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Calagator, the PDX tech calendar, snaps to life

Calagator, the community project designed to give Portland one tech calendar to rule them all, has quickly begun to show signs of progress. In fact, events have begun populating the calendar already.

How is this possible? Well, in addition to a bunch of hard work by a bunch of talented folks, this rapid development is thanks in no small part to the Calagator team’s choice to adopt microformats for importing event information, specifically hCal.

So let the importing (and bug reporting) begin!

For more information on importing your Portland tech events into Calagator, see the Calagator blog.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Sometimes, a link says more than I could ever say. Here are some fragrant little buds I’ve found recently, courtesy of ma.gnolia.

Snagging Jobs on Facebook

Portland-based StepChange Group has released a new Facebook app for client SnagAJob. The app was built on Rails and leverages the RFacebook interface to the Facebook API.

MetroFi seeks emergency cash for wireless network

The Silicon Valley company that has been building Portland’s free citywide wireless network won’t finish unless the city hands over as much as $9 million.

Ignite Portland

From Peat Bakke: “My presentation is about “Beauty in Abandonment” — it’s about photographing abandoned places and things in the Portland area. I’ll also be wandering around, helping people register, find seats, and answering questions about the whole shebang. “

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Sometimes, a link says more than I could ever say. Here are some fragrant little buds I’ve found recently, courtesy of ma.gnolia.

Got to play with a MacBook Air Today

At today’s Ignite Portland planning lunch, Raven brought his wife Mara’s MacBook Air – the one he ordered from her from the expo floor at Macworld, immediately after it was announced in Steve Jobs’ keynote.

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

BarCamp Portland 2008 dates announced

It’s still three months off, but I’m happy to report that BarCamp Portland, our local BarCamp gathering, has announced the dates and location for the 2008 event: May 2-4 at CubeSpace.

Tech + Geek + Culture. The event for the Portland tech community, produced BY the Portland tech community. Interesting topics, cool people, and great networking opportunities. Always free to attend.

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants.

The name BarCamp was inspired as a complement to FooCamp.

BarCamp Portland is managed by the Legion of Tech (the same great folks behind Ignite Portland). For more information, visit BarCamp Portland. To RSVP, visit the BarCamp Portland on Upcoming.

Additional BarCamp Portland coverage can be found on Dawn Foster’s Fast Wonder blog.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Sometimes, a link says more than I could ever say. Here are some fragrant little buds I’ve found recently, courtesy of ma.gnolia.

How I’d like to use Twitter for work

Could we be seeing some early thoughts around extending the functionality of Jive Software’s Clearspace?

“As I’ve been using Twitter, I’ve realized that there are some posts I make (or that I’d like to make) that are related to the work I’m currently doing. For example, I’ll post a URL that I’d want the people working on Clearspace 2.0 and our PR Agency to see.”

Finally, A Fast Wonder Redesign

Dawn Foster’s Fast Wonder gets a new look. Read here post about the how and why.

Leaving Nokia, Joining MyStrands

Dr. Joseph McCarthy, former Principal Scientist at Nokia Research Center Palo Alto, has joined Corvallis-based MyStrands as Principal Instigator.

OEN: Take a ride on the bus.

The OEN CEO Bus Tour is coming up this Friday and it should be not only fun but interesting too. The first stop will be at Vesticon, a company whose mission it is to cure Vertigo.

Oregon 2007 VC Investments Significantly Higher

Oregon ranked #16 compared to other states in 2007 venture capital investment-dollars, with $301 million invested in 40 deals.

For all you software development nerds

Kevin Spence of Portland Small Business posts: “I just saw this on my feed reader this morning. The Impact of Component Modularity on Design Evolution: Evidence from the Software Industry authored by Alan MacCormack, John Rusnak, and Carliss Y. Baldwin.”

Vimeo Search Improvements

Portland’s own Dalas Verdugo posts on search improvements to Vimeo: “Now when you search for videos and people on Vimeo, you have more options for sorting and filtering your search results. These new options will help you to refine your search and pinpoint exactly what you’re looking for.”

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Portland Startup Weekend, May 23 – 25, 2008

I am happy to report that details on Portland Startup Weekend have just been announced. The event will be held May 23-25, 2008, at SMtvMusic.

Portland Startup WeekendNow, that’s not only Memorial Day weekend, it’s also pretty darn close to WebVisions 2008, which runs May 22-23, 2008, in Portland.

Oregon-native and Startup Weekend organizer, Andrew Hyde, has promised that he has a few surprises up his sleeve for this one.

I, for one, am looking forward to doing whatever I can to make this event a success for Startup Weekend—and Portland. And I hope you’ll join the fun.

(To help promote this event, feel free to use the Startup Weekend badge above.)

