Checking Out Earth Class Mail
David Recordon writes “I’ve been up in Portland the past two weeks for the holidays which coincidentally is where Earth Class Mail is headquartered. A few days, ago their community manager @UncleNate shot me a message asking if I’d be interested in checking out their facility. So yesterday – yes they work on Saturdays too – I drove over to Beaverton to get a tour of their warehouse.”
VC funding for open source: mixed messages from 2008
Via The 451 Group “The figures for publicly disclosed venture capital funding in open source vendors during Q4 and FY08 are in and while the numbers themselves provide a mixed picture, the statistics don’t necessarily tell the full story.”
OPB News · People Fine Tuning Social Networks To Meet Their Needs
Via OPB “Social networks on the Internet like Facebook and Myspace have been around for years. But more recently, a new trend has emerged in the social networking world. People are creating smaller, theme-specific, and geographically defined social networks. From Portland, Elliot Ward reports.”
The Beer and Blog family expands to include two more people and two more chapters at Beer and Blog
Via the Beer and Blog mothership “Last week we announced the addition of Michelle to the Portland Chapter as the Chapter Provost. This week we’re proud to announce the addition of two more people to Beer and Blog: Kelly Guimont as Mistress of Organizer Affairs, and Christine Kistner in charge of Development. Please also welcome our two newest chapters: St. Louis and Eugene.”
Clearwire streams from MAX trains, mayor’s office at WiMAX launch – Silicon Forest
Mike Rogoway writes “I attended Clearwire’s formal WiMAX launch this morning at a South Waterfront hotel. They pulled out all the stops, with elaborate demos (on the Portland Streetcar, in pedicabs, in Smart cars, etc.) and a fancy A/V presentation more suited for Moscone Center.”
People are people; users aren’t what they used to be
Via the AboutUs blog “Yesterday wiki enthusiast Stewart Mader commented on his weblog about a guest editorial on zdnet.com by SocialText’s Scott Schnaars which highlights an idea gaining groundswell in online communities as well as the AboutUs office – referring to those utilizing social networking tools (including wikis, blogs, etc) as people instead of users. The idea is more than a shift in terminology, but reflects the ever-changing nature of the web, from single “users” to vast communities sharing and building things together.”