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Category: Services

Black Tonic: The tonic for what ails shared online presentations and Web conferencing

HTML and Javascript? No Flash? No plugins? Black Tonic just works. And because it uses basic technology to work its magic that means it will even run on an iPhone.

Sometime, somwhere, you’ve tried to share a presentation with someone else. You know you have. And every time you have, you’ve wound up tearing your hair out, haven’t you? It’s okay. You’re among friends. You can be honest.

I know. You’ve tried that Web conferencing stuff. You’ve tried emailing them a PDF. You’ve tried simply calling them to review a hard copy. But it never ever works the way you expect that it should. If only there were a better way….

Well, now there is. Portland-based Black Tonic. Read More

iPhone developers rejoice: Urban Airship launches push notification beta

Portland-based Urban Airship, the little company that’s going to help iPhone app developers scale in big ways, has announced that they are now accepting participants as part of their beta program for Apple Push Notification Services.

Portland-based Urban Airship, the little company that’s going to help iPhone app developers scale in big ways, has announced that they are now accepting participants as part of their beta program for Apple Push Notification Services.

If you’re a developer working on an iPhone app and you want to take advantage of iPhone OS 3.0 features, I’d highly suggest you check it out. Even if you’re not, the whole setup is pretty impressive. Read More

Tap tap: Urban Airship celebrates launch of iPhone OS 3.0 with Tapulous deal

Today as Apple makes iPhone OS 3.0 available, Urban Airship announces a deal with Tapulous makers of the insanely popular Tap Tap Revenge that will enable the game to support the latest iPhone 3.0 features.

Okay. I have to admit, I thought it was a big deal when Portland-based Urban Airship launched at WWDC and announced Portland-based Subatomic Studios as their first customer.

But just wait until you hear this.

Today as Apple makes iPhone OS 3.0 available, Urban Airship announces a deal with Tapulous—makers of the insanely popular Tap Tap Revenge—that will enable the game to support the latest iPhone 3.0 features. Read More

Shizzow starts shouting in the Bay Area

ShizzowPortland-based Shizzow—the service designed to help you find and meet up with friends as quickly and easily as possible—has had a good run in the Portland area. But now, they’re feeling the need to stretch their horizons a bit.

And where better for a cool Web-based and SMS-friendly app to stretch than the Bay Area? Um. Well, nowhere, really. So, starting today, Shizzow has decided to expand its “heretofore relegated to the Silicon Forest” user base to include our friends in San Francisco and the surrounding area.

Now, granted, our friends to the south get to test this kind of thing more often than most. Why should they take a look at Shizzow? According to the folks at Shizzow—arguably the best ones to respond—there are a number of reasons their service is different.

But the one that strikes me—an active Shizzow user—as the most poignant is this one:

We developed Shizzow to solve a specific need: the desire to find our friends and hang out with them. The other services had so much clutter that we weren’t able to effectively solve our need using any of the existing location-based applications.

If you’re in the Silicon Forest and haven’t had a chance to try Shizzow yet, drop a comment below and I’ll get you on board. Same goes for our Shizzow neighbors in the Silicon Valley. Or you can always go straight to the source.

With your help, finding Portland events may soon get a lot easier

Many of us here in the old Silicon Forest have bemoaned the overlapping of interesting events happening in town. And the lack of one single place to go for event information only exacerbates the problem. (That’s right, I said “exacerbates.” I’m not afraid.)

On any given day, we’re jumping from Upcoming to Meetup to specific sites, trying to figure out what the heck is happening where and when with tech-type folks in Portland and the surrounding areas.

Enter Audrey Eschright (@spinnerin for you Twitter types) and the Portland Tech Calendar project.

Eschright has gathered a group of folks together—currently hovering around 20 members—in hopes of building a single resource for all of the tech events happening in Portland. Using Google Groups as the foundation, the service promises to pull feeds, consolidate information, and allow for the posting of new events.

I’m in the group, and I’d love to see you in there, too.

For more information, sign up for the Portland Tech Calendar project.