Portland Oregon startups, tech, news, events, jobs, and community
Portland startup and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
While the team, the execution, and the initial idea are important, the success or failure of most startups comes down to one thing: timing. Forcing something at the wrong time is almost worse than not doing it at all. And that’s why I’m happy to see the Startup Weekend Vancouver (Washington) team adjusting their timing. Read More
Ah, summer camp. That time to get away from the house. To make new friends. And to spend a few moments immersed in activities that made you the person you are today. Yes, summer camp was great. But as an adult, similar opportunities are few and far between. Except when it comes to Startup Weekends. Read More
So… mountains. They’re big. They’re often covered with snow. They crop up here and there in the Northwest. And if you squint just right, they can be pretty darn hard to tell apart. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself. Because tonight, the local Twitter crowd is getting many a laugh thanks to WSU Vancouver’s Twitter account accidentally mislabeling Washington’s Mt St Helens as Oregon’s Mt Hood. Read More
I just wanted to take a second to say “Thank you.”
I wanted to thank you for caring about what’s happening in the Silicon Forest. To thank you for keeping your eye on the Web and mobile startup scene. To thank you for giving all of the amazing developers in the area the attention they so richly deserve. To thank you for giving the entrepreneurs of Portland, Corvallis, Eugene, Bend, Ashland, Hood River, Vancouver, and all of the Oregon and Washington towns in between the opportunity to wow you with the products they’re building and the problems they’re solving.
I’m constantly reminded of how incredibly lucky I am that I get the opportunity to write about this stuff. And even luckier that you swing by to read about it. So thanks for letting me into your browser or feed reader or mobile device every once in awhile to share what people are sharing with me.
SXSW Interactive always reaffirms my belief in how lucky we are to have the community we do.
Thank you for being part of it.
Even the iPhone critics have to admit that there may something to the iPhone app thing. I mean, if the results Vancouver-based Avatron Software is producing are any indication.
Last Monday at 5 PM Pacific time, Avatron released Air Sharing, a temporarily free iPhone app that lets you treat your iPhone as a wireless hard drive. Not earth shattering news, I grant you.
But fast forward to today. And as of this writing—a few minutes shy of one week—they’re approaching nearly three-quarters of a million downloads.
That’s right more than 700,000 little versions of the Avatron apps are walking around on iPhones.
“It’s just amazing,” said Dave Howell, CEO of Avatron. “It’s way beyond what we thought would happen.”
And the reviews are looking quite positive, too. Even donpdonp might be happy with this little app, considering:
Best app in the app store. It’s incredibly useful and works with my Ubuntu desktop!… This is seriously the best app around. Worked out [of] the box, almost zero config.
Using Bonjour and the standard WebDAV interface, Air Sharing allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to mount the devices as a wireless drive on any Mac, Windows, or Linux computer; drag and drop files between the device and computers, and view documents in many common formats.
Basically, it’s like working with any other drive. Wirelessly.
But there are also some other interesting features that could extend the use of the Air Sharing app. What are those features? Well, Dave will be my guest on the next Silicon Florist podcast, so tune in to find out.
Interested in trying Air Sharing? Well, it’s free to try for one more week. After that the price will go up to $6.99.
For more information, visit the Air Sharing area on Avatron’s site. Or to see what others are saying and to try it for yourself, head on over to the Air Sharing page in the app store.
(Hat tip Raven Zachary)
[Editor: Full disclosure, Iterasi is a client of mine, but I was not involved in this announcement.]
http://www.iterasi.net/user/siliconflorist?format=widgetN1Vancouver-based Iterasi, the service that allows you to create your own personal Wayback Machine, took a huge step forward in making its network of users more social, today, when they announced three major additions to their offering: public pages, RSS feeds, and widgets.
Josh Lowensohn at Webware broke the news:
Web page archiving tool Iterasi is getting a small but important update Tuesday morning. Users can now share their stream of archived pages with others as an RSS feed, letting anyone view their saved items either directly in their browser or in a feed-capturing tool like Google Reader or desktop e-mail clients.
In my opinion, these seemingly innocuous changes actually mark a decided change in Iterasi’s stance. With these features, Iterasi moves from being an interesting personal service toward becoming a valuable social service. And by embracing features that allow me to distribute my saved pages to a much, much wider audience, they gain the benefit of more people encountering their service.
I have found a great deal of value in being able to save pages for myself. But now that I have the option of sharing pages with folks? It opens a whole new realm of use for me. Like a more typical social bookmarking service.
