After the Urban Airship and Alaska Air announcement during Google I/O, you might have seen this one coming. But now it’s been confirmed. Urban Airship is powering Alaska Airlines Passbook integration on iOS devices. The upgraded Alaska Airlines iOS app available today will use Urban Airship’s PassTools solution to c

Spring is a good time for road trips. And that’s just what Jeff Barr—Chief Evangelist for Amazon Web Services—has been doing for the past few weeks. Roadtripping from town to town. Chatting about AWS. On Friday, he stops in Portland. In the last ten years I have spoken at AWS, PHP, Linux, Perl, Java, and

You know me. I’m a sucker for an awesome video montage. And when it’s a video about Portland and its startups, I can’t help but get a little giddy. That’s why I’m super happy to share the Tech Town Portland piece that was just released, this evening. The short film—based on an original co

While many demo days are closed to the public, the folks at Portland Seed Fund always want to include the community however they can. And what better way than throwing a little shindig for the community once PSF demo day is over? You’re invited to join the Portland Seed Fund and their graduating class at

Portland now has six new startups on the block. Literally. The Portland Development Commission has revealed the winners of its first ever Startup PDX: Challenge. What’s the Startup PDX: Challenge? Well, Mike Rogoway at The Oregonian has a pretty good rundown: The PDC, Portland’s urban renewal agency, budgeted ab

Every once in a while, it’s nice to take Portland Lunch 2.0 outside of Portland, so that folks who don’t work in the city get a chance to participate as well. This Wednesday is one such jaunt as our friends at OTBC will be hosting Lunch 2.0 in Beaverton. In Beaverton or Hillsboro? Want a

If you don’t know Adam DuVander, you should. He’s one of the unsung champions of the Portland tech scene. He was one of the first Beer and Blog attendees; he started Demolicious; he was on the committee that brought the Ignite format to Portland; and the same group who helped bring BarCamp to Portland. But

While it’s not yet there, Portland is getting ridiculously close to having—like brewpubs—more tech startup accelerators per capita than anyone else. The latest addition? TiE Oregon is expanding its accelerator program to the Pearl, partnering with ISITE Design to open TiE Pearl. The new accelerator will be

I get asked a few times a week how people can learn to program. I felt like if more people shared their stories it might help people to understand how many different ways people teach themselves to work with code. Every time I hear someone’s story, I wish it could be shared further with the

Ah late May in Portland. The February Fakeout is a long distant waterlogged memory. And even though we got a few days of awesomeness over the long weekend, any plans you had to anything outside have likely been dashed at this point. So why not join Portland types and WordPress for its 10th Anniversary? As

Still looking for something to do this weekend? Well, I mean, I know you have tonight covered and Monday covered. But what about Saturday? Well, get ready to be happy. Darya Rose, Ph.D is the author of Foodist, Using Real Food and Real Science to Lose Weight Without Dieting. She’ll be signing books on Saturday

Portland will always take the chance to celebrate. But the tenth anniversary of WordPress? That’s a better excuse than usual. I’m a huge fan of WordPress. And I know I’m not alone. I’ve been blogging for nearly 15 years and I’ve been using WordPress to run my blogs for the majority of that time

Startups are pretty cool. Music is pretty cool. Art is definitely cool. But what happens if you put all of those things together to create something cooler? That’s just what Portland design shop The Brigade has done with an art exhibition to bring tech to a Portland elementary school. The Cover by Cover Art Auction

Treehouse has been on a tear lately. Following on news of recent funding, they’ve now launched an education channel dedicated completely to getting the most out of Adobe Illustrator. What’s Treehouse do? The extensive Treehouse library of step-by-step video courses and training exercises will give you a wide ran

Portland just got a little cloudier. Orchestrate—a startup that has a new take on how to distribute resources for cloud computing—has landed a $3 million seed round, led by True Ventures. What’s this “new take”? Well, it’s the idea that the data in the cloud should be as distributed and r

