https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/posts/Recent content in Posts on Web Things ConsideredHugo -- gohugo.ioenFri, 09 Aug 2013 08:29:02 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2013/08/09/adventures-in-json-parsing-with-c/Fri, 09 Aug 2013 08:29:02 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2013/08/09/adventures-in-json-parsing-with-c/Despite building applications with C# for years, I was frustrated today with some basic JSON parsing. This is something that I have done hundreds of times in Ruby and Python, where parsing JSON consists of deserializing into a Hash (Ruby) or Dictionary (Python) on the fly without defining a class, or mapping, beforehand. It’s easy to build the objects on the fly in the dynamic languages. But, with C# being a statically typed language, it’s taken a long time to get to that point.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2011/07/29/procrastinators-guide-to-pie/Sat, 30 Jul 2011 04:23:33 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2011/07/29/procrastinators-guide-to-pie/NOTE: when I started writing this, I thought the deadline was August 1st, turns it was extended today to August 8th. So, come back and read this next week I guess. Enjoying your summer? Soaking in that Friday night feeling? Have that nagging thought in the back of your mind that you haven’t finished your PIE application for you great idea? Ah ha, I knew it. Since I’m one of the biggest procrastinators around, I feel your pain.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2011/07/20/rocky-mountain-hi/Thu, 21 Jul 2011 05:27:43 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2011/07/20/rocky-mountain-hi/I won’t dwell on the fact that it’s been 3 years since I last posted. As I work on posting regularly again, it will be fun to revisit the last few years. But, the occasion of moving half-way across the country is enough to stir the blog into action again. This past weekend, I made the journey from Portland to Boulder, Colorado, marking the culmination of a frantic few months of tough decisions and planning.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2008/07/24/is-it-hot-in-here-apps-to-help-your-macbook-laptop-stay-cool/Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:10:07 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2008/07/24/is-it-hot-in-here-apps-to-help-your-macbook-laptop-stay-cool/Working at Strands has presented the unique opportunity to work in an all Mac shop, which is fun seeing all the MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs around the office when I’m there. But, as many people quickly discover, these things get HOT, like burn your lap and destroy your child producing ability hot (not to mention the possible damage to the hardware itself). The question was posed at work with the ultra modern social media tool of “send email to whole company” about how to keep things cool.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2008/05/26/webvisions-wrap-up/Tue, 27 May 2008 06:30:25 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2008/05/26/webvisions-wrap-up/This last Thursday and Friday was the annual WebVisions conference here in Portland. 2008 marks my 4th year in attendance, and I definitely look foward to it every year. You can’t beat the price, it’s one of the cheapest conferences around and with it being local, there’s really not much excuse not to come and check out at least a few sessions and a keynote. Plus it’s a great chance to catch-up with my local developer and entrepreneur friends and meet some new ones.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2008/05/21/events-to-keep-an-eye-on/Wed, 21 May 2008 21:24:13 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2008/05/21/events-to-keep-an-eye-on/The next couple weeks are going to be busy around these parts and just wanted to share some of the events I’m planning on attending. WebVisions Always one of my favorites and it’s cheap! Starts tomorrow. Strands Portland Meet-up Think Strands is all about Music and now Money? Think again. This meet-up will be a chance to preview the all new strands.com and meet more of the Strands team. Portland Lunch 2.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2008/05/15/breaking-the-silence/Thu, 15 May 2008 16:31:29 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2008/05/15/breaking-the-silence/Hard to believe it’s been 6 months since my last post, but what can I say, I’ve been busy! Not only have I been silent on this here blog, but for those that I have talked with over the last few months can attest, I haven’t talked a whole lot about what I’m working on. Today is the day I get to tell my story. NetworthIQ has been acquired by Strands and I have joined the Strands team to work on moneyStrands, the upcoming personal finance solution.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/11/18/can-i-get-a-yay-windows-no/Mon, 19 Nov 2007 06:43:32 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/11/18/can-i-get-a-yay-windows-no/The glowing apple is becoming ubiquitous. Is this indicative of the conference experience these days? First a picture from RubyConf held earlier this month: Reminded me of one of Jason‘s pics from Gnomedex this summer: I wonder how the audience pics at DevConnections (.NET conference in vegas 2 weeks ago) compare. Now, why didn’t I buy Apple stock when I first started noticing the geeks and their MBP or PBs back then?https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/10/30/new-challenge-web-reviews/Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:52:09 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/10/30/new-challenge-web-reviews/I’ve got a new moonlighting gig, to go along with my own projects. I’m writing web reviews for Digital Trends. I didn’t really see this one coming but the opportunity seemed like an excellent one, so I’m giving it my best shot. Digital Trends is one of the best web business stories in the Portland area. Founded just a few years ago, it has bootstrapped its way to a thriving online business focusing on consumer electronics reviews and news.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/10/27/infrequent-round-up/Sat, 27 Oct 2007 23:52:07 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/10/27/infrequent-round-up/When there’s some down time it’s nice to get a post out and then not worry about keeping up with the latest goings-on throughout the week so much here. I’ve pretty much gone the Twitter route for a lot of stuff I may have tried to turn into a post before. You can follow me there if you’re so inclined. Local Signal Had a couple days to myself last week and was able to wrap up a number of loose ends with Local Signal.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/10/27/portland-web-20-update/Sat, 27 Oct 2007 23:36:40 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/10/27/portland-web-20-update/Web 2.0 activity in Portland is still a big interest area for me and a number of Portland sites popped up this week. Seems things are really getting going around here. TwitterWhere TwitterWhere is a cool new project from local Portland developer Matt King. Similar to how Local Signal tracks an assortment of feeds for a specific city to filter and discover news, events, and people, TwitterWhere tracks Twitter activity for a given location, making it easy find local breaking news and other Tweeters.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/10/10/occaisonal-round-up/Thu, 11 Oct 2007 05:39:34 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/10/10/occaisonal-round-up/Local Signal Continuing to fill out the local content (mainly news, biz and sports) for all the cities in Local Signal. In marketing news, the site was added to the Programmable Web mashup directory which helped drive a nice amount of users this week. There’s a great new logo, produced by Craft Is The New Black. Turns out there are brother-n-laws who are in fact good designers. It’s pretty cool to be sitting around with the family and get some real progress made on a project.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/10/10/kicked-out-some-cliqers/Thu, 11 Oct 2007 05:10:33 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/10/10/kicked-out-some-cliqers/As the CLIQ leader for the Portland Web/Tech group, it appears that it is my responsibility to keep the CLIQ relevant. So, I have booted a couple of blogs that were definitely not Portland Web/Tech focused. I will restrain myself from abusing my power by booting those with more views than me ;-). With CLIQ now in public beta, anybody can join, so get over there and sign up if you’re looking for a little bling for your blog and want to connect with other Portland bloggers.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/10/08/coming-full-circle-with-mvc/Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:40:25 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/10/08/coming-full-circle-with-mvc/Interesting how software design repeats itself so much as different groups discover old patterns and make them new again to a whole segment of developers. I’ve been developing for about 8 years, only a fraction in the history of software, but already I’m looking at repeating myself. I’m reading today about the ASP.NET MVC (Model View Controller) announcement from this past weekend. I think it was a little over 3 years ago now that, in my day job, I left Java for .https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/26/localsignal-preview-release/Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:52:12 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/26/localsignal-preview-release/Thanks for all that voted in my “name this app” poll. LocalSignal.com won by an 8 to 6 margin over SocialMetro.com. I’m going to trust the voters on this one and go with it. It’s also time to announce the preview, since Silicon Florist and Metroblogging Portland have already covered it. Yes, I know it’s aesthetically challenged (though it’s much better than the first preview thanks to Matt at CouldBe Studios who hacked up my css), but I would love to hear feedback on the idea, content, and if you feel so inspired, design ideas.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/19/mint-finally-launches/Wed, 19 Sep 2007 17:38:20 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/19/mint-finally-launches/Mint finally launched yesterday at the TechCrunch40 conference. Congratulations Mint! I had been referring to Mint as the great vaporware of personal finance apps. They first started promoting it back in March, and was beginning to think it would never launch. 6 months later they have a public beta out (I believe they actually started working on it on December ’05). Good to see there is something there after all, so I guess I have to stop calling it vaporware.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/18/lunarr-launch/Wed, 19 Sep 2007 05:45:37 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/18/lunarr-launch/Portland company LUNARR, cut through the TechCrunch40 noise nicely this morning with their release. Silicon Florist has a good roundup. This is interesting to me, one because I love trying collaboration tools and two, because I noted LUNARR way back last february and for the longest time, I was getting a good chunk of my paltry traffic from google searches for Toru Takasuka, the CEO. I’ve now been relegated to page 3 of the google results.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/17/11-guys-youll-find-playing-basketballl-which-one-are-you/Tue, 18 Sep 2007 05:35:13 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/17/11-guys-youll-find-playing-basketballl-which-one-are-you/I’m not afraid to admit that I’m Richard Simmons. Don’t want to pull a muscle now. (via)https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/14/weekly-round-up/Sat, 15 Sep 2007 05:22:43 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/14/weekly-round-up/It’s Friday already, here’s some news to note from the past week or so. Silicon Florist marks its first month – The best new blog around, if you live in the Portland area and are interested in web/tech, this is a must read. I left a comment about how reading Silicon Florist reminds me of the early days of TechCrunch, Read/Write Web, and Mashable when I was always anticipating the next post to see what great new stuff was coming.