Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
As Lao-Tzu said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” So began the journey for Walker Tracker, a Portland-based community site for pedometer fans to log and track their steps.
One billion steps later, that journey continues.
To see how that total number of steps breaks down into the people who have taken them, try starting at the Walker Tracker Hall of Fame.
SplashCast hits one million. Walker Tracker hits one billion. Do I hear one trillion? Anyone? Anyone?
Portland Small Business, a burgeoning social network for members of the Portland small-business community to go for peer advice and network, has announced a planned site makeover. And, they’re looking for your feedback to help guide their development efforts.
This is the your opportunity to get in on the ground floor and have a real impact on this site. PortlandSmallBusiness.com is 6 weeks old and we are planning to retool and polish up this site by Oct. 23. I’m looking for as much feedback as I can before then. So, if you have any suggestions, please share them. With your help, we can make this site a useful tool for all the small businesses in Portland.
For more information or to provide feedback on future direction, visit Portland Small Business.
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.
Looking forward to Ignite Portland? I hear you, brother and/or sister. Same here.
And I’d like to see as many folks getting involved in this thing as possible. So I created (and I use that term very loosely so as not to imply any actual “creativity”) a little badge to help promote the event. 
And now, I’d like to share.
If you’re interested in promoting Ignite Portland, you can use the badge, too. Have at it.
What’s that? You’d like to use my bandwidth to host the image so that I can track your Web metrics?
That’s cool.
Feel free to use the following code, allowing you to slap this bad boy into whatever Web page you like without any of those annoying graphic uploads:
<!-- Ignite Portland care of Silicon Florist -->
<a href="http://www.igniteportland.com" title="Ignite Portland">
<img src="http://siliconflorist.com/images/promoIgnitePortland.gif" title="Ignite Portland promo" alt="Ignite Portland promo" border="0" height="135" width="135" />
</a>
Presenter or sponsor? We’ve got you covered.
Got a better one? I should hope so. What took you so long? Link it up and share the love.
I thought there might be a little more than just mutual “We share Portland as a hometown” respect behind Attensa’s Office 2.0 presentation on how to use Attensa’s and Jive’s products in tandem.
Turns out Attensa just released a beta version of their support site. And it’s built on Jive Clearspace X.
Now, that’s the kind of Portland-based technology collaboration we like to see.
As part of the beta rollout, Attensa has also announced that it will begin phasing out its old support site, in order to “build a vibrant support community” using the features of Jive’s collaboration platform.
See additional coverage in NW Innovation.
I’m a big proponent of the “cache of locality.” The idea that, given the option, people tend to gravitate toward services and products based on their location. Even if those products and services have absolutely nothing to do with the location in which they are being used.
Buying local, if you will.
That’s why I think it’s important for all of you globally-accessible businesses and Web 2.0 entrepreneurial types to take note of this local event.
On October 23, the Alliance of Portland Neighborhood Business Associations (APNBA) will hold its annual meeting—entitled “Portland Business 2.0: How to Do Business in the 21st Century”—at the Oregon Convention Center, featuring a Web 2.0-leaning keynote entitled, “Doing Business in a Socially Networked Climate.” The cost of attendance is $50.
The event is promoted as an ideal venue for networking with small businesses, startups, and individual contractors in the Portland area. It also promises to give the somewhat-disconnected home-office types a better understanding of what business is occurring in the neighborhoods around them.
A strong, active business district association is the glue that holds neighborhoods together, giving them the distinctive identities that characterize Portland. Many of them serve the functions of a small town, offering the services and providing space for public interaction and community celebration. The well-organized business district association can be the business voice of this “micro-village” to the surrounding municipalities.
For more details on the event, please see additional coverage from Portland Small Business, the CubeSpace registration page, and the APNBA site. If you’re already sold on the idea, download the registration form.
The event is sponsored and managed by the folks at CubeSpace. If you’re interested in being a sponsor of this event, contact Eva Schweber at eva@cubespacepdx.com.
