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Category: #featured

Portland, Oregon, joins the ranks of the open cities, officially embracing open data and open source

Rick Turoczy on September 30, 2009

[HTML3][HTML2]Portland, Oregon, is now an open city.

Following in the footsteps of open cities like San Francisco, Chicago, and Vancouver, BC, Portland’s Mayor Sam Adams and the City Council today unanimously approved a resolution that directs the City of Portland to open data to outside developers and encourages adoption of open source solutions in technology procurement.

With the ratification of the Portland Economic Development strategy, the City officially recognized the value of the open source in Portland. Now, with the adoption of the open data and open source resolution, the City has prescribed specific objectives for the municipal government that will help Portland begin the transformation into a government that more willingly embraces open standards, transparency, and more collegial interaction with its open source community. Read More

WhereCamp PDX 2009: Where the where things are

Rick Turoczy on September 29, 2009

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: Portland likes the geogeeking. And whether it’s mobile, Geode, or good-old mapping, there’s no better place for getting your fill of geolocation and geography goodness than WhereCamp PDX.

So if you’re interested in hanging out with some of the best and brightest geolocation types in town, you’re going to want to find your way to WhereCamp this weekend, October 2-4. Read More

Zipcar iPhone app shifts into gear

Rick Turoczy on September 29, 2009

A few months back during Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, the folks at Apple got up on stage to demonstrate a very cool little iPhone app for Zipcar.

The app—designed by Portland-based iPhone agency Small Society—allowed you to find and reserve Zipcars, unlock your car, even honk the horn. But for all the bells and whistles, the app had one major problem: it wasn’t available to the general public. Until now. Read More

Mayor Sam Adams and the City of Portland to open source, open data, and transparency communities: Let’s make this official

Rick Turoczy on September 28, 2009

[HTML2]You may remember a couple of months back—during the Open Source Bridge conference—that Portland Mayor Sam Adams made a commitment to turn Portland into a “hub for open source.”

But conversing about a topic, as they say, is relatively easy. Or to put it more bluntly: talk is cheap.

That’s why it’s incredibly heartening to see the City moving to get something on the books with a resolution that is designed to officially make Portland a more open city. And if you care about open source—even remotely—it would be great to see you at the City Council meeting this Wednesday during the testimony and voting on the resolution. Read More

Portland’s Small Society builds an iPhone app for a little coffee shop called Starbucks

Rick Turoczy on September 24, 2009

[HTML2]Turns out even coffee shops need iPhone apps. Well, they do if they’re Starbucks. Two even. And now the official Starbucks iPhone drink app—myStarbucks—is available from the App Store.

Yes, yes. Starbucks is headquartered in Seattle, I know. And even though a number of sites were covering the app launch—including Portland-based iPhoneSlutz—I didn’t really have any Silicon Forest angle on it.

So why am I writing about it now? Well, because as it turns out, the Starbucks app was created by none other than Small Society here in Portland. Read More

Mike Berkley on ‘Preparing for the Next Web Boom’

Rick Turoczy on September 23, 2009

[HTML2][Editor: The following is a guest post by Mike Berkley, who served as the CEO of Portland-based SplashCast until its recent demise. Mike and I have had any number of conversations about the startup scene here in town. And I asked him if we wouldn’t mind putting his thoughts into a post. The first post—of hopefully many—follows.]

Preparing for the Next Web Boom

Since putting SplashCast to rest a few months ago, I’ve finally had time to reconnect with the entrepreneur community here in Portland, as well as in the Bay Area and NYC.  I’ve packed my days full of coffee, apricot scones, phone calls, and meetings… lots of meetings.  I’ve talked to dozens of entrepreneurs and investors.

Two themes have surfaced in this process. Read More

Matt Mullenweg on martinis, jazz, and a little open source project called WordPress

Rick Turoczy on September 21, 2009

[HTML2]If you’re an out-of-town tech type who’s traipsing through Portland chances are—that at one time or another—you’re going to wind up on the set of Strange Love Live, the best tech podcast in Portland… if not the world.

So it comes as no surprise that when Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, was here in town for Beer and Blog (yes, the rumors were true) and WordCamp Portland that Cami Kaos and Dr. Normal managed to wrangle Matt away from WordCamp for a few minutes to chat about martinis, jazz, and, of course, WordPress. Read More

Watching the Emmys? Portland Drupal developers will be

Rick Turoczy on September 18, 2009

Yes, yes. Everyone’s all excited about Portland playing host to Leverage—well, okay, not everyone but you know what I mean. And, as such, there’s all of this talk about PDX becoming little Hollywood or Trolleywood or Hippiewood or whatever.

But that’s just one small segment of the Hollywood experience. Anyone who knows Hollywood knows that the real pomp and circumstance takes place on the venerable red carpet. That’s right, my friend. Awards shows. That’s where it’s at.

And guess what? Portland’s got a part of that, too. No, I’m serious. Portland-based Metal Toad Media is the magic behind emmys.com. Read More

Rumor: WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg will be at Beer and Blog

Rick Turoczy on September 17, 2009

[HTML2]Now you know how I struggle with the rumors. Generally, I don’t post anything until I’ve had the chance to check it out. I mean, just look at what all you crazy Portlanders did with that Dave Chappelle rumor.

But this one falls into the “fairly certain” category. And since I’m convinced that Portland loves WordPress and beer almost as much as it loves Chappelle I’m going with it: Matt Mullenweg—none other than the guy who created WordPress—will be at Beer and Blog, this Friday. Read More

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