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/10/dilberts-co-workers-discuss-web-20/Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:18:02 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/10/dilberts-co-workers-discuss-web-20/The debate about “Web 2.0” has been played out probably thousands of times before in the echo chamber, but it’s now gone mainstream, with a touch of humor: http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070909.htmlhttps://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/07/help-me-name-a-new-site/Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:51:00 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/07/help-me-name-a-new-site/I’m trying to nail down a name for my newest project. But since most of the names I thought of are taken or too expensive, I need a little help. BTW, if you’re searching for a good name, be sure to add Bust A Name to your toolbox, I can’t say enough good things about it.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/06/how-to-get-ilife-08-for-free/Thu, 06 Sep 2007 20:54:52 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/09/06/how-to-get-ilife-08-for-free/I was just getting ready to buy iLife ’08, but then came the news that people that bought iPhones before the price drop would get a $100 credit store credit. I believe I will be using that towards iLife ’08 and that makes me a much happier Apple customer and should calm the early adopter crowd a bit. Now I just have to find that receipt. I know it’s around here somewhere.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/08/15/the-casey-controversy/Thu, 16 Aug 2007 06:46:47 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/08/15/the-casey-controversy/You may not have heard (or care much, but I do) that the University of Oregon is bringing back varsity baseball after a 28 (or so) year absence. I think it’s a wonderful thing, though perhaps 10 years too late for me, but still nice to not have to root for the arch-rival come spring time. You may also know that the Oregon State baseball team won their second straight national championship in a stunning run through the College World Series back in June.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/08/14/stay-away-from-my-contacts/Wed, 15 Aug 2007 07:09:36 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/08/14/stay-away-from-my-contacts/In what is quickly surpassing CAPTCHAs as the most annoying, and frightening part of registering for a new web service, we, as users are being asked to give up our email contacts in order to get more “friends” to use the service. I’ve been pondering this for a week or so, but Jeremy Zawodny summed up my feelings pretty well in his post about Spock: That’s right. They want me to provide my username and password for the on-line services that may contain some of my most sensitive information, including: Gmail, Plaxo, Yahoo, Hotmail, and AOL.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/07/30/hello-iphone/Mon, 30 Jul 2007 23:32:36 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/07/30/hello-iphone/This post was published on my iPhone. Turning 30 isn’t so bad with this in my hand. Be sure to leave your favorite iPhone apps in the comments.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/07/26/today-is-my-last-day-as-a-twentysomething/Thu, 26 Jul 2007 18:22:40 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/07/26/today-is-my-last-day-as-a-twentysomething/Tomorrow is the big 30. Just thought I’d mark the milestone somehow, the passing of an era. No longer will I “still have my youth” :-). Unfortunately, there haven’t been many web things considered here lately. I became a father for the 2nd time in early June, which has made this a wonderful time. However, time for blogs (both reading and writing) has dwindled as I sharpen my focus on family, work, and paying side-projects (yes, July also marks the first month that I will personally make money on NetworthIQ).https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/07/17/sherwood-best-place-to-live-in-oregon/Tue, 17 Jul 2007 14:37:29 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/07/17/sherwood-best-place-to-live-in-oregon/It must be time to start a Sherwood Web Innovators group now that it’s been named the #18 best place to live in the country (and top Oregon city). Well, we’re probably not that far along yet, but maybe someday. Here’s the write-up: Like much of the Northwest, Sherwood is home to an array of beautiful parks and natural beauty. But the quickly growing commercial sites of Sherwood offer true insight into the town’s character: a juxtaposition of old and new, with reverence toward both the city’s historic past and its bright, expanding future.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/07/05/portland-suburbanites-avoid-iphone-hype/Thu, 05 Jul 2007 23:17:20 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/07/05/portland-suburbanites-avoid-iphone-hype/I found this report about remaining iPhone stock funny. Despite the fact that there was a line 50 deep at the Sherwood AT&T store on launch night (I checked), the closest Apple store still has stock: Stocks of iPhones were depleted at all but two of Apple’s retail stores by the end of business on July 4th. Only the Shadyside (Pittsburgh) and Bridgeport Village (Portland area) stores report stock when they open Thursday, July 5th.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/06/04/techcrunch-database-and-startup-search/Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:36:02 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/06/04/techcrunch-database-and-startup-search/I haven’t seen any formal announcement, perhaps because it’s still being built out, but there is a new feature at TechCrunch called the “TechCrunch Database.” It appears to be a comprehensive listing of startup companies with information on their products, people, funding with additional content pulled in about the company from TechCrunch posts, TechMeme, Technorati (I’m sensing a tech trend here…), del.icio.us, and the company’s blog. If you go to db.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/23/blazers-un-jump-the-shark/Wed, 23 May 2007 14:02:05 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/23/blazers-un-jump-the-shark/Amazing what a couple weeks will do for a team. The Blazers won the draft lottery last night for the rights to pick first in this years NBA draft, the most highly coveted #1 pick since Lebron James a few years back. Couple that with Brandon Roy’s rookie of the year win and I’m actually excited about seeing them play next year. It’s been years since I’ve attended or even watched a game on tv as they’ve fielded teams that were terrible on and off the court.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/18/teamsnap-the-northwest-is-on-fire-today/Fri, 18 May 2007 20:46:54 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/18/teamsnap-the-northwest-is-on-fire-today/TeamSnap, a product of Portland-based SparkPlug is the second northwest site on TechCrunch today and is enjoying a much smoother launch than TalentSpring’s. I saw TeamSnap on Mike Davidson’s blog the other day and it definitely is a good-looking site, but didn’t realize they were local. Congrats on the launch SparkPlug! I used to play a lot of sports and do a little coaching before I got bit by the side-project entrepreneur bug, but not enough to warrant the use of TeamSnap.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/18/how-to-blow-your-launch/Fri, 18 May 2007 18:37:10 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/18/how-to-blow-your-launch/I’m not sure if TechCrunch jumped the gun, but boy is TalentSpring awful. I noticed that TalentSpring is a northwest company (Seattle), which made me want to check it out, as I don’t bother with most of the stuff that comes through TechCrunch these days. Though I can’t speak much for the business and/or idea itself, as I’m not totally sure what the point of it all is yet. It seems slightly interesting, but the TalentSpring site itself is so unusable right now, I have no motivation to explore.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/17/yahoo-broke-their-geocode-api/Thu, 17 May 2007 17:55:02 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/17/yahoo-broke-their-geocode-api/UPDATE: It appears to be working again today (Saturday, 3 days after the first reports). I wasn’t able to make the switch to Google’s yet, so I’ll still use Yahoo’s for now. But, there are some changes I need to make to better prepare if something like this happens again. Yahoo rolled out some updates to their Maps API on Tuesday night, but unfortunately they broke their Geocode API in the process.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/09/new-tech-group-in-town/Wed, 09 May 2007 22:33:04 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/09/new-tech-group-in-town/The folks at Pop Art have launched a new group, PDX UX (UX = User Experience), for area designers and developers to get together (via). Looks to be heavy on Microsoft stuff. That’s not an indictment against the group (I code in .NET for a living as a matter of fact), but I do know that many developers dislike Microsoft’s proprietary ways and many designers dislike working with Microsoft technology. So, it will be interesting to see how it does.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/07/webvisions-day-2-review/Mon, 07 May 2007 20:39:05 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/07/webvisions-day-2-review/You want irony? On the day I drive 90 minutes to the convention center and nearly 2 hours to get home, I do a brief interview with an Oregonian reporter about my 25 minute daily work commute. Doesn’t seem so bad now :-). Let’s recap day 2: Let Go! 8 Steps to Succeeding in a Post-2.0 World Lane Becker and Thor Muller, Satisfaction (slides) I didn’t write down the 8 specific things, perhaps they’ll show up here, but this talk wasn’t really about presenting the 8 things, it was more a conversation about their message, “Be Like the Internet.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/07/webvisions-day-1-review/Mon, 07 May 2007 20:38:49 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/07/webvisions-day-1-review/WebVisions turned out all-in-all to be a good time. The sessions were great and I came out of it plenty inspired and am trying to review notes and reviews this morning so that I don’t lose track of the important bits. AJAX Inside Out (Workshop) Jack Herringon Slides: http://muttmansion.com/webvisions.pdf Code Samples: http://muttmansion.com/webvisions.tgz Waste of time. They should give refunds for this. Not sure if it was a horrible mis-communication between WV staff and Mr.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/03/webvisions-starting/Thu, 03 May 2007 20:35:13 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/03/webvisions-starting/I’m at WebVisions today and tomorrow. Jeremiah is streaming live on Ustream if you want to check out the action. Ahhh, conferences. If I had the time and money, I’d probably just go to conferences and classes for a career. It’s a blast to learn new things and listen to different perspectives. But, I’m practical and know that you won’t get much done if you’re only learning, so usually end up doing one or two outings a year.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/03/log4net-problem-finally-solved-i-think/Thu, 03 May 2007 12:57:38 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/05/03/log4net-problem-finally-solved-i-think/For the longest time I’ve been aggravating over a Log4Net problem using the RollingFileAppender with a RollingStyle of “Date”. This is probably the most popular style of logging, with the log file rolling over every day. But, I could never get it to work consistently. Log4Net would always start the log file over each day, but would not always archive the previous day’s log. End result being the entire log from the day before was gone!https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/04/30/dump-the-captcha/Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:17:35 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/04/30/dump-the-captcha/Why do do new or moderately trafficked sites insist on using a <a href="CAPTCHA on their registration form? A CAPTCHA is a simple test to verify an actual person is using the computer and not a machine, usually in the form of a “type the letters in this graphic” question. They are used primarily to thwart spam bots roaming the web. Sites create an unnecessary roadblock to user adoption, and it seems to be becoming more common.