Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 23
Janrain Blog: OpenID User Experience (UX) Summit
Coffee Deals
COWPU on Rails
O’Reilly Media postpones iPhoneLive | raven.me
Starting Up in an Economic Downturn
Spreading the news at Finovate 2008
Prolifiq gets blue—in a good way—with IBM Bluehouse
Beaverton-based Prolifiq may be one of the most successful companies in the Silicon Forest of which you’ve never heard.
And I have to admit that part of that is entirely my fault. I had the pleasure of speaking with the folks over at Prolifiq quite a while ago, and I have a half-composed post about what they’re doing. But it never seemed to make it out of drafts.
Well, I’m happy to say that Prolifiq has some big news, today, that forces my hand. And it involves another company that you may know. One with one of those “acronym names,” IBM.
So what does Prolifiq do? They actually help sales teams and marketing teams work together. That bears repeating: they have come up with a solution that actually helps sales teams and marketing teams work together. And if this doesn’t sound like boiling-the-Willamette-River magic to you, you’ve obviously managed to dodge one of those roles in your professional life.
Prolifiq’s solution is the love child of customer relationship management (CRM) and content management (CMS) with some collaboration and social recommendation features, as well. In short, Prolifiq helps marketing types arm sales teams with immediate access to the information their potential customers need. And it allows them to crate it up and send it to anyone, lickety split. From a mobile device. Or from the desktop.
CEO Jeff Gaus calls it “the digital equivalent of a FedEx envelope.” I’d agree. Only it’s faster. And you don’t have to deal with the goofy guy in the purple shorts.
So where does Big Blue come in? IBM recently launched Bluehouse, which is basically Lotus Notes “up in the cloud,” as the cool kids like to say.
To hear IBM tell it:
“Bluehouse” is the place where businesses come to get work done. Whether you need to prepare for tomorrow’s meeting, are ready to host one today or want to collect feedback from yesterday’s call – “Bluehouse” can help.
So where does Prolifiq fit into the mix?
“’Bluehouse’ integrates key tools that enable teams to work more effectively,” said Sean Poulley, IBM Vice President of Online Collaboration Services. “Prolifiq for ‘Bluehouse’ provides sales organizations with the content they need at their fingertips that is branded, formatted and ready for use. Sales teams that use Prolifiq for ‘Bluehouse’ will have more time to do what they do best—close deals.”
Something tells me that a lot of other folks are going to be telling people about Prolifiq, now. Especially given the stage on which they find themselves, today.
But I still need to finish that draft.
Prolifiq revolutionizes personal email between sellers and their customers or prospects. The company’s smart email solution enables sellers, such ad Cisco Systems, General Electric, and Getty Images to send personal email that projects the brand, uses content that works and measures 1:1 conversations with customers.
For more information, visit Prolifiq.
Where I catch up on WhereCamp PDX
Last weekend, Portland played host to all sorts of geolocation goodness at WhereCamp PDX. And proud as I was to sponsor this unique event, I was unable to attend.
What to do? Read the blog posts about the event, of course! And since I’m tracking down those posts, anyway, I thought it might be nice to share them with you, gentle reader.
Let’s get going, shall we?
- WhereCamp PDX Roundup
“As you can probably guess, WhereCamp focuses on geo-geeking. It began in 2007 as a way to extend and build on conversations and topics presented at O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference.” - WhereCamp PDX Takes on PacManhattan
“On the final day of WhereCamp, it was time for location-based games. After a late night of geohacking, several WhereCampers returned early to play PacManhattan, where city streets become the game board.” - Oh my gosh, it’s like being immersed in the brochure online!
“So the conversation started off all over the board: discussing whether Google was a brand-neutral service or whether or not it over-shadowed the brand; why anyone would want to push branded content to the web; the cost-benefit analysis of any custom solution (including Google or Flash); the perceived need to require Geo-spatial accuracy and so on.” - Wherecamp PDX | Paul Bissett on Illuminating the Dark Geoweb
“These are notes from the WhereCamp Portland morning session on dark content and the geoweb. It was led by Paul Bissett, CEO of WeoGeo. About 15 people were at the session, and brought up some very interesting points.” - WhereCamp PDX Resources
“This Yahoo! Pipe for WhereCamp PDX [built by Amber Case] grabs FlickrPhotos, the Google Map Location, drop.io session note updates, and Twitter Feeds.”
For more details on the event, visit WhereCamp PDX.
Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 22
OpenID Case Studies Highlight Website Benefits from Accepting OpenID
GOSCON gives government good open source ideas
AboutUs front page tops 20 million pageviews
Custom Searches and Mozilla Geode
GOSCON closing notes | OpenSourcery
Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 21
Strands Social Player wins the BlackBerry Developer Challenge as best multimedia application!
Earth Class Mail lands VC round – Silicon Forest
The Big Showcase Update
Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 20
The trouble with social media is, well, people.
See These Talks at Ignite Portland 4 at Ignite Portland
October is a month of many conferences
Announcing MIDIator
Ideademic
Jama Software Wins Bend Venture Conference
Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 18
Oregon VC investment cools modestly – Silicon Forest
Garett Croft Stenson – a TRIBUTE to db clay.
451 CAOS Theory » VC funding for open source down 12% in Q3
Get your text on: Shizzow adds SMS
Our favorite local location-based social networking service, Portland-based Shizzow, has had great uptake around the local area. And with good reason. It’s a really simple and effective way to keep tabs on who is where when.
But one thing has been holding it back for some folks: the fact that you’ve had to use a mobile Web browser to update your Shizzow location.
Well, not for much longer, my friend. Because Shizzow just announced a beta release that enables you to shout updates via SMS:
We’ve tested it as much as we can, but we need for you to try it out and let us know if you find any issues or have suggestions for how we can make it better. Until I perfect that mind reading device I’ve been working on in my garage, we can’t fix the bugs that you forget to tell us about! Log all of your suggestions on our Get Satisfaction page.
Want to try to out SMS for yourself? You’re going to have to configure your profile, add some nicknames, and learn some new lingo:
Available Commands and Abbreviations
#message (#m) – Add a message to a shout.
#shout (#s) – Shout from a favorite place.
Shout from a Place
Format:
shzow #s {place nickname}Example:
shzow #s happyplaceShout from a Place with a Message
Format:
shzow #s {place nickname} {message}Example 1 (explicit)
shzow #s happyplace #m here til noonExample 2 (implicit)
shzow #s happyplace here til noonSend (re-shout) a new Message from your Current Location
Format:
shzow #m {message}Example:
shzow #m here til noon
So get to trying it. And give Shizzow your feedback.
What’s that? You’re in the Portland area and you don’t have a Shizzow account? Comment below and I’ll send you an invite.
Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 17
Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy
Downtown Portland Restaurant, West Cafe, Offers Dinner Twitter Promotion
Apply to the Knight News Challenge
(The hardest of the 4. A map mashup