Dave Knows Portland

Dave Goes . . .

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Astoria!Heather and I are moving to Astoria!

I put in my notice at my day job last week – my last day will be in early May, and by June we except we’ll be living somewhere above downtown Astoria with a view of the Columbia.

That’s the plan anyway.

We don’t have new jobs lined up. Well, jobs in the traditional sense. Between developing Dork Face Media, running PDX Web Ads, blogging and tweeting, we’ll be busy enough.

But really our plan is to largely take the summer off and discover more of what the North Coast has to offer. With the Astoria Bicentennial celebration taking place all summer long, the place will be especially thick with fun activities. But also, we just want to relax and enjoy the town (Blue Scorcher, Fort George Brewery, and daily walkabouts; we’re looking in your direction).

So that’s the “plan,” if it really qualifies as such.

But don’t worry, Dave Knows Portland is not going anywhere. In fact I’ll have more time to spend on the site this summer than ever before. Plus we’ll be in Portland a lot during the summer – for weddings, Timbers games, and business. I’ve got some new plans for the site percolating too, which I’ll share in due time . . .

Heather has more details on this big announcement at Mile73.com, including FAQs!

Presenting PDX Web Ads: Your Local Blog and Ad Network

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PDX Web AdsHeather and I have started a business that we hope will help both local businesses and local bloggers: PDX Web Ads.

Heather sums up what we’re up to at Mile73.com:

Dave and I both love writing our blogs. We’ve both been at it now for a number of years. For a long time, we have discussed various ways to try to make a little money from our writing without turning our sites into a patchwork of tacky advertisements. We figured other bloggers must have the same dilemma.

At the same time, we realized we’d much rather support businesses in Portland and in our neighborhood than host ads for teeth whitening or belly flab. We started doing some research on how to start our own online ad network featuring local websites and serving local businesses.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago. Our plans were starting to firm up. We had a software solution, and we partnered up with Alley at qPDX to host some of our ads. I blasted through some graphics and finished up the actual website. We started to think of ways to get the word out. In a moment of insanity, I came up with a brilliant idea. Let’s give away free advertising in December! Help small businesses and shops with the final holiday rush! No strings attached! Just a way for us to say “howdy!”


Read the rest: Heather and Dave Start a Business.

And stop by PDX Web Ads to see what we’ve wrought. Whether you’re a blogger or a potential advertiser, we hope you’ll like what you’ll see!

TriMet Diaries Hits A Chord

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TriMet Diaries Last week Heather and I launched TriMet Diaries. We knew, in our Portland take on Muni Diaries, we had something good, but the interest and attention has been overwhelming!

PortlandAfoot‘s Michael Andersen started things off with an enthusiastic comment on the launch announcement post, and a flattering blog post soon followed: Awesome new transit blog: TriMet Diaries.

We also received an encouraging comment by Christian, proprietor of TriMetiquette, on the launch post. And Punkrawkers blogs on and Bojack have also blogged about the site.

Last Thursday we posted F*ck You TriMet: A Love Story, a short film by Sam Brosnan. This beautifully shot but confusingly plotted video that takes a lot of geographic liberties piqued the interest of some of our more, uh, persnickety, readers. Analyses of the film soon appeared on MAX FAQs and Hard Drive.

Heather and I have a stash of Portland transit related posts on our own blogs to mine for TriMet Diaries (Heather’s are especially amusing!), but the point of the site is to provide a forum for Portland transit riders to contribute their own stories. Thank you to William Reagan (TriMet Vignette) and Torrid Joe (Short Bus, Short Fuse) for already sending in stories! We’ve also been promised enough reader contributed stories to last for months – please send them in!

And just this morning Thrillist featured our humble site: TriMet Diaries: Like The Princess Diaries, with less Hector Elizondo and more public transportation. Thrillist, for you philistines [which I was a member of until late last week] is an online digital lifestyle publication which recently expanded to Portland with Patrick Alan Coleman, formerly of the Portland Mercury, at the reins.

Thank you all, and keep reading, linking, and sharing!

You can follow TriMet Diaries on Twitter, and subscribe to the TriMet Diaries RSS feed! A Trimet Diaries Flickr or Picasa photo pool is in the works too!

Portland Poutine Turns One!

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Quietly last week (because I forgot) Heather and my first collaboration, Portland Poutine, reached a milestone – the one year anniversary of its launch!

In the past year, for our dear readers, Heather and I (often accompanied by friends) have eaten and reviewed poutines from over a dozen restaurants, mostly in Portland, but also in Los Angeles and Seattle. We’ve also made and shared our homemade poutine recipes, traditional and “healthy”. Through diligent googling we’ve found and featured poutine related music and games. We were the very first guests on Cascadia.fm‘s Savor Portland, and Portland Poutine was featured in The Oregonian and The Globe and Mail in Toronto, Canada!

There are a few more poutines in Portland we haven’t tried yet, and we intend to re-review others (and get better photographs in some cases) – so stay tuned, thanks for reading, and consider contributing your own reviews to Portland Poutine!

The Launch of CASCADIA.FM

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Cascadia.FMThe groundbreaking PDX.fm internet radio network is no more, but that’s not bad news. CASCADIA.fm is here, starting Monday, October 11 2010.

Now, maybe you didn’t get the memo – probably because we didn’t send one out (we’d rather be working on making good Internet radio than writing stupid memos), but if you want to know why we changed, what’s different, or how it affects everyone involved, we suggest that you listen to the Friday, October 8th episode of Suck It™ – all will become clear.

You really should listen to that broadcast, but here’s the thumbnail: Robert and Sabrina thank the listeners and explain that in all likelihood your favorite show is still on the air. The difference is that the station, and audience is growing. Cascadia.fm bills itself as The Next Generation of Independent, Talk Radio and has expanded its reach to Seattle, Vancouver B.C. and beyond. A Cascadia.fm application is forthcoming, which will make listening to and interacting with the show hosts easier, and in May 2011 Cascadia.tv will launch.

The most popular shows, like iPhoneSlutz, continue on the air at CASCADIA.FM. Suck It™, Unibash Radio, Cort and Fatboy, Legion of News, Don’t Panic Portland, and Exceptional Women NW continue as daily programs. The Life Portlandic is now The Life Cascadia, and a new weekly show, Evening Submission, kicks off Friday, October 15 2010 at 8pm. The full broadcast schedule is up at Cascadia.fm.