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Portland’s Grove makes exceptionally awesome iPhone 4 cases out of bamboo—and for a limited time old skateboards

Rick Turoczy — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 17:30:41 +0000

While I tend to write about the Web, mobile, and open source technology, every once in awhile I feel the urge to branch out a bit. To write some stuff on the industries tangential to tech. To cover other startups in Portland that are doing awesome work. To cover something less ethereal and more tangible.

Well, I didn’t have to look very far. Meet Grove, an awesome Portland, Oregon, company that makes incredibly beautiful bamboo iPhone 4 cases—by hand. Well, at least mostly. I mean, they use freakin’ lasers.

The company, started by Joe Mansfield and Ken Tomita, employs a team of artisans that craft the cases out of bamboo, probably the most sustainable wood product around. They work out of the Towne Storage space, close-in east side.

The cases these folks create come in a variety of flavors. They’ve got theplain for $69 or, if you’re looking for something a little more funky, they’ve got the artists series for $89—which come with matching wallpaper for your iPhone desktop. Both come in either natural or amber.

Don’t see something you like? Get creative. You can create your own custom case with practically anything laser etched into the back of the case. A custom Grove case will run you $89.

An artisan, sustainable, slightly crazy company that focuses on being happy and open while making stuff for the iPhone? I honestly have a difficult time fathoming anything more Portland-y. Or interesting.

And I’m not the only one who thinks so. For example, Gadget blog Gizmodo wrote up a piece about all the flaws of the wooden Grove cases. And then told folks to buy Grove’s product anyway.

Here’s the thing: It’s wood. It’s not supposed to be perfect. And as far as the quality of the workmanship goes, I am seriously impressed.

The design itself is smart, with a modern-looking trough to expose the volume controls and a 45° bezel around both edges that comes from the workshop with a smooth hand finish. (Much of the sanding and polishing on Grove cases is by hand, although they’re not afraid of sanders either.)

It feels about as thin and precise as a wooden case could be. I can’t ask for more.

Plus it’s wood. Wood that feels better the more I hold my iPhone. Wood that has taken a couple of short falls and looked better as it has weather scuffs and scratches. Wood that’s just pretty to look at, to turn idly in the hand.

Two Portland companies that taste great together: Grove and MapleXO

And as if Grove weren’t awesome enough, they’re striving to be, um, awesomer. How? By partnering with Portland’s MapleXO to make a limited edition of cases—out of old skateboards. That’s right. MapleXO here in Portland recycles skateboards into jewelry, bike fenders, and, well, now iPhone cases.

grove + mapleXO from Joe Mansfield on Vimeo.

I know, right? Amazing. Two great sustainable artistic Portland tastes that taste great together. Who woulda thunk?

And remember, it’s never too early to get started on your holiday shopping for your favorite iPhone geek.

[UPDATE]

File under happy happenstance. Treehugger just wrote up MapleXO this morning.

Recycling skateboards is nothing new, as skateboarder and designer Lindsay Jo Holmes will tell you. Holmes is the founder and mastermind behind MapleXO, a Portland-based company that specializes in hip, handcrafted jewelry and standout accessories — like the terrific iPhone 4 case shown above — made entirely from salvaged skateboards.

For more on all of this awesomeness, visit the Grove site, follow @grovemade on Twitter, or like Grove on Facebook. More more on recycled skateboard awesomeness, visit MapleXO, follow @maplexo on Twitter, or like MapleXO on Facebook.

Lots of New Faces at Lunch 2.0

Jake — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:14:21 +0000

Yesterday, well over a hundred people gathered at Hive-FX‘s office in the SE waterfront for a Reese’s-like Lunch 2.0 co-hosted by Oregon Film (@oregonfilm), Beam Development and Hive (@hivefx).

I’ll explain. If you read here, you’ll know one of Rick’s favorite expressions is the classic:

“You got your peanut butter in my chocolate!”

“You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!”

As with those two great tastes that taste great together, yesterday’s Lunch 2.0 brought together several communities, ones that don’t normally mix, and the result was good.

This particular lunch was the brainchild of Vince Porter (@vinbutterknife), the Executive Director of Oregon Film, who called me up about a year ago to chat. Vince’s vision was a co-mingling of the tech and entertainment/creative/production communities that would inspire conversations and collaboration.

Vince articulated his vision yesterday with examples of these types of collaboration (YouTube, Netflix, TiVo and 3D video) from the last decade that have forever changed the way we consume film and television.

He also debuted Oregon Film’s new blog, Oregon Confluence, which, like any good product is in beta right now. He and Nathan Cherrington, the blogmaster, are looking for feedback, ideas, suggestions and comments on their blog. Check it out and provide your thoughts.

In addition to Vince, the assembled crowd heard from Jonathan Malsin of Beam Development, the company that has transformed several areas of the SE waterfront into great working spaces, and Jim Clark from Hive-FX who said a few words about his studio and their projects.

We also heard from Skip Newberry (@skipnewberry), economic development policy advisor to the Mayor. He mentioned that Portland was answering Google’s RFI for the 1 gbps fiber-to-the-home network, a.k.a. Google Fiber for Communities.

ZOMG WANT!

Anyway, I saw a lot of new faces and saw lots of cross-pollenated conversations happening, so I think the lunch was a rousing success. I, on the other hand, was guilty of chatting with people already knew about SXSW plans. Bad Jake.

Now, if we could only sustain some momentum.

Normally, this is the part where I would suggest people attend the upcoming lunches, but there have been none announced.

Don’t fret, I’ll soon be announcing hosts for April and May, followed shortly, I hope by June and July announcements.

Stay tuned.

Now, the boilerplate:

If you’re interested or know someone who might be interested in hosting a Lunch 2.0, drop a comment or hit me up on Twitter (@jkuramot). Also, check out the how-to primer.

