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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

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Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Rick Turoczy on February 28, 2008

Sometimes, a link says more than I could ever say. Here are some fragrant little buds I’ve found recently, courtesy of ma.gnolia.

Portland Lunch 2.0: Tasty

Today was the first Portland Lunch 2.0 event, a lunchtime gathering for a group of mostly-techie Portlanders to enjoy some good food and talk with others from the community. The idea is that the event will rotate around with different companies sponsoring the lunch in their space.

Jive Talks: We’ve donated an iPhone to the DataPortability logo contest

Jive’s Sam Lawrence writes, “Earlier this week, the DataPortability WorkGroup was sent a Cease and Desist order by Red Hat to stop using their logo. Opting to take the high road, Chris Saad and the crew decided to hold a logo contest to rebrand the DataPortability WorkGroup. To show our support and to get the prize bandwagon moving, Jive was the first to donate a prize, which was an iPhone.”

Are you going to Startupalooza?

It’s brought to you by the same people who put on IgnitePortland so you know it is going to be good. Best of all–it’s FREE!

iovation Hires Sales, Technology Vice Presidents

Internet security specialist iovation reported Wednesday that it has hired two new vice presidents. The Portland, Ore.-based company said Chris Reid will step in as vice president of sales while Emmett Zahn will serve as vice president of technology.

Recipe for a High-Tech Hub

To get there, a city needs three things. Money, big companies and good weather. That last one isn’t a joke; quality of life is important. For example, many people want to live in Austin, while few want to live in Houston. So even though there are a lot of huge companies, money, and a real effort by folks at places like the Houston Technology Center and Startup Houston, building an information economy there is going to be a challenge. Blame it on the humidity. The same goes for places like Tulsa, Okla., Detroit and even Chicago, where weather or other factors such as crime make it hard to convince people to live there. (Note to the Chambers of Commerce in named cities: I said hard, not impossible).

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Portland Lunch 2.0: Filling and good for you, too

Rick Turoczy on February 27, 2008

The inaugural Portland Lunch 2.0 kicked off, today, at the AboutUs offices in the still-being-renovated Olympic Mills Commerce Center. And after pouring through a number of tweets about the topic, this afternoon, I can confidently say that Lunch 2.0 was a definite success.

The Lunch 2.0 concept started with folks in Silicon Valley as a means of staying in touch with friends and former coworkers, while getting the chance to gawk at everyone else’s office spaces and to try out the food in the cafeteria.

And there was much gawking to be had at the new AboutUs build-out. The space was perfect for the crowd. And, by midway through the event, it was easily filled to capacity with a wide variety of folks from startups around the area.

Since its start in the Valley, Lunch 2.0 has popped up all over the map, from Amsterdam to Bangalore to (my personal favorite) Lunch Five-0 in Hawaii. Portland’s version of Lunch 2.0 was brought to town by Jake Kuramoto with help from Dawn Foster.

Thinking about attending a future Lunch 2.0? Please bear in mind that part of the appeal of Lunch 2.0 is its progressive nature of moving from one location to another—so you can start scheming about how to cowork in their space you get to see the cool spaces in town where smart people do their work. If you’re interested in having a group of hungry startup types invade your office space during a lunch hour, please comment below.

As a reminder for those of you who were taking pictures and who have plans to upload them to flickr, tagging them “lunch20” will ensure they appear in the flickr widget on the official Lunch 2.0 site.

Jive Software nearly doubles customer base in 2007

Rick Turoczy on February 26, 2008

I knew Portland-based Jive Software was hot. I knew they were award winning. And I knew that they had taken an unassailable lead in the “Most Want Ads in the Portland Area” race.

But, even with all of this purported knowledge of mine, it’s always nice to have some numbers to back me up.

Today, Jive released some of those numbers for FY2007. And they’re impressive, to say the least:

  • Nearly 800 new customers
  • 325% increase in annual sales
  • 15% of the Fortune 500 use a Jive product

Jive attributes its continued success to businesses’ growing need for “a better way to work,” highlighting that the collaborative nature of Jive’s products makes them a compelling platform for improving communications with a “proven, people-centric approach to collaboration.”

For more information on Jive’s numbers, read the press release. For more information on the company, visit Jive.

(Hat tip Northwest Innovation)

Monitoring the pulse of Open Source

Rick Turoczy on February 25, 2008

Impressed by the Pulse of PDX tool that gives anyone—whether they use Twitter or not—a view into what Portland-based Twitter types are saying, Raven Zachary saw an opportunity to provide a similar view into what the Open Source proponents are saying on Twitter.

