, and just plain cool tech people to be found via the Portland twitterverse (including a wiki-built Twitter dictionary, for all those not up on the geeky lingo) is truly astounding.”

Legion of Tech Happy Hour Meetup with Waffles Oct. 23rd

Via Legion of Tech “Todd had the best description of this event on Twitter: ‘Sweet waffles, savory waffles, beer, wine, art & geeks all converging in a glorious orgy of awesome.'”

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Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 14

Rick Turoczy on October 14, 2008

 

SLL: An Interview with Oregoniansteve | Our PDX Network

Cami Kaos writes “But first, an introduction. I’m CamiKaos, and with my husband DrNormal as my co-host we record a weekly podcast. Strange Love Live is something we’ve been doing together for almost a year. It’s recorded right here in Portland every Friday night, and thanks to Betsy, I’m going to be posting a new episode here each week. “

WorthWorkingFor | Inspiring the Inspirers, and because work doesn’t always have to suck.

A new blog from Elliot Swan covering inspirational workspace designs.

Gail Ann Williams on Community from Love@First Website at Fast Wonder Blog: Consulting, Online Communities, and Social Media

Dawn Foster writes “I’m spending the morning at iSite’s Love@First Website Conference here in Portland. I was impressed with Gail Ann Williams’ presentation about building online community. She was an early participant at The WELL and is currently the Director of Communities at Salon.com. Here are my raw notes from Gail’s presentation. In other words these are my notes about her words (not my words), so hopefully, I managed to get most of it right with only a few typos.”

Coffee with Likemind, October 17th at 8am – Substance

Via the Substance blog “As the title states, it’s this Friday, October 17th at 8am. Stop in the Stumptown Ace (1026 SW Stark), grab your beverage, then make your way over to the lobby of the Ace Hotel to meet other likeminded folks.”

DrupalPDX November Meeting | groups.drupal.org

Via DrupalPDX “We’re now meeting at the offices of OpenSourcery at 711 SE Ankeny St. Portland, OR 97214. Steve Edwards will be doing a presentation on using Übercart to build e-commerce sites. After the meeting we’ll probably head to the Green Dragon for a food and drink.”

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Vidoop banks on, well, banks

Rick Turoczy on October 14, 2008

VidoopMany know Portland-based Vidoop—yes, they DO have a new look—as purveyor of OpenID provider myVidoop and home to the DiSo Project, “an umbrella project for a group of open source implementations of distributed social networking concepts.”

But Vidoop also has a number of revenue generating tricks in its bag, from the advertising that comprises its ImageShield to the enhanced security products that it sells.

Today at Finovate, Vidoop launched a new suite of those security products targeted at financial institutions, healthcare organizations, and corporations. And for banks in particular, Vidoop highlights that they offer “three options for providing strong authentication for accessing Web sites.”

The announcement appears to be striking a chord. According to Banktastic, “Your bank or credit union NEEDS to look into this.”

Of course, the real magic of Vidoop’s easy to implement, tough to defeat, advertising-supported security is that it not only reduces implementation and maintenance costs, it actually provides another way for businesses to generate revenue.

The ImageShield provides advertisers the opportunity to sponsor images within certain categories. Customers who choose to enable advertising-supported logins can obtain Vidoop’s increased security at little or no cost, and in some cases, generate revenue through the sponsored images.

“Not only can financial institutions potentially make money using Vidoop, but they can also realize substantial savings through customer service,” said Mitch Savage, Vidoop’s Executive Vice President, Business Development. “The number one call to most customer support centers is login issues. Vidoop provides an easier way for users to remember passwords with images, and now we have two additional ways they can authenticate without requiring expensive call center support.”

For more from Mitch on Vidoop’s new offering, here’s an interview from Finovate:

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For more information, visit Vidoop.

[Updated] Sadly Jive Software layoffs confirmed

Rick Turoczy on October 14, 2008

[UPDATE 4] Portland Business Journal “Jive layoffs are ‘market response'”

[UPDATE 3] Mike Rogoway of The Oregonian talks to Sam Lawrence about the layoffs.

[UPDATE 2] Sam Lawrence, Chief Marketing Officer at Jive, via Twitter:

Jive cost reduction via Sam Lawrence on Twitter

[UPDATE] Chris Kalani provides insight, confirming that there were layoffs today at Jive.