Big thanks to all the hosts who have hosted or plan to host Lunch 2.0.

(Images courtesy Jim Clark. Used with permission.)

Wayback Machine 2.0: AboutUs and Iterasi partner to give you a view of present and past

Rick Turoczy — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:27:46 +0000

[Full disclosure: Iterasi is a client and I've been working with AboutUs on a top-secret widget project.]

If you’ve ever been looking for dated information on the Web, you’ve likely come across the Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive. No site provides such a detailed reference to the yester-Web, allowing us to reach back to forgotten history and grab snippets of the Web as it once was.

But for all the compliments I can pile on the Wayback Machine, it is not without its flaws.

The biggest gripe? The Wayback Machine only archives HTML. That means that any image files or CSS that is needed to render a page doesn’t get archived. Which means if that information gets deleted from the original server, then the Wayback Machine archives don’t render properly.

Needless to say, a bunch of pages render poorly.

My other complaint? The Wayback Machine wasn’t created in the Silicon Forest. But that’s just how I am.

Okay. That’s Wayback Machine 1.0. Hold that thought.

Now, when it comes to accessing current information about any Web site, few resources can compete with the simplicity and ease-of-use of Portland-based AboutUs. Even if AboutUs doesn’t have a current page about a site, they’ll render one in a matter of seconds. So, typing “http://aboutus.org/[whatever URL you want]” is about the easiest way to get information on any site—as it currently exists.

There’s just one problem: seeing how a site looked in the past isn’t always that simple. You can review the Wiki change tracking, but that’s not always the best way of assessing the changes to the site. And if you just added the site to AboutUs, you have no idea what the site looked like previously.

Now for that historical reference, Portland-based Iterasi is about the easiest way to see how a site looked in the past.

But Iterasi has its own flaw: the archive isn’t terribly broad. It’s deep for certain “Web 2.0 cool kid” sites, but it could use more breadth.

If only AboutUs could find a site that helped provide the historical reference they’re missing. If only Iterasi could find a site that could help extend the breadth of their Web archive.

Well welcome to a “You got your archive in my current information! You got your current information pointing to my archive!” moment as two great Portland tastes have found a way to taste great together.

That’s right. AboutUs and Iterasi are partnering. And the result could be what we’ve all been wanting the Wayback Machine to provide: current details and accurate historical renderings.

Welcome to the Wayback Machine 2.0.

Sure, the Iterasi link isn’t huge, but it is important.

Now, you can visit AboutUs to get the latest information about any given site. Looking for historical information? Iterasi is there to provide the archived pages that they have on file. Voila!

Iterasi describes the peanut butter of the AboutUs-Iterasi partnership this way:

So why is this cool? Well for a whole bunch of reasons. It gives the AboutUs user a very cool new feature (obviously…right!). AboutUs users can now search through the iterasi archive to research the evolution of the Website, search for information of historical significance, whatever. For iterasi, it should be a source of traffic to our site where we can hopefully turn them into happy users as well.

AboutUs describes the chocolate of the partnership this way:

Now, we’ve partnered with the smart folks at Iterasi to give their archive greater visibility and provide the people visiting AboutUs with an additional resource for information about websites and the organizations and people attached to them. Now at every AboutUs page, you’ll find a link to the Iterasi Archive of pages relating to that site.

And to think, it was all put together by Erik Benson of Voyager—a VC. As Pete Grillo of Iterasi recounts:

Recently I ran into Erik. I suspected he had something to do with putting iterasi and AboutUs together. The talk went something like this:

Pete: ‘Erik, are you behind this?’.

Erik: ‘Yes. It makes sense to me’.

Pete: ‘You know, if people find out you do nice things, it could be the beginning of the end for you as a VC’.

Erik: ‘Yes, it could appear that I am losing my edge’.

We both had a good laugh and went our separate ways.

Whatever the case, it’s a great move for a couple of outstanding Portland startups. And it’s really cool to see this kind of collaboration in our community.

Long story short, we all win. And now we have a much stronger information resource—right here in our Silicon Forest backyard.

Beer and Blog & Open Source Bridge: Two great tastes that taste great together

Rick Turoczy — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:06:30 +0000

Last night at the Portland Web Innovators presentation, I got the chance to laud compliments on Beer and Blog, an event that has really helped solidify the Web and Open Source startup community in Portland—and now Corvallis. A little later, I got the chance to share some of the early thinking on what will be the biggest volunteer event for Portland in 2009, Open Source Bridge.

Well, as luck would have it, whether you’re interested in Beer and Blog or Open Source Bridge, you can kill two birds with one stone this week. Because Beer and Blog this week will feature none other than Open Source Bridge:

Hi friends! Rick Turoczy asked me if he and the Open Source Bridge crew could lead some discussion tomorrow @beerandblog. I think what they are up to is valuable to the Portland community and her tech scene, so I said yes. If you’re not yet familiar with Open Source Bridge, they are a group of local techies that want to continue OSCON now that they are not coming back to Portland. But, they’re growing into much more than that.

So why not take some time out of your busy schedule of attending holiday parties to hang out with the Open Source Bridge team at Beer and Blog? Not interested in Open Source Bridge? Come on over anyway. You might find yourself having such a good time that you wind up wending your way over to the CyborgCamp pre-party at Vidoop.

RSVPs abound: Beer and Blog and the CyborgCamp pre-party.

I’m looking forward to seeing you there.

Silicon Florist » Search Results » two+great+tastes

Portland’s Grove makes exceptionally awesome iPhone 4 cases out of bamboo—and for a limited time old skateboards

Two Portland companies that taste great together: Grove and MapleXO

[UPDATE]

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