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/04/11/have-you-heard-of-john-arnold/Wed, 11 Apr 2007 22:12:22 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/04/11/have-you-heard-of-john-arnold/I bet you will soon. I remember how aghast my sociology prof was in college when some CEO made $100 million in one year. Well, imagine what will be thought of about this hedge fund manager’s 2006 take: $1.5 – $2 billion. Given Arnold’s record 2006 — the largest sum, we believe, anyone has ever earned in one year — a slap like that just might land someone in intensive care.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/04/04/portland-web-innovators-meeting-tonight/Wed, 04 Apr 2007 19:44:45 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/04/04/portland-web-innovators-meeting-tonight/I know it’s late notice, but this should a fun one. Adam has put together a great event, with Dietrich Ayala, a Portland-based Mozilla developer, giving a preview of Firefox 3. Thanks to ISITE for hosting too! When it comes to web innovations, Firefox definitely fits the bill. I remember first discovering Firebird (as it was known before the name change) a few years back along with the Edit CSS plugin, and was amazed that I could edit CSS on the fly and see the changes live.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/03/28/is-likecom-going-to-make-it/Wed, 28 Mar 2007 20:20:18 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/03/28/is-likecom-going-to-make-it/Remember when they launched in November after their strategic shift from Riya to Like? I don’t quite understand why they were so quick to change, but people make decisions I don’t understand all the time. It appears the decision has not paid off. I read that they raised enough to last through 2009 and go through 3 iterations. If the Riya was #1 and Like is #2, I’d bet they’re thinking about that 3rd iteration by now, especially considering how silent the CEO blog has been since the beginning of the year.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/03/28/its-true-oregonians-cant-drive/Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:13:11 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/03/28/its-true-oregonians-cant-drive/Not really a web thing, but this is engineering/usability/design related. There’s this crazy idea floating around that Oregonians don’t know how to drive. You hear it mentioned every once in a while, usually by someone from the busy roads of California. I admit I have seen my fair share of people going 65 in the left lane on I-5, driving along in ignorant bliss, as the lineup behind them is preparing to run them off the road.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/03/27/follow-the-building-of-a-web-20-app-with-twitter/Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:16:43 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/03/27/follow-the-building-of-a-web-20-app-with-twitter/I’ve been avoiding Twitter like the plague, figuring if I got hooked it would be a major productivity dagger, even more so than reading/writing blogs. Jason asked if I was on Twitter yesterday, and I responded “nope and don’t plan too.” However, the thought occurred to me last night, maybe I can do something slightly different with Twitter. I decided to start a Twitter feed for the building of NetworthIQ. Kinda like bare naked app did by blogging about the building of Amigo and what Steve Poland is doing now at Ringside Startup, only mine will be “microblogging” allowing me to make quick entries instead of long blog posts.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/03/26/playing-with-georss/Mon, 26 Mar 2007 19:45:33 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/03/26/playing-with-georss/I was just reading the Radar post about Google Maps new support for GeoRSS and wanted to take it for a little spin. I know that Platial supports GeoRSS, so I decided to take the Web 2.0 HQ Feed (which is where new startups are mapped, since I coudn’t keep up on the Web 2.0 Innovation Map), and plug it into Google maps. Here’s the result: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=http://www.platial.com/rss/map/1768 Platial also lets you create maps from GeoRSS, so the new Google feature doesn’t really do anything new or better, it does however make it a bit easier since I just have to enter a URL for the feed (no account required).https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/03/26/new-features-on-oregonstartupscom/Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:15:29 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/03/26/new-features-on-oregonstartupscom/The OregonStartups site is beginning to come into the modern age. Up until now, the biggest value of the site is their weekly email newsletter, which includes the most extensive local business event calendar that I’ve come across. They now publish the calendar to Google Calendar which can be subscribed to, making it super easy to know what’s going on around town. There are also a couple of blogs now (main and news), which for me anyway, is a much easier way to get information these days.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/02/02/how-are-you-going-to-use-your-tax-refund/Fri, 02 Feb 2007 20:56:23 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/02/02/how-are-you-going-to-use-your-tax-refund/I know you want to share. Well, jump over to the head-to-head refund smackdown game that Adam and I (mostly Adam, but he’s gracious enough to say I helped :-)) just released. Best use of Income Tax Refunds If after doing that you feel inspired to go file your taxes, InstaFILE is there for you.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/02/02/thank-you-programming-book-gods/Fri, 02 Feb 2007 20:49:55 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/02/02/thank-you-programming-book-gods/Yes! Somebody wrote a book about NHibernate. I can’t tell how woefully lacking NHibernate is on helpful documentation and articles. Couple that with the little time I have to work on building out my app and I am not nearly as efficient as I could be. I hope this will help. Maybe now I’ll be able to figure out how to delete a persistent object without breaking into plain old SQL and ADO.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/01/26/you-dont-see-that-very-often/Fri, 26 Jan 2007 22:31:31 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/01/26/you-dont-see-that-very-often/Ducks, Cougars one of the biggest games of the weekend! This is basketball season isn’t it? Go Ducks!https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/01/08/sponsored-post-seo-toolbar-review/Tue, 09 Jan 2007 05:53:28 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/01/08/sponsored-post-seo-toolbar-review/SEO Toolbar: The bad, the bad, and the not so ugly There is definitely no lack of tools in SEO arena. But, there is also a wide range of quality in these tools. I have a couple of favorites in my toolbox including SearchStatus and SEO for Firefox. I have to say after giving the SEO Toolbar a run through, I like the tools overall, but I give it thumbs down and will not be adding this to the toolbox.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/01/04/please-dont-use-snap-preview-anywhere/Thu, 04 Jan 2007 17:44:09 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2007/01/04/please-dont-use-snap-preview-anywhere/There are good uses of AJAX and bad uses. The Snap Preview Anywhere widget is what I would consider a bad use. I cringe every time I go to TechCrunch now and actually wan’t to visit one of the sites they mention. It’s distracting and unexpected (I hover over a link wanting to click on it and all of a sudden this damn window pops up). Even if I wanted a preview of the site, the thumbnail isn’t big enough to provide anything of value other than a cursory look at the page’s design.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/12/21/clearspace-looks-cool/Thu, 21 Dec 2006 17:59:40 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/12/21/clearspace-looks-cool/Local company Jive Software is readying what appears to be an extremely compelling team collaboration suite called Clearspace. I’ve seen a lot of job postings for Jive in the pdxMindShare newsletter, but never really looked into what they were building. Nino pointed out the the cNet review which has some nice screenshots. Clearspace looks to be bringing together blogs, wikis, forums, and document sharing into a single product, perfect for teams.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/12/21/belkin-is-a-disaster/Thu, 21 Dec 2006 16:58:57 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/12/21/belkin-is-a-disaster/I’ve long thought Belkin was the home of crappy/cheap electronic accessories that fell apart easily or never worked quite right. This mainly comes from buying a few things in college, when the funds were low and you generally look for the cheapest version of whatever you’re buying. You get what you pay for right? Well, I thought they were improving with their current generation of products including their iPod accessories. I just bought a Nano as a present for my wife’s birthday and needed to get a car adapter for it.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/12/20/web-apis-shifting/Thu, 21 Dec 2006 06:04:00 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/12/20/web-apis-shifting/Dare has a good summary of the recent events surrounding web APIs, namely the Google and Del.icio.us moves away from server-side APIs to more Widget based functionality. We talked about APIs back at the September PDX Web Innovators meeting, and much of that was focused around building mashups off of these services. I think it will be a real bummer if this trend continues, and less mashup-friendly services are offered. I agree with Dare that a site would be stupid to restrict ways to add stuff to your site.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/12/04/firebug-10-beta-out/Mon, 04 Dec 2006 23:40:12 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/12/04/firebug-10-beta-out/If you’ve been waiting to try out Firebug for any reason, wait no longer. Skip right past the current release and install the the new 1.0 Beta. I can describe this new version in one word: Amazing. Firebug will make debugging your web app a joy. No matter if the problem is in the markup, script, CSS, or HTTP request/response, Firebug will help you find it. You’ll actually want to have bugs just so you can use it.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/12/01/running-multiple-browser-versions-side-by-side/Fri, 01 Dec 2006 19:58:29 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/12/01/running-multiple-browser-versions-side-by-side/Need to run both IE 6 and 7 in order to test your sites? For that matter, you’ll probably want Firefox 1.5 and at the same time as well. Well, the IE blog announces the release of an Virtual PC hard drive with an authorized Windows XP image and IE 6 installed. They also provide the previously announced free VPC install. There is a catch, it only lasts 4 months (treating us to a wonderful April fools).https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/21/smartfilter-doesnt-like-yahoo-related-javascript-developers/Tue, 21 Nov 2006 22:20:16 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/21/smartfilter-doesnt-like-yahoo-related-javascript-developers/Interesting to see that at one point, the SmartFilter URL filtering software blocked 3 key Yahoo and JavaScript related blogs (with reason in parens): Simon Willison (malicious content) YUI blog (spam urls) Jack Slocum (spam urls) I asked for Willison’s and Slocum’s to be whitelisted and the YUI blog started working this week without a request, so maybe Secure Computing updated the blacklist. Is this some conspiracy to suppress the adoption of the Yahoo User Interface Library?https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/17/firefox-2-takes-new-measures-against-popups/Sat, 18 Nov 2006 00:50:53 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/17/firefox-2-takes-new-measures-against-popups/If I had to pick only one application to have installed on my pc, it would be Firefox. I live in it for a good chunk of the day, and am extremely hesitant to install anything else (with the exception of development servers and some programming tools). That’s the power of the web, you can do almost anything in a browser now days. So, it was with great excitement that I updated to the new Firefox release a couple weeks ago.