Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
File under “better late than never.”
I just realized that, earlier this month, Frederic Lardinois—an awesome tech blogger with whom I had the pleasure of working during a short stint at ReadWriteWeb—has joined the ranks of TechCrunch. Frederic lives Portland. Read More
When it comes to blogs, Portland has got quite a few. But one Portland blog stands above all others. And now, that blog is having a meetup. So you should go.
That’s right. ReadWriteWeb is inviting you to meet with the RWW team and have a beverage or two. Read More
In case you’ve been hiding under a tech news resistant rock, I wanted to let you know that TechCrunch — the 800 lbs. gorilla of tech blogs — has been acquired by AOL. Yes, that AOL. And the news, strangely enough, is topping Techmeme. Much like TechCrunch posts have for years.
Say all you want about Michael Arrington, the guy who started TechCrunch. It’s an important event to note. Because it’s a five year old blog being sold to a major corporation for a rumored $25 million or so. Read More
And this week, ReadWriteWeb’s founder, New Zealander Richard MacManus, is even here in Portland too. So what better time for RWW to embrace their Rose City spirit than sponsoring Portland Beer and Blog?
When it comes to covering startups and technology, few resources are comparable with ReadWriteWeb, one of the leading tech blogs in the world.
But did you know that a good chunk of the RWW staff—including Marshall Kirkpatrick, Frederic Lardinois, Abraham Hyatt, Alex Williams—is right here in Portland, Oregon? And there’s also Curt Hopkins in Eugene. It’s true. And this week, ReadWriteWeb’s founder, New Zealander Richard MacManus, is even here in Portland too. So what better time for RWW to embrace their true Rose City spirit by sponsoring Portland Beer and Blog? Read More
Cami Kaos and I cover Portland Pitch Day, Foursquare Day, 101 different data sets to build Portland CivicApps, Mugasha Halo 3 track, Marshall Kirkpatrick and ReadWriteWeb, iPhone 4, more Foursquare Yahoo! jibber jabber.
Happy Portland Pitch Day! And Thursday. And other stuff. To celebrate this Thursday, the memePDX elves have working on baking a fresh new episode of the show. Just for you. And since you’re going to be busy at lunch, I thought I should get it in front of you sooner rather than later.
And this show is cram packed full of tech stories from Portland… and beyond. Read More
Okay, anyway. Secret one: Portland loves Marshall Kirkpatrick. Secret two: ReadWriteWeb one of the leading blogs in the world is a Portland blog.
I have two secrets to share that aren’t really secrets. But I’ll pretend they are. And you can pretend that you haven’t been paying attention… Wait a second. You have been paying attention, haven’t you?
Okay, anyway. Secret one: Portland loves Marshall Kirkpatrick. Secret two: ReadWriteWeb—one of the leading blogs in the world—is a Portland blog.
So what happens when ReadWriteWeb promotes Portland’s favorite blogging son to co-editor? We get happy, that’s what. Read More
Cami Kaos and I talk about Abraham Hyatt joining ReadWriteWeb, e. coli in your Twitter, Crappy Santas, the Winter Coders’ Social, Corvallis Startup Weekend, RIP CrunchPad, and the Google Phone.
It’s Thursday! Here’s hoping you’re still not nursing a turkey or tofurky hangover. And that you’ve managed to do something with those leftovers.
Whatever the case, you deserve a little break. So why not take a few minutes to revel in memePDX? This week, Cami Kaos and I talk about Abraham Hyatt joining ReadWriteWeb, e. coli in your Twitter, Crappy Santas, the Winter Coders’ Social, Corvallis Startup Weekend, RIP CrunchPad, and the Google Phone. Read More
Abraham Hyatt known around these parts as a former managing editor at Oregon Business Magazine and the guy behind Digital Journalism Portland has joined the ReadWriteWeb team as the production editor.
Now if I had to pick my favorite tech blog, it would have to be ReadWriteWeb. Not just because I used to work there. And not only because they’ve got some amazing talent on board. But because ReadWriteWeb is the most Portland-y tech blog around. What with Marshall Kirkpatrick, Frederic Lardinois, and Alex H. Williams.