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but in this case, I feel an obligation to report it.

I’ve been hearing rumors about Jive Software for a few weeks now. Enough so that I’ve asked for comment from Jive on what’s going down.

They haven’t been at liberty to respond. So I haven’t written anything.

Well, I just wanted to let you know that the rumors have escalated exponentially today.

Something is going down. And it doesn’t appear to be good. But I can’t confirm that.

I’ll let you know when I hear more. Again, I’m not looking to further the rumors, but there’s too much activity for this to be a coincidence.

If you have any insight, it would be appreciated.

In the meantime, I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for the folks at Jive.

GadgetTrak goes mobile

Rick Turoczy on October 14, 2008

[HTML1]GadgetTrak BlackBerryPortland loves mobile. And, clearly, Portland-based GadgetTrak, the company that turns your stolen electronic devices into a sentient Neighborhood Watch for nabbing thieves, is no different.

That’s why they have just announced the launch of GadgetTrak’s thief-thwarting technology on mobile devices:

GadgetTrak® Mobile Security enables device owners to send remote commands to wipe data from their device and back data up to another phone. Additional commands for Blackberry devices can be sent to lock the device, signal an alarm that cannot be disabled by the thief, get the current location of the device, send a message to the main screen, and initiate a remote call back.

Simply install GadgetTrak on your BlackBerry or Windows Mobile device, and you gain remote access to destroy the data on the device, backup contacts, lock the device and signal an alarm, get the location of the device via GPS, call a predetermined number, and—perhaps my favorite—taunt the thief with a custom message that appears on-screen.

For more information on the mobile solution and GadgetTrak’s other products, visit GadgetTrak.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 13

Rick Turoczy on October 13, 2008

A Field Guide To Coffee Shops Around Northwest Portland, Particularly The Pearl District Neighborhood

Bram Pitoyo writes “ut, first things first, let me clarify that this post serves to answer one question (and one question only): Which coffee shop is appropriate for which occasion? Now, having spent adequate time in various coffee shops around this area in specific, and Portland in general, I feel that I am able to identify some factors that are present in most, if not all of them.”

PortlandTechTwitter – AboutUs Wiki Page

From AboutUs “Portland is extremely well-represented on Twitter, the popular micro-blogging platform. The following is a list of some of the most interesting citizens in the Portland Twitterverse. Feel free to follow them, ask them for advice, or run into them at the many local Portland Tech Events.”

Last Chance to Submit Your Talk Ideas for IP4!

Via the Ignite Portland blog “There’s only 1.5 days left to get your Ignite Portland 4 talk idea submissions in. The window officially closes at 12:01 AM Wednesday 10/15 (that’s the hour after 11PM on Tuesday night 10/14, just to be clear). If you’ve got a talk idea you’d like to share on stage at Ignite Portland 4, now is the time to get it in.”

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Lunch 2.0 at the Art Institute is Wednesday

Rick Turoczy on October 13, 2008

It’s been a while since this Lunch 2.0 was announced, but the big day has nearly arrived.

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So in case you’ve forgotten, the kind people at the Art Institute of Portland will be opening their doors to the eighth iteration of Portland Lunch 2.0 this coming Wednesday, the 15th, from 12 to 2 PM.

Ideally, you’ve already RSVP’ed on Upcoming, and you know where you’re going. It’s not too hard to find, right across the street from the Portland Armory, in the Pearl District. Parking may be a bit dicey, so carpool, MAX it, or bring your parking space radar.

As previously mentioned, the space is very big. So, feel free to bring along your coworkers, but if at all possible, RSVP with an accurate number to help with the food planning. The Art Institute’s Fall term just began, so perhaps some students will come by to mingle as well.

One person you can definitely expect to see on Wednesday is Art Institute graduate Bram Pitoyo, who convinced the Art Institute to host this Lunch 2.0. Bram recently had his bike and laptop stolen, and Amber Case has rallied the Portland tech community to come to his aid. Collecting small donations over the course of four days last week, she suprised him with $400 at Beer and Blog last Friday.

If you haven’t met Bram or Amber, take the opportunity on Wednesday over lunch.  Based on Upcoming, it should be a nice turnout, and I hope to see you there.