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/17/wesabe-launches/Sat, 18 Nov 2006 00:11:12 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/17/wesabe-launches/So, Wesabe launched today. I’ve been waiting for this since I first saw Marc’s post on the Radar. As you may know I run a personal finance site, NetworthIQ, so I’m always on the lookout for related ideas and competition. I’m also happy to discover other people thinking about how to improve the way we manage our money. Wesabe is a compelling product that I myself will try out. Features such as tips and goals are nice community features that are also slated for NetworthIQ one of these years (though my vision of these is a bit different).https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/09/tracking-web-20-revisited/Thu, 09 Nov 2006 19:16:49 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/09/tracking-web-20-revisited/By far my most popular post here was the Tracking Web 2.0 recap of all of the various blogs and listing sites. I went back and cleaned it up a bit creating two separate lists. Also, because I’m starting to have fun creating different subscription lists, I created an opml file to kickstart anybody wanting to start following the Web 2.0 world. Top Web 2.0 Blogs (opml file) If you don’t want to worry about adding subscriptions, a great resource for keeping up on Web 2.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/08/stickies-everywhere/Wed, 08 Nov 2006 21:13:03 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/08/stickies-everywhere/Stickies (and similar notes-based organizational tools) are all the rage these days with 34 recent product launches: stikkit stickytag Helipad nottr As much as I want to like these tools, (especially local entry stikkit), I just can’t get behind them yet. I’ve tried using all kinds of organizational apps like Ta-da lists, wikis, Basecamp/activeCollab, all of the different start pages (google/ig, pageflakes, live.com) and their todo widgets, Google Notebook, and Microsoft OneNote among others.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/08/likecom-forgot-the-basics/Wed, 08 Nov 2006 17:40:32 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/08/likecom-forgot-the-basics/Turn off javascript and try to do a search on the newly launched Like.com (Scoble and TechCrunch have more on the release). What do you get? Nothing. This is a move sure to fire up accessibility advocates everywhere. You may say “But who really ever turns off javascript?”, well I say why on earth do you need to write a series of javascript functions, have 15 javascript file includes, and wire up event handlers to submit your search form?https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/07/discovering-top-blogs-on-a-specific-topic-and-top-net-and-php-blogs/Tue, 07 Nov 2006 21:58:00 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/07/discovering-top-blogs-on-a-specific-topic-and-top-net-and-php-blogs/How do you discover new blogs/feeds? The question becomes especially interesting when you want to start studying a new subject area. I checked out Share Your OPML, which certainly seems useful, but that only seems to be helpful for finding the most popular blogs overall or new blogs related to things you already have in your subscription list, not really helpful for finding the top blogs in a new subject area.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/03/more-portland-sites/Fri, 03 Nov 2006 23:16:48 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/11/03/more-portland-sites/I’ve got such a backlog of half-written posts, who knows when they’ll ever get completed. Does every blogger have long list of partially completed stuff? Here’s a quick link list though. This week has seen a relative slew of new locally produced social sites to launch or that I noticed. Gone Raw PDX Web Innovators Ray and Kandace from Needmore Designs launched their newest creation at the Wednesday meeting, which unfortunately I skipped this month, so I didn’t get to see it there.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/10/13/new-portland-web-20-startup/Fri, 13 Oct 2006 16:45:28 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/10/13/new-portland-web-20-startup/It’s rare that I get to use the Portland and Web 2.0 categories on this blog, so this is big news. The newest Portland Web 2.0 startup, stikkit, will be publicly unveiling at the Web 2.0 conference (via evhead). Looks like a lot of familiar names behind this project, so it should be interesting. Good luck guys. See previous discussion of the Portland web startup scene here and here.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/10/12/dont-let-scoble-manage-your-money/Thu, 12 Oct 2006 12:24:32 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/10/12/dont-let-scoble-manage-your-money/Not just rich people buy Playstations and Xbox’s This is just ridiculous. It sickens me to see people advocating the use of credit to buy these types of things. If you need credit to buy a HDTV and gaming system, then you don’t need a HDTV and gaming system. Use cash or save for it. Period.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/10/11/portland-version-of-bare-naked-app/Thu, 12 Oct 2006 04:24:58 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/10/11/portland-version-of-bare-naked-app/Zack Jenks, a portland web developer, is chronicling his experience building a web business. Much like the Carsons’ Bare Naked App, Zach shares his status and frustrations as the site comes together. Being in a similar situation, I always appreciate getting a window into another devrepreneur’s mind, so this should be interesting to keep an eye on. We’ll have to get Zack out ot the PDX Web Innovators next month.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/10/11/money-stuff/Thu, 12 Oct 2006 04:13:46 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/10/11/money-stuff/I haven’t been keeping up with the money blogs very well lately, but I did catch a couple of personal finance bits of note lately. Dilbert’s 9-point financial plan I think this is some very sound advice. You really don’t need to get that complicated with how you manage your money. Moneyhacks and Get Rich Slowly J.D. started Get Rich Slowly about six months ago and has quickly risen to the top tier of the money bloggers (see pfblog.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/10/03/another-idea-bites-the-dust/Tue, 03 Oct 2006 23:21:11 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/10/03/another-idea-bites-the-dust/Last month I mentioned Cambrian House as a place to share business ideas and possibly have them devloped by a crowdsourced team. The idea I submitted there was a social network for health type thing and it got shot down pretty good unfortunately. The idea was in the middle of my idea list, and it was more an experiment with Cambrian House, but I still thought it wasn’t that bad.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/10/02/npostcom-entrepreneur-networking-event/Tue, 03 Oct 2006 04:54:38 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/10/02/npostcom-entrepreneur-networking-event/nPost.com is coming to town again next week with their second Portland networking event. I went to the first one in August and had a good time. This is a general entrepreneur event, along the lines of an OEF event, but with a youger crowd. Their site is also a great resource for entrepreneurs, featuring many great interviews and a northwest focused job board. I’m adding nPost to the Portland Technology/Entrepreneur group list.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/09/30/pdx-web-innovators-october/Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:03:24 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/09/30/pdx-web-innovators-october/We’re set for the October PDX Web Innovators meeting. Same place, same time, details at Upcoming.org. If you’re in the Portland area and interested in the web (developer, designer, entrepreneur, whatever), come talk about your projects and interests with your fellow web geeks. Wednesday, October 4, 2006 7:00 PM Equator Coffee Cafe 510 SE Morrison Portland, Oregon Keep up to date with the PDX Web Innovators via the Google Group.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/09/28/web-20-jobgigmatchmaking-board-review/Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:31:03 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/09/28/web-20-jobgigmatchmaking-board-review/We all got a good laugh (at least I got a good laugh) out of Richard MacManus’s job board announcement, but reality is stranger than fiction sometimes, as they still just keep coming. So, I thought I’d take a moment to recap. It’s been a while since I’ve actually looked for work, but if I ever need to again, I’m honestly glad there are so many resources available now. Down with Monster.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/09/20/lucky-perhaps-but-there-is-more-to-the-story-of-ducks-big-win/Wed, 20 Sep 2006 23:09:53 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/09/20/lucky-perhaps-but-there-is-more-to-the-story-of-ducks-big-win/Football is in the air again and that means I can root for the Ducks again instead of congratulating the beavers. Like most Duck fans, I was a bit delirious on Saturday after the big win over Oklahoma. Honestly, I had pretty much given up hope after Dixon’s second interception. I mean, how are you supposed to win the game if your offense can’t stay on the field for more than a play or two?https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/09/20/the-results-of-having-a-successful-api/Wed, 20 Sep 2006 16:46:25 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/09/20/the-results-of-having-a-successful-api/APIs were the topic at our Septemeber Web Innovators meeting and Adam has some notes. On the topic of what companies get out of having an API, if it’s good enough, people will write books about it. We’ve seen it with the Google Hacks and Amazon Hacks books and now the trend continues with a line of Flickr books. I’d argue that this is a good sign that your service has arrived, helps to increase mindshare and gets more people using your service, which ultimately will increase the bottom line.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/09/14/net-neutrality-important-what-about-corporate-neutrality/Fri, 15 Sep 2006 04:41:23 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/09/14/net-neutrality-important-what-about-corporate-neutrality/I don’t talk a whole lot about my day job here. Some of my readers may know for whom I work, and some even work there with me (hi guys), and I don’t plan to say much beyond this post. It’s a good company, and I enjoy the work, the people and the other important part of working. Today, I was taken completely aback because the company began implementing a major internet filtering policy, and I mean major.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/09/06/pdx-web-innovators-tonight/Wed, 06 Sep 2006 21:33:53 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/09/06/pdx-web-innovators-tonight/I wish I’d gotten to this sooner, but better late than never. Tonight is the night for the September PDX Web Innovators meeting. Check out the details at Upcoming.org. Would you look at that, we have a TOPIC!! Thanks to Adam for suggesting it. So, all you Portland web people come on out if you can and give your $.02 or just meet some fellow web geeks. To keep up to date with the group, use our ultra-modern web 2.