Web Things Considered

I was reading an interview at SitePoint with Dino Esposito, an “ASP.NET Expert.” I know he has written several books (apparently well rated and sold), and I’ve read several articles by him before. But this comment scares me a bit:

“I don’t write much real-world code. But automated testing is key. Period.”

So, he’s an “Expert,” but doesn’t write much real-world code? Should we be looking elsewhere for ASP.NET 2.0 books? I generally like to learn from someone who has been there, done that. Since I don’t like Wrox books much (too big and disjointed usually), I’ve avoided their book. Hopefully, Fritz Onion’s book will be out sooner rather than later.

I’ve talked before about tracking Web 2.0 and mentioned the following:

But, say I want to find the best calendar app with reviews, ratings, a screenshot, in a easy to navigate list. Where do I go to get that info?

I’d say the Web 2.0 Awards is pretty close to the answer to that question. The Web 2.0 awards is a beautiful list that has rated, ranked, and awarded the best of Web 2.0 sites across many categories.

Of course I also like it because NetworthIQ got an honorable mention in the “Business, Money, and eCommerce” category going up against some pretty big competition.

The other lists I mentioned before are still great going forward to keep an eye on new stuff and there’s still room for the versiontracker.com type site with more user opinions, and tracking new features. But, we have to stop and admire the Web 2.0 awards for a while. Well done.

The last four days have been an exhausting sprint to get moved into our new house. Half the house is still in boxes, but I’m heading back to work tomorrow. The old house is cleaned out and ready for the new owners to move in tomorrow. It’s kind of sad to say good-bye to your first house.

Thanks to the incompetence of Verizon (we notified them a month ago of the date we were moving in), I’ve had no DSL in the new house and won’t until early next week. Tell me why the baby bells are allowed to merge back together? So they can abuse their customers even more. I’ll definitely be switching to Comcast for internet, especially with the deal at Comcast Offers. I’ve always done DSL in the past because it was cheaper, but with that deal, it equals out over a year. Plus, Comcast’s service has always been pretty good.

What else have we learned with this move? Nobody is never on time. Cleaners at the new house were an hour late on move day. Movers (had some larger items moved on Monday) were over an hour late. The post office is completely confused, with one person telling us it will be 7-10 days before we get mail at the new address, but then after catching the mailwoman today, she informed us that she was holding our mail already and waiting for us to come to the post office for a key. Would’ve been nice if someone told us that.

But on a brighter note, the Fourio team and family members were great and the bulk of the move went pretty fast on Saturday. You never realize how much stuff you have until you move. Hopefully we won’t have to move for another 5 years at least.

Came across Starve Ups today, an interesting looking group focused on start-ups. Here’s the twist

Unlike other organizations, Starve Ups membership is only open to the founders, management and core team members of idea, emerging and established stage companies. This unique approach, which eliminates investors, consultants, vendors and service providers allows Starve Ups to encourage full disclosure among its members.

I need to check it out a bit more and see if it complements the PDX Web Innovators and OEF events.

Tags: portland pdx entrepreneur starveups

Web 2.0 or Star Wars Character? I got 39, but I have an excuse because I spent two weekends building the Innovation Map.

(via CrunchNotes)

Now that Portland is the best place to live, some people may want to move here. Because of that (but really because a couple people have asked recently), here are the various technology/entrepreneurial groups around town. This is by no means a complete list.

• PDX Web Innovators (cross between developers, designers, entrepreneurs)
• DevgroupNW (design focused)
• PDX UX (cross between designers and developers)
• SAO - Software Association of Oregon
• OEF - Oregon Entrepreneurs Forum
• IPN - Internet Professionals Northwest (now part of SAO)
• PADNUG - .Net User Group
• PDX CFUG - ColdFusion User Group
• PJUG - Java User Group
• POSSE - Portland Open Source Software Entrepreneurs
• PDX.rb - Portland Ruby Brigade
• PDXPHP - PHP User Group
• Internet Strategy Forum
• CHIFOO
• pdxMindShare
• OregonStartups.com - Great collection of resources for local entrepreneurs
• Starve Ups
• Northwest Entrepreneur Network
• nPost.com

There are others like Mac, Linux and PC user groups, Podcasting Meetups, Entrepreneur (general) meetups, but these are the main ones I’ve come across. What others do people know of or enjoy?

Tags: pdx portland

Portland is the best place to live. How do I know? Men’s Journal says so. Shhh… don’t tell anyone. Unless of course you want to move or launch your web startup here, I don’t mind having more of those around.

Tags: pdx portland

For all those sports fans looking to get an edge for their team, this is a great story.

In the days of MySpace and Facebook, making it easier to find you, I’d be extra careful if I were an athlete. You’re conversations might not be too private. Poor guy.

