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Category: Links

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for September 30

Oregon Blogs Aggregator Goes Live | Oregon Blogs

Via the ORBlogs 2.0 blog “Wow, you people move fast! I guess we should expect that if there’s a story to break, bloggers are going to be there before anyone! Yes, Virginia, there is an Oregon Blogs aggregator. But it’s time for some pause before swamping the poor fellow’s server.”

Making Clearspace look and act a little like Facebook

Gia Lyons writes “Who Cares? HR departments should, that’s who. All those Gen Y new-hires could join your company, and immediately feel comfy with your social software environment, because their homepage sort of resembles what they’re used to using already. You find recruits on Facebook, right?”

LinuxCon: The anti-OSCON? – Silicon Forest

Mike Rogoway writes “A lot remains unresolved — the venue, the exact dates, admission prices — but it’s certainly a shot in the arm for a city that had seemed to be losing some of its Linux-buffed sheen.”

Open source conference evolution, restart with LinuxCon

Jay Lyman writes “I’ve long been lucky to have some of the key open source software conferences occurring in my home town, Portland, Oreg. While I was sad to see recently that the biggest Portland open source show of all, OSCON, was moving to the Bay Area, I was encouraged this week when the Linux Foundation announced LinuxCon, to be in Portland September 2009.”

Corporate Community Trend: Focus on People at Fast Wonder Blog: Consulting, Online Communities, and Social Media

Dawn Foster writes “I was looking at the new SocialText 3.0 release this morning, which TechCrunch describes as a blend of “Facebook, Twitter and the Enterprise”, when I started thinking about a trend that I have been noticing for quite a while related to companies, communities, and community software.”

OurPDX author/reader meetup at Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub (Wednesday October 8, 2008) – Upcoming

“Join the OurPDX authors (and help celebrate Betsy’s birthday!) at the Green Dragon. We’ll have appetizers there for all to share (although you’ll need to spring for your own beverages or full-on meals, though.)” The “Green Dragon”? Never heard of it.

(The) Startup Depression « The Jason Calacanis Weblog

Jason Calacanis writes “the goal of this post was not to spread fear, but rather inspire folks at startup companies to get focused and to save as many as possible from hitting the wall. Myself? We’ll I funded Mahalo for the long-term and while the market down turn isn’t good for anyone, we’re largely immune from it because we are building on a five year plan that we’re only 18 months into.”

SAO October Tech Pub – Dawn Foster at Renaissance on the Riverfront (Thursday October 9, 2008) – Upcoming

Corvallis gets the chance to pick Dawn Foster’s brain, thanks to the SAO.

Justin Kistner On WordPress Ecosystem: A WordCamp Portland Event Review « Link En Fuego

Bram Pitoyo writes “WordCamp Portland, the city’s first conference+unconference around the blogging platform, was happening all day Saturday (where by “all day” I mean “from 8 am to 11:45 pm,” partly thanks to Aaron Hockley’s diligence.) On the first breakout session, Justin Kistner made a presentation on setting up a WordPress backchannel ecosystem for team collaboration and work delegation.”

Scott Blomquist » Now 25% more CTO!

Scott Blomquist (recent Vidoop transplant) writes “I’m really enjoying Portland overall—I never have trouble finding interesting things to do or interesting people to talk to. I actually think I’ve become acquaintances with more techies here in 3 weeks than I managed to meet the entire time I was in Tulsa. I’m sure it’s not entirely Tulsa’s fault, but there are so many well-established and well-attended tech events here that it makes it really easy to meet lots and lots of people.”

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for September 29

WordCamp Portland was Waaaaay better than WordCamp [Insert-your-lame-city-here] | Our PDX Network

Via OurPDX “As I recall, in the first giveaway there were two dozen unbranded oil-free hybrid cars powered by the collective kinetic energy of a crowd of mad MacBook Air keystrokers and Power User iPhone/Blackberry text messagers. In the hand-stitched organic velvet gift bags, we each received free matching his-and-her HD videocams with a gift certificate for a lifetime personal satellite uplink (and stickers!), a complimentary Herman Miller Aeron chair (and a button!), and a lifetime subscription to pre-edited versions of StrangeLoveLive. And then there was the outdoor fully-immersive multiplayer virtual reality gaming arena, but that was kind of boring unless you’re into that sort of thing.”