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/31/dare-depressed-about-unoriginality-yet-works-for-microsoft/Fri, 01 Sep 2006 05:06:00 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/31/dare-depressed-about-unoriginality-yet-works-for-microsoft/I think a healthy dose of cynicism is a good thing and I’ve really enjoyed Dare’s blog over the years. In fact RSS Bandit was my first reader and really got me into the whole blog thing. I stopped using it when I realized it was too big of a pain keeping client readers updated and syndicated and switched to BlogLines. Anyway, I about choked on my lunch today when I saw his comment about Web 2.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/30/myspace-founder-from-portland/Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:42:03 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/30/myspace-founder-from-portland/Along the same lines as the UserPlane founders, turns out Chris DeWolfe, one of the founders of the vaunted MySpace, grew up in Portland (via John Cook), before ultimately migrating south to make it big.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/29/movietally-keep-track-of-movies-youve-watched/Wed, 30 Aug 2006 05:18:22 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/29/movietally-keep-track-of-movies-youve-watched/I Discovered MovieTally today (via eHub). It’s a real basic, neat little app that let’s you keep track of movies you watch and ones you want to see. I was thinking of something like this just last week as movies are a common/easy discussion starter around the water cooler and I always seem to forget what I’ve seen recently. By keeping an inventory, it will be much easier to remind myself.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/23/oregon-baseball-makes-another-run/Thu, 24 Aug 2006 03:52:27 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/23/oregon-baseball-makes-another-run/Just a couple months after Oregon State’s run through the college world series, another team from Oregon is making a run. This time it’s Murray Hill (Beaverton) shooting for the little league world championship, having now reached the US final. I actually lived in the area when I first moved to Portland after college and still work just down the road, so it’s a very close connection. I think it’s awesome they’re doing so well.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/23/kiko-auction-pulled/Wed, 23 Aug 2006 17:04:35 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/23/kiko-auction-pulled/Checked on the Kiko auction (the AJAX calendaring app) today and it’s been pulled. What’s the scoop? I was curious to see the result. There was a bidder earlier this week. Update Looks like it was just an eBay technicality that forced them to re-list, here’s the current auction. Tags: web2.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/22/list-of-seattle-startups/Tue, 22 Aug 2006 21:00:36 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/22/list-of-seattle-startups/Here’s a list of Seattle internet startups ranked by Alexa traffic (via Mike Davidson). Wow, that’s a long freakin’ list! P-town has a long way to go, and this is a great example for my point at the nPost event last week about how Portland’s a great city, but we just don’t see the same level of startup activity right now. Also interesting to note that the UserPlane (company acquired by AOL last week) fouders are from Oregon.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/21/business-basics-for-engineers/Tue, 22 Aug 2006 02:26:47 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/21/business-basics-for-engineers/Business Basics for Engineers appears to be an oldy, but a very helpful resource for those interested in the nuts and bolts of putting a startup business together. I’ve read many posts by various VC and entrepreneur bloggers on the topic and this ranks among the best. Tags: startupentrepreneurhttps://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/19/cambrian-house-idea-approved/Sat, 19 Aug 2006 14:25:44 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/19/cambrian-house-idea-approved/My idea was approved, now it’s on to the IdeaWarz. Feel free to vote for it if you feel so inclined. Tags: cambrianhousecrowdsourcinghttps://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/19/average/Sat, 19 Aug 2006 14:23:22 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/19/average/The latest entrant into the Web 2.0 tracking game came out this week with Seth Godin’s Web 2.0 Traffic Watch List at alexaholic. NetworthIQ is at 441, pretty much right in the middle.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/17/cambrian-house-are-ideas-really-worthless/Thu, 17 Aug 2006 13:31:08 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/17/cambrian-house-are-ideas-really-worthless/I signed up for Cambrian House last night in an attempt to see if ideas are in fact worth anything. Cambrian House is attempting to capitalize on the “crowdsourcing” movement, which merges a few concepts like “Wisdom of crowds” and open-source software, to enable teams to come together and develop commercially viable products. I’m intrigued because I’ve got a few ideas kicking around and figure it’s worth a shot to see if they can be developed through Cambrian House where otherwise they would languish in my project queue probably never to see the light of day.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/16/kiko-for-sale/Wed, 16 Aug 2006 23:10:07 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/16/kiko-for-sale/I can’t say I’m surprised to see Kiko for sale on eBay (via OnStartups). Not that I thought Kiko was bad (though it ran up against Google as noted previously), but because I agree with Dharmesh and think this will become a rather common occurence in the not so distant future. With all of these Web 2.0 sites coming out, it’s easy for them to fade away and get lost in the noise.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/12/goodbye-basecamp/Sat, 12 Aug 2006 20:44:29 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/12/goodbye-basecamp/Hello activeCollab. I’ve been wanting to have more projects in Basecamp for a while, but am extremely resistant to shelling out money on tools. Now, thanks to activeCollab, I don’t have to. I downloaded it earlier this week and was going to set it up on one of my domains, then I noticed that it was a one-click install on Dreamhost (affiliate). Even better! 5 minutes and it was ready to go.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/09/vacation-and-networthiq-press/Wed, 09 Aug 2006 23:56:27 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/09/vacation-and-networthiq-press/Oh, and of course, if you’ve followed this blog for a while, you know that whenver I go on vacation, NetworthIQ gets some significant press exposure. Well, it happened again (the 3rd time in the last 12 months). Scott Burns, a syndicated financial columnist, included NetworthIQ in an article about Tricia, a personal finance blogger (and one of our users) chronicling her family’s climb out of debt. Congrats for the writeup Tricia, and thanks Scott!https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/09/plugged-in-again/Wed, 09 Aug 2006 23:53:06 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/08/09/plugged-in-again/I’m on vacation this week and from last Friday until last night I was out of town and completly unplugged. No laptop, no Internet. It was a refreshing break from the constant information processing that usually marks my days (not that I’m complaining, I enjoy it tremendously). This year we headed off to see some friends in northern Idaho, outside of Sandpoint. It’s a beautiful area, and I’d recommend visiting if you ever get the chance.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/25/site9-lands-funding/Wed, 26 Jul 2006 05:34:35 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/25/site9-lands-funding/A couple weeks back, I noticed a piece in the Biz Journal feed about a web development firm called Site9 moving its corporate headquarters to Portland. I’ve never heard of them and from what I could tell they didn’t look that big to even need a corporate headquarters. But, that’s cool to have another web shop in town, no harm there. Now, they’ve gone and raised some money. Again good for them, I’m happy to see people get a chance to build a business.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/23/picasa-red-eye-tool/Sun, 23 Jul 2006 15:16:22 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/23/picasa-red-eye-tool/Is it just me, or is Picasa‘s red-eye tool amazing? So simple, so powerful. Even though I’ve wound up with several tools for accomplishing different tasks (viewing, storing, searching, printing, editing), when it comes to editing Picasa is a thing of beauty. If you’re looking for a powerful, light-weight image management tool, check out my colleague Jesse‘s clickHappy.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/23/proving-mike-davidson-right/Sun, 23 Jul 2006 15:01:15 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/23/proving-mike-davidson-right/No, not trying to suck up, just found that it was incredibly ironic proving one of his points from the Webvisions session. The point he made was that a person will try something out if they hear about it from two unrelated sources. On Thursday night I was catching up on my Wired reading while taking MAX home. Flipping through, I caught a bit about a band called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but didn’t really think anything more of it.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/21/webvisions-day-2/Sat, 22 Jul 2006 05:40:08 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/21/webvisions-day-2/Today was much, much better than yesterday. I drove today, MAX was too slow yesterday. MAX can be nice if you live close to it, but Sherwood is just too far away. Great sessions throughout the day with one exception. It’s interesting going to conferences in your hometown. I think you tend to miss out on a lot of the socializing because it’s more like a day at work. It was a hot one in Portland, but you’d never know being in the convention center.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/21/webvisions-designing-for-community-interaction/Sat, 22 Jul 2006 05:32:49 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/21/webvisions-designing-for-community-interaction/Speaker: Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine Lot’s of stuff about Newsvine and news sites, how design can enhance your product/community. News moving from pyramid to hourglass (comments being the bottom portion). Identify interaction goals (comments, stories, posts, etc.) Funny (but slightly controversial) riff on PeopleAggregrator and how horrible the design is and even though Marc is a smart guy, everybody is blowing it off because of the bad design. Cork’d good because you learn about wine from common people/friends rather than wine afficianados.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/20/webvisions-day-1/Fri, 21 Jul 2006 06:22:03 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/20/webvisions-day-1/With WebVisions, code camp, and OSCON all around the same time, it’s tough deciding which one to go to. It always comes down to one since getting away from work two weeks in a row would be a challenge and burning a weekend at code camp wouldn’t fly at home. I’ve never gone to OSCON and last year was my first year at WebVisions. Though slanted mostly towards designers, there’s still enough for developers, marketers, entrepreneurs, etc.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/17/pdx-web-innovators-meetup-this-week/Mon, 17 Jul 2006 15:39:32 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/17/pdx-web-innovators-meetup-this-week/The PDX Web Innovators group is having a meetup this Wednesday at 7:00 (details here). With WebVisions starting on Thursday, this will be a good warm-up. We’d welcome any of the out of towners coming in Wednesday evening. The Rose & Raindrop is not far from the Convention Center area. PDX Web Innovators is essentially a group of web enthusiasts (developers, designers, entrepreneurs, project managers, etc.) who get together and talk about what’s going on with the web these days.