Via Strange Love Live “Friday night we were joined in studio by Stephanie Stricklen and Aaron Weiss, the host and Senior Producer (respectively) of KGW’s The Square. It was a full house as fans of both The Square and SLL settled into our little studio audience to see what happens when Newscasters and Podcasters collide.”
As Audrey Eschright accurately predicted, 2009 is shaping up to be the “Year of the User Group” in Portland. If you’re thinking about starting a user group, Igal Koshevoy has provided some invaluable tips to help you get the group going.
Mike Rogoway writes “Given Oregon’s small base of venture activity, neither a single quarter nor a single year can point to a coming trend. But at the least, the state held up OK as the venture markets froze up late in ’08.”
Via Shizzow “It’s been a long time since our last Tweaks of the ‘Week’ post. With all of the refactoring happening in preparation for the Shizzow API, we held off on deploying anything new on the old code. While the API beta stole most of the thunder during our update this weekend, you might have noticed that we also snuck in a few cool improvements. Again, this is just more proof that we actually read all of the stuff you send us through Get Satisfaction.”
Bacn.com is your new source for high-quality bacon products, wrapped in butcher paper and delivered to your door all with the click of a mouse. We’ll have customer reviews and of course a few howtos to help you in your quest to fulfill that “bacon passion.”
Given that few things go as well together as the Web and bacon, it’s surprising that it has taken someone this long to stumble upon this brilliant idea. But when Kveton’s Bacon Geek site took off in popularity and he began working to find the world’s best bacon, he saw an opportunity—albeit a strangely Web 1.0 opportunity for someone so awash in the world of the Open Web.
And that’s likely why this will work.
Bacn is about as straightforward as you can get, offering up the best bacon products you can find. Initial suppliers include Beeler’s, Broadbent Hams, Burgers’ Smokehouse, and Fletcher’s. And with Bacn’s straightforward ordering system, those products will be on the way to your doorstep with a few clicks.
For those with discerning bacon palates, the site provides insightful details about each offering, including videos on the products.
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Not enough bacon for you? Bacn also offers bacon-oriented paraphernalia for those who are forthright with their passion about the salty little pieces of pork.
To check out the selection, visit the Bacn products page. Or simply hit the home page and spend some time checking out all Bacn has to offer.
Via Wired “Whatever hurdles OpenID has to clear to become a widely-adopted de facto standard, its blueprint for success lies at the bottom of millions of blog posts.”
Via the Attensa blog “Marshall Kirkpatrick has stirred things up for RSS followers with his post R.I.P Enterprise RSS on Read Write Web. As I write this, there have been 70 comments covering a range of viewpoints. Marshall’s post is one of several recent perspectives relating to what is commonly called ‘enterprise RSS.’ The crux of Marshall’s observation is that RSS has not been widely adopted by large organizations despite expectations a couple of years ago that RSS would be come a key enterprise tool.”
Via the AboutUs blog “RCC is about openness and inclusion, collaboration and community, creativity and flow and is open to anyone of any skill set that’s interested in wiki, open collaboration, public participation and free culture. You’re welcome to come for any or all of the three days. Notable wiki enthusiasts as well as other OpenTechnology and OpenCulture people will be in attendance.”
Ask me about my favorite podcast and I will respond without hesitation. “Strange Love Live,” I will say.
Ask me about my favorite local news program (period), and I will respond just as quickly with, “KGW Live @7.” I’ll also mention that it’s going to be called “The Square” once they finish their studio in Pioneer Square.
For what it’s worth, I will also likely punctuate both of those responses above with, “Duh!”
So just imagine my excitement for this evening when—in a Reese’s “you got your peanut butter on my chocolate; you got your chocolate in my peanut butter” moment—Stephanie Stricklen (host) and Aaron Weiss (Senior Producer) from KGW will be on Strange Love Live with Cami Kaos (host) and Dr. Normal (Senior Producer).
What’s that? You’ve never heard of Strange Love Live? First, you hadn’t heard of KGW Live @7, and now this? I’m growing concerned.
It’s Friday. It’s kind of chilly outside. You’re looking for something to do. Why not spend some time by the warm glow of your monitor learning some interesting stuff from some interesting people?
That’s why there’s Strange Love Live, the weekly podcast hosted by Cami Kaos and Dr. Normal. Dare I say, “the best podcast in Portland”? Indeed, I dare.
Several of us have read Marshall’s How to: Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet for Any Topic http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_build_a_social_media_cheat_sheet.php where he integrates data from many different sources and uses various plumbing tools to pull it all together. Marshall is a master of tools like Yahoo Pipes and Dapper, and it will be great to have him presenting at our Jan 27th meeting.