WORDCAMP PORTLAND

Dane Hesseldahl writes “OK… so let’s talk about what I learned this weekend at Wordcamp Portland.”

PDX #powerballVC Reaps Rewards Worthy of Wall St

Nate Angell writes “I’m pleased to report that the first ever PDX Powerball Venture Capital fund returned earnings worthy of a Wall Street investment fund. With a generous $155 in initial capital, #powerballVC returned a stunning $9 in winnings!”

Three-digit Alexa ranking

Via the AboutUs blog “On one hand it’s a little embarrassing to toot our own horn. On the other hand it’s fun to celebrate milestones! As of last Friday, AboutUs.org has a three-digit Alexa ranking (top 1000 for the first time)!”

Stopping the Social Cartography Menace

Via the WhereCamp PDX blog “A disturbing new trend is showing up among the consumer base. It has the potential to be worse than mix-tapes, worse than the VHS, indeed worse than online piracy. Consumers are taking it upon themselves to make their own maps of their own neighborhoods and their own issues. The HQ for this behavior appears to be at WhereCamp Portland in October – we need to infiltrate this event and put a stop to this kind of behavior!”

ORblogs is back! (Jack Bog’s Blog)

Jack Bogdanski writes “Or at least, somebody’s making great headway in restoring it.”

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for September 26

PDX #powerballVC: Fund startups using the lottery

Nate Angell writes “Based on an idea by @linuxaid, we announce the first PDX Powerball venture capitalist (#powerballVC) group. Our own Legion of Tech has been nominated as the trusted #powerballVC steward and will receive 10% of any winnings to support their awesome work to grow and nurture the local Portland community through free, educational, community-run technology events. Anyone who gives/pledges $5 no later than noon tomorrow (ie, 12pm PT Saturday 27 Sep 2008) can join the final draw and I’ll collect your contribution later if necessary. All entrants will split the winnings equally, minus LoT’s share.”

Hazelnut Tech Talk Episode 11 | On The Road With The Infovore | Hazelnut Tech Talk

Via Hazelnut Tech Talk “This episode features Troy Harlan, wherein we talked about information gathering, filtering and consuming (naturally,) human factors, trilobites, reading at 2,000 words per minute, INTP’s, striving for objectivity, The Black Swan, hunches, and why it’s better to “have no map at all than have the wrong map”—all recorded on the road from St. Johns to downtown Portland.”

Shizzow Blog · Tweaks of the Week: Nearby People on the Place Page

Via the Shizzow blog “We released a couple of new things yesterday. As always, this our way of proving that we like you and actually listen to all of that feedback you post on Get Satisfaction.”

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for September 25

JPV PDX: Articulating KlatchPDX

J.P. Voilleque writes “I feel like we’re missing the chance to get people with different backgrounds and experiences into a room for talks about stuff that matters. Even more, I feel strongly that cool chats are at least as useful as cool talks. There’s also the potential to record these and provide some additional shoutouts to the PDX tech/creative community.”

WhereCamp PDX: bringing the electronic world into the physical

Via the WhereCamp PDX blog “I think that Wherecamp PDX may be the most important unconference in Portland this year.”

OSU’s Open Source Lab names well-connected advisers – Silicon Forest – The Oregonian – OregonLive.com

Mike Rogoway writes “Oregon State’s Open Source Lab named seven from the tech industry to form a new advisory council for the lab. Advisers are charged with helping connect the lab to open source communities and to create opportunities for OSU students.”

Brandon Philips » Linux Plumbers Conf- huge success and looking to 2009

Brandon Philips writes “Linux Plumbers Conf was a huge success due to the huge amount of effort put forth by the organizers and the great turnout of attendees. Thanks to everyone!”