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/15/music-api/Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:29:16 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/07/15/music-api/I’m exploring some new project ideas and was wondering if anyone knew where to get an API for music, as in I’d like to know about artists, albums, songs, etc. Kind of like an IMDB for music with an open API? And free? I haven’t found anything yet. Seems like that could be a project in of itself, but not quite what I’m looking to do. There are a couple sites like allmusic and discogs that have pretty extensive databases but no open api.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/28/jot-sucks/Wed, 28 Jun 2006 23:15:34 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/28/jot-sucks/It seems that Jot has removed our one page PDX Web Innovators wiki (http://pdxwebinnovators.jot.com/). Why would they do such a thing? Becuase it suffered a major case of comment spam and that caused the page count to be exceeded for the free plan. Sounds reasonable? Well, I see a few problems here: The fact that it was so easily comment spammed The fact that comments are considered pages in their plans I could find no way to mass delete comments and I was not about to delete several hundred of them by hand.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/27/osu-wins/Tue, 27 Jun 2006 14:47:35 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/27/osu-wins/Congratuations to the OSU Beavers, the 2006 NCAA Division I baseball champions. Facing elimination 6 times in Omaha, the Beavs won all 6. Unbelievable. Oregonians everywhere, no matter a Duck or Beaver, are celebrating this tremendous accomplishment.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/22/attensa-a-connected-innovator-and-other-portland-thoughts/Fri, 23 Jun 2006 05:38:47 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/22/attensa-a-connected-innovator-and-other-portland-thoughts/How ironic that Attensa came up in a conversation I had today and then saw that it was named a connected innovator at this week’s SuperNova conference. Congrats Attensa! As you can see from the Web 2.0 Innovation Map, there hasn’t been a lot of action in the Portland area, yet one of the three (and yes, I know how far behind I am on the map) got this nice accolade.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/22/go-beavs/Fri, 23 Jun 2006 04:22:07 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/22/go-beavs/Wow, as a die-hard Ducks fan, I can’t believe I’m actually thinking those words. With a win tonight finalizing their miraculous climb out of the loser’s bracket, the Oregon State Beavers have reached the final of the College World Series. Amazing is all I can say. I love college baseball, and considering OSU is the only varsity DI baseball program in the state I have been cheering for them and am excited to see them play this weekend.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/22/monetization-happenings/Thu, 22 Jun 2006 17:33:18 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/22/monetization-happenings/Couple of interesting bits recently. First, looks like Google may be readying a CommissionJunction rival. I think that would be pretty cool. We haven’t had a lot of success with affiliate marketing on NetworthIQ (ok, actually zero success as in not a single conversion) through CJ. But, I don’t really blame that on them. It just hasn’t been a priority, so I haven’t done much research/tracking/experimenting, other than throwing a coupld LMB, ING, and Vonage ads up.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/18/accident-on-mt-hood/Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:37:52 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/18/accident-on-mt-hood/Woke up this morning to quite the scare, hearing that friend and colleague Aaron, one of the four in Fourio, and his friends had been in an accident on Mt. Hood yesterday. I just talked to him and he was in good humor (I’m sure the pain medicine helped that), with a broken jaw being the most serious injury. I know Aaron and his team are very experienced climbers, and I’m sure that training helped prevent further problems.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/16/oregon-news-on-techdirt/Sat, 17 Jun 2006 04:48:46 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/16/oregon-news-on-techdirt/Good to see Oregon in the news on Techdirt. Nothing like making the state proud, eh? I wonder if it was a Windows machine and if so, I’d be curious to know how Steve Ballmer feels now?https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/16/cuppin-watch/Sat, 17 Jun 2006 04:32:25 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/16/cuppin-watch/As part of Rails day 2006, Ray is working for the next 24 hours on Cuppin’. Looks like it’ll be a Cork’d for coffee. Good luck guys. Update: This site is up and running now at cuppin.com. Go check it out.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/06/i-took-the-bait-google-spreadsheets-is-sweet/Tue, 06 Jun 2006 15:06:29 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/06/i-took-the-bait-google-spreadsheets-is-sweet/I jumped at the Google Spreadsheets launch (more here) and wanted to share my first impressions. It sure gets the closest to Excel that I’ve seen so far. I was incredibly impressed. The editing, formuals and sheets functionality is very well done. You can even change sheets with CTRL-PgDn like in Excel, although if you have mutliple tabs open in Firefox it will change the sheet in your spreadsheet and then change tabs (so if you want to use this feature, make sure you have your spreadsheet in a single tab instance of Firefox).https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/02/more-family-20/Fri, 02 Jun 2006 16:07:52 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/06/02/more-family-20/Back in April I posted (or more like rambled) about some parenting/family sites that were popping up. In a stroke of really, really original thought (I’m being sarcastic here), because they were using what would generally be considered a Web 2.0 approach (collaborative, social, user-generated content, etc.), I called them Family 2.0. Since that time, a blog has been started, Amiglia is using it in their title, and now cnet is running a front page story on it.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/05/31/redfin-making-a-comeback/Wed, 31 May 2006 17:27:10 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/05/31/redfin-making-a-comeback/They probably don’t think they ever really went away, but Zillow and Trulia stole most of their thunder. Being that Redfin was only for Seattle, I can see why nobody ever talked much about them. These guys were the pioneers though, in merging maps, listings and recent sales data. When it came out, I was just dying for something similar for Portland. I’m a real estate, map and data junkie, so this was just awesome.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/05/30/lesson-learned-for-visual-studio-and-web-deployment-projects/Wed, 31 May 2006 00:12:13 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/05/30/lesson-learned-for-visual-studio-and-web-deployment-projects/In my jump into using Web Deployment Projects with Web Application Projects I ran into an issue which is rather obvious after the fact, but thought it would be good to share for Google searchers. When creating a new solution/project configuration (i.e. dev, test, production, etc.) in Visual Studio 2005, which is useful to do when using Web Deployment Projects, make sure you set the output path for the Web project to “/bin”.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/05/23/to-net-or-not-to-net/Wed, 24 May 2006 06:59:18 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/05/23/to-net-or-not-to-net/Over at Web 2.0 Central, Reg has an interesting post on the Top 13 reasons to CONSIDER the Microsoft platform for Web 2.0 development. I especially liked the disclaimer. Not that I question Reg’s objectivity, but it sounds like Microsoft showed him a pretty good time. Maybe I’m just jealous 🙂 This seemed like a good topic to get me back into the blogging spirit. Since I’m working on a Web 2.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/04/15/webvisions/Sun, 16 Apr 2006 01:24:21 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/04/15/webvisions/I really enjoyed last year’s Webvisions with some interesting talks by Stewart Butterfield, BJ Fogg, Molly, Thomas Vander Wal and more. It looks like this year’s is rounding into form as well with Dan Cederholm, one of my favorite designers, coming to town.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/04/09/zipingo-getting-left-behind/Mon, 10 Apr 2006 03:12:26 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/04/09/zipingo-getting-left-behind/In the local reviews race, it looks like Zipingo is trailing badly. Yelp, Insider Pages, and Judy’s book look to be going strong except for a recent drop-off for Judy’s book.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/04/05/family-20/Wed, 05 Apr 2006 20:44:26 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/04/05/family-20/I’m not exactly sure how I missed Trixie Tracker‘s launch last month, but the great thing about this blog and PDX Web Innovators is that I’m making some great connections with people here in Portland and this new network is a great place to learn about new things. Anyway, I mention Trixie Tracker, because I’ve been following Family 2.0 applications like Trixie Tracker, Minti, Amiglia, and Families.com. I’ve had similar ideas in these areas, so it’s been interesting seeing them pop up.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/04/05/time-to-get-a-mac/Wed, 05 Apr 2006 19:24:34 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/04/05/time-to-get-a-mac/With the Apple Boot Camp announcement today, I think there are no longer any doubts about what my next laptop will be. Not that I have any idea when that will be. I’ve been wanting to switch to a Mac, but now that I’ll (easily) be able to run Windows for ASP.net development, the decision is made easier. Time to start saving for a PowerBook.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/04/05/blog-updates/Wed, 05 Apr 2006 15:27:33 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/04/05/blog-updates/Last night, I wrapped up a series of blog updates that have been a long time coming. As always, things are never as easy as they appear to be, but everything appears to be working fine now. Here’s a rundown: Moved web hosting to Dreamhost. I got a screaming deal, like $20 for 12 months of hosting. I’ve got a number of domain names I can play around with, so the unlimited domain capability is great.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/04/04/pdx-web-innovators-2/Tue, 04 Apr 2006 14:29:07 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/04/04/pdx-web-innovators-2/The next PDX Web Innovators is tomorrow night, April 5. It will be great to catch up with everybody and meet the new faces. See ya then…https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/04/03/new-features-at-museum-of-modern-betas/Mon, 03 Apr 2006 15:15:51 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/04/03/new-features-at-museum-of-modern-betas/Over at MOMB, Saurier has released a couple of new features. The Hot 100 and Top 100: The Top 100 – a list of the 100 most popular betas (and alphas, and pre-betas, …) based on the number of how many bookmarks there are in del.icio.us; this list will be updated biweekly, and The Hot 100 – which is a kind of mini-zeitgeist and displays the most popular betas (and alphas, and pre-betas, …) based on how many bookmarks there have been added within the last 7 days; this list will be updated every Sunday.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/30/hmmmm-what/Fri, 31 Mar 2006 00:42:08 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/30/hmmmm-what/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.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/28/web-20-awards/Wed, 29 Mar 2006 01:16:19 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/28/web-20-awards/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.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/21/moving-sucks/Wed, 22 Mar 2006 05:14:29 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/21/moving-sucks/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.