David Abramowski writes “Many entrepreneurs find themselves in a strange situation where they have built amazing technology, have all the right marketing materials and then come product launch day nobody pays attention. This can be rather demoralizing and a blow that many young start-ups will find hard to overcome. There is no one size fits all solution, but having a wide network of people who know you and your team will go a long way to breaking the ice. Not only will your network give you support and encouragement, you may also find much needed assistance in the strangest of places.”
Via the OpenID blog “2008 was an awesome year for OpenID where the community created significant momentum moving toward mainstream adoption. No, not every site on the web is using OpenID nor does every consumer know what OpenID does, but last year alone the number of sites that accept OpenID for sign in more than tripled. Today, there are over thirty-thousand publicly accessible sites supporting OpenID for sign in and well over half a billion OpenID enabled accounts.”
Via the brand new Portland WordPress User Group site “Tonight we held our first meeting. Attendance was around 40 people from a variety of backgrounds and skill levels that ranged from one attendee who doesn’t yet have a blog but is interested all the way up through seasoned developers. Here’s a summary of some decisions and directions that were discussed.”
Via Day On “Day On connects nonprofit organizations that need advice and assistance with volunteers who are ready to help. Our first project is Geeks Day On, a day of service during MLK Day, Monday, January 19, 2009 where geeks will offer free technology and Internet communications advice and assistance to nonprofit organizations.”
Yesterday, Steve Morris and the OTBC hosted the tenth iteration of Portland Lunch 2.0 and the first one in the ‘burbs.
Even though we didn’t get an official count, estimates I collected put the attendance between 75 and 100. Pretty typical for Portland Lunch 2.0, but a pleasant surprise for our first venture to the ‘burbs. It was tough to count people because they filled up the OTBC office and its conference rooms and spilled into the lobby.
Todd and his party train brought about 30 people from Portland, and attendance from nearby the areas seemed high. I didn’t do a scientific poll or anything, but based on the number of new faces, I think it’s safe to say that we had a lot of first-timers. It was a nice mix of the usual suspects and new people. The reactions I saw on Twitter right after lunch included several good-to-meet-yous and the like.
The fare was pizza, but as with most Lunch 2.0s, I didn’t eat. Too busy chatting and networking. Simeon Bateman liked it enough to ping me to find out who provided it. Bellagios if you’re wondering, and a couple of the OTBC’s companies provided it: Integra Telecom and Sonitrol.
A little nugget here: Sonitrol provides security systems and captures audio of intruders; Todd and I agreed that audio would be really funny to hear, like a YouTube for botched breakins. Turns out they do publish some of the audio clips, and they’re as funny as expected. I found this out while chatting with Chuck Mally and Pamela Singleton from Sonitrol.
This Lunch 2.0 also featured a field trip over to Denney Cole’s Portland TechShop. What is TechShop you ask?
TechShop is a membership-based DIY workshop that gives you access to a huge variety of tools and equipment, tons of friendly and easy classes, and a community of amazing people who share your interest in making things.
That’s right, it’s a DIY workshop, complete with tools and machines you just don’t have room for or don’t want to buy. I had to miss the field trip, which bummed me out because several of us agreed that welding stuff and then cutting it apart with an acetylene torch for giggles sounded like a blast. Denney agreed this was the type of activity he wanted to encourage. He might even name a class “Welding for Giggles”. Sweet.
Wm Leler will soon be opening an Open Tech Space there soon, which will be free to anyone, the ostensible reason for the field trip. Sounds like about 20 people made the trip, but I’m still focused on the heavy machinery.
Photo by Wm Leler, used with permission.
So, it was a great lunch all around, and judging by the number of new Twitter follows and good-to-meet-yous, we managed to make some new connections.
Interested in hosting a Lunch 2.0 this Spring or later in the year? Drop a comment (or tweet @jkuramot) if you want information about hosting one. It’s easy.
One more thing, will someone please remind me to carry business cards the next time? Every time we have a Lunch 2.0, I sheepishly have to tell people I don’t carry cards. Sorry about that.
Just a quick reminder that if you’re a fan of WordPress—and I know you are—you’ll want to make it to the first official gathering of the WordPress Portland User Group.
Enter Portland WordPress User Group, a new event designed to help newbies get the help they need, to ensure power users get more powerful, and to generally forge a stronger community among the WordPress types here in town.
The meeting will be held tonight at CubeSpace starting at 6 PM. For more information or to RSVP, visit Upcoming.
