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Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 20

Rick Turoczy on October 20, 2008

The trouble with social media is, well, people.

Via ITS insider “The individual in question, Chris Kalini, along with his wife Jessa, are both what we’ve come to know as ‘Gen Y’ employees. Chris is a web designer and now happily employed at Euro RSCG as a front-end web developer/designer. The problem with Chris is, well, he blogs his life. Everything gets published– from playing pool, to helping friends move, to ordering pizza, to cooking with Jessa. Did anyone expect him not to blog losing his job?”

See These Talks at Ignite Portland 4 at Ignite Portland

Via the Ignite Portland blog “Man, that was TOUGH. We received over 50 talk ideas for Ignite Portland 4. The vast majority of them were really, really good. But we only have room for 13 talks on stage at the Bagdad (plus the traditional ‘What is Ignite?’ talk). So before I announce what those 13 talks are going to be, I just want to give a HUGE “Thank You!” to everyone who submitted a talk that wasn’t chosen.”

October is a month of many conferences

Selena Deckelmann writes “I just blogged about WhereCampPDX, and am enjoying a few days of quiet before heading out to Google for the Summer of Code Mentor’s summit this coming weekend. I was so busy I didn’t have much time to blog about the PostgreSQL Conference West. “

Announcing MIDIator

Ben Bleything writes “I was just looking at my FeedBurner statistics and noticed that my feed readership has gone up by approximately 100 in the past year. Then I looked at my blog and realized I hadn’t posted anything Ruby-related in 2008. Then I remembered that I’m a Ruby programmer and decided to release some software for the express purpose of blogging an announcement. Okay, not really. Well. The last part is mostly a lie. I guess. On to the point…”

Ideademic

Via Ideademic “And just like that, Elementary becomes Ideademic. Here’s to a moment of evolution among our medley of firsts, iterations and lessons that we’ve experienced over the last four months. We write to share the stories of Ideademic, past and present, and shed a little light on our up to now decidedly vague startup.”

Jama Software Wins Bend Venture Conference

Via Techvibes “Jama Software won the Bend Venture Conference on friday. They were part of the 5 companies which presented business pitches to the 250 people who went to the conference. Jama provides an webservice which facilitates collaborative software product development.”

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Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 18

Rick Turoczy on October 18, 2008

Oregon VC investment cools modestly – Silicon Forest

Mike Rogoway writes “In a small state like Oregon, which doesn’t get much venture capital, no single quarter (or even a single year) is enough to draw any conclusions about funding trends. But it’s encouraging that each of the past two years have been strong.”

Garett Croft Stenson – a TRIBUTE to db clay.

Garett Croft Stenson writes “I began hand making wallets back in the sticky summer of 1998. I simply made them as a hobby at first and gave them out as novelty gifts to those close to me. I then moved back to Portland, they soon caught on fire, and I immediately found myself asking the question, ‘How do I make these things better and faster?'”

451 CAOS Theory » VC funding for open source down 12% in Q3

Via The 451 Group “The decline is not exactly unexpected. The overall market was down nearly 6% according to figures from The National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters, while there was bound to be some hangover for open source following the most successful quarter ever in Q1 and solid growth in Q2.”

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Get your text on: Shizzow adds SMS

Rick Turoczy on October 17, 2008

ShizzowOur favorite local location-based social networking service, Portland-based Shizzow, has had great uptake around the local area. And with good reason. It’s a really simple and effective way to keep tabs on who is where when.

But one thing has been holding it back for some folks: the fact that you’ve had to use a mobile Web browser to update your Shizzow location.

Well, not for much longer, my friend. Because Shizzow just announced a beta release that enables you to shout updates via SMS:

We’ve tested it as much as we can, but we need for you to try it out and let us know if you find any issues or have suggestions for how we can make it better. Until I perfect that mind reading device I’ve been working on in my garage, we can’t fix the bugs that you forget to tell us about! Log all of your suggestions on our Get Satisfaction page.

Want to try to out SMS for yourself? You’re going to have to configure your profile, add some nicknames, and learn some new lingo:

Available Commands and Abbreviations

#message (#m) – Add a message to a shout.

(#s) – Shout from a favorite place.

