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AboutUs Lists Get a History

Steven Walling — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:15:00 +0000

This week we’ve already talked about the value of editable lists, on AboutUs and elsewhere. But one thing we didn’t address is that to be truly wiki-like, they need to have a trail of edits that show what has been done and who did it.

As of now, all AboutUs lists have a history page that show edits to the title and description for that list. The button is located right next to the edit button, so it should be very easy to find. Each entry within the history is titled with the person that made the edit, and red or green text will highlight the changes.

For now lists don’t show the edits to summaries or tags of sites within a list. But the history of any individual summary or tag can still be viewed at that domain’s AboutUs page if you notice a change in a list.

For a visual example of list history, visit the site or check out the screenshots below of the Arduino list that our own Ward Cunningham is the list keeper for.

Adding a history to lists allows for faster and more valuable collaboration between AboutUs community members. Please feel free to test out this new feature, and don’t hesitate to let us know how we can improve list editing in the future.

Ray gets the thumbs up at OEN

Aliza Earnshaw — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:06:06 +0000

Ray posing with his award and some of the AboutUs team

Our throats are a little sore over here at AboutUs. That’s because we did a lot of yelling last night when Ray King, our CEO and founder, won the Entrepreneurship Award for Individual Achievement at the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network’s annual awards dinner.

Ray gave a very nice acceptance speech, thanking OEN, the AboutUs management team, all the employees, and of course, Tom Holce, the veteran Portland entrepreneur and angel investor for whom the awards are named. Tom was one of the early investors in AboutUs, and he’s one of the smartest, most savvy entrepreneurs in town. He’s also one of the kindest, most gracious and gentlemanly people I’ve ever met.

For those of you who don’t know the organization, OEN is the largest group in Oregon assisting entrepreneurs. Established in 1991, the nonprofit brings together investors, entrepreneurs and advisers who are enthusiastically committed to helping startups grow and thrive.

AboutUs is Ray’s fourth venture, if you count the company he started while still in high school, The Computer Workshop. Ray started his second company, Semaphore Inc., while he was a student at M.I.T., creating accounting software for his father’s architecture firm. That company grew quickly and was acquired in 2000 by Deltek. The next Ray King enterprise was SnapNames Inc., a company that created several novel ways for people to acquire the domain names they want. Oversee.net acquired SnapNames in 2007.

As delightful as it was to see Ray win – and to scream our throats raw – it was equally gratifying to see such great entrepreneurs and companies honored.

Winners in the other categories were:

Jama Software Inc. for Development Company of the Year. Jama, co-founded and led by Eric Winquist, creates software that helps companies manage development of products that incorporate software, from initial idea through prototyping to production. Like AboutUs, Jama started up three years ago.

Monsoon Inc. for Working Capital Company of the Year. Monsoon, now seven years old, was co-founded by CEO Kanth Gopalpur and Clark Hale on their credit cards. Monsoon sells software that allows small sellers of books, CDs, DVDs and other goods to accurately price and efficiently sell their wares at websites like eBay or Amazon Marketplace.

Motorcycle Superstore Inc. for Growth Company of the Year. Motorcycle Superstore, located in Medford, is led by CEO Don Becklin, and sells motorcycle helmets, apparel and accessories from its website.

The competition for the individual award was intense. The other three finalists were:

Bill Kelly, CEO of Learning.com, a 10-year-old company that creates online learning systems used in more than 3,000 U.S. school districts. Before Learning.com, Bill helped start up Sapient Health Network, which became part of WebMD in 1999.

Steve Sharp, chairman of TriQuint Semiconductor Inc. TriQuint, which is publicly traded, makes communications chips and modules for all kinds of mobile devices and systems, including your iPhone. During his tenure as CEO, Steve took TriQuint from less than $100 million in revenue to $600 million. He’s an active investor in Portland-area technology companies, and a mentor to entrepreneurs.

Lynnor Stevenson, a veteran biotech entrepreneur. Lynn heads DesignMedix Inc., which is developing drugs to cure drug-resistant diseases, such as malaria. DesignMedix was nominated for OEN’s development company award, and is the 10th company Lynn has founded. Six of her companies have gone public.

And now, please excuse me. I need another cup of chamomile tea to soothe this throat.

Google is confused, again

MarkDilley — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:33:07 +0000

Last year Google banned the word wiki from corporate headquarters when it released Google Sites. Google’s focus seemed to be, “wiki is just like any other website, let’s not confuse people, so let’s call our wiki system ’sites’”.

Now it looks like they have reconsidered. Not only is wiki now mentioned at Google Sites, they recently launched two new products with the word wiki in them (Sidewiki launched today). What is jarring is that neither resemble a wiki. Weird, ehh… SearchWiki is not a wiki and GigaOM says that Sidewiki is more like a ‘Universal Commenting System‘ – by allowing anyone to comment about any site. It is interesting that Google Sites is the most wiki-like, yet the one that doesn’t have wiki in the title.

Maybe they are distilling the concept of wiki down to the fact that you can edit anything. This is a great core concept of wiki, but certainly not the only one. For me, these are some fundamental elements of a wiki:

ability to edit

ability to easily create a new page

ability to link

recent changes

transparency – being able to see one’s changes (called ‘diff’ for difference)

page versioning

One of the core values in the wiki world, which AboutUs is part of, is AssumeGoodFaith. If we start from that value and look at Google’s pattern with the word wiki and the concept of wiki, what must this very smart company be trying to do? Any insights?