The result? The Pulse of Open Source.

Lisa Hoover of Download Squad sees it as a stab at Twitter groups and deems the Pulse concept—appropriately—“cool”:

Twitter doesn’t have a grouping feature yet (even though they said 7 months ago it was “at the top of their list”) but that hasn’t stopped a group of open source aficionados from finding a way to form one anyway. Five Twitterers including SourceForge’s Ross Turk and open source analyst extraordinaire Raven Zachary launched The Pulse of Open Source today, calling it a “collective stream of consciousness from the open source community.” We just call it “cool.”

And Portland’s Marshall Kirkpatrick takes the concept even further in his Read/Write Web coverage of the Pulse concept:

With a little editorial judgment, this model could work well for any number of niche topics. Integration to display recent bookmarks on social bookmarking sites and blog posts wouldn’t be difficult either. Think of it as an industry-centric version of social lifestreaming, instead of a user centric one as is more common these days. I think both models are fascinating.

Wouldn’t that be interesting? I think so. And I see Portland continuing to innovate on how Twitter, as a platform, will be used.

GoLife Mobile framework promises true “write once, run anywhere” for mobile, digital-telepathy

Rick Turoczy on February 25, 2008

GoLife MobileI just received word that Hillsboro-based GoLife Mobile, the mobile company focused on turning “dumb” phones into more intelligent platforms, will announce a development partnership with digital-telepathy of San Diego, today, that promises to deliver some of the first major “lifestyle” applications on the new GoLife Mobile framework.

The partnership announcement is a great move for both companies. Because I mean, seriously, a framework without apps? It’s not really going to fly.

[Update: GoLife Mobile posted additional insight on the partnership.]

So I almost stopped there, and you probably would have too. But then I started thinking about the framework. And suddenly, it became clear that this announcement was about more than a simple partnership. It dawned on me that this is actually a big announcement. As partners begin to validate the GoLife Mobile framework, it should have a positive affect on application development in the mobile world.

But you know me. I get really excited about this stuff going on in the Silicon Forest. Before I wax any more hyperbolic utopian fluff, we should start from the beginning.

What is the GoLife Mobile framework?

[It’s] a powerful framework which empowers the rapid creation and distribution of personalized lifestyle widget applications which cross multiple horizontal boundaries. Our Java thin-client runs on virtually any phone, and utilizes a novel on-the-fly application delivery methodology.

The underlying premise of any framework is to remove the common stuff, enabling developers to focus on elements of importance—the innovative leaps that keep apps sharp and make them worth using. GoLife Mobile is proposing to do that for every phone in every pocket.

Not only does the framework expedite development, it’s cross-platform, so developers can build an app once—once—and rest assured that the app is going to run on practically every phone.

Now, that may not sound earth-shattering to some of you. But I’m positive that a few of you have your jaws dropping ever so slightly. And with just a slight bit of envy.

Either that, or you just seriously considered jumping into mobile application development.

What the GoLife Mobile framework offers is the equivalent of building a Web app without having to spend untold hours making sure it renders in every browser on the market. Or, like writing a single application that runs on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, by default.

Write once, run anywhere. Yes, I know we’ve all heard it before. Could this possibly be the first true instance of that happening? Could be. Right here in the Silicon Forest. That’s big.

Long story short, the GoLife framework promises more thoughtful mobile apps, developed more quickly, for every phone.

It’s no wonder that the digital-telepathy folks are eager to jump on-board. And that vote of confidence could be the validation that the GoLife Mobile framework needs.

Jason Grigsby alluded to Portland’s trailing mobile adoption. That may be true, but if the GoLife Mobile framework takes hold, we may have the chance to lead in terms of mobile development.

If you’re a developer interested in working with the GoLife Mobile framework, register for more information at GoLife Mobile’s developer lab for the chance to be invitied to an upcoming developer conference in Portland.

For more information on GoLife and its solutions, visit GoLife Mobile or see the original release on the GoLife Mobile framework. For more on digital-telepathy, visit digital-telepathy and RE3EL.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Rick Turoczy on February 24, 2008

Sometimes, a link says more than I could ever say. Here are some fragrant little buds I’ve found recently, courtesy of ma.gnolia.