Fringe benefits abound. With RSS feeds and widgets, Iterasi just increased its exposure exponentially. I’ve added the widget to this post and I’ll likely add it to the blog (once the Mac version is out and I can use the service regularly.) And, I’m adding the RSS feed to my lifestreaming services, like FriendFeed and Strands.
What’s more, by launching public pages, Iterasi has the potential to rapidly increase its online footprint for search engines and the like—like any other public-facing social network service.
Now, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. As with any new feature on a BETA product, there are some rough spots and some nice-to-haves that didn’t make the cut. There are some areas over which I would like to have control, like skinning the widget and dealing with the publishing function.
But as I’ve mentioned, I see this release as less about “features” and more about “vision.” It’s clear to me that Iterasi is taking a much more social stance. And that’s a very good thing.
To test drive the product, visit Iterasi. To see the public page in action or to get the widget code, please visit the Silicon Florist page on Iterasi.
[Full discloure: Iterasi is a client of mine. I worked with them a great deal on the initial announcement of their product in February, but aside from some ad hoc consultation, I did not participate in this launch.]
Vancouver-based Iterasi, the service that allows you to run your own personal Wayback Machine, has come out of private BETA and announced general availability for the Windows version of their browser toolbar. Using the toolbar, you gain the ability to capture an entire Web page, exactly as you see it—dynamic elements and all—and save it in that state, forever.
Sound interesting? Head over to the site to register and download your Iterasi toolbar.
The team has added some compelling features since the last time I wrote about the product back in February. Most notably the ability to embed captured pages within Web pages.
I’ve posted one of my favorite examples—the ability to save a Google search for future reference—below.
http://www.iterasi.net/embedded/?sqrlitid=_usQPoEYdU6mizC1xaJXOQ
As you’ll see from the embedded page, Iterasi saves the entire Web page as fully functional HTML, including any AJAX wackiness or completed form fields. In many ways, it’s the evolution of bookmarking. Moving from saving the location of a Web page to saving the Web page, itself.
But even that description might not give you a full feel for the potential of the product. So, if you’re a Windows user or have access to Windows on your Mac, I’d encourage you to download it and give it a shot.
The Mac version of Iterasi’s toolbar is still under development.
For more information, visit Iterasi.
Vancouver’s Aaron Hockley is fed up.
I’m going to take a bit of a stand. Effective immediately, I will no longer comment on tech blogs that don’t support OpenID for comment authentication.
And I, for one, really respect his taking this stance. I think it’s these small, self-admittedly “mostly insignificant” kinds of actions that make things happen. The journey of 1000 miles and whatnot.
Aaron makes a strong argument for every blog pursuing its own OpenID login for comments:
OpenID is a win-win for blog comments. It’s a win for the comment author, since it means less info to type. It’s a win for the blog owner, since it means the comments have a “real” identity behind them.
I mean, if you really want to be part of the conversation, shouldn’t you make it as easy as possible for others to join in the conversation?
Of course you should. And OpenID can help you do that.
And you—as a Portlander or Silicon Forester—should be more than embracing OpenID. You should be singing its praises from the rooftops, if only to support great companies like Vidoop, ConfIdent, and JanRain who are the forefront of OpenID development.
OpenID is like the Portland Trail Blazers of technology around here. Only better. Like the ’76-’77 Blazers. That’s right. You know what I’m talking about. The plucky young upstarts who win despite all odds.
And OpenID has more than a fighting chance. But it still needs the support of each and every one of us.
But what if it’s a technical issue that’s preventing your adoption? (Like me, for instance. I wrangled my OpenID WordPress implementation for hours before Chris O’Rourke was able to pinpoint the issue and help me resolve the problem.)
Well, you don’t have that excuse anymore. Because Aaron has offered to help:
And I’ll put my time where my mouth is: I’ll help you. If you follow those links above, and can’t figure it out, or you try it and it doesn’t work. I’ll help. Send me an e-mail. I want you to have OpenID.
I’m looking forward to using my OpenID to comment on your blog the next time I swing by.
In fact, how about this? Let’s round up a list of all the Silicon Forest based blogs and services that support OpenID.
If you’re one of them, use your OpenID to comment below.
I’ll work on gathering a comprehensive list for posting. And then we’ll work on promoting your blog or service for being one of the ones who’s supporting OpenID.
Just as a way—albeit minor—of saying “Thank you for using OpenID.”