Via SXSW “The next SXSW Interactive mixer will be held at the Fez Ballroom in Portland (316 SW 11th at Burnside) on January 19th from 6:00pm – 8:00pm. RSVP to interpress@sxsw.com now to ensure your spot on the guest list. Porter Novelli, the official PR agency of SXSW Interactive, is the co-sponsor of these networking parties.”
Via Chris Anderson “CouchDB’s been seeing some interest growth lately, and we’ve been ‘on the cusp’ of an 0.9 release for a while. 0.9 is still ‘soon,’ but for those who don’t want to wait for a release, you’ll need to run against CouchDB trunk if you want to play with the latest codes.”
Mike Rogoway writes “I happened to be walking to a coffee with top iPhone developer Raven Zachary this afternoon when the news broke about Steve Jobs taking a leave from Apple.”
Cami Kaos writes “That’s right everyone, Masterbacon is almost upon us. Join the bacon loving masses this Saturday, 1 PM at Davis Street Tavern for a bacon contest. There will be a grand prize winner and a runner up plus several special awards. But don’t show up empty handed, all who attend are expected to participate in some fashion.”
Via Girl In Your Shirt “CitySpeek is a NEW micro-messaging service that allows you to stay in contact with friends, co-workers, teammates and customers. You can create public and private groups and upload photos.”
Alexander Howard writes “There you go. The top 15 Twitter acronyms, along with a few extra ones in the explanations. If you have others that you think should be included, add ‘em to the comments. @verso & @ahockley maintain a whimsical wiki called the ‘Twictionary‘ where you can find more coinages.”
Via the Beer and Blog, um, blog “Last Saturday’s End Bloglessness workshops were blogtastic, were they not? A huge success, I’d say. Many, many people arrived ready to be workshopped into shape. One couple built their wedding Web site, and several business blogs went up as well. You can be sure there will be more valiant strides towards the End of Bloglessness. Oh, yes. I’m wondering, though, how many blogs actually DID go up. Please leave a comment and let us know?”
Cami Kaos writes “On Saturday Cube Space played host to an awesome event called End Bloglessness. It was put on by the good people at Beer & Blog and was staffed by some wonderful volunteers, there are too many for me to name (especially since I didn’t make note of who all was there, sorry… my bad). “
Marshallk Kirkpatrick writes “Long time innovator Marc Canter has made a proposal for a system to let users integrate all their social networks from around the web into one central dashboard. He calls it the DiSO Dashboard.”
Via The 451 Group “In the end, open source vendors that are willing and able to continue building, strengthening and investing in their communities — and we do see vendors catering to community users and even monetizing them via per-incident support, documentation and other services — are the ones who will benefit most when things begin turning around.”
Via the ExpressionEngine blog “Of course, the real reason you are reading this is for 2.0 news. At this point I’m obligated to gently remind you we promised an update the second week of January, which is next week. Specifically the next 2.0 update will be 1 week from today on Friday January 16th and a second update on friday January 30th (or thereabouts). In any case, there will be at least two 2.0 updates from us this month to keep everybody in the loop.”
Via Calagator “Now that the beta version of the API has been released, you can finally build those Shizzow mobile apps and mashups you’ve been scheming about for the last couple of months. We wanted to make ourselves available to help you get off to a running start on your new Shizzow-based apps. Meet us at the Green Dragon on Thursday, January 15th at 5:00pm, and we can discuss the API as well as some of the architecture principles behind people, places and shouts on Shizzow.”
I’ve been a huge fan of Yay!Monday, an inspirational collection of cool design and thought-provoking imagery that refreshes—you guessed it—every Monday. Um, yay!
But, I must admit, it left me longing for Monday on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday… well, you get the idea.
Now, the curator of Yay!Monday, Vancouver’s Chris Kalani, has launched a new site to solve that problem. Introducing Yay!Everyday.
Yay!Everyday is curated by a community of users, ensuring that there’s always something new and interesting to see. And it’s got a fresh and eclectic feel that reminds me of other amazing inspirational design sites like k10k, surfstation, and Design is Kinky. But unlike those sites, Yay!Everyday is right here in our own backyard.
It’s always great to see another combination of creativity, design, and technology in the Silicon Forest. But most of all, I’m just thrilled I don’t have to wait until Monday to get my Yay! on.
If you’re lucky enough to secure an invite code, you’ll soon be submitting creative content that is sure to inspire your peers and fans. Otherwise, spend some time flipping through the content collected by the current participants.
Just a quick reminder that if you’re a fan of 