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/21/another-portland-entrepreneurs-group/Wed, 22 Mar 2006 05:14:00 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/21/another-portland-entrepreneurs-group/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.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/16/web-20-or-star-wars-character/Thu, 16 Mar 2006 19:36:11 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/16/web-20-or-star-wars-character/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)https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/14/portland-technology-groups/Wed, 15 Mar 2006 01:35:19 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/14/portland-technology-groups/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 – .https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/14/portland-is-1/Wed, 15 Mar 2006 01:07:28 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/14/portland-is-1/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: pdxportlandhttps://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/14/awesome-social-engineering-attack/Tue, 14 Mar 2006 19:03:31 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/14/awesome-social-engineering-attack/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.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/11/pdx-web-innovators/Sat, 11 Mar 2006 16:04:13 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/11/pdx-web-innovators/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.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/10/oef-pubtalk-seed-oregon/Fri, 10 Mar 2006 15:40:05 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/10/oef-pubtalk-seed-oregon/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.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/10/whats-up-with-techcrunch/Fri, 10 Mar 2006 14:57:20 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/10/whats-up-with-techcrunch/Or I should say what’s down, because it’s been down all morning. But, I guess since it’s not even 7:00 here on the west coast it’s not really all morning. I’ve just been up for a few hours already, so it feels like it. I’ve been trying to follow the conversation about Minti and niche Web 2.0 sites (ahem, such as NetworthIQ). Mike has some interesting comments about walled gardens. In general, I don’t tend to buy his argument about aggregating content from blogs and not forcing people to enter content on the site.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/10/so-many-ideas-so-little/Fri, 10 Mar 2006 14:36:17 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/10/so-many-ideas-so-little/It was a little over a year ago that I started seriously brainstorming application/business ideas. We had struggled to get going on our first idea, so something simpler was needed. I amassed a list of ideas, which isn’t particularly hard these days. It’s pretty simple to follow the blogs and trends to pick up ideas. Almost exactly one year ago, NetworthIQ was picked to be first. What’s interesting is how many of these ideas have shown up in different forms recently.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/03/web-20-directory/Fri, 03 Mar 2006 15:10:19 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/03/03/web-20-directory/Previously I wrote about the need for a Web 2.0 list with categories, descriptions, ratings, etc. Well, yet another web 2.0 list makes it way onto the web. But, this Web 2.0 directory is definitely worth noting. It has categorized over 900 web2.0 sites. This is going to be a big help for completing descriptions and categories/tags on the innovation map. It also means there’s a lot not on the map yet.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/26/portland-web-innovators/Mon, 27 Feb 2006 03:30:53 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/26/portland-web-innovators/Adam got the ball rolling with his post. I’ll spread the word a little more here. We’re looking to start a new, more informal group for Portland web types to get together. Inspired by groups in Boston and San Francisco, we’re calling it Portland Web Innovators. We know there are many great developers, designers, and entrepreneurs around, so check out the wiki and sign up if you’re interested. We’re looking to get a first meeting setup sometime in March.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/23/networthiq-in-business-week/Fri, 24 Feb 2006 05:16:00 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/23/networthiq-in-business-week/Fresh off the buzz of the Innovation Map, we turn our attention back now to NetworthIQ. This is an exciting time at NetworthIQ headquarters (virtual headquarters that is) as this week’s issue of Business Week features an article (free right now) on personal finance blogs and NetworthIQ is mentioned. Needless to say, the rest of the Fourio team and I are pretty happy to get this level of exposure. First the NY Times and now Business Week.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/22/putting-platial-on-the-map/Thu, 23 Feb 2006 01:45:17 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/22/putting-platial-on-the-map/One of the perks of developing the Web 2.0 map has been the response from other Web 2.0 companies, both well known and those that had escaped my radar previously. I was amazed at some of the people submitting their sites or corrections for the map. It was quite a thrill. One of the companies that had escaped my radar was Platial, a company right here in Portland doing some exciting things with maps.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/20/more-on-magnolia/Tue, 21 Feb 2006 00:51:35 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/20/more-on-magnolia/I checked out Ma.gnolia today. First the good: groups and private bookmarks are nice and the UI is clean and simple. But, there is some bad, enough of which to keep me away for now. A few things really bug me: The domain name is terrible (as mentioned previously). The masked URLs are lame. Use some unobtrusive javascript or something to track clicks if you must. But, I’d really like to see the real link in the anchor tag, so I can easily right click and copy the url (should I want to).https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/19/random-thoughts/Mon, 20 Feb 2006 05:18:41 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/19/random-thoughts/I’ve been pretty slammed over the last week and this week looks pretty busy as well. So, I only have time for a couple quick thoughts. Thought #1 Dang, Zillow.com (previously discussed here) sure shot to the top. Have you seen their numbers? I’m impressed. Looks like they came through that inital rough patch with barely a scratch. I hear about them everywhere it seems. Newspaper, local news, co-workers, in-laws. I’ll have more to say about the response to Zillow.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/14/ajax-lessons/Tue, 14 Feb 2006 23:29:45 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/14/ajax-lessons/If you’re interested in learning AJAX, take a look at AJAX Lessons. (and if you click on that link you’ll help me win free books. What can I say, I’m a sucker for free stuff)https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/14/tracking-web-20/Tue, 14 Feb 2006 13:42:11 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/14/tracking-web-20/Maybe it’s just because I made one myself and tend to notice these things more now, but it seems there are an over abundance of web 2.0 tracking sites popping up. However, there is still not a clear winner when it comes to providing a way of finding the best of the new online services. This weekend Pete Cashmore launched his Weblist blog which adds detailed reviews and user ratings to the mix.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/12/whats-with-the-ios-some-history-about-fourio/Sun, 12 Feb 2006 21:12:32 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/12/whats-with-the-ios-some-history-about-fourio/Seeing that Edgeio is getting some pretty good buzz this week and ready to launch in a few weeks, I thought I’d comment on the name and it’s similarity to our company name, Fourio. Not that anyone would ever confuse the two. Because of who’s behind it (and its potential), they’ll be getting more press than we dream of and we won’t be competing or anything. But, I want to make it clear that Fourio is an original name.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/12/new-web-startup-to-call-portland-home/Sun, 12 Feb 2006 20:36:24 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/12/new-web-startup-to-call-portland-home/I haven’t been very good about reading the paper recently. Mornings are usually spent working on my projects, then off to my job, then home with family and maybe a little more work at night. But, today I caught an article about a Japanese software entrepreneur, Toru Takasuka, and his plans to base his new web startup in Portland. Takasuka will be pouring $10 million of his own money into the project.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/09/carnival-of-entrepreneurship/Thu, 09 Feb 2006 19:15:08 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/09/carnival-of-entrepreneurship/This week’s Carnival of Entrepreneurship is up at Small Business Trends and it happens to include the Innovation Map .https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/08/zillowcom-launch/Wed, 08 Feb 2006 16:36:40 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/08/zillowcom-launch/Wow, I bet heads are rolling somewhere in Seattle today. Zillow.com launched today (more here), complete with $32 million and 75 employees, and what do we get for that? A nice big outage message. I’ll say it again, wow! $32 million and you can’t run a load test? Zillow promises to be able value your home for you, which is an interesting idea. I’m in the middle of buying and selling a house so I was really excited to try it out.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/07/were-on-tv/Tue, 07 Feb 2006 23:50:50 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/07/were-on-tv/This was fun to find. The commandN web video show featured the Web 2.0 Innovation map in this week’s episode. Thanks commandN!https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/06/more-maps/Tue, 07 Feb 2006 01:51:48 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/06/more-maps/Some more maps that have been brought to my attention over the last week: SF Bay Area Tech Companies European Web 2.0 map A Web 2.0 meme map In the O’Reilly Post, PJ from Wayfaring makes a comment about creating maps like ours there. For some reason, none of my comments went through (I got in the blog itself, but I can’t get a comment through?). So, responding here, I hadn’t really considered using another site, as I wanted to funnel buzz through Fourio and our projects.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/03/web-2o-logos/Fri, 03 Feb 2006 21:50:35 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/03/web-2o-logos/Check this photo out on Flickr. Along with our map, this is quite the week for Web 2.0 compilations. (via Russell Beattie)https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/02/linkedin/Thu, 02 Feb 2006 08:48:03 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/02/linkedin/If there are any LinkedIn users out there. Feel free to connect with me at ryan@fourio.com.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/02/map-updates/Thu, 02 Feb 2006 08:43:42 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/02/02/map-updates/I’m currently drowning in submissions. Perhaps email wasn’t the best mechanism for that, eh? Ahh well, live and learn. A victim of our own success. I hope to catch up by the weekend. There are many international ones, so that should start to satisfy some complaints about the map being too US centric. For anybody reading this that has or is going to submit…. please include an address or a lat/long (just a url, or a url and a city doesn’t cut it).https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/01/31/more-innovation-map-news/Wed, 01 Feb 2006 04:36:34 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/01/31/more-innovation-map-news/A very successful day in blogosphere for the map. Made the Digg front page and del.icio.us/popular page for the first time! (we got close to the del.icio.us/popular page for NetworthIQ). But even more exciting was that Tim O’Reilly (yes the one who publishes all those books on your bookshelf at work), who helped define the Web 2.0 movement, posted: “It is indeed interesting. A lot of apps I haven’t followed (and missing a lot that I have) so I can’t speak to how thoroughly it covers Web 2.