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Month: June 2009

Strands personal finance paying dividends, ING joins the roster

Corvallis-headquartered Strands has always had a definitive focus on the power of recommender technology—a technology that use an amalgamation of personal actions, actions of like-minded individuals, and inferences from those actions to make recommendations. But they’ve struggled a bit finding the appropriate and market worthy applications of that technology. They’ve pursued music, lifestreaming, and—most recently—exercise.

However, if this recent news is any indication, it’s their personal finance recommender pursuits that may be paying off. You see, Strands just signed ING. Read More

They’re in Oregon? 17+ projects that don’t get the Silicon Forest cred they deserve

There are still any number of wildly successful startups, blogs, and companies here in town that rarely get the Silicon Forest and Oregon cred they so richly deserve.

[HTML1]While a number of the folks in the Portland tech community spend time getting together on a regular basis at things like Beer and Blog and Ignite Portland, there are still any number of wildly successful startups, blogs, and companies here in town that rarely get the Oregon cred they so richly deserve.

They’re doing good work. They’re garnering national—and sometimes international—recognition. And they deserve all the Silicon Forest love we can dish out.

So who are they? Let’s take a look. (Listed by the number of times people looked at me with incredulity when I told them they were headquartered in Oregon.) Read More

eROI expands its offerings with a simple and elegant event registration service

Enter Portland-based eROI with eROI Event, a simple, straightforward, and skinnable event registration service that lets you manage people, pricing, discounts without all the usual headaches.

[HTML2]When it comes to managing small events, finding a capable event registration system can be a bit of pain. There are any number of systems that provide the features you need but there’s always a drawback. Maybe you can’t muck with the design. Maybe you have problems with your own merchant account. Maybe it’s just a bit too wonky.

Whatever the case, there’s room for improvement. Enter Portland-based eROI with eROI Event, a simple, straightforward, and skinnable event registration service that lets you manage people, pricing, discounts without all the usual headaches. Read More

Open Source Bridge: Looking back, literally

It’s just a bit shy of two weeks since we launched the first ever Open Source Bridge an entirely volunteer run conference for open source citizens in Portland.

It’s just a bit shy of two weeks since we launched the first ever Open Source Bridge—an entirely volunteer run conference for open source citizens—here in Portland. While it was a great event, it was also a bit of a whirlwind. And I wasn’t even terribly involved. I can only imagine how it felt for folks who were presenting and participating.

But that’s why we hire people like Aaron Hockley to take photos. So that we can remember all of those moments. Read More

Elemental Accelerator speeds up video production with NVIDIA, Adobe Creative Suite integration

Elemental Accelerator can bring a 2x to 11x performance boost to common video processing tasks in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.

Now, it’s rare for me to touch on traditional software around here. But Portland-based Elemental is doing so well, I couldn’t resist.

They’ve already been getting kudos with Badaboom, their consumer-level product that eases the process of encoding video for iPhones and other mobile handsets. And today, they’re making headlines again with their professional-level product Accelerator, which integrates with both NVIDIA video cards and Adobe Creative Suite. Read More

Demolicious: Experiencing Portland’s technology of tomorrow, today (or more appropriately, Wednesday)

Interested in the freshest new products from the Portland technology types? Who isn’t? We all love the cutting-edge tech stuff around these parts.

Well, you’re in luck. Because there’s no better place to catch a glimpse of these new products in the wild than Portland Web Innovators’ quarterly Demolicious—an evening of folks demoing products you’ve probably never seen.

Even better news? It’s this week. That’s right! This Wednesday. I know. I can’t wait either. Read More

Oregon Small Business Boost: July 1 means free business plan software for Oregon startups

Eugene-based Palo Alto Software’s Business Plan Pro can help by providing startups with guidance and instruction on building their business plans. And now, for one day only—July 1, 2009—Palo Alto software will be giving you opportunity to get that assistance for free.

[HTML4]For some, the hardest part of building a business plan is simply getting started. For others, it’s like doing taxes. It seems like it should be simple, but they want to make sure they don’t miss any steps. Others don’t even know where to begin.

That’s where products like Eugene-based Palo Alto Software’s Business Plan Pro can help by providing startups with guidance and instruction on building their business plans. And now, for one day only—July 1, 2009—Palo Alto software will be giving you the opportunity to get that assistance for free. Read More

REMINDER: Find the cofounder of your dreams with OTBC startup speed dating

This Saturday the folks at the OTBC will be hosting another round of cofounder speed dating. Starting at 1:00 PM, the session is designed to help like minded startup types find one another in hopes of making their startup dreams a reality.

Are you looking for that special someone? Someone to help fill those lonely hours? Someone who complements your personality and skills? Someone who can help you get that startup from vision to reality?

Well, get ready to meet Mr. and/or Mrs. Right Entrepreneur, my friend. OTBC startup speed dating is back. Read More

iPhone developers rejoice: Urban Airship launches push notification beta

Portland-based Urban Airship, the little company that’s going to help iPhone app developers scale in big ways, has announced that they are now accepting participants as part of their beta program for Apple Push Notification Services.

Portland-based Urban Airship, the little company that’s going to help iPhone app developers scale in big ways, has announced that they are now accepting participants as part of their beta program for Apple Push Notification Services.

If you’re a developer working on an iPhone app and you want to take advantage of iPhone OS 3.0 features, I’d highly suggest you check it out. Even if you’re not, the whole setup is pretty impressive. Read More