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Category: News

Queen Bee sitting pretty with UpSale

Rick Turoczy on October 26, 2007

Portland-based Blue Hill Solutions, a Web-development shop specializing in e-commerce systems, has announced the relaunch of Queen Bee Creations, a Portland-based manufacturer of unique handmade bags and wallets.

The entire redesign and relaunch took eight weeks, concept to completion.

Besides requiring 100% creative control over the presentation of their site, they needed a system for managing retail and wholesale customers, tools to match their manufacturing and fulfillment processes, and a platform that would scale with their business through the holiday season and beyond.

The new site is built upon Blue Hill’s UpSale e-commerce platform, which was built specifically for applications like Queen Bee.

NetworthIQ sees users surge after Aussie ink

Rick Turoczy on October 23, 2007

Portland-based NetworthIQ, the site that helps individuals track—and promote–their financial net worth, is reporting a surge in users after receiving favorable coverage in news.com.au.

Via the newswire that is Twitter, I’m hearing numbers north of 200, but shy of the one-day record of 391 set by the New York Times.

Inspired by the personal finance bloggers who feel liberated enough to share their net worth with the world, and other social sites (Flickr, 43things, del.icio.us, upcoming.org), NetworthIQ was conceived as a place where people can track, share and compare their financial status. The company describes it as a “social personal finance tool.”

Platial acquires Frappr (updated)

Rick Turoczy on October 18, 2007

Portland-based Platial, the social mapping community with all of its vowels still intact, has acquired competitor Frappr.

Platial welcomes Frappr users

Details are fairly limited at this time. Aside from a welcome message to Frappr users on the Platial site.

Platial has dropped a press release to announce the acquisition (hat tip to paidContent), purporting to be the “#1 Social Map site.”

Platial’s CEO Di-Ann Eisnor says, “We are delighted to have the Frappr community join the Platial family. This reinforces our vision to connect people, neighborhoods and nations around the world. Together, we will make social mapping more accessible, more valuable and a more fundamental part of Web 2.0, encompassing mobile and local search. We will also introduce new, more effective advertising models using social data and location to create greater relevance.“

So what about that other company that does something with maps? You know, that one down in Mountain View and in The Dalles? Marshall Kirkpatrick of Read/Write Web provides guidance on what this acquisition actually means.

At the time of this posting, this has not been announced on the Platial blog. [Update] On October 23, Platial posted a blog entry about the benefits of the acquired technology.

More information as it becomes available.

See additional coverage in TechCrunch, Mashable, paidContent, and Read/Write Web.

SplashCast signs 3 out of 4 major labels

Rick Turoczy on October 5, 2007

Portland-based SplashCast, the media player that allows anyone to pretend they’re a high-powered media exec, continues its quest to become the leading media player for actual high-powered media execs in the recording industry.

SplashCast has now released artist-branded channels for 3 out of the 4 major recording labels.

If you’ve been following SplashCast news, you may know that we’ve already done a lot of work with Sony through their other labels, including Zomba Music Group and Columbia Records. The addition of EMI’s Capitol Records and Universal’s Geffen means that we are now partnering with 3 of the 4 major music companies in the world.

More information on this news as it becomes available. For details on the artist channels, visit SplashCast.

SplashCast player hits 1 million views in a single day

Rick Turoczy on September 28, 2007

Portland-based SplashCast, which recently announced several impressive new SplashCast players branded for the Miami Heat’s Dwayne Wade and a number of popular recording artists, has seen equally impressive gains in the number of SplashCast player views they’re tracking.

Not rocket science or especially tantalizing investigative reporting there, I realize. More players == more views. And more popular players == way more views.

But, today, SplashCast achieved a notable milestone. Today, the company reported that the SplashCast player had reached 1,000,000 (one million) views for the day. An impressive feat, to be sure.

SplashCast user-generated (and increasingly corporate-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. For more information, visit SplashCast.

Jive Software wins 14th Annual Oregon Entrepreneur Network (OEN) award

Rick Turoczy on September 20, 2007

Word around the (Twitter) campfire is that Jive has walked away with the top honors at the Oregon Entrepreneur Network’s (OEN) 14th Annual Entrepreneurship awards. [Update] Jason Grigsby has published the complete OEN-award-winners list on User First Web. [Update 2] And the OEN has dropped a release, announcing the winners.