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/01/31/the-map-is-a-hit/Tue, 31 Jan 2006 14:34:31 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/01/31/the-map-is-a-hit/Looks like the map is going over well. Here’s what’s happened so far. Dion Hinchcliffe says: “Visually shows where Web 2.0 development creativity is actually happening, using the latest Web 2.0 software lists. A pretty cool data point.” Google Maps Mania posted its review: “Ryan Williams has put together a great new Google Maps mashup called ‘The Web 2.0 Innovation Map’” Emily Chang added it to eHub and is going to let me see the entire feed.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/01/30/web-20-innovation-map/Mon, 30 Jan 2006 18:21:42 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/01/30/web-20-innovation-map/Introducing the Web 2.0 Innovation Map. We all know Silicon Valley is hot when it comes to web startups. But, what about other areas of the country? Are there any hidden hotbeds of web talent? What other groups were in the northwest along with Fourio? These were some of the questions I was looking to answer. Now, Web 2.0 can be visualized, using what else, but the Google Maps API and Yahoo Geocoding API.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/01/11/startup-toolkit/Thu, 12 Jan 2006 01:06:33 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/01/11/startup-toolkit/Chris Mullins presents a great startup tool kit. I’ve seen most of these before, but there were a few new ones for me, and it’s nice to have it all in one place. (via Startup Fever, another new to me resource) Subscribed to both.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/01/07/what-happened-to-well-spent-business-week-blog/Sat, 07 Jan 2006 15:59:37 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/01/07/what-happened-to-well-spent-business-week-blog/I was looking through my Bloglines subscriptions this morning, trying to prune back inactive blogs and seeing what kind of subscriber counts certain blogs had. It’s interesting that Business Week’s Well Spent blog only had 5 subscribers (Granted there are 8 available feeds for this blog, so there may be more subscribers across the different feeds. But, why on earth do you need 8 feed URIs?). So, I went to the site and see that Well Spent is not in the list of blogs anymore.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/01/02/fun-sports-reads/Tue, 03 Jan 2006 05:39:16 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2006/01/02/fun-sports-reads/For most of my life, prior to this thing they call the web, sports was my #1 passion. My goal was to play pro baseball. That didn’t quite work out and I only made it as far as small college. But, it’s always fun to read some great sports stories and take your mind off everyday life. I just came across a couple good ones by Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball:https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/21/more-winodws-live-favorites/Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:12:10 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/21/more-winodws-live-favorites/Steve Rubel adds his thoughts on Windows Live Favorites. I echo these criticisms along with my earlier post. I ended up trying Favorites out just for grins. Man, what a pain. First I had to install the MSN toolbar (another disappointing MS tool) and jump through some other hoops. Then, to use it, you have to keep an explorer bar open, which I don’t like doing. Then you have competing favorites tools (builtin and Windows Live) that aren’t connected at all, which is kind of weird.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/21/pandora/Wed, 21 Dec 2005 19:32:15 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/21/pandora/I’ve been reading and hearing great things about Pandora. One co-worker referred to it as “ear crack” and I can definitely see why. It’s fun to plugin you’re favorite artists and songs and see what’s related. A nice legal way to listen to music.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/19/the-web-is-falling-apart/Tue, 20 Dec 2005 00:36:20 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/19/the-web-is-falling-apart/It snowed here a bit in Portland yesterday, so attendance is pretty light at work, and it feels pretty relaxed. But, it seems things are falling apart all over the place on the web. TypePad is having all sorts of problems lately, Del.icio.us is having issues, and Bloglines is moving and their servers are down for a few hours. It makes it really hard to slack when your favorite tools are offline.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/17/networthiq-makes-top-10-list/Sat, 17 Dec 2005 16:57:03 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/17/networthiq-makes-top-10-list/As we reach the end of the year, many people are coming out with top 10 lists for this and that. It was exciting to see this week that NetworthIQ was included as #6 in the list of Top 10 Innovative Web 2.0 Applications of 2005. This article made the Digg home page and the del.icio.us/popular page, resulting in a surge of traffic and registrations at the site.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/13/cool-net-productscompanies/Wed, 14 Dec 2005 05:58:51 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/13/cool-net-productscompanies/In the spirit of trying to be more positive about Microsoft on this site, I came across this list of “cool” .Net products/companies by Dan’l Lewin (via <a href="Scoble). I’ve only heard of a couple of them, but will be checking the others out. There’s also an intersting list of reasons for choosing .Net at the end of the article. I’m sure the open source crowd will have something to say about that.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/13/wiki-collaboration-tools-roundup/Wed, 14 Dec 2005 05:29:48 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/13/wiki-collaboration-tools-roundup/This is a reference post for wikis (and other collaboration tools) that I need to check out: Basecamp (already using) Confluence Central Desktop Jotspot [Hosted] Social Text [Hosted] Stikipad [Hosted] WikiSpaces [Hosted] PBwiki [Hosted] Zimbra Perspective [.Net] FlexWiki [.Net] MediaWiki [PHP] DokuWiki [PHP] TikiWiki [PHP] PmWiki [PHP] Twiki [Perl] Kwiki [Perl] trac [Python] Zwiki [Python] Update: WikiMatrix looks at these too.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/13/online-calendars/Wed, 14 Dec 2005 05:12:56 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/13/online-calendars/This is a reference post for me so that I can keep track of online calendar tools I’m interested in looking at. Kiko CalendarHub Planzo Hula Trumba Zimbra AirSet 30 boxes HipCal SpongeCell Update TechCrunch takes a look at these too. Final Update Not much need for this list anymore. Google Calendar wins. I generally root for the small guy, but it just didn’t work out this time.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/13/email-beta-smackdown-begins/Wed, 14 Dec 2005 04:55:11 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/13/email-beta-smackdown-begins/As of today, I am now using the big three email betas: Gmail, Windows Live Mail Beta, and Yahoo! Mail Beta. I have entirely too many email accounts, but it’s interesting using the different clients. I’ve been using Gmail heavily for a couple months, I just switched to the Yahoo! mail beta last week, and to the Winodws Live Mail Beta today. I’ll spend some time analyzing the three over the next few weeks and see which one comes out on top.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/13/the-irony-eye-clinic-site-not-accessible/Wed, 14 Dec 2005 01:30:35 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/13/the-irony-eye-clinic-site-not-accessible/The other night we had an eye emergency in the family, and I desperately needed the phone number for the Oregon Eye Specialists. As you probably know, I use FireFox. Well, guess what happens when you go to that site in FireFox? Nothing! Absolutely nothing. Just a blank blue screen. No alternate content, just blank (Yes, Flash is installed). In my haste I went back to Google to track down the phone number.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/09/windows-live-favorites/Sat, 10 Dec 2005 00:01:42 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/09/windows-live-favorites/Let me start off by saying this Windows Live branding is dumb. I mean, I guess it presents some consistency. But, like with Windows Live Local, it sounds like a tag line for the evening news, not a web app. So anyway, I was reading over at Dare’s blog about the release of Windows Live Favorites and the associated toolbar. I thought it might be interesting to try out. But, it’s entirely IE specific.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/09/busy-week-for-acquisitions/Fri, 09 Dec 2005 20:24:30 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/09/busy-week-for-acquisitions/First Consummating, now del.icio.us. What a week for web startups. Though I have no experience with Consummating, I’m an avid del.icio.us user, and think it’s great that those guys made some cash for their work. I just hope Yahoo doesn’t screw up any account mergers with del.icio.us like they did with Flickr. I still can’t get the my old Flickr account back (and the images in it) months after they forced the accounts to move over.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/09/google-transit-its-for-portland/Fri, 09 Dec 2005 19:25:46 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/09/google-transit-its-for-portland/News yesterday about the Google Labs release of Google Transit (via SearchEngineWatch). It’s pretty cool that Portland is featured. Being that I live in the Portland area, it’s also pretty easy for me to test it out. Overall, I was pretty impressed, I could see this being a very useful tool to figure out approximate routes. Considering that most public agencies probably don’t have top-notch web talent like Google does, this could be very helpful.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/07/gmail-adds-delete/Wed, 07 Dec 2005 19:05:19 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/07/gmail-adds-delete/I’m seeing a delete option now in the actions menu in Gmail. Is this new? It always bugged me that the interface discouraged me from deleting anything. Interesting that they decided to go back to the model all other email clients use.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/07/top-5-tips-for-email-newsletter-success/Wed, 07 Dec 2005 16:10:16 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/07/top-5-tips-for-email-newsletter-success/Email newsletters are still an important piece to Internet marketing as part of the “Permission Marketing” game. Along with blogs (and RSS feeds), they are a great way to update customers on the status of your site/product/service. What’s interesting is that for NetworthIQ we have almost 500 newsletter subscribers, but maybe only a couple dozen subscriptions to our feed. This highlights the importance of having another channel besides blogs to communicate with your customers.https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/07/getting-re-acquainted-with-wordpress/Wed, 07 Dec 2005 15:02:44 +0000https://www.webthingsconsidered.com/2005/12/07/getting-re-acquainted-with-wordpress/I’ve pretty much wrapped up the move over to WordPress here from my old home. I think I’ll leave the Blogger posts over there for now, as WordPress’s blogger-import process is less than ideal. Isn’t there a Blogger API? Why do I need to publish all of the Blogger articles to my WordPress server and give up my blogpot address that gets some decent search engine traffic? Maybe there is a better import script out there?