News  . . .  or so says Fast Company Magazine, which recently named Rowley to the list of 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2013. The mag is a little bit late to the game, given that we wrote about Rowley and her non-profit, Code Scouts, one year ago.  Code Scouts' mission is to increase the number of female software developers, a field that is largely weighted with Y chromosomes, by ...   More

News Sure, Google's mobile phone payment pilot project in Portland may not have taken off in a big way. But mobile transactions are increasing faster elsewhere in the world—including in some poor and far-flung corners. A former executive with Afghanistan's largest telecom provider, Roshan, will be visiting Portland to talk about the mobile money transfer system the company launched there in 2007. Since ...   More

Cover Story On a warm morning last June, Mayor Sam Adams stood in front of a crowd of computer geeks at the Eliot Center in downtown Portland...   More

Features Wieden + Kennedy last year embarked on what was seen by many as sort of an odd breed of adventurism for an advertising company, especially one in Portland. The Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE for short) is a mentored accelerator for start-up companies, with participants chosen from applicants around the country.In exchange for a six percent stake in the ventures—and assumed grateful back rubs ...   More

Cover Story Luke Kanies believes he’s found the solution to Portland’s economic woes. Strike that: Luke Kanies believes he is the solution. “Two years ago, when I moved to town, people were like, ‘Oh,    More

News At last week's PlayStation Meeting 2011, Sony picked up the silicon gauntlet thrown down by Nintendo with its 3DS by announcing a new handheld gaming device code-named Next Generation Portable.The NGP sports bucket loads of bleeding-edge tech including:A huge 5" OLED touchscreen (that's right, the NGP supports multi-touch).A rear touch pad that is 1-to-1 pixel mapped to the front display, so you can ...   More

News Yesterday morning, Google introduced Google Instant. As far as Google products go, this one seems more of a Google Maps or Voice style success than the failure that was Buzz or Wave. It works, and people will use it. So what is it? Google Instant augments a live search suggestions so that while you type, instead of just giving you a list of potential search topics, it automatically starts presenting ...   More

News At first glance, it would be easy for a hardcore smartphone junkie to dismiss Wal-Mart's announcement Monday of its Family Mobile service. While the basic communication price is attractive enough, ($45 a month, no contract, for unlimited talk and text versus $90 at ATT and Verizon), Wal-Mart's data rates are a whopping $40 for 1 gigabyte. Verizon offers an unlimited data plan for $30, while AT&T ...   More

News Yow. As excited as I am to get my grubby sandwich clamps on Nintendo's newest bit of silicon child pacifier, the prospects of it being priced much higher than what the original DS retailed for is a bit off-putting to say the least. Last night Nintendo's media dump revealed that the follow-up to the company's ultra-successful DS bows in Japan on Feb. 26 for the eye-popping price of ¥25,000, which ...   More

News Hoping to regain lost market and mindshare in the red-hot smartphone wars, Microsoft is officially rolling out its revamped, Zune-inspired and Xbox-Live aware Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system on Oct. 11. Phones will be hitting retail in November, just in time for the holiday buying season. The handsets will be provided by LG, Samsung and HTC, and will be initially available exclusively through ...   More