Just as Portland has made Ignite Portland an overwhelming success and promises to make Lunch 2.0 a Portland-flavored affair, I’m sure we can show the Startup Weekend folks how Portland puts its own unique spin on these types of events.

Tickets for Startup Weekend Portland will be sold here for $40. This is really a RSVP cost, and you will receive your fair share of food, swag and memories. If you or your company is interested in sponsoring a meal, shirts or massive amounts of caffeine, email sponsor@startupweekend.com.

For more information, see Portland Startup Weekend. To reserve your spot at Portland Startup Weekend, buy a ticket.

Grabb.it releases API, documentation

Portland-based Grabb.it, the music service that helps users share and rate MP3s, has announced the release of a rich RESTful API for accessing its data.

The primary resource type Grabb.it makes available is the playlist. We make playlists available in many formats, at many endpoints. We also have a few methods to manipulate and generate playlists. This document details the formats, endpoints (access urls) and uses of Grabb.it playlists.

Documentation on the API is available on a new Grabb.it API Google Group. For more information, visit Grabb.it.

SplashCast reports metrics, hits the 200 million views mark

Portland-based SplashCast, makers of the media widget that allows anyone to create their own channels of content, has just crossed the 200 million views mark, rapidly eclipsing the 100 million views mark they hit just nine weeks ago.

Another impressive metric, SplashCast is reporting that they have more than 8.5 million unique users.

“That likely puts SplashCast in the top 20 of widget providers on comScore’s widget metrix chart,” said Mike Berkley, CEO of SplashCast.

For more information, visit SplashCast.

Silicon Florist’s links arrangement

Sometimes, a link says more than I could ever say. Here are some fragrant little buds I’ve found recently, courtesy of ma.gnolia.

Screencast: Welcome to AboutUs

As another step towards making available great help resources for wiki editors and vistors, we have created our first screencast, called Welcome to AboutUs. Over the next few weeks, we plan to create many more screencasts, to compliment all of the existing help information. We would love your comments both on this screencast and on which topics you think we ought to be covering first as we develop more.

VanPortlander: Portland Mobile Newspapers

For the past several months I’ve used a Blackberry to read a lot of content during my commute. One thing that has become apparent is that local newspaper websites aren’t created equal when viewed from a mobile device – some work just fine and some downright suck.

OregonStartups.com News: Startup Weekend Coming to Portland

May 24-26 is Startup Weekend Portland. So what is Startup Weekend? Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of small business entrepreneurs to build a community and company in a weekend.

Reminder: The Big Idea Bash, Wednesday, January 30, 2008

To start out the year with a bang, Credit Suisse, manager of the Oregon Investment Fund, invites you to meet and exchange big business ideas with entrepreneurs and investors. Enjoy drinks and food on us while initiating conversations with some of the brightest business minds in the Northwest. Now is the time to make partnerships and grow your business. It’s set to be the business event of the year.

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia

Iterasi launches at DEMO 2008

[Full disclosure: Iterasi is one of my clients which may taint my objectivity. For other reviews of the tool, see coverage in CenterNetworks, Profy, VentureBeat, Webware, and Web Worker Daily.]

Vancouver, Washington, based Iterasi has been working in stealth mode for the last six months. (So stealthy, in fact, that my friends and family have, to date, only known them as “double secret probation.”) Today, Iterasi was finally able to start talking about their offering, unveiling an early—yet highly functional—version of their product at DEMO 2008.

They will be the only Silicon-Forest-based company taking the stage at DEMO, this week.

So what does the Iterasi do? It saves Web pages.

Sounds simple. But, these days? Not so much.

Given the dynamic nature of today’s Web sites—AJAX, CSS, dynamic HTML, widgets, database-driven content—“saving a page” is a little more difficult than it seems like it should be.

But Iterasi makes it incredibly easy, enabling the user to save the exact page he or she is seeing. No matter how many little AJAX balloons may have been opened or what personal information has been provided.

When Iterasi saves the page, it’s in its native format. It’s HTML. So all of the links still work. All of the CSS is still there. So you get to see all of the content, in context, and work with it, instead of just looking at it.

In addition to saving pages, Iterasi offers a scheduler that allows you to capture the same page over time:

You can also schedule automatic capture of a page at regular intervals. We believe that capturing the same page over time will highlight the differences among notarized versions. And we think that type of comparison will be great for competitive intelligence and other online research. Some people will use it to monitor their kid’s MySpace page over time, others to take an extended look at Craigslist search results for a town they might move to.

For more information, to see a demo, or to sign up for an invitation to future BETA versions of Iterasi, visit Iterasi. To keep tabs on what the company is doing, visit the Iterasi blog.

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