Shout from a Place

Format:
shzow #s {place nickname}

Example:
shzow #s happyplace

Shout from a Place with a Message

Format:
shzow #s {place nickname} {message}

Example 1 (explicit)
shzow #s happyplace #m here til noon

Example 2 (implicit)
shzow #s happyplace here til noon

Send (re-shout) a new Message from your Current Location

Format:
shzow #m {message}

Example:
shzow #m here til noon

So get to trying it. And give Shizzow your feedback.

What’s that? You’re in the Portland area and you don’t have a Shizzow account? Comment below and I’ll send you an invite.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 17

Rick Turoczy on October 17, 2008

Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy

Paul Graham writes “The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the mid seventies. When Microsoft and Apple were founded.”

Downtown Portland Restaurant, West Cafe, Offers Dinner Twitter Promotion

West Cafe offers “Portland Twitterati are invited to spend some quality time at the West Cafe, a fine downtown Portland dining and drinking establishment. Because we’ve begun to experience such a positive response to our involvement with the Twitter community, we wanted to ‘Thank You’ by offering Twitters a special dinner deal.”

Apply to the Knight News Challenge

Andrew Hyde writes “$5,000,000 is being given away to fund innovative ideas that address the following points: Use or create digital, open-source technology as the code base, use news and information to serve the public interest, benefit one or more specific geographic communities, and be innovative.” Um, hello? I can’t swing a piece of bacon without hitting 20 Portland startups that qualify for this.
(The hardest of the 4. A map mashup

Would You Like a Job as an Online Community Manager?

Marshall Kirkpatrick writes “One of the services that I provide for consulting clients is assistance in recruiting bloggers and social media experts for hire. In the past 2 months I’ve helped 3 companies find company bloggers or community managers. Right now I’m working on a list of 3 to 5 high-quality candidates for a community management position for a very innovative and cool startup.”

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Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 16

Rick Turoczy on October 16, 2008

The Power of Making People Look Good | Positively Glorious!

Skip to the bottom where John Metta reveals the formation of a new blog covering the Gorge tech scene: “[O]ver the next couple weeks, I’m slowly building up the infrastructure for a way to Engage The Gorge (Site launch scheduled for November 1st). It’ll start small, because that’s all I can do. It’ll just be an article here and there thanking someone for what they’re doing. Just some quick write-ups and podcasts helping to make people look good.”

5 Early Recommendation Technologies That Could Shake Up Their Niches – ReadWriteWeb

Marshall Kirkpatrick writes “International recommendation technology provider Strands has announced the five finalists in the Strands $100K Call for Recommender Start-Ups. From music to video to pharmaceutical drug development recommendations, these plucky startups from all around the world will now present at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Recommender Systems 2008 conference in Switzerland and one will be offered a $100k investment from Strands.”

Break-in at Free Geek – Silicon Forest

Mike Rogoway writes “Free Geek’s Kevin Berg tells me this morning that someone broke in to the group’s Southeast Portland thrift shop early yesterday morning and stole a Mac.”

WhereCamp PDX Arrivals

Via the WhereCamp PDX blog “On Friday evening, WhereCampPDX kicks-off with an art opening at Olympic Mills! The exhibition is called Equilibrium, the Human Mashup and presents artworks that explore the ways art and technology deal with Momentum, Maintenance, Multiplicity, and Mobility.”

Tweaks of the Week: Sorting messages, favorites, and more

Via the Shizzow blog “We made a few enhancements and some bug fixes this week as proof that we really do read all of that stuff that you post for us on Get Satisfaction.”

Portland Java Users Group joins ORBlogs Effort

Via the Oregon Blogs blog “For a little while, things were starting to seem disappointing in the ORBlogs effort. I origionally shot for Oct. 1st to get the BigBark code running, giving us a near immediate availability of the aggregator and Digg ranking. However, the time I’ve spent away from Java has made that nearly impossible. So we started talking about what the best options are, and if we should step back from the BigBark code at all.”

CyborgCamp PDX will be on Saturday, Dec 6th, 2008 | Hazelnut Tech Talk

Amber Case writes “The date’s been set. Due to scheduling conflicts (including the event being really close to Thanksgiving) CyborgCamp Portland will be held on December 6th, 2008, at Portland’s CubeSpace.”

Coffee with an expert

Via the LaunchPad Coworking blog “For this installment, a virtual chat with Carolynnn Duncan, founder of CoffeeWithAnExpert, an online/offline way for entrepreneurs to find the right person with a skill that can solve a micro-problem in their business. Duncan has been partnering with coworking spaces [like Portland’s CubeSpace] to offer her program.”