Strands Social Recommender to power Web-based virtual warehouse DollarDays and its retail customers

Via the Strands blog “We are happy to announce that Strands Social Recommender™ is now powering personalized product recommendations at DollarDays, the online wholesaler and closeout company that hosts a Web-based virtual warehouse at http://www.dollardays.com.”

Thought Propulsion | iPhone & Web Apps Built About You

Bill Burcham launches Thought Propulsion. “At Thought Propulsion™ we develop joyful Web applications using whizbang technology like Ruby on Rails and Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud. Got a native iPhone app in mind? We can help with that too.”

Announcing Jama Contour v2.4: Building great software products just got a little easier.

Via the Jama Software blog “Each year in the U.S. alone, over $30 billion is wasted on failed software development projects. And, the major causes for why these projects fail consistently tie back to requirements management. Jama Software’s mission is to eliminate that failure by enabling companies to take a more collaborative, customer-driven approach to product planning and development.”

WordCamp Portland: We’re Going to Rock the House! | Our PDX Network

Betsy Richter writes “Sure, I may be speaking. Yes, I’m a sponsor (and am helping to facilitate the beer acquisition and delivery, woo-hoo!) But I have to shamelessly say that WordCamp Portland will absolutely, positively rock it.”

Coffee With An Expert- PDX Coffee Clinic at CubeSpace at CubeSpace (Monday September 29, 2008) – Upcoming

Via Upcoming “Our September 29 Coffee Clinic will focus on angel/VC fundraising. ‘Startup Expert’ Carolynn Duncan will be available to address your questions and help resolve areas where you may be stuck.”

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for September 24

Justin Kistner – WordPress ecosystems at WordCamp Portland

Justin Kistner writes “Oh man am I looking forward to this Saturday’s WordCamp!! @ahockley and crew have really pulled together something special. Jane from WordPress will be there to give us an early look at WordPress 2.7. How sweet is that!?!”

Beer and Blog the WordCamp edition at Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub (Friday September 26, 2008) – Upcoming

WordCamp Portland is this Saturday and we’re pre-funking at this week’s Beer and Blog!

Strange Love: all things aaron…

Via Strange Love Live “On another long crazy Friday night we had the ever distinctive Aaron Hockley over to answer questions about the upcoming Word Camp Portland. I’d suggest that you rush over to register for what’s sure to be an outstanding conference/un-conference hybrid but it’s already sold out. If you’re one of the lucky 150 registered to attend you can get some inside info on what’s going to happen.”

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for September 23

Iterasi Moves to the Heart of Downtown Portland

Pete Grillo writes “We moved here for two primary reasons: better proximity for many of our employees’ commutes to work and to get closer to Portland’s exciting and thriving high-tech community.”

Andy Baio joins Kickstarter board

Via Waxy.org “I wanted to take a moment to announce that I’ve joined the board of directors for Kickstarter, a brand-new startup based out of Brooklyn and Chicago…. Ultimately, everybody should be able to support themselves doing what they love using the web, and I think Kickstarter will be a great way to get there. Expect to hear more on Waxy.org as launch day gets closer.”

3 Tips for a Great Landing Page

Guidance from StepChange Group “every time we build a Landing Page or a Microsite, we see campaign conversion rates that are substantially higher than the main site – plus higher-quality referrals due to better targeting and qualification. Since most targeted Landing Pages can be put together in a couple of weeks, they are nearly a ‘no brainer’ for an online campaign. Based on our experience, here are some tips for creating a great Landing Page that converts well.”

Clearwire lurks – Silicon Forest – The Oregonian

Mike Rogoway writes “While walking to work last week, I passed this Clearwire truck parked on the street downtown. It’s got Oregon plates, which makes me think the company’s pretty well set up in Portland — though it’s still not offering service here.”

OTBC picks new home, new model – Silicon Forest

Mike Rogoway writes “The Open Technology Business Center has picked a new home, at The Round in central Beaverton.”

