Portland

One of my favorite products on the Schoolhouse Electric & Supply site is a replica of IBM's standard-issue wall clock from the '60s, sure to make it onto Don Draper's holiday wish list this year.

This run is technically the first, as Schoolhouse Electric hit up IBM to make these iconic clocks available to all of us who didn't work in IBM offices, warehouses, and schools during the mid-20th century.

They're all assembled by hand in the company's factory in Portland, Ore., and each clock is bound by a spun-steel case with the original graphic hands and domed glass lens.

As is usually the case with historical relics, getting your hands on one of these will empty your wallet--the IBM standard-issue wall clock retails for $235 in the Schoolhouse Electric marketplace.

(Via A Continuous Lean)… Read more

PORTLAND, Ore.--Google Offers launched its answer to Groupon today exclusively in Portland, Ore., with its first deal for--you guessed it--a coffee shop. Perhaps owing to the highly caffeinated culture here, some people who snapped up the "Offer of the Day" raced over to Floyd's Coffee Shop only to discover that the coupon can't be redeemed until tomorrow.

"Within 10 minutes of the deal going live, someone was in the shop to redeem the offer," Jack Inglis, co-owner of Floyd's, said in a phone interview.

On the cash register at Floyd's in … Read more

Google Offers--the Web giant's Groupon challenger--will launch tomorrow in Portland, Ore., Google Chairman Eric Schmidt announced this evening.

Schmidt and Stephanie Tilenius, Google's VP of commerce, demonstrated the new daily deals service at the D9 conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., showing a $3 coupon that yields $10 in Floyd's coffee. The service is expected to rollout later this year in other cities, including New York and San Francisco.

Like Groupon's service, Google Offers users can receive discounts of 50 percent or more at local businesses, but the deals won't need to hit a user … Read more

Looking for a food cart in Portland, Ore.? There's probably one right in front of you. But maybe there's one up the street that's better. Now you can find out such things with a new mapping layer from Microsoft for its Bing Maps service.

Having grown up in Portland, I can tell you that most locals know where the best carts are, along with the food item to get at those places. But one thing the locals won't always be able to tell you is the location of the traveling food carts--the ones that are not … Read more

Mitsubishi Motors has kicked its Drive@Earth global sustainability initiative into high gear. The company recently announced plans to develop the pure electric, four-passenger Mitsubishi i-MiEV (Mitsubishi Innovative Electric Vehicle) for global markets.

Mitsubishi partnered with the state of Oregon and Portland General Electric for the project. PGE is installing a network of charging stations across its service territory in Oregon and the addition of i-MiEVs further facilitates its support of next-generation electric vehicles. PGE currently has more than a dozen charging stations running.

"We are developing a model charging station infrastructure across our service territory to advance the … Read more

It didn't take a check of other CNET stories to confirm that Apple/AT&T's registration servers have either went back to bed or checked out early on a Friday. After the cheers at 8:00 a.m. the line moved less than 20 feet within the first hour. There were at least two announcements from Apple reps (one in a utila-kilt even) that things are "a little bit slow," because of the "overwhelming demand." An insistent, we could always come back later was touted too.

At one point, I was getting discouraged. … Read more

Some things never change: Despite being a stranger in a foreign land (a San Franciscan in sales-tax-free Portland on business), despite only getting 4 hours of sleep and despite iPhone 1.0 waffling towards getting iPhone 3G, I found myself in line in front of the Apple Store at 7:00 a.m. in Portland, Oregon waiting for the new iPhone 3G. And, of course, I wasn't alone.

My goal: the white 16-GB iPhone. Will I get it? Only time will tell. But like last year's wait in San Francisco, those earliest of the early adopters are primarily … Read more