The statewide entrepreneurial community’s biggest gathering of the year will be the 2007 OEN Entrepreneurship Awards — the 14th annual celebration of the entrepreneurial spirit in action throughout Oregon and Southwest Washington.

The Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving the climate for emerging, growth-oriented companies across Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. OEN helps improve the flow of ideas, services, and capital to entrepreneurs and helps connect companies to expertise and other resources they need to grow their business. Together, the nearly 2,500 members strive to aid the growth and development of a healthy, diversified Oregon economy with a new generation of entrepreneurial leaders.

This is hot off the… well, it’s not even on the presses yet, so I’ll update this post with additional links as news becomes available.

(Hat tip Jason Grigsby)

Local Signal: Portland-focused start page

Rick Turoczy on September 18, 2007

Portland-based application developer Ryan Williams’ formerly-yet-to-be-named news tool now has both a name, Local Signal, and some publicly available functionality.

Even in its rough form, you’ll get the gist.

The Pageflakes-esque and Netvibes-y tool takes the “personalized start page” concept to a regional level, providing a wealth of Portland-oriented content, right out of the proverbial box.

It’s a resource Williams has been seeking. When he was unable to find one that met his needs, he decided to build one. And he’s being very open about the development process.

The UI/Design is still in progress, but you can get a good idea of the purpose and the content. I’d love to hear what you guys think. Is it interesting? Worthless? Is there some content this is missing?

For more information on the project, see the Portland Web Innovators discussion or Williams’ blog, Web Things Considered.

Tweet! SplashCast announces Twitter integration, Columbia Records deal

SplashCast, the Portland-based media company that enables anyone to create a media channel out of practically anything they have lying around the house—video, music, photos, narration, text, as well as RSS feeds, PowerPoint presentations and PDF documents—has announced a groundbreaking new feature for their SplashCast player: integration of Twitter.

Rick Turoczy on September 13, 2007

SplashCast, the Portland-based media company that enables anyone to create a media channel out of practically anything they have lying around the house—video, music, photos, narration, text, as well as RSS feeds, PowerPoint presentations and PDF documents—has announced a groundbreaking new feature for their SplashCast player: integration of Twitter.

SplashCast now offers the only media player online that allows quick, inline messaging to Twitter. Your viewers will be able to click the Twitter icon in your players, provide their username and login and then enter a message to be sent with a link to your channel to their entire network of friends on Twitter. Think Twitter’s just for the early adopter tech crowd? Readers of Sally Forth in the Sunday comics and viewers of the MTV Video Music Awards might disagree.

They also apparently signed a deal with some little record company called Columbia Records.

http://web.splashcast.net/Skins/candc_wide.swf

That deal carries with it two additional technology features that benefit all SplashCast users, but Columbia-act Coheed and Cambria will be the first to use the new features:

FanCast, our new mobile publishing feature, will allow the band’s fans to upload photos, audio files and video from their mobile phones to the Coheed and Cambria channel.

The second feature that will be deployed first on Columbia Records artist channels is live chat. Fans will be able to discuss whatever is on their minds in real time with our new in-player chat functionality.

I know, I know. I led with the technology.

I realize that the SplashCast deal with Columbia Records is huge. For both the company and the awareness of the SplashCast player. Not to mention Beyonce. And Bruce.

And, this is huge for Portland, as well. More and more the music mecca, this deal meshes incredibly well with the local culture.

All good points. And all worth congratulations. But I stick to my lead for three reasons:

  1. SplashCast is the first media delivery application to embrace the power of Twitter as part of its core feature set.
  2. This marks a decided move beyond simply “publishing” media to facilitating media distribution and promotion.
  3. I guessed this Twitter integration was coming.

Additional coverage of the SplashCast announcement can be found on the SplashCast blog, Center Networks, TechBizMedia, and Mashable.

Coda named one of the 35 absolutely essential Mac apps

Rick Turoczy on September 6, 2007

Portland-based Panic is well-known for developing beautiful and intuitive Apple Macintosh applications. So, it comes as no surprise that their latest product, Coda, follows suit.

What has been a nice surprise is the rave reviews the product has been receiving around the industry.

The latest? Freelance Switch has named Coda one of the 35 Absolutely Essential Mac Apps. To wit:

Coda is an all in one application that makes designers want to take notes and is a lot of web developer’s only tool. A text and css editor, a built in file browser (let’s not forget, these guys built Transmit) and an Apple Design Award to its honor. It also comes packed with a an actual web reference book reformatted and built into the actual application.

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