Another Portland company has had a successful exit—and that also means another successful exit for the Oregon Angel Fund. Indoor mapping startup Meridian has been acquired by Aruba Networks. And it will remain in Portland as a wholly owned subsidiary. What’s Meridian do? Well, the Portland Business Journal summe

Portland startup and Portland Seed Fund alum Gliph has been an interesting and compelling cloaking device that’s been searching for just the right application of their technology. And they just found it: the nebulous and still relatively nascent world of Bitcoin. Not familiar with Bitcoin? it’s an open source vi

Ah spring. With a faint hint of Google I/O in the Portland air. Why? Well, while most of the Google I/O activity is taking place down in San Francisco, some of it is taking place right over our heads, with Urban Airship and Alaska Air. The two companies joined forces to build a Developer Sandbox

Portlanders tend to do a really good job of staying behind the scenes on some pretty amazing projects. Case in point: Hello Again, a project created by Chris Milk and Beck that just won a Webby for “Best Use of Video or Moving Image” and “Auto & Auto Services.” But those 360-degree shots were ma

Okay okay. Setting the Google Glass link bait headline aside, Jeff Hardison of Portland-based Meridian—a company that’s reinventing the way we find our way around interior spaces—sat down with Robert Scoble to chat about what Meridian is building. Jeff does a great job on the interview. Even while staring

If you carry a smart phone, struggling with TriMet ticket machines could be a thing of the past. The Oregonian was on hand when Portland startup GlobeSherpa debuted their mobile-phone-based ticketing system. For more information on the launch, read The Oregonian post. For more on the company, visit GlobeSherpa. Background t

Portland startup Lucky Sort, which has been focused on analyzing trends and patterns in written content in an attempt to predict market fluctuations, has been acquired by Twitter. LuckySort founder Noah Pepper announced the acquisition—where else—via Twitter. So excited to announce that @luckysort has been acqui

It’s always nice to see Portland types getting national recognition for their efforts. And it’s especially nice when they’re recognized among a very select group of people. Such is the case for Portlander Michelle Rowley, who was just named among Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business 20

Portland’s Instrument always tries to pull out all of the stops when it comes to Google I/O, the annual developer conference where Google often unveils new technology. This year is no different. Check out the skydiving game they built using “multiple instances of Chrome mashed up with the Google Maps Javascript

Now you may not realize this but a lot of people like to watch TV. No, it’s true. I swear. And that’s wby the technology for watching TV continues to improve by leaps and bounds. But tracking what’s available when? Not so much. Until now. Enter tvQ from Trakt. Using the tvQ iOS app, users

In a day and age when many acquirers waste the value of acquisitions, it’s always nice to see companies actually using acquisitions to greater effect. And that’s just what TigerLogic has done with the latest version of Postano—one of the early players in the visual aggregation space—by integrating fu

Being an entrepreneur ain’t easy. And getting your startup to a point where it’s generating revenue, satisfying customers, and gaining recognition can sometimes seem like insurmountable tasks. That’s why it’s nice to have peers who can help mentor you. Like Starve Ups Launch Pad. Born out of the Star

You hear me blather on and on about the Portland tech scene. With my rose colored glasses. But do you ever wonder what it’s really like? Well, get ready to be happy. Know Your City is taking you on a tour of the seedy underbelly or the Portland tech scene. With Keep Portland Wired. Board

There seems to be a constant stream of chatter about how the Portland startup ecosystem compares to the Bay/Seattle. Inherently, a major piece of this conversation is about the ability or inability to raise money locally. This assumes that if there is money to be had locally, it’s the better choice—raise locally

For many mobile app developers, applications crashing or looking less than optimal on a device can be the difference between wild success and languishing in relative anonymity. But testing those apps on the ever growing variety of mobile handsets can be daunting—if not downright impossible. Until now. Enter AppThwack.