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Month: January 2009

Concrete5 pours the foundation for another Portland user group

Rick Turoczy on January 6, 2009

Concrete5If I had to describe 2009 thus far, I would dub it the “Year of the User Group.” And that would also make Audrey Eschright’s prediction right—already.

What is it with you people? I mean, it’s a totally good thing. But man, there are new user groups springing up left and right. First Portland Data Plumbing, then Portland WordPress, and now Portland Concrete5. And since I promised Igal Koshevoy that I would do a better job of highlighting what’s happening in the user groups and development groups in town, I’m simply trying to keep up.

What’s Concrete5? It’s an elegant open source content management system developed right here in Portland, Oregon, that rivals some other more popular content management systems out there in terms of functionality—and downright crushes them in terms of ease-of-use.

Well, something as good as C5 is sure to develop a legion of fans. And now, those fans and users have the opportunity to meet one another with the newly launched Concrete5 Portland User Group:

Earlier this summer we released our previously commercial CMS as fully “Free Beer” under the MIT open source license. The second half of 2008 was a whirlwind for us as we were named project of the month on SourceForge and saw traffic go through the roof.

As part of running what promises to be the next Drupal, local user groups are going to be a huge component to our success. We have several starting around the states and Europe this month, with the Portland one obviously being super keen as this is our home turf.

Meetings will be held the second Thursday of every month, beginning with the inaugural meeting this Thursday, January 8 at Hopworks. For more information, see the Calagator entry. To RSVP, visit the Concrete5 Portland community.

Angels among us? Only if you apply by January 7

Rick Turoczy on January 6, 2009

OENIt’s that time of year again.

Time for a bunch of startups to begin vying for funding via Angel Oregon, the annual competition from the OEN that pits startup against startup during stumping sessions at PubTalks. Why? Hopes of securing some much needed funding for their companies.

OEN’s Angel Oregon is the nation’s premier investor/entrepreneur matchmaking event. Angel Oregon brings together Oregon and SW Washington’s brightest entrepreneurial talent with qualified angel investors. The top six companies who apply, including the OEN Seed Oregon PubTalk winner, will present at the OEN Angel Oregon conference on March 12th at the Governor Hotel. Two investment prizes will be awarded by a final vote of the OEN Investment Committee.

In 2007, an architectural software company walked away with the prize. In 2008, it was an apparel company. Could this be the year that a Silicon Forest Web company takes the big prize? I don’t know. Are you going to apply?

You have until the end of the day on January 7 to get registered. Go get ’em, tiger.

[Editor: The link to the guidelines on the main page seems to be broken, so here’s a direct link to the 2009 OEN Angel Oregon application guidelines.]

Portland WordPress User Group: Why save all the love for WordCamp Portland?

Rick Turoczy on January 6, 2009

WordPressHands down, one of the most compelling and beneficial events of the Portland Web scene last year was WordCamp Portland, where the WordPress faithful took the opportunity to gather, share ideas, and learn about new ways to use their favorite blogging platform.

So much WordPress love from the community. It seems a shame to keep it pent up all year.

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. And an event—most importantly—designed to occur much more often than once a year.

Apart from the assurances of “I know Beer and Blog. I’ve been to Beer and Blog. This is not Beer and Blog,” the format is still pretty open. The first gathering will be designed to help form that, um, format.

The inaugural meeting will be held Thursday, January 15th from 6:00-7:30pm at CubeSpace. To RSVP, visit Upcoming.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for January 05

Rick Turoczy on January 6, 2009

OAuth doesn’t stop phishing

Michael Richardson writes “Look, I love OAuth. It’s amazing. You should be using it if you aren’t. But it doesn’t really help against phishing attacks. The attack against an OAuth-enabled service is the same as an attack against an OpenID provider is the same as a normal phishing attack.”

More time with WiMAX – Silicon Forest

Mike Rogoway writes “While reporting Sunday’s article on Clearwire, I spent more time trying out the company’s Portland mobile WiMAX service at the end of this week from eight locations around the metro area.”

Learning Fast About Online Marketing in 2009

Marshall Kirkpatrick writes “Will 2009 be the big year for corporate transparency, for a global conversation – perhaps for bargain basement online marketing tactics instead of old-school huge commercial campaigns?”

Modifying RSS Feeds: 2 Minute Yahoo Pipes Video Demo

Dawn Foster writes “While many people use Yahoo Pipes to filter RSS feeds, Pipes can also be used to modify RSS feeds to work better for your purposes. In this example, we will add the author name to the beginning of the title to make it easier to see the author without opening the item in your rss reader. I recommend watching the Introduction to Yahoo Pipes: 2 minute Yahoo Pipes Video Demo if you haven’t already, since we’re going use the basic pipe developed in that demo using fetch feed and sort modules, but without the filter module.”