Entrepreneurs and…Hey, There’s A Shiny New Thing!

Via OnStartups “If you’re one of those rare entrepreneurs that has the discipline to stay reasonably focused on what you should be working on, feel free to skip the rest of this article with the comforting knowledge that you have my admiration and envy.”

10 Reasons Every Entrepreneur Should Have A Gym Membership… And Use It. | Internet Astronauts :: Bootstrap Startup Blog

Darius Monsef writes “As an internet entrepreneur you never have enough time complete all the things you have on your list get done. Often working out is not high up on that list, but I’m going to encourage you to put it up there at the top… Membership fees cost around $20-50 a month and I promise you you’ll get a great return on your investment of cash and time. Have more energy, feel better, be happy, sleep better, be more successful…”

Eclipse DemoCamps November 2008/Portland – Eclipsepedia

Via the Eclipse Foundation “During November 2008, we are inviting individuals to organize and attend Eclipse DemoCamps around the world. The Eclipse DemoCamps are an opportunity to showcase all of the cool interesting technology being built by the Eclipse community. They are also an opportunity for you to meet Eclipse enthusiasts in your city. You don’t need to be a software developer to attend!”

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Lunch and Unexpected Careers at the Art Institute

Rick Turoczy on October 16, 2008

Yesterday, the Art Institute of Portland graciously hosted what looked like about 175 people in their aptly titled “open space”.

We came for the lunch, but got an unexpected bonus, a career fair. Turns out the “open space” is so ginormous it can house two events at the same time, very nicely.

Some explanation: the AI was holding a career fair for their students in the same space as Lunch 2.0, overlapping us by about an hour or so. Aside from a little confusion, sharing the space, separated by portable wall-boards worked really well. It may have been fortuitous for at least a few people attending Lunch 2.0, since I heard one group mention they were looking for design interns.

The format was a bit different this time, mostly by accident. This was the first lunch table style setting, which seemed to work well for conversations, even though it crimped the milling around time we usually get.

Also, since the career fair was in full swing when we started the lunch, it was too noisy to do my usual five second, stumbing intro and the host’s welcome. So, we did them later, after people had eaten and the noise had died down a bit. I actually think this is a better format, not that there’s a playbook or anything, just an observation.

This Lunch 2.0 featured a swag drawing for Art Institute gear, won by Bill Jackson and Manuel Espino.

Thanks to Allena Baker, Lulu Hoeller and the Art Institute for hosting a highly successful and enjoyable Lunch 2.0, and to Bram for connecting the dots for us.

And finally, thanks to Don Park for providing some shots (and a video), in the absence of the unofficial Lunch 2.0 photographer, Aaron Hockley, who apparently is on vacation. If you liked the food, the event was catered by Kam & Kam Catering.

Upcoming Portland Lunches 2.0

  • November 5 at the Eclipse Foundation
  • January 14 in the ‘burbs at the new OTBC offices in the Beaverton Round

Looks like we may be unintentionally taking December off, unless someone out there wants to host a Lunch 2.0 in December. Interested? Let me know in comments.

Of course, other comments and inquires should also be directed to the comments.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 15

Rick Turoczy on October 15, 2008

Geek of the Week: Selena Deckelmann

Via .51 “I first met Selena Deckelmann at a Code-n-Splode meeting here in Portland, Oregon. Code-n-Splode is a monthly meeting of women who are programmers. The ‘code’ is obvious; the ‘splode’ is what we do afterward with beer and local grub. Selena was one of the founding members, and she graciously agreed to an interview here on dotFiveOne.”

Portland Tech Twitter

Via AboutUs “It’s no secret that Portland has one of the most dynamic Twitter communities in the country, if not the world. The multitude of interesting conversations, absorbing events, and just plain cool tech people to be found via the Portland twitterverse (including a wiki-built Twitter dictionary, for all those not up on the geeky lingo) is truly astounding.”

Legion of Tech Happy Hour Meetup with Waffles Oct. 23rd

Via Legion of Tech “Todd had the best description of this event on Twitter: ‘Sweet waffles, savory waffles, beer, wine, art & geeks all converging in a glorious orgy of awesome.'”

