Portland startup and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
It’s not often that fledgling startups get the chance to stand in front of a group of venture capitalists and pitch their ideas.
But that’s exactly the idea behind the Big Idea Bash, sponsored by the Oregon Investment Fund and hosted by the State Treasurer of Oregon, Ben Westlund, Wednesday night at the Olympic Mills Commerce Center: Read More
Remember that other rant at which I was hinting in my last rant? No? Well whether your remember it or not, here we go.
I’ve been concerned lately. Bad economy. Tightening budgets. Volunteer run events relying on sponsors. Not exactly a proven recipe for success.
There’s the bigger volunteer-run events like the Legion of Tech events, Open Source Bridge, WordCamp Portland, and Beer and Blog—and then there are any number of smaller events like Portland Web Innovators, PDX Critique, Refresh Portland, PDX Wiki Wednesday, user groups, yadda yadda yadda. Read More
It never fails. All it takes is the first glimpse of that burning orb up in the sky and the first warm spell. And suddenly every Oregonian is sprinting to the local garden store, grabbing their shovels, and frantically tilling their backyard beds or their local community gardens.
But come summer and early fall, what happens? That’s right: too many zucchini.
Enter Portland-based Veggie Trader, a social swapping site that uses the Web to help overbearing gardeners… err gardens share their bounty with others—and get vegetables they can use in return. Read More
You never know. There might be something to this whole iPhone thing and Portland.
Today, Portland-based Lexcycle was acquired by a little bookstore up in Seattle called Amazon.
“We are excited to join forces with a company that has innovated on behalf of readers for over a decade and is a pioneer in ebooks,” the company stated in a blog post. “Like Amazon, we believe there is a lot of innovation ahead for ebooks and we could not think of a better company to join during this exciting time.” Read More
With Portland-based GadgetTrak, Mac and mobile users have been a little spoiled. You see, they’ve had access to GadgetTrak’s theft recovery software for a while now. Windows-based users, however? They were still openly susceptible to laptop theft without much hope of recovery.
Until now.
Today, Windows laptop and netbook users are finally getting the same protection as the Mac and mobile folks: GadgetTrak has launched for Windows. Read More
Seems like we’re going to need to change our tune about venture capital firms not being interested in Portland, Oregon, and the Silicon Forest.
Mike Rogoway over at The Oregonian reveals that DFJ Frontier in partnership with Capybara Ventures has opened another office for early stage venture capital—right here in Portland, Oregon. Read More
There are tons of great blogs around the Silicon Forest. And, by extension, that means we have a bunch of great bloggers. So it stands to reason that, every once in a while, one of those bloggers makes the leap from the farm leagues to the big show.
The latest to make the jump? Kelly “Verso” Guimont, who just got the call to join The Unofficial Apple Weblog—affectionately known as TUAW—as a new writer. Read More
Every once in a while, I get something stuck in my craw that causes me to get up on my high horse. Sometimes I then convince that high horse to climb up on a soapbox. And then I take on a holier-than-thou stance and pontificate on something which has been irking me.
This would be one such occasion. (And, fair warning, there’s another one coming soon. [UPDATE] And here that rant is.)
Something has been bugging me. And if you’ve got a sec, I’d like to lay it all out there.
And to be candid, remember I’m only taking the time to bitch about it because I think we could be fixing something that would help the Web and mobile startups in the Silicon Forest get the recognition they so richly deserve.
And it’s really easy to fix. Read More
If there’s one thing we here in Portland love, it’s our Twitter. And it’s not just because the inimitable Rael Dornfest, Twitter’s user experience (UX) engineer, happens to live in Portland.
No, it’s something deeper than that. Twitter works for Portland’s dynamic. It meshes with our culture and our geekiness and our whatever.
And so it should come as absolutely no surprise that, when it comes to understanding Twitter, Silicon Forest startups come up with some interesting solutions. Like Portland-based Twitalyzer. And like the latest feature from Clicky, the lightweight yet extremely feature-heavy Web analytics tool. The new feature with which I’m so impressed? It’s called Twitter brand monitor. (Calm down, Dawn.) Read More
Remember Encyclopedia Brown? He was this kid detective who could always figure out random stuff using random clues? He was kind of like the MacGyver of the youth sleuth scene.
Well we had a little bit of a mystery going on ourselves tonight in the world of the Portland, Oregon, social media scene that needed some solving:
Who had taken home the honors from the Social Media Awards—the coveted SoMe Awards?
Read More
