.

Category: Portland

Mapdango mashes Digg, Flickr, FriendFeed, Wikipedia, and more into your maps

While mapping services are often one of the first places people start mucking with APIs and mashups, few take to it as well as Portland-based Cartosoft. Continuing to push the mapping mashup envelope, they’ve just announced the latest version of their award-winning flagship product, Mapdango.

Mapdango

From the Mapdango v2 post:

You spoke, emailed, and clicked – and we listened. After some relatively in-depth analysis for usage trends over the last four months or so, we custom-tailored mapdango to provide users with a better experience exploring different locations around the world.

So what’s new?

Well, what’s most important to a mashup? More stuff to mashup, of course. And Mapdango doesn’t disappoint. If it’s got an API available and some GIS info, it’s likely that it’s on Mapdango, now.

The Google Maps based tool now includes travel books from Amazon, news from Google News, weather from WeatherBug, photos from Panoramio, videos from YouTube, articles from Wikipedia, country demographic information from the US Census Bureau, geotagged Flickr photos, events from Eventful, social connections via Google Friend Connect (Mapdango was one of the early beta testers of the Friend Connect service), related news from Digg, links from FriendFeed, and “a whole bunch” of social bookmarking links.

To make things a little easier to digest, the single view map has now been split into three separate views: a dashboard, a map view, and a social view.

What’s more, they’ve added the ability to string queries through a URL, making it easier to bookmark and perform quick lookups:

We have made it even easier to add dynamic location links to mapdango. Simply add a URL-escaped location to the following URL, and mapdango will search for a location: http://www.mapdango.com/location.php?q=. For example, to search for Portland, Oregon, you would create a link to http://www.mapdango.com/location.php?q=Portland+Oregon.

All in all, this feature-rich release marks another leap forward for Mapdango and Cartosoft. And it serves as a positive reminder to the industry that—with the continued proclivity toward open data exchange—individuals hold the power to accumulate and manage tons of data within a single resource.

To try it for yourself, visit Mapdango. For more on the latest release, see the Mapdango v2 release post on the Cartosoft blog.

Portland Start-up Index for September 2008: Did Vidoop get lost on the Oregon Trail?

Didn’t we just have a Techvibes Portland Start-up Index a few weeks ago? Yes, we did. But Techvibes has decided to change the publication date, so we’ll be getting these at the beginning of the month.

Techvibes has changed a few other things, too.

And while the listings might be a little more cryptic now—and unfortunately lacking in indicators in regards to movement this time around—this effort continues to provide a interesting way to assess and discuss the local startup scene.

The biggest mover on this edition of the index? Pheedo rocketing up 33 slots to crack the top 20.

Strangest part of the new list? Vidoop has completely dropped off the index during the week that they’re relocating the entire company to Portland. NetworthIQ (acquired by Strands), MyOpenID (JanRain‘s OpenID relying party), and Workplace2go also disappeared from the list.

Portland Start-up Index for September 2008

  1. AboutUs
  2. MetaFilter
  3. Kongregate
  4. Discogs
  5. Digital Trends
  6. COLOURlovers
  7. Frappr!
  8. Jive Software
  9. SplashCast
  10. Platial
  11. Clicky
  12. Pheedo
  13. Earth Class Mail
  14. Sandy
  15. Gone Raw
  16. eROI
  17. Stikkit
  18. Attensa
  19. Active Reload
  20. Walker Tracker
  21. Grabb.it
  22. GadgetTrak
  23. iovation
  24. UrbanDrinks
  25. KnitMap
  26. Pibb
  27. ChoiceA
  28. Art Face Off
  29. LUNARR
  30. WeoGeo
  31. Iterasi
  32. FreeRange
  33. fmyi
  34. GoLife Mobile
  35. Rocketbook
  36. Picktastic
  37. Kryptiq
  38. Jama Software
  39. MomHub
  40. GreenRenter
  41. Goboz
  42. Lightfleet
  43. Imindi
  44. Cendix
  45. Vocal Nation
  46. Box Populi
  47. GoSeeTell
  48. Collaborative Software Initiative
  49. YourList
  50. Techchex
  51. Avnera
  52. Kumquat
  53. IDP Solutions
  54. Worldwide Nest

As always, the official metrics can be found at Techvibes.

Interested in seeing your Portland-based company on this list? You now have an automated way to add it. And make sure to drop the Techvibes folks a note, too.

Morph Labs transforms into a Portland company

Morph LabsIt’s no secret that Portland continues to attract talent. But, lately, we’re seeing both the city and the Silicon Forest as a whole, attract companies, too.