After rushing downtown to make the OEF PubTalk, I then rushed over the river for the first PDX Web Innovators meeting. It was interesting going to the PubTalk first because part of the vision I had for PDX Web was the ability for early stage companies to demo/pitch/present. Even after seeing that the PubTalk is built for this kind of thing, since it’s more general purpose entrepreneurship and the pitches are really short, I think that PDX Web can support that idea exclusively for web/mobile companies.

Whether or not we get to that point though, it’s still a lot of fun hanging out with other web people. For people who follow the web all the time, it’s not everyday that you meet people that read the some stuff you do and share the same ideas. Just to run down who was there:

• Adam
• George
• Ray
• Will
• Greg
• Kyle
• Kandace
• Marcus
• Jacob
• myself

Maybe it’s not that surprising, but just about everybody had their own web shops. The discussions were a great mix of design, programming, blogs, podcasts, business. I’ll try to remember some of conversations:

Rails was a big topic. I hadn’t even realized Portland was such a leader in Rails development (With the O’Reilly Rails book author in Portland and his company Planet Argon being a big Rails shop), and I pride myself on knowing a lot of stuff.

Ray and Kandace talked a bit about their web-based, hosted CMS package, Ladybug. Sounds like a great tool for Flash (and non-Flash) sites. I believe we have our first presenter for next month.

Marcus shared some his experiences with software in the Music business and Tables Turned, his team’s initiative to let podcasters legally play music. Billboard wrote it up, and it sounds like it’s getting some great traction among the labels.

Jacob talked about his work in design (you have to check out the design on BePrivy), email marketing and learning Rails. I wrote about email newsletters before, so you’ll have to let me know how far off-base I am.

Adam and I discussed his work on Best Places, and some of the issues they were working out, including the transition to ASP.NET 2.0, something I’ve been spending a lot of time on lately. Adam has a lot of biz ideas going too, including the just released onBlOCK spam fighting service.

There was some interesting talk about business models, design, and adsense and how ugly sites seem to do so well. Scoble’s post on anti-marketing design is an interesting follow-up on that topic.

I talked a bit on NetworthIQ (shocking I know): specifically about funding options, APIs, Quicken integration, and growth of the site.

I missed the topics from the other end of the table, so feel free to join the converstation with your own writeups.

So, where is this going to go? Sounds like everybody was up for getting some space and a projector for next month. Definitely keep the social aspect, but add a presenter or two. We can take that conversation over to the google group.

Thanks for coming everybody and we’ll see you next month.

Tags: pdxwi, pdx, portland

Wednesday night was a very rare night for me with two events in one night (more about PDX Web Innovators in the next post). As is often the case with OEF events, I heard about the Seed Oregon PubTalk at the last minute (I’ve sent feedback to OEF that they need to do better at getting notices out of their events, with Upcomig.org or something. I even signed up for emails, but still didn’t get anything about this.). Since I missed Angel Oregon, I really wanted to make this and see some companies pitch and check out the environment. The companies had to do a true elevator pitch, with no powerpoint or presentation tools. Out of the 5 companies that pitched, there were some interesting ideas. These were the companies:

• Acquirit -Agricultue technology/software
• IterationZero - agile software development tools
• DOCUMAX Enterprises - Accounts Payable technology
• ParaMedia - “iTunes for print media” was the analogy used (comic books was the prime example)
• iKnoodle - Ad toolbar that benefits charities

Unbelievable, only 2 of these companies have a web site? I know they’re not exactly web companies, but sheesh, what year is this? How am I supposed to learn more about the company? Even if you’re early stage, it seems like a site would be a good idea. Throw a blog up at least.

Anyway, they all got some good questions from the judges and the audience. IterationZero got the most pushback, mostly because the pitch gave some pretty big numbers (i.e. 84% of software projects fail) but I think there are some good ideas there. Their angle is to help companies adapt agile methodolgies more gradually, by identifying the areas of agile most likely to succeed and starting with the easy ones. There’s a lot of talk about the dangers of “building to flip” in the web 2.0 world. That’s their business model, get something out and get bought by the IBM’s of the world.

I don’t know much about agriculture or Accounts Payable tools. But, both seemed like viable ideas. I’m not sure about the ad toolbar. I think I’d rather just write a check to a charity rather than suffer through intersital ads. But, who knows. The “iTunes for print media” idea seems like it could have many large competitors in no time flat, but if they can be first, all the power to them.

It was a good experience to go. I think it’s something we’ll aim to do with Fourio/NetworthIQ, perhaps for next month if we can get on the list. Although public speaking and I don’t exactly get along too well. So, Todd may get the call ;-).

Technorati Tags: portland, pdx, oef, entrepreneur