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All posts by Rick Turoczy

More than mildly obsessed with the Portland startup community. Founder and editor at Silicon Florist. Cofounder and general manager at PIE. Follow me on Twitter: @turoczy

Matt Beck named to Shopify Advisory Council

Recent changes in the Shopify pricing structure have had unfortunate effects on a number Portland-area developers. And some of them, like Matt Beck of CouldBe Studios, are letting the Shopify team hear about it.

Beck voiced his displeasure on the What Could Be blog, highlighting the problems with the way that Ottawa-based JadedPixel, makers of Shopify, handled the pricing change.

The problem we had with the situation was not the new rates which are actually quite reasonable, but that the change was carried out in secrecy, which left us in a potentially sticky spot as we had bids out to potential clients which were based on their old pricing model, and even worse projects currently being developed that had their pricing model changed! How were we supposed to handle that? We’d quoted people based on their old pricing model, started working on the site and then had it change mid-way through.

No good deed goes unpunished. So, with his thoughtful comments, Beck has been rewarded with a position on the newly formed Shopify Advisory Council.

The Council is made up of a handful of Shopify users who are particularly passionate and active in the forums, and we will be bouncing ideas off of them concerning both how we communicate changes to our users and specific strategies for improving Shopify in general. This means that the Shopify team will be able to get user feedback on things before they are quite ready to be announced publicly, and we’ll then be able to balance our priorities and adjust our efforts accordingly.

Portland Web Innovators discuss OpenID, September 5

Portland Web Innovators has just announced the topic for their September get together, “Digital Identity and OpenID.”

Hosted at Jive Software, the event will feature Scott Kveton.

Digital identity promoter Scott Kveton will talk about his experience with OpenID and the future of digital identity on the web. He worked at JanRain (creators of MyOpenID) as CEO and helped it reach Business 2.0’s list of Startups to Watch. Now Scott consults and speaks on identity and open source.

To RSVP, visit Upcoming. For more information on Portland Web Innovators, see the PDXWI site.

Ultimate Blogger 3 from Urban Honking

Local collective blog, Urban Honking, has announced that it is now accepting applications for Ultimate Blogger 3.

Applications are now being accepted! You have until August 30th to apply and the application process is very easy: Shoot a video of introducing yourself and telling us what qualities you have that will make you the winner of Ultimate Blogger. Tell us about where you’re from, what you do, and what makes you the best contestant. Then upload your video to Vimeo.com and add the tag “UB3app“. We’re looking for bloggers who are willing to take the competition even deeper than the amazing performances of last season’s game. We’re looking for the BEST BLOGGERS IN THE WORLD! Ultimate Blogger 3 is going to be bigger, faster paced, and more popular than last season.

Think you’re made of the right stuff? Get to applying.

Urban Honking is a collection of blogs with more than 50 bloggers providing content. In the words of Urban Honking, “It feels like a real community of creative people. “

BarCamp Portland gathering August 23

The folks who organize the BarCamp Portland event, Dawn Foster and Raven Zachary, also hold a series of informal meetups throughout the year.

The Portland meetups are intended to be a little less intense and more frequent than a full BarCamp Portland event. The intent is to get a group of cool people interested in technology together to chat over drinks on the fourth Thursday of every month. Anyone working in high-tech is welcome to attend. Conversations usually range from wikis to open source to blogs to who knows what!

Interested in attending? See Upcoming or RSVP at the BarCamp Portland site.

Converge on Inverge 2007

I’m not really sure what this is. Even after reading this:

inVerge 2007 is an immersive 2 to 4-day experience starting on Sept. 6th in Portland, OR USA that focuses on emerging interactive convergence [invergence] dynamics manifesting as various global business trends including: media platform integration, brand integration, collective intelligence, participatory culture and mass collaboration.

But it has plenty of buzzwords, and that’s always good. Isn’t it?

In any case, it’s happening in Portland, September 6. And paying $495 will surely lead you to a deeper understanding of the concept than I’ve been able to garner with my quick gloss and snarky comments.

Get more information on Inverge 2007 by visiting the site or reading the Invergence blog.

Grabb.it

Grabb.it, the self-proclaimed “Giant MP3 eating rabbit,” has released some new features and a shiny new interface, according to some recent tweets from Chris Anderson.

Designed to support independent musicians, the Grabb.it service makes any Web-accessible MP3s—from local favorites, relative unknowns, and popular artists—more accessible by indexing MP3s as they are posted by artists and fans.

At the time of this posting, Grabb.it was indexing nearly 9,000 artists and more than 8,000 albums.

For more information or to register for the service, visit Grabb.it.