Upcoming Portland Lunch 2.0s

  • November 5 at the Eclipse Foundation
  • January 14 in the ‘burbs at the new OTBC offices in the Beaverton Round

Thanks to all the hosts and people who’ve made this a success. If you want details about hosting, let me know in comments.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 11

Rick Turoczy on October 11, 2008

Memeorandum Colors: Visualizing Political Bias with Greasemonkey – Waxy.org

Andy Baio writes “With the help of del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter, we used a recommendation algorithm to score every blog on Memeorandum based on their linking activity in the last three months. Then I wrote a Greasemonkey script to pull that information out of Google Spreadsheets, and colorize Memeorandum on-the-fly. Left-leaning blogs are blue and right-leaning blogs are red, with darker colors representing strong biases. Check out the screenshot below, and install the Greasemonkey script or standalone Firefox extension to try it yourself.”

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 10

Rick Turoczy on October 10, 2008

GOSCON: Government Open Source Conf in PDX at Fast Wonder Blog: Consulting, Online Communities, and Social Media

Dawn Foster writes “I was just talking to Deb Bryant about the upcoming GOSCON event here in Portland Oct 20th – 23rd, and there are some very exciting things about the event. For anyone unfamiliar with GOSCON, it is focused on providing ‘forums to explore both the business case and real-world applications for open technology to deliver the next generation of government services.’ This is the fourth annual GOSCON event.”

Saturday Dinner and Hackathon – WhereCampPDX Blog

Via the WhereCamp PDX blog “After sessions on Saturday, the 18th, we’ll be heading over to Old Town Pizza for dinner and hacking. We’re asking attendees to RSVP and pre-pay for dinner with the form below. Join us to continue talking about ideas from the day’s sessions, and collaborate on projects.”

Shizzow Blog · Using Shizzow RSS: FriendFeed, Widgets, and More

Via the Shizzow blog “A few weeks ago, we turned the switch to make the RSS feeds for shouts publicly available. While we have a few people using them for something interesting, the rest of you slackers haven’t done squat with them. Here are a couple of ideas to get you started.”

Quick update | Oregon Blogs

Via the Oregon Blogs blog “There are at least 4 people looking at the codebase, including me. This is a good sign because, although it’s complex and feature rich, it’s relatively clean and Patrick (@plightbo) has graciously provided a script to grab the dependencies, meaning going from ‘broken’ to ‘not broken’ is relatively painless.”

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

JanRain helps the other side of the OpenID (and OAuth) equation

Rick Turoczy on October 9, 2008

JanRain RPXIt’s no secret that I fancy Portland the hub of OpenID development. And it’s days like today that I actually sound like I know about that which I am blabbering.

You see, today Portland-based JanRain, one of the old guard in terms of OpenID, unveiled a new service that has the potential to increase OpenID adoption.

How? By focusing not on those people holding an OpenID, but on those who want to allow people to use that OpenID—but simply can’t figure out how.

With this new software-as-a-service solution (that’s a lot of “s”s, isn’t it?), RPX, JanRain has the makings of a service that allows anyone to drop OpenID support—and OAuth support for that matter—into place on their site. Simply and easily.

With RPX you don’t need to become a security expert, a protocol expert, or play through a number of security and data flow problems, RPX handles all of this for you and delivers a simple payload in either JSON or XML.

In my mind, JanRain’s solution has a great deal in common with Will Norris’ brilliant OpenID plugin for WordPress, wp-openid. But for a much larger audience.

With RPX, JanRain has the opportunity to take that same kind of plug-and-play OpenID login concept to the larger Web—beyond blogs—to the companies who could greatly benefit from the technology.

And that’s very cool.

It’s also cool that they could be making some money off of subscription fees to deliver that service.

As an aside, I’m also happy to report that JanRain gains the distinction of being the first Portland company that I got to cover for ReadWriteWeb. And I can’t tell you how great it is to share the amazing tech scene here in Portland on that larger stage.

Well and speaking of that larger stage, JanRain also garnered coverage on a little tech blog of which you may have heard, TechCrunch.

Dare I say “YAY Portland!”? Indeed I do.

Still hungry for more OpenID news? Fear not, gentle reader. A little bird tells me that they’ll be some more cool OpenID stuff being released here in Portland within the next week or so.

Just you wait.

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