Fast Company features I Want Sandy

“Send a message to Sandy, and she’ll remind you in a daily digest, in a text message, or as an event on your calendar. Using e-mail, SMS, Twitter, or Jott, you can set up and receive reminders for appointments, contacts, lists, and random information. And, true to her human-like presence on the site, ‘Sandy’ speaks and understands plain English — just like a real personal assistant.”

Corporate Blogging Tips at Fast Wonder Blog

Dawn Foster writes, “I think we are finally moving past the era where people thought of blogs as a consumer phenomenon, where discussions focused on kids, pets, weekend excursions, and other personal topics rather than serious corporate content. Now most companies are past the question of should we blog and on to the discussion of how to write more effective corporate blogs.”

Jive Software attracts design talent

Oh my. Chris Kalani, David Carroll, and Josh Pyles are all doing work for the Jive Software design department? Stand back.

SplashCast redesigns, repositions to focus on big media

Alex Williams writes, “The new look for SplashCast, and the language / positioning behind it, has finally caught up to our business focus on media companies, agencies, and brands. The site now supports our strong value propositions for online marketers. In addition, the SplashCast blog will be tended to more diligently moving forward (we miss you Marshall), but with a focus specifically on social marketing.”

Bend Blogger Meetup Followup

Jake Ortman writes, “Amazingly enough, the local blogger meetup was a huge success. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, and when I got there (late, like I said), I was floored by the sheer amount of people there. I was expecting a few, not the 30 or so that were there.”

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Rick Turoczy on February 23, 2008

Sometimes, a link says more than I could ever say. Here are some fragrant little buds I’ve found recently, courtesy of ma.gnolia.

Tim Sears joins WaggEd

Tim Sears is leaving ISITE Design for a new gig at Waggener Edstrom. Can’t place that name? Well, you might know WaggEd by its other name, “Microsoft’s PR firm.”

Cool Oregon Events This Week at Fast Wonder Blog

Dawn Foster posts a reminder of upcoming events, saying “We have several really cool events coming up this week, and I wanted to remind everyone to attend (I’ll be there)!”

Central Oregon Web Professionals Usergroup: PU.Camp Sessions

COWPU, easily my favorite acronym for a professional organization, has announced PU.camp in Bend. Check out the sessions or submit your idea for one.

Tweetup! Portland Twitter users at Noodles & Company (Monday, February 25, 2008) – Upcoming

@MarinaMartin is down from Seattle and has proposed a Portland Tweetup to meet some of the Portland Twitter types.

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Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Rick Turoczy on February 21, 2008

Sometimes, a link says more than I could ever say. Here are some fragrant little buds I’ve found recently, courtesy of ma.gnolia.

Janet Lee Johnson: Attensa Enhances My Productivity

Janet Lee Johnson has some nice things to say about her Attensa feed reader. I mean, sure, Attensa is a client of hers. But I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt when she states examples like, “Gives me the capability to tag my persistent search results (and have them appear in my del.icio.us account) and comment on blog posts that reference my persistent searches right from within the RSS reader itself,” and “Attensa searches 18 different sites for the most up-to-date mentions of any keyword combinations you want to track.”

Beer and Blog – Work Session at Lucky Labrador Brew Pub (Friday, February 22, 2008) – Upcoming

Come join fellow Portland bloggers for a work session this Friday from 4pm until at least 6pm at the Lucky Lab. We help each other work on our blogs.

Kryptiq signs up new customer for Allscripts interface

Portland-based Kryptiq, the leading provider of next generation healthcare connectivity solutions, today announced that Frederick Primary Care Associates (FPCA) has partnered with Kryptiq to provide secure patient access to vital information stored in their Allscriptsâ„¢ clinical and business systems.

TechCrunch, Peaking, Etc.

Two interesting perspectives on the future of tech blogs. Worth the read whether you’re a fan of TechCrunch or not.

Vidoop Video Contest – What is your Identity?

While Vidoop hasn’t made the leap to Portland completely official. They were brave enough to use a Vanilla Ice lyric to start a blog post. So I’m going to let them in early. Not that I know it was a Vanilla Ice lyric.

Because I don’t.

Let’s move on to what Vidoop has going, “With everyone talking about what makes up your online identity (your OpenID, social network profiles, etc.) we wanted to give you a chance to tell us at Vidoop how you identify yourself. So make a video that tells everyone ‘How do you Identify’ and win cash!”

SplashCast political project

Portland-based SplashCast has provided the technology for the “Hillary speaks for me” advertising campaign. Word around the campfire is that they’re seeing a huge uptick as a result.

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

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