The Alliance of Portland Neighborhood Business Associations (APNBA) is an alliance of the 30+ business district associations (BDAs) in Portland, Oregon. BDA members are the merchants, property owners, and employees in the commercial districts surrounding downtown. For more, see the APNBA site.
(Hat tip to Portland Small Business)
There’s a been something gnawing at you. I can see it. And everyone else can see it, too.
You’ve been consumed with the curiosity about how Attensa Feed Server actually works, but you don’t want to pony up the cash to buy it.
Well, count your blessings, my friend, because today is your lucky day.
Portland-based Attensa, the company focused on helping organizations manage and make better use of RSS feeds, has released a trial version of Attensa Feed Server. It’s free. And it’s available for download, right now.
The trial version is fully functional for up to five (5) users, allowing unlimited feeds and unlimited groups. All you need is the hardware, and you’re off and running.
The Attensa Feed Server is a virtual appliance that provides enterprise customers with centralized administration, routing, security, search, synchronization, analytics and reporting for enterprise-wide RSS coordination. It brings together all of the tools IT administrators, team leaders and users need to manage and streamline the delivery of critical business information using web feeds behind the firewall.
Download your copy of Attensa Feed Server.
For more information, see the Attensa blog, read additional Attensa coverage on NW Innovation, or gain some insight from Brooks Jordan.
Local-startup tracker and small-business social network Portland Small Business is looking for a few good companies to review. The only qualifying factor? Portland Small Business hopes to make the pool of companies as diverse as possible:
I’m looking for 10-20 small businesses to review on this site. I want a representative sample of all the businesses in Portland. Everything from the soap carvers to SOAP developers.
Interested in having your company or product reviewed? Contact Kevin Spence at Portland Small Business.
PortlandSmallBusiness.com is a collaborative website, where members of the Portland small business community can go for peer advice and network. In addition to interacting in the forum, all members can post articles and place their business in the directory.
For more information, see Portland Small Business.
Word around the campfire It has been confirmed that CD Baby is looking for a short-term Chief Operating Officer (COO). Details about the position are as follows:
CD Baby (cdbaby.com) is looking for a short-term COO with possibility of becoming President.
CD Baby is one of the largest sellers of independent music online, providing retail sales and digital distribution for 200,000 musicians, with over $60M in sales. (And despite what you hear about the rest of the industry, sales are up 35% over last year, here.)
80 employees: 35 warehouse, 30 customer service, 5 digital distribution, 4 managers, and a few mysterious elves.
No music experience needed. We’ve got plenty of musicians here, and are looking for someone with a long proven history leading companies of a similar size, showing drastic operational improvements in a short timeframe.
Some of the areas you’ll be focusing on will be: developing and streamlining processes, improving customer service metrics, and leading the employees through the changes.
We’re looking for you to develop the plan, put it in action, and define the results.
This is a 3-month intensive project and pays $50,000.
You will report directly to CD Baby owner/founder Derek Sivers, and need to provide measurements to prove your operational improvements.
To apply, please send specifics of your history of operational improvements in a leadership role, whether COO, VP, President, or CEO – to jobs@CompassHumanResources.com.
Portland-based CD Baby describes itself as a “little online record store that sells albums by independent musicians.” That little store also happens to be one of the largest sellers of independent music on the Web. It is brother (or possibly sister) to Film Baby and Host Baby.
More information will be posted when available. In the meantime For more information about CD Baby, please refer to the CD Baby site or the CDBaby Wikipedia page for additional information.
It’s official! Ignite Portland has set its date and location: October 25 at Wieden+Kennedy.
We have a confirmed date and venue! Ignite Portland will happen on Thursday, October 25, 2007, at Wieden & Kennedy (224 NW 13th Ave, Portland, OR). Exact time TBD, but it will be in the evening, around 6PM to 9PM. The WK space is AMAZING – many thanks to Renny Gleeson and everyone at Wieden & Kennedy for being willing to host us.
That means you (yes, you) have got stuff to do, like:
For more information, see the Ignite Portland site. To stay up-to-date on the latest news, subscribe to the Ignite Portland feed.