And now, there’s another Portland type in the mix. Abraham Hyatt—known around these parts as a former managing editor at Oregon Business Magazine and the guy behind the Digital Journalism Portland camp and meetups—has joined the ReadWriteWeb team as the production editor. Read More
To blog or not to blog? It’s a question with which any number of corporations wrestle. And today at the InnoTech eMarketing Summit, Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb and Josh Bancroft of Intel will answer that question—and likely many more about corporate communications, blogging, and microblogging sites like Twitter. (I’ll be on the panel as well, doing a lot of smiling and nodding.)
Here’s the basis of the discussion:
Whether out of curiosity or under pressure, you’ve likely started a company blog. Maybe you’re even letting employees blog. But making blogging a successful component of your organization’s communications and support programs? That’s another thing, entirely. Join this panel of panel of elite bloggers and microbloggers to learn how you can use blogs to increase transparency with your target market, create deeper and lasting relationships with your existing customers, and improve your company’s visibility on the Web. Attendees are sure to leave with both a renewed motivation to blog and specific steps for improving their organizations’ use of traditional blogs and new microblogging platforms.
The three of us will be providing our insight at 2 PM, today, in Portland Ballroom 256 at the Oregon Convention Center. So if you’re at InnoTech, we’d love to see you. For you Twitter types, the hashtag for the event is #emspdx.
Can’t come see us today? Well we can’t save you any… oh wait. That’s okay, but we’ll miss you. And I’d highly encourage to register to attend InnoTech on Thursday so that you can see Rahaf Harfoush talk about the Obama social media campaign.
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We’ve all been there. There’s that one article that you need to remember to read. You simply don’t have time to read it, right now. And you’re not sure if you’re going to want it after you’re done reading it.
In short, you can’t commit to saving it to your bookmarks because you’re not sure if it’s bookmark material, yet.
Currently, I have a system set up in Evernote that involves a lot of clipping and organizing—and then reading and deleting—to manage my list of “read this later.” Honestly, it takes a bit of effort to simply remind myself to go back and read a particular page. And the Evernote saving process has a couple of steps to it.
Portland’s own Marshall Kirkpatrick, vice president of a blog called ReadWriteWeb and one with quite an appetite for consuming online content, has a delicious tag called “toread” that he uses to manage his “I’ll get to this later” list.
There has to be a better way. And as we all know, it’s usually the simple—and well implemented—ideas that can have the most impact.
Enter Portland-based I Need to Read This.
I saw I Need to Read This demoed at a recent Portland Web Innovators Demolicious, and I was blown away by how drop dead simple—and incredibly effective—the tool could be.
I Need to Read This is about as simple as you can get. Just register (either with a username and password or with OpenID) and add a I Need to Read This bookmarklet to you Web browser toolbar. That means it works for any browser—unlike a Firefox add-in (and since I generally run Camino, I’m addicted to bookmarklets).
The next time you’re browsing content and you come across a page you need to read? Simply click the bookmarklet and the page will be added to your list things you need to read.
Have a free minute to catch up on your reading? There’s another bookmarklet that will take you to the first item on your list of things to read.
So simple. Yet so effective.
Don’t trust me? What about Webware?
What’s nice about I Need to Read This is that you can use all of its services through bookmarklets instead of having to install anything in your browser. There’s simply “I Need to Read This” and “Read an Article” bookmarklets, which you drag up to your browser’s toolbar, and on any story you want to bookmark you just hit the former bookmarklet to save it. Then, to read what you have saved you click the latter “Read an Article” button, which takes you to the latest story. Clicking it again takes you to the second most recent, and so on.
Or maybe that little blog called Lifehacker?
We love the previously mentioned Read It Later Firefox extension, which offers a simple method for saving bookmarks to read later. The I Need to Read This bookmarklet offers similar functionality without the extension dependence.
I Need to Read This even made Techmeme.
Can I get a “Yay Portland!”?
This is just an early start for the tool created by Benjamin Stover and Jason Grlicky, but it’s got all the functionality you need to get started.
For more information or to register for an account, visit I Need to Read This or follow them on Twitter.
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