Vidoop is in the midst of a road trip that will relocate the entire company here to the Rose City. WeoGeo is in the process of becoming a Portland company. And, now—as Dawn Foster revealed during Strange Love Live—I’m happy to report that Morph Labs now calls Portland their US headquarters.

And like recent transplants Intrigo, Morph Labs has already jumped in with both feet by sponsoring the last Legion of Tech Happy Hour.

So, what does Morph Labs do?

Well according to CEO David Abramowski:

Our product is really a combined service. It brings together people, process and technology to provide an on-demand solution for hosting and running web applications. We take away all of the “muck” of dealing with servers, operating systems, backups, monitoring and provide it at a very low cost subscription rate. We have a free developers account and our paid service starts at $1/day.

The Morph service relies on Amazon Web Services—both EC2 and S3—and currently supports Ruby on Rails, Java web applications and Grails applications. PHP and Python support are planned for later this year.

The company—originally founded in the Philippines—has 35 employees, eight of whom reside in the US. But they’re looking to grow. And no doubt, that’s part of the appeal of Portland.

I’m looking forward to running into the Morph folks soon. If you beat me to it, please welcome them to town.

Morph Labs is the leading provider of Platform as a Service (PaaS) that virtualizes the application environment through the use of open source technologies to simplify the deployment, delivery, and management of Web based applications. They use virtual infrastructures including Amazon Web Services to provide a truly elastic environment for Web applications that can be instantly provisioned and seamlessly scaled. For more information, visit Morph Labs.

Silicon Forest Forum revs up the geek cred with Tesla founder, social media slot

Silicon Forest ForumNow in its seventh year, the Silicon Forest Forum has been one of the premiere local gatherings for venture capitalists and technology entrepreneurs to discuss the technologies that are driving development and businesses in the Silicon Forest.

And while the event has always had a “technology” bent, its focus on traditional high-tech pursuits left its perceived “geek cred” a bit lacking, at best.

But this year, they’re clearly working to erase that deficit.

First, they’re bringing in the CTO and Co-founder of Tesla Motors, Marc Tarpenning, to keynote the event. And I would have a hard time arguing that any other automotive company carries as much geek and green credibility as Tesla. (No word as to whether the Tesla Roadster will be making an appearance.)

Second, they’ve put social media on the docket with a panel entitled “Bloggers, Digital Media…..and the Business of Creating Content.” The panel features Harry McCracken, the former editor of PC World who now runs Technologizer, a blog that gives McCracken the freedom to exercise his journalistic muscle on technology topics of his choosing; Leander Kaheny, the news editor at Wired.com; and maybe—just maybe—some local flavor.

The Silicon Forest Forum will be held at the Intel Jones Farm Campus in Hillsboro on Friday, September 12. General registration is $125. Members of the SAO can register for $95. For more information, visit the Silicon Forest Forum or RSVP on Upcoming.

(Hat tip Sean Sullivan)

How do you get From Side Project to Startup?

So just how do you take a passion project and make it your full-time startup gig? It’s a common question. And a question any number of us have struggled to answer at some point.

And on September 12 and 13 at CubeSpace, a bunch of us are going to get together to try and figure it out with From Side Project to Startup.

The event will be a continuation of the discussion we started earlier this year at BarCamp Portland.

The seeds for ‘From Side Project to Startup’ were sown at a session of early May’s Bar Camp Portland. The conference generated a good amount of buzz, and brought up more questions than the time could answer.

And besides, I’d love to have you there as part of the discussion. So join us, won’t you?

You’ll notice the schedule includes a lot of ‘schmooze,’ snack, break and party time. With this as well as the unconference time to meet and discuss with people, it’s a goal of ‘From Side Project to Startup’ that a network of interested startups will form to provide each other with peer support and accountability. You can do it, keep going!

For more information, visit From Side Project to Startup. Or, if you’re already as excited about this as I am, go ahead and RSVP on Upcoming.

Silicon Florist podcast: Gnomedex, Sarah Lacy, and more on Friends of the Florist

Thanks for all the feedback on the first Silicon Florist podcast. I’m working to incorporate the feedback, but please, by all means, keep the critiques coming! I really, really appreciate it.

Now, let’s get on with the latest show. Some important links:

Think this podcast sucks? Well, why not try listening to some people who are much, much better than I at this whole podcasting thing: Strange Love Live with Shizzow.