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for September 22

Strands, students, and haXe: Taking Web development to the next level

Via the Strands blog “As you might remember, Strands has organized the Strands Summer 2008 haXe Project (also see the announcement post), an opportunity for students to receive funding for open source development focused on the web based programming language “haXe“. Today, the Strands Summer 2008 haXe Project has officially come to a close.”

Happy OneWebDay!

Via the AboutUs blog “Today is OneWebDay, an international event celebrating online life on the 22nd of September each year. On OneWebDay.org it is explained as ‘a platform for people to educate and activate others about issues that are important for the Internet’s future’ and an ‘Earth Day for the internet.’ OneWebDay was founded by Susan Crawford in 2006, and has since spread all over the world.”

Linux Plumbers Conference: Mission Accomplished

Via Still Life with Chicken “I couldn’t have been happier with how the Linux Plumbers Conference went last week. I went back and looked at the original proposal that we had Arjan, Greg, and Randy present to the Linux Foundation, and we seem to have hit all our original goals.”

Walker Tracker in the blog world today

Via the Walker Tracker blog “It’s a busy day at Walker Tracker. We were chosen as a Kim Komando cool site of the day. Thanks, Kim! We were blogged on Crooked Timber, by Eszter Hargittai. Thanks Eszter! And we signed our first Private Level in New Zealand.”

Smart Phones for the Masses

Peat Bakke writes “Which gets me thinking — in ten years it could cost under $10 to build a mobile device equivalent to the iPhone, thanks to Moore’s Law. With an open source operating system (like Google’s Android), and an open hardware platform (like the Neo FreeRunner), a remarkable new level of capability and opportunity will be available to the people and communities who can only afford bare bones mobile phones today.”

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for September 21

WhereCampPDX Blog » Equilibrium: The Human Mash Up

Via the WhereCamp PDX blog “To kick off WhereCamp PDX, on Friday night, October 17th, we’ll be taking part in an interactive art installation entitled ‘Equilibrium: The Human Mash Up’ taking place at the Olympic Mills Building at 107 SE Washington St Portland, OR 97214.”

Success as an Entrepreneur: Why It’s Not About You

Via Get Rich Slowly “Peter Hamilton is not alone. In interview after interview throughout Japan, Asia, and North America, successful entrepreneurs told me the same thing, in different words and in different languages: ‘It’s not about the money.’ What, then, is entrepreneurship about? Exploiting a market opportunity? Fame? Fortune? Proving yourself? “

451 CAOS Theory » Pressure, progress flow at Linux Plumbers Conference

Jay Lyman writes “This week’s Linux Plumbers Conference in Portland was a great opportunity for many of the Linux kernel community people to get together, challenge one another, hash out some differences and hone their similarities and synergies. What strikes me as perhaps most interesting is that while there was some discord felt throughout the event among the different Linux camps, this conglomerate of developers representing a range of different vendors in a variety of different ways all do one thing common to all of them: push the kernel forward.”

Creating Startups in Gray Areas

Via CenterNetworks “I am by no means some kind of business rock star. I didn’t attend Stanford or know anybody. I just focused on creating what didn’t exist, both then and now. Many refer to this as ‘gray areas,’ and they can be very good for business. Here are my five rules for finding them”

Win Building Websites with ExpressionEngine 1.6

Via the ExpressionEngine blog “We’re giving away 2 copies of Building Websites with ExpressionEngine 1.6. To enter all you have to do is post to the Discussion thread linked at the top of this post before Tuesday (September 23), 3pm Central.”

Strange Love Live – a set on Flickr

Curious about the inner workings of Portland’s favorite tech podcast? Let the lens of Aaron Hockley take you behind the scenes of Strange Love Live.

