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JULY 2008: TECHNOLOGY
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START ME UP
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| 2. |
WHO THEY ARE: Values of n WHAT THEY MAKE: I want Sandy WHERE THEY LIVE: Northeast Portland AGE: 2 years old NAME YOU SHOULD KNOW: Rael Dornfest, founder and CEO HOW TO FIND THEM: iwantsandy.com |
It’s not hard to anthropomorphize Sandy, the cheerful,
free, web-based personal “assistant” launched by
Dornfest last November. Her purpose is simple: keeping your
calendar and to-do lists organized. But as the two of you
communicate in natural language via email, text message, or
Twitter — the social networking service that allows you
to broadcast 140-character messages to people you choose
— she starts to feel a little like the secretary you
never had.
“Remind me on Friday to print out my plane ticket
confirmation number,” you write her. Or, “Remind me
about my meeting on Wednesday at 9 a.m.” She’ll
send you a reminder at the correct time, or she’ll add
events or contacts to your calendar program or address book.
She even interfaces with Jott, the free service that turns
phone calls into text messages or emails. One call to Sandy,
via Jott, and moments later she’s adding something to
your calendar.
Dornfest, previously CTO of Sebastopol, Calif.-based
O’Reilly Media, recently went through a funding round (he
declined to say how much was raised) with angel investors and
says he’ll base future growth of I want Sandy on user
need; adding subscription-based services is one option.
One thing he won’t change is Sandy’s personality.
While Dornfest doesn’t reveal how many users I want Sandy
has, he tells a story that’s indicative of her
popularity: This last February some of her many fans emailed
her Valentine’s Day greetings.
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JanRain is perhaps the leading developer in the growing
world of OpenID, a service that lets you use a single ID
to log in at multiple sites across the web. The issue of
identity security has always been a big deal; different
sites require different IDs, but each of those IDs are
only as secure as the weakest place you use them. But if
you’ve signed up at an OpenID hosting service like
JanRain, the login process at any website —
approximately 10,000 sites support OpenID logins —
is conducted between JanRain and the site. All you have
to do is enter a basic web address. |
| 4. |
WHO THEY ARE: NuScale Power WHAT THEY DO: small-scale nuclear reactor development WHERE THEY LIVE: Corvallis AGE: 1 year old NAME YOU SHOULD KNOW: Paul Lorenzini, CEO |
When Lorenzini says NuScale is developing a small nuclear
reactor, he’s not kidding. He means “fits on a
railroad car” small. He means 15-feet-by-60-feet small.
True, that doesn’t take into account the other parts of a
power plant, like a turbine and a generator. But compared to
the multi-acre footprint of traditional nuclear power plants,
this reactor design is tiny.
NuScale grew out of a federally funded study done by Oregon
State University and other groups in 2000. Two years ago the
university decided to commercialize the work and in 2007, via
OSU’s tech transfer program, NuScale was born. The
company went through its first funding round in January
(Lorenzini declines to say how much was raised). The company is
now focusing on marketing and the federal permitting process,
which will take several years to prepare for and then
complete.
So who’s in the market for a little nuclear power plant?
People who need power but can’t access it, says
Lorenzini. The NuScale plant puts out 45 megawatts — by
comparison the now-demolished Trojan Nuclear plant produced
1,130 megawatts — which Lorenzini says makes a NuScale
plant the perfect size for towns in extremely remote locations,
or island nations, or industries that don’t want to rely
on traditional power sources.
| 5. |
WHO THEY ARE: WeoGeo WHAT THEY DO: Map-making services WHERE THEY LIVE: Portland State University AGE: 2 years old NAME YOU SHOULD KNOW: Paul Bissett, CEO and co-founder HOW TO FIND THEM: weogeo.com |
WeoGeo is undoubtedly the wonkiest startup on the list. And
they’re also the newest to wear the “based in
Portland” label. The company moved here from Florida
earlier this year and now shares office space with other
startups in PSU’s business accelerator. The company
describes itself as a “one-stop marketplace for
mapping.” But these aren’t maps for Sunday drivers.
These are high-resolution, data-intensive maps used by
scientists, surveyors and engineers. Users store, sell and buy
data. That sounds simple until you see the server-busting size
of these maps, which makes distribution, storage and even
search functions very difficult.
Combining the searchable and selling aspects of geospatial
data was a first, and one that Bissett says has been a big hit.
The company, he says, hopes to create an eBay-like effect in
the mapping community. But instead of used kitchen utensils,
they’re helping sell the data that underlies everything
from freeway construction to scientific research.
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The loneliness of the small-business owner — Reimer
knows it well. And as someone who has worked alongside
other entrepreneurs as they develop their own companies,
she knows another thing, too: The people who run small
companies have more in common than they think — the
same questions, the same concerns, the same desire for
information that will let them know if they’re on the
right path. Lumeno.us is like a CEO forum for the little guy. Users — who can remain as anonymous as they want — compare financial data with other users in the same industry or region or size of company. They can poll their peers on potential business decisions. They can, in the most non-buzzword sense of the word, network. Right now the site is in private beta, which means a few invited users are helping iron out wrinkles. One of the challenges, Reimer says, is providing enough tools but not swamping the busy small-business owner with too many bells and whistles. The site is expected to go public this fall.
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| 7. |
WHO THEY ARE: Iterasi WHAT THEY MAKE: Web page saver WHERE THEY LIVE: Downtown Vancouver AGE: 1 year old NAME YOU SHOULD KNOW: Pete Grillo, founder and CEO HOW TO FIND THEM: iterasi.com |
Find a cool web page online, click the bookmark function on
your web browser and here’s what happens: Your browser
remembers the location of that page. That’s it. Come back
the next day and the page you’ve linked to — for
example, a receipt for an online purchase or a form
you’ve filled out — has changed. It’s called
“dynamic content” — information that changes
automatically as user information or a server database
changes.