Sarah Lacy swings by Portland

After a long weekend at Gnomedex and a—no doubt—“conversation crammed” late-night ride to Portland on the Iterasi Magic Bus, Sarah Lacy took time out of her travels to spend some time chatting with Portland folks at the Green Dragon, last night.

A number of folks got into some pretty in-depth conversations with Sarah. And from what I could hear, those chats made the trip well-worth Sarah’s time.

Sarah Lacy (@sarahcuda) on the Portland tweet up

The Portland stop on her junket was part of her User Generated Book Tour to promote Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good. And I’m proud to say that Portland was one of 13 cities that made the cut. Thanks, in no small part, to folks writing in and asking Sarah to stop by.

So thank you to all of the folks who wrote in and to all of you who took time out of your weekend to swing by and meet Sarah.

As I always say, I think it’s incredibly important for folks from outside of Portland and the Silicon Forest to meet the people who are doing cool things here. To get an understanding of what’s happening in our area. And to get them as excited about what we’re doing as we are.

I think we succeeded in doing that last night. And, I know Sarah really appreciated your being there, too.

But what if you couldn’t make it?

Buck up, little camper. Don’t be sad.

We’re already working—lobbying heavily, in fact—to get Sarah back to town soon.

And Sarah’s assistant, Olivia (who is from Portland), will be here in town for a few more days. So we’ll work on getting her out at some more of the Portland events.

Plus, Amber Case and Bram Pitoyo sat down to record a Hazelnut Tech Talk with Sarah, so you’ve got that going for you, too.

What’s that? Oh, the book?

Well, see here’s the thing. Sarah and Olivia had a few books and a couple of t-shirts and some stickers and stuff left. And they were going to have to check bags. And I knew that you would really like the book.

So, here’s what I did: I kinda bought them out.

And I was thinking of selling them on eBay—I mean, they’re signed and everything—but I like you more than eBay.

So I got this idea.

Join Friends of the Florist

You’ve been working hard and being good and whatnot. You deserve a little reward.

And then there’s me. I don’t really do anything and yet, every once in a while, I kind of stumble into some cool stuff. Like multiple copies of Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good, for example.

Seems like there’s some kind of disconnect here, doesn’t it?

I agree.

It struck me that, for all the nice things you do for me—like creating cool stuff for me to write about and showing up at cool events and being interesting—I’m not really pulling my weight.

So, I’ve started Friends of the Florist.

By joining Friends of the Florist, you’ll get the opportunity to receive random physical mailings from me from time to time. No spam. No ads. Just cool stuff—or at least stuff I think is cool—from people like you who are busting their proverbial humps to make cool things.

Well, and you’ll probably get some Silicon Florist stuff every once in a while, too.

You might get flowers. You might get a pony. Who knows?

First mailing? Four lucky winners will receive a signed copy of Sarah Lacy’s book, Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good.

Your obligation? I just need a physical address to which I can send the stuff. Well, and your trust that I’m not going to do anything nefarious with that information. (Which I won’t, Seeger.)

If the idea of getting some little rewards and nice things from Silicon Florist from time to time sounds like a good thing to you, simply sign up to be a Friend of the Florist.

New Iterasi release (now with Mac support) garners coverage and kudos from TechCrunch

Iterasi, the currently Vancouver-based but soon to be Portland-based company that allows you to create your own personal Web archive, has released the latest version of its service. And some people are taking notice. [Full disclosure: Iterasi is a client of mine.]

https://www.iterasi.net/embedded/?sqrlitid=VCTZ2q3oBEm2VERKCHW9ig

Who? Well, there’s a little blog called TechCrunch that deems the new release—with the addition of a scheduling feature—“a must have research tool. ”

Michael Arrington writes:

Overall Iterasi is an excellent service, and the schedule feature makes it a must have research tool.

So what does the new Scheduler offer?

Use the iterasi Scheduler to automatically Notarize pages when you tell it to, without having to be there to push the button. Set up the Scheduler to Notarize a page every day, week or month at a time that you choose. Great for tracking blogs, reviews, retail sites, and just about anything you can think of. Use the Scheduler to build your own history of any website!

But the biggest news (in my opinion)? They now have native Mac support for Firefox 2 and 3!

No more switching over to my Windows machine to save pages. With the latest release, I can do it right from my Mac. Simple.

Now, granted, I’m a little biased since Iterasi is a client, but I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see another Silicon Forest based company—joining the ranks of Vidoop and others—getting recognition on such an international stage.

Good for Iterasi. And good for Portland.

For more information, visit Iterasi. Or to download the the browser-based tools, register for an account.

To view my saved pages, visit the Silicon Florist public Iterasi page.

