Facebook is still very interested and supportive of the open source community. A significant contribution to the Oregon State University Open Source Lab just goes to prove that. Introducing Supercell.
But where else is Facebook having an effect in Oregon? You might be surprised to learn that for an organization that gets continual press about its market valuation, the Facebook crew is still very interested and supportive of the open source community. (I mean, it is a gigantic PHP app, after all.) And the latest effort—a significant contribution to the Oregon State University Open Source Lab—just goes to prove that. Introducing Supercell. Read More
Open Source Bridge Startup Crawl, a progressive party starting at Kells sponsored by Facebook, JanRain, Puppet Labs, and Urban Airship, Wieden + Kennedy, Taplister.
No matter how geeky or antisocial you claim to be, it remains a fact that—every once in awhile—you need to put down the keyboard and spend some time with other developers. And this Thursday night, Portland, is one of those times.
While my blogging empire hasn’t reached the level where I’ve got a “home away from home,” there’s a good chunk of the ever-aging Facebook demographic that does. Maybe it’s a house at the coast. Or maybe it’s a cabin in the mountains. Whatever the case, as the economy continues to tank, those owners are looking for ways to make sure that someone is using those properties—as much as possible.
And that’s where folks like me come into the picture. I’ve got a great deal of interest in renting those properties from time to time—especially if they’re affordable. And when I do, where do I go for recommendations? That’s right: friends and family.
If only there were an app that connected the haves with the have nots. You know, socially. Well, now there is. A Facebook app from Portland called Second Porch. Read More
It’s another Thursday, and that means it’s time for another memePDX, the weekly wrap up of the hottest tech stories from Portland… and beyond.
Yet again, we got a little too chatty. So it’s running a little long. Like about 30 minutes. But in our defense there was a ton of news. And both Cami Kaos and I were tired and a tad punchy.
But trust me, there’s a bunch of good stuff. Like what? pdx.fm, Microsoft sponsoring WordCamp, Kanye, One Web Day, Simler, and a whole heck of a lot of Facebook news. Read More
And even though he hasn’t been out of the political dance that long, quite a few things have changed since his last bid—roughly a decade ago.
I mean, you might remember that Obama guy and his whole social media thing. Based on the initial rumblings from Kitzhaber camp, I can guarantee that the folks working on his campaign do. Read More
All of the sudden everybody in Portland is going all Hollywood on us.
First SplashCast announces that they’re partnering with Hulu. And now JanRain has announced that their RPX solution—a product that makes managing the ever-growing variety of distributed login credentials easier for developers and users—is going to be helping InterscopeGeffenA&M, a division Universal Music Group, give fans an easier way to connect with their favorite artists.
Using the RPX interface, fans who’d like to connect with say, Lady Gaga, have the option of using their Facebook identity, Google identity, MySpace identity, or any variety of OpenID flavors, like AOL, Yahoo!, or Portland’s MyOpenID or myVidoop.
Where did all of these options come from all of the sudden? Well…
It’s been quite the month for the world of distributed social networking. Both Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect – two services designed to help user manage a single profile across multiple sites – launched on the same day. Then, MySpace followed in close succession with their MySpaceID offering, another distributed social option built on the Open Stack. In a matter of days, the distributed social space went from nascent to completely confusing.
JanRain is hoping to make it a little less confusing, for both developers and users. And if they have to work with big-time music types—like 50 Cent, Fergie, and Guns n’ Roses—to get that done, so be it.
Now, granted, I try to keep my focus right here at home in the Silicon Forest. But I had the feeling that news about these two little Web companies—Google and Facebook—might, just might, have some repercussions for the local tech scene.
I’ll also defend this post by reminding you that The Goog’ has an installation in The Dalles.
Okay, that may be gobbledy gook techie speak to some of you. So, why is this so important?
The non-participation of Google and Facebook, two companies that hold more user data and do more with it than almost any other consumer service on the market, was the biggest stumbling block to the viability of the project. These are two of the most important companies in recent history. What’s being decided now is whether they will be walled-garden, data-horders or truly open platforms tied into a larger ecosystem of innovation with respect for user rights and sensible policies about data.
One of those applications—their IRC-like Pibb application—has recently been ported to Facebook.
This communications conduit has the potential to be incredibly useful for those folks looking to tie Facebook communications to the rest of their online communications. (Like say for instance, keeping your Facebook comments and your blog comments all in one place.)
By adding the Pibb Facebook application to your account you can easily tie together two end points of your social graph, Facebook and Pibb. Once you add the application to your Facebook account, you will easily be able check for new messages and connect with your Facebook friends on Pibb and vice versa.
(As an aside, with both JanRain and SplashCast supporting Facebook applications, I’ve got to assume there are others of you out there building Facebook apps. Yes? No? Well, if you’ve got a Portland-built Facebook app, link it up, below, or drop me a note. If enough folks respond, I’ll post a roundup.)
Well, if Twitter is any indication, a small planning session, today, seems to have been extremely positive. Josh mentions it in tweets here and here. And Dawn Foster mentioned it in a tweet as well, offering that something may be happening as soon as October. I know that Raven Zachary was in attendance, too.
Fresh on the heels of its NPR Podcast player for Facebook, SplashCast has announced the addition of email notifications to its interface. This new feature simplifies the cut-and-paste-a-link process by allowing SplashCast publishers to quickly and easily notify friends about updated content–without leaving the SplashCast application.
For more information on this feature, watch the SplashCast support channel entry, below.
The SplashCast service enables anyone to create streaming media ‘channels’ that mix together video, music, photos, narration, text, as well as RSS feeds, PowerPoint presentations and PDF documents. These user-generated channels can be played and easily syndicated on any web site, blog, or social network page. When channel owners modify their channel, their content is automatically updated across all the web pages ‘tuned’ to that channel.