Lists, now showing on domain pages!

KristinaWeis — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:23:25 +0000

Since adding a Featured List Keepers box to our homepage in August, we recently added another way to highlight the lists that the AboutUs community and our writers are creating.

If a site is included on a list, its domain page will highlight and link to the lists that it is on.

If you want to add a website to a list you can try adding some tags to its page, which may tie it to a list that has already been created. Or while on any list you can also add a site directly at the bottom left. See this page for more details.

You can also create a list of your very own! See our List Keeping page or email Lists@AboutUs.org to learn more or get started.

Today we also added the ability to link from one list to another within its descriptive paragraph. Check it out on the Portland startups list that AboutUs’ CEO created. To see how it works click “edit” on that list, and for instructions see this page.

Redesigning Agility

MarkDilley — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:36:51 +0000

We mentioned last week that Ward was going to be in Chicago at a conference. There is an interesting video coming out a workshop regarding more collaboration between user-experience designers and agile software developers. This is pretty exciting to us at AboutUs because we are working on developing our muscles in this realm.

Follow along on the Twitter hashtag #reagility:

List Keeping – share what you know best

KristinaWeis — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:23:28 +0000

Today we added a Featured Lists section to our homepage. In recent months we’ve had a growing community of people creating and tending lists of the best sites about topics that they are passionate about.

The Featured Lists section on the AboutUs homepage is our way of showing off AboutUs’ new-ish feature (lists!) and the fantabulous early adopters (we call them “List Keepers”) who are creating one-of-a-kind lists with the initial tools we have to offer at AboutUs. Their input–past and future–will continue to make the tools and lists “Better, Stronger, Faster.”

A list is a unique way to share your knowledge of a topic that you care about, while helping guide people to the best sites about that topic.

If you’re interested in working on a topic that you care about:

Email Lists@AboutUs.org and we’ll get you started, or
Go to our ListKeeping page and dive in!

Intellipedia hits a home run

MarkDilley — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:54:38 +0000

I mentioned at the Connectipedia launch last year – if They can do it, why can’t we?

They – are the intelligence community. Intellipedia is a U.S. government cross-department wiki with differing security and access levels. I believe it was started after a Navy representative attended the first Wiki conference in the United States – WikiSym in October 2005. It has been rolling forward ever since – check out this video – the closest representation of the power of Wiki that I have seen to date:

While the video came out in June, I ran across it a few weeks ago. Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic focused on how They used YouTube and NamHenderson is amazed that They are talking candidly about using open source philosophies to tear down silos in that community.

What was missing from both posts was the analysis of the powerful platform and community that wiki is and provides for – ‘Living Intelligence.’

Wikipedia is obviously the most known case, but even the very first Wiki, which was created to change they way software engineering was taught – succeeded in both community and ‘Living Intelligence’. AboutUs attempts to bring TheWikiWay to people, companies, institutions, non-profits… really anyone/anything who is organized enough to have an Internet presence.

hat tip to Suzi Ziegler for editorial support.

AboutUs’ new bot

KristinaWeis — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:07:24 +0000

Our developers have been working on a new bot to create pages for sites that don’t yet exist in the AboutUs.org guide to websites.

Earlier this month we turned it on!

The new bot creates pages that are a bit different than most of the pages in our system which were created by the old bot. Our hope is that the new pages–which have more widgetized and form-based sections–are easier to edit.

What do you think? Here’s a page just created by the new bot and one created by the old bot.

We’re still working to make our new bot and the pages it creates better, and if you have any thoughts we’d love to hear your feedback.

The State of Oregon Tech

Steven Walling — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:13:46 +0000

Usually when it comes to the Portland tech scene, we look to the trusty Silicon Florist for news and analysis. But this time, The Oregonian has outdone themselves with an article on why “Oregon’s high-tech better off now than in dot-com bust“.

Not only does the piece outline how things aren’t as bad as in the dot-com bust, but it explains how “a new cluster of Web services companies have sprung up and created a vibrant culture”. For us, it’s especially pleasing to be listed alongside Jive Software and SplashCast as “prominent examples” of the smaller companies who have bootstrapped themselves to success as the traditional manufacturing base of Oregon tech declines.

We’re proud to be counted among a growing community of tech startups in Portland. There are a great many more companies that didn’t get listed in the article, so be sure to check out our list of Portland startups for an organic resource on the subject.

AboutUs at the SAO’s “Winning Game Plans for 2009″

Steven Walling — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:51:40 +0000

Everyone knows that 2009 has gotten off to a rocky start. The good news is that it’s not too late to try and formulate a strategy for not just survival, but for growth as a business. That’s why the Software Association of Oregon is hosting Winning Game Plans for 2009, a panel with four technology companies on how their marketing and sales strategies have adjusted to the financial realities of the downturn.

We’re pleased to let you know that our own Martin Laetsch, who we recently brought on as VP of Sales and Marketing, was invited to be a part of the panel. Moderated by Cecile Bos, Partner at Blue Research, also speaking will be Dennis Deveny, Regional Sales Director of Jive Software, Tony Bash, Sr. VP of Marketing & Business Dev at Pop Art, Inc. and Nathan Rawlins, Sr. Director Product Marketing of Serena Software.

If you go:

Tuesday, April 14, 2009 – 7:30am-9:00am
Location: Portland Center Stage (map)
Cost: $20 for members, $30 for non members
Light breakfast is included
Register here