All of My Flickr Photos Now Have Creative Commons Licensing » Hockley Photography

Aaron Hockley writes “After some consideration, I’ve changed the licensing on my Flickr stream; all of my work there is now available under the Creative Commons Attribution – Noncommercial – No Derivative Works license. In short, you may use and share the photos for non-commercial purposes, unaltered, as long as you provide attribution to Aaron Hockley as the photographer. A link to hockleyphoto.com is always appreciated.”

We got a map | Clicky Blog

Via the Clicky blog “We re-organized things a bit, you may notice a new ‘Locale’ tab. This is where all the country, city, language etc stuff has been moved to. We also added a new sub-tab, called ‘Regions,’ but data only started tracking yesterday for it.”

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for September 19

OEN honors achievement in entrepreneurship – Silicon Forest – The Oregonian – OregonLive.com

No Web startups won this year, but AboutUs was in the running for a couple.

“There is no viral marketing”

Tom Turnbull writes “Brian Solis recently spoke at the Web 2.0 conference in New York. He provocatively stated that “There is no viral marketing.” Marketing in the age of social media, rather, is an ongoing, and necessarily authentic, effort. It requires more than putzing around on Twitter, slapping up a Facebook fan page or pumping out some goofy widget.”

Please excuse our dust

Cory Huff writes “This Blogger to WordPress migration was supposed to go very smoothly. WP even has a button built in to do it, but for some reason it didn’t work. I’m re-posting each article by hand as we speak, so it looks like there’s going to be a day or two of down time for the site. I’ve had some really great experts look at this thing, but it looks like there’s nothing to be done but do it all by hand. So much for ease of use, eh?” (Sounds like somebody has a good unconference topic for WordCamp Portland.)

Color-Based Social Networking – ColourLovers.com Celebrates All Shades

Via Trendhunter “This is a brilliant user-generated site where you monitor and influence color trends online. In brief, Colour Lovers is a social network built around color palettes.” (Hat tip Todd Kenefsky)

Hazelnut Tech Talk Special | An Interview with Virtual Architect Eric Rice | Hazelnut Tech Talk

Cyborg Anthropologist Amber Case Interviews Virtual Architect Eric Rice at Gnomedex 2008. “After an amazing post-conference dinner with a bunch of exellent people, Dave Olson was kind enough to lend his excellent podcasting equiptment. I was able to capture a minute percentage of the Sweetopian existence of Eric Rice. Rice is incredible. I wish I had better adjectives in which to describe him, but I’ll let him do the talking.”

Portland Infects Seattle With Hoppy Goodness « The Pursuit of a Life

Justin Kistner’s brainchild, Beer and Blog, makes the leap to our sister city to the north, Seattle. Thanks to TeachStreet (and something tells me Brian Westbrook). “He says it was inspired by Beer and Blog, a Portland gathering which I’ve seen Rick Turoczy tweet about time and again – proof that in some essential alcohol- and startup-related respects, Portland is further advanced than Seattle!”

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for September 18

Automattic to Preview WordPress 2.7 at WordCamp Portland

Aaron Hockley writes “I’m excited to announce we have a great addition to our lineup of speakers for WordCamp Portland. Jane Wells from Automattic will be offering a look at some of the new features and changes that will be coming in WordPress 2.7.”

SplashCast has Politics

Tom Turnbull writes “The channel is a massive clearing house for some really great political content. Yesterday afternoon, I listened to a series of recent political speeches while working. Without divulging my political leanings (not that I hide them) some of the content fires me up, while some raises my hackles a bit – which is part of the fun of politics, after all.”

An Interview About WordCamp Portland

Aaron Hockley writes “Portland area freelance writer Kerri Buckley interviewed me about the upcoming WordCamp. Since it’s a blogging conference, I suggested the interview be posted on a blog.”

A case study in poor authentication: Palin’s Yahoo! email account

Greg Hughes writes “Vidoop uses a system like this for resetting information on their OpenID accounts. It’s simple and it works. It requires me to have the correct device (my phone), uses a different communication channel (the phone network, hence “out-of-band”) to contact me and then verifies I am a legitimate user. It requires me to interact as part of any change.”