WordCamp Portland: It’s on!

WordCamp PortlandI’m happy to report that registration for WordCamp Portland is now open.

So, come on down all you WordPress-o-philes or WordPress curious types. And get all signed up to spend a full day discussing the WordPress platform, plugins, themes, RSS, and more with some of the Portland WordPress faithful.

Registration is $10. And that garners you a t-shirt. Well, and a really interesting conference experience:

WordCamp Portland will be held at CubeSpace on September 27th. You can head over to the Agenda page to check out the details, but we’ll kick things off with a couple large-group speakers including Lorelle Van Fossen as our keynote speaker. The middle of the day will feature several small-group breakout sessions with a variety of topics. Attendees can pose WordPress questions to our “Ask the Experts” panel before dinner [featuring yours truly in my ever popular “nodding and smiling but not really saying anything” role]. After dinner, we’ll have a bunch of rooms available for unconference-style sessions to be determined by the attendees on the day of the event.

But wait! There’s more! Fellow sponsor OurPDX hints at some other benefits of attending WordCamp Portland:

This all-day conference will cost you a mere 10 dollars – which includes a t-shirt, meals, and beer. Yes, there will be beer – in fact, Our PDX Network is more than happy to be ponying up for a keg (or two) to help support WordPress Portland…!

I know I speak for all the sponsors and organizers when I say that we’re looking forward to having you at WordCamp Portland. So why not take a couple of seconds to register? Space is limited. First come, first served.

Sunday Sunday Sunday! For one night only! Sarah Lacy swings through Portland

Once You're Lucky Twice You're GoodIt’s not often that Portland gets random “Internet famous” types swinging through town. I mean, yes, we have quite a few Internet famous types who live here, but we’re not often on the “swing through” route for those that don’t.

But this Sunday, we get one of those opportunities.

Sarah Lacy, arguably one of the most important voices—female or otherwise—in the world of Web 2.0 apps and startups, will be swinging through Portland as part of her User Generated Book Tour in support of Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0.

“Wait a second,” you’re saying. “On the Silicon Florist podcast, you said this gig was Monday Monday Monday!”

Well, you’re right. It was originally scheduled for Monday. But schedules being what they are, the event had to be moved up to Sunday. Same bat time, same bat brew pub. Just a different day.

But let’s get back to Sarah, shall we?

Lacy has been a reporter in Silicon Valley for nearly a decade, covering everything from the tiniest startups to the largest public companies. She writes a biweekly column for BusinessWeek.com called “Valley Girl” and is co-host of Yahoo! Finance’s Tech Ticker.

And the book? It’s been incredibly well received.

“Happily, one intrepid reporter, Sarah Lacy, stayed on — and she now has given us what will likely be the only real record of what happened during that remarkable era. Her portrayals of the founders of companies such as Facebook and Twitter are dead-on, and her reporting will no doubt be a vital source on this amazing time for generations to come. ”

– Michael S. Malone, author of Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World’s Greatest Company

So, much like the opportunity we had to meet with Garyvee not too long ago and like the missed opportunity with Charlene Li, I see this as a big opportunity for the entire Portland tech community to put its best foot forward in welcoming Sarah to town.

But there’s another important aspect to this. As much as I hate to admit it, there simply are not enough women’s voices in tech. Sarah is one of those voices, and a strong one at that. One that holds its own with the likes of Tara Hunt, Li, Kathy Sierra, and Kara Swisher.

Likewise, in Portland, I’ve always been terribly impressed by the number of incredibly strong women’s voices we have in our own tech scene. Voices like Dawn Foster, Audrey Eschright, Selena Deckelmann, and Amber Case to name just a very, very few.

And, this event—in my opinion—would be a really, really good opportunity to shine a spotlight on that wealth of female tech talent we have in town. And I would really like to see that happen.

As I’m sure would others.

So now, here comes my begging and pleading

In my opinion, this is one of those rare opportunities to give some new folks a view of what makes Portland so special. An opportunity to share our town. And an opportunity to give a brief glimpse into the incredible tech community in this town.

And you know, I’m all about making people appreciate what’s happening in the Portland tech scene.

I realize that it’s Sunday (trust me, I’ll be busting my hump to make it back to town after Gnomedex). And I realize that you may already have some stuff planned. And the shift in time doesn’t help.

But let’s try to make this happen, Portland.

So please join Sarah Lacy, me, and (hopefully) a full patio of people at the Green Dragon, Sunday, August 24 at 6:00 PM.

For more information or to RSVP, please see the Sarah Lacy Tweetup on Upcoming.