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Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for October 14

Rick Turoczy on October 14, 2008

 

SLL: An Interview with Oregoniansteve | Our PDX Network

Cami Kaos writes “But first, an introduction. I’m CamiKaos, and with my husband DrNormal as my co-host we record a weekly podcast. Strange Love Live is something we’ve been doing together for almost a year. It’s recorded right here in Portland every Friday night, and thanks to Betsy, I’m going to be posting a new episode here each week. “

WorthWorkingFor | Inspiring the Inspirers, and because work doesn’t always have to suck.

A new blog from Elliot Swan covering inspirational workspace designs.

Gail Ann Williams on Community from Love@First Website at Fast Wonder Blog: Consulting, Online Communities, and Social Media

Dawn Foster writes “I’m spending the morning at iSite’s Love@First Website Conference here in Portland. I was impressed with Gail Ann Williams’ presentation about building online community. She was an early participant at The WELL and is currently the Director of Communities at Salon.com. Here are my raw notes from Gail’s presentation. In other words these are my notes about her words (not my words), so hopefully, I managed to get most of it right with only a few typos.”

Coffee with Likemind, October 17th at 8am – Substance

Via the Substance blog “As the title states, it’s this Friday, October 17th at 8am. Stop in the Stumptown Ace (1026 SW Stark), grab your beverage, then make your way over to the lobby of the Ace Hotel to meet other likeminded folks.”

DrupalPDX November Meeting | groups.drupal.org

Via DrupalPDX “We’re now meeting at the offices of OpenSourcery at 711 SE Ankeny St. Portland, OR 97214. Steve Edwards will be doing a presentation on using Übercart to build e-commerce sites. After the meeting we’ll probably head to the Green Dragon for a food and drink.”

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Vidoop banks on, well, banks

Rick Turoczy on October 14, 2008

VidoopMany know Portland-based Vidoop—yes, they DO have a new look—as purveyor of OpenID provider myVidoop and home to the DiSo Project, “an umbrella project for a group of open source implementations of distributed social networking concepts.”

But Vidoop also has a number of revenue generating tricks in its bag, from the advertising that comprises its ImageShield to the enhanced security products that it sells.

Today at Finovate, Vidoop launched a new suite of those security products targeted at financial institutions, healthcare organizations, and corporations. And for banks in particular, Vidoop highlights that they offer “three options for providing strong authentication for accessing Web sites.”

The announcement appears to be striking a chord. According to Banktastic, “Your bank or credit union NEEDS to look into this.”

Of course, the real magic of Vidoop’s easy to implement, tough to defeat, advertising-supported security is that it not only reduces implementation and maintenance costs, it actually provides another way for businesses to generate revenue.

The ImageShield provides advertisers the opportunity to sponsor images within certain categories. Customers who choose to enable advertising-supported logins can obtain Vidoop’s increased security at little or no cost, and in some cases, generate revenue through the sponsored images.

“Not only can financial institutions potentially make money using Vidoop, but they can also realize substantial savings through customer service,” said Mitch Savage, Vidoop’s Executive Vice President, Business Development. “The number one call to most customer support centers is login issues. Vidoop provides an easier way for users to remember passwords with images, and now we have two additional ways they can authenticate without requiring expensive call center support.”

For more from Mitch on Vidoop’s new offering, here’s an interview from Finovate:

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For more information, visit Vidoop.

[Updated] Sadly Jive Software layoffs confirmed

Rick Turoczy on October 14, 2008

[UPDATE 4] Portland Business Journal “Jive layoffs are ‘market response'”

[UPDATE 3] Mike Rogoway of The Oregonian talks to Sam Lawrence about the layoffs.

[UPDATE 2] Sam Lawrence, Chief Marketing Officer at Jive, via Twitter:

Jive cost reduction via Sam Lawrence on Twitter

[UPDATE] Chris Kalani provides insight, confirming that there were layoffs today at Jive.

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but in this case, I feel an obligation to report it.

I’ve been hearing rumors about Jive Software for a few weeks now. Enough so that I’ve asked for comment from Jive on what’s going down.

They haven’t been at liberty to respond. So I haven’t written anything.

Well, I just wanted to let you know that the rumors have escalated exponentially today.

Something is going down. And it doesn’t appear to be good. But I can’t confirm that.

I’ll let you know when I hear more. Again, I’m not looking to further the rumors, but there’s too much activity for this to be a coincidence.

If you have any insight, it would be appreciated.

In the meantime, I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for the folks at Jive.

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