But with Iterasi, a simple browser-based tool, you can
“freeze” a moment in time, saving a page in the
exact state — complete with links and formatting —
it was in when you visited. It’s a replica of a page
instead of a remembered link. “We’re fanatics about
the fidelity of the page,” Grillo says. Saved pages are
searchable and shareable. Iterasi launched a private beta in
February and will go public sometime this summer. Right now
it’s only available for Windows users who use Internet
Explorer and Firefox. According to Grillo, a version for Mac
users will be available later this summer.
| 8. |
WHO THEY ARE: LUNARR.com WHAT THEY MAKE: a collaboration platform WHERE THEY LIVE: Southwest Portland AGE: 2 years old NAMES YOU SHOULD KNOW: Toru Takasuka, founder and CEO; Hideshi Hamaguchi, co-founder and COO HOW TO FIND THEM: lunarr.com |
The phrase used again and again to describe LUNARR’s
collaboration platform is “deceptively simple.” And
the minute you start to play with the idea, you see why. Open
up a Microsoft Word document filled with data from a group
project you’re working on. Type some new info onto it.
But wait, before you attach this thing to an email to send to a
co-worker, click on the dog-eared corner in the upper
right-hand corner. The document gracefully flips around.
On the back is an email field, other documents linked to this
project, a place for notes, all previous revisions to the
document — a tidy collection of everything associated
with the “front” of the page. As Hamaguchi puts it,
the front is for content; the back is for context. Takasuka,
who was a tech entrepreneur superstar in Japan, and Hamaguchi,
a long-time concept development guru at Matsushita (aka
Panasonic), both had ties to the Portland area before starting
LUNARR here in 2006.
Currently the platform is in private beta (which means
it’s limited to a few invited users and still may see
some changes) but will go public in the next few months. As
Hamaguchi says, the moon is almost full.
| 9. |
WHO THEY ARE: OsoEco WHAT THEY MAKE: A green social shopping network WHERE THEY LIVE: Downtown Eugene AGE: 1½ years old NAMES YOU SHOULD KNOW: co-founders Caroline Cummings, CEO, and Katie Wilson-Hamaker, president HOW TO FIND THEM: osoeco.com |
“Web 2.0” is the now-ubiquitous term for websites
and applications that allow users to interact and collaborate.
Long ago the term degenerated into an overused buzzword, but
it’s still around. Why? Because people keep coming up
with great ways to interact online. Take OsoEco, for example,
which describes itself as a sustainable social shopping
community. OsoEco is targeting a type of shopper called social
researchers — consumers who spend a significant amount of
time learning from other online shoppers before purchasing
something.
The company, which won $57,500 in the “sustainability
track” of this year’s Angel Oregon contest, was
originally slated to be an e-commerce site with an emphasis on
educating businesses on sustainability. But the founders
decided giving consumers the tools was a more powerful
approach. Using interactive elements on the site and in their
web browsers, users research and share information. “It
takes the search out of research,” Cummings says. OsoEco
had raised $110,000 by early June as part of a $1 million
fundraising round. The site is expected to go public in
November, just in time for the holiday shopping season.
| 10. | WEB STARTUPS |
OK, for No. 10 we’re going to cheat a little. Instead of
focusing on one company, here are five young Portland-based web
companies. All of them rank in the Top 26 of
Techvibes.com’s monthly ranking of startups in Portland.
(The Techvibes list averages the findings of two other
companies, Alexa and Compete, which track web traffic at
thousands of sites.) Maybe these guys aren’t the next
eBay — which 71.6 million people visited in April,
according to Compete — but they do offer another peek at
the creative tech startups that dot Oregon’s business
landscape.
| 1. | goneraw.com Gone Raw is the brainchild of Portland web designers Ray and Kandace Brigleb. They started the site in 2006 as a place for people to share and talk about raw and vegan food recipes. It’s proved to be a popular hangout: In April, a little under 30,000 visitors, according to web traffic tracker Compete, stopped by to be part of the conversation. |
| 2. | networthiq.com Created by the startup Fourio, networthiq.com blends social networking and personal finance. The site’s approximately 13,000 users track and compare their financial data. It’s part of a personal finance trend that has gotten the site mentioned everywhere from Business Week to the Wall Street Journal over the past year. |
| 3. | grabb.it The site calls itself “giant CD-eating rabbit.” We’ll call it an intriguingly simple way to play and search for web-based MP3 audio files (which are not stored on grabb.it). Users index and blog about their favorites, which they have a lot of: There are more than 10,000 musicians indexed on the site. |
| 4. | walkertracker.com They call themselves “pedometer enthusiasts,” and as of early June, they had counted, and blogged about, more than 2.1 billion steps at walkertraker.com. Author, web developer and site creator Ben Parzybok, who started the site in 2006 after receiving a pedometer as a gift, accounts for about 7.1 million of those steps. |
| 5. | urbandrinks.com This isn’t the biggest site — 1,000 to 3,000 visitors stop by each month according to Compete — but this list wouldn’t be complete without a Portland drinking site. Urbandrinks.com has a simple mission: track and find happy hours in your city; right now it’s limited to Portland, Seattle, Dallas and Columbus, OH. There are blogs and reviews and maps — even a way to punch in your address and find the nearest happy hour happening right now. It may not be miniature nuclear reactors, but it may be, to the Portland startup crowd looking for a way to unwind after another long day, just as significant. |
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