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CitySpeek looks to cram more content into 140 characters

Rick Turoczy on January 5, 2009

CitySpeekLooking to provide a little more content than you can wedge into a tweet? Portland-based CitySpeek—a microblogging platform with a number of features beyond typing 140 characters—may be what you’re seeking.

Founded by members of the team that launched Goboz in 2007, CitySpeek was designed to fill some gaps in functionality that larger microblogging (oxymoron intended) platforms don’t offer—or aren’t interested in offering.

Turoczy on CitySpeek

What sort of things? I’m glad you asked.

First, on a grand scale the only similarity that CitySpeek shares with Twitter is the 140 character limit for messages (what we call ‘speeks’). CitySpeek offers many features that Twitter does not, including:

  • Groups, both open and private
  • Integrated pics and video, no leaving the site to view
  • Speek by category like “Overheard”, “Question”, “For Sale”, etc.
  • Communicate with CitySpeek via IM
  • Seamless integration with Flickr

The service is also offering Twitter crossposting—if you’re comfortable giving them your Twitter username and password.

[Editor: No offense to CitySpeek, but this “give me your Twitter username and password”—although currently unavoidable for certain functionality—has always made me edgy. And after today, it only make me moreso. However, it serves as yet another opportunity for me to wonder aloud “When oh when will Twitter make good on their promises to support OAuth?”]

CitySpeek has documented its API support and is said to have mobile support in production.

Long story short, with its group functionality, categories, and attachments, CitySpeek brings some interesting features to the social microblogging table. We’ll just have to wait and see if these additions—added to an otherwise simple format—attract users.

If you’d like to try the service for yourself, swing on by CitySpeek and register for an account. If you’d like to “speek” to me, I’m turoczy on CitySpeek.

Get out your RSS wrench: Portland Data Plumbing User Group

Rick Turoczy on January 5, 2009

Want to share the ways you consolidate different data streams to make your life better? Interested in learning more about RSS wizardry? Are your Yahoo! Pipes clogged?

Well, you’ll be glad to hear that there’s a new (or at least, resurrected) user group in Portland that will allow you to compare notes with other plumbers of your ilk: Portland Data Plumbing User Group.

Dawn Foster writes:

I’ve decided to resurrect the Portland Data Plumbing Group to give us a time and place to talk about RSS feed hacking, Yahoo Pipes, Dapper, and other related technologies.

I know! What a way to start 2009. It sounds interesting, doesn’t it?

Well, what are you waiting for? A dangling preposition? (Sorry. Grammar humor.)

Get involved by joining the Portland Data Plumbing User Group discussion and RSVP for the first event, Tuesday, January 13.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for January 04

Rick Turoczy on January 5, 2009

Reviewing Oregon’s top tech stories of 2008 – Silicon Forest

Mike Rogoway writes “Portland’s culture of socially networked startups: With a social calendar any undergrad would envy, a host of Portland Web startups knitted a vibrant tech culture concentrated in Old Town. Jive, Vidoop, Splashcast and many, many others made this a good year to be young (or a young company, anyway). And while many have cut jobs, these microbusinesses are holding up better to this point than many tech titans.”

Why I Love My iPod (Yes, This Is Work-Related)

Dawn Foster writes “Instead of music, I fill my iPod with audio podcasts. I don’t watch the news on TV or listen to the radio, so I rely on podcasts as my primary way to consume some types of news (blogs and feeds are also a big part of how I consume information). I use iTunes subscriptions, which allow my podcasts to automagically appear on my computer every day, and I sync my iPod first thing in the morning so that it is ready at all times.”

A year of innovatin’ — 2008 | PDX Web Innovators

Adam DuVander writes “We had ten excellent gatherings in 2008. New Year’s Day seems like an apporiate time to look back, as we get excited for 2009.”

Top Fast Wonder Posts for 2008 and Some Silliness

Dawn Foster writes “I was looking at my Google Analytics for 2008, and I thought it would be fun to share some of the info.”

meme: Current state of me

Selena Deckelmann writes “Audrey started a meme that I liked – so here’s my answers…”

What a busy 2008

Audrey Eschright looks back at a busy—and successful—2008.

2008 Year in Review for Dawn and Plans for 2009

Dawn Foster looks back at 2008 and plans for 2009.

2008 — Another Blogger

Aaron Hockley recaps his achievements in 2008.

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