Just wanted to throw a quick reminder out there that if you’ve got a tech related event happening anywhere along the Wasatch front (Ogen-Salt Lake-Provo) drop us at CodeAway.org a line. We’ve got edit rights to the Utah Tech Calendar hosted on Google Calendars. In addition to having your event featured on the calendar hosted on this site you’re event will go out to all subscribers of that public calendar.

If you’ve got an event just send an email with the details to create [at] voxpopdesign [dot] com.

Things have been slower than I had hoped but, little by little, I’m getting new spots added to the Salt Lake Free WiFi map. I’ve been going through the list of wireless points provided as a community service by Xmission.

I’ll post more info as it goes live.

Last week I was having dinner with several notable area web folks and they were shocked – Shocked! – that CodeAway didn’t have an email newsletter (and they were surprised to hear we didn’t have membership fees, or formal memberships, or…)

I’ve always felt that people didn’t need their addresses on another email list. There are too many groups who’s ‘free’ membership comes with strings attached: expectations for contribution or pitches for products. I’ve always wanted CodeAway to provide as comfortable environment as possible; and that includes no subversive agenda.

But I can understand not everyone wants to check the website on constant basis to get updates. Some people would prefer getting email reminders of area events in their inbox. So I need your help: would you like email updates of group events? Would you mind if we send a once-a-month email? And what experience have people had with different group services? Should we put together a Google or Yahoo group to help centralize signups and email sending? Which service is better?

The 2007 edition of Software for Starving Students is out! One of the greatest enablers of independent web working is the wealth of freely available tools. SoftwareFor.org, the organization behind the package, goes out and finds the best available stuff and puts it all together in one easy to grab package. From the press release:

Software for Starving Students is a free collection of programs organized for students (but available to anyone). We’ve gathered a list of best-in-class programs onto one CD (one disc for OS X, one for Windows), including a fully-featured office suite, a cutting-edge web browser, multi-media packages, academic tools, utilities and more.

More info:

• Project homepage: http://softwarefor.org/
• A complete list of included titles: http://softwarefor.org/faq.html#q5

If you’d like to help the cause throw the fine fellows a Digg vote to help spread the news. They’d be most grateful.

From the makers of Connect, a Utah business mag with attractive design, comes Launch. It’s a free magazine all about entrepreneurship (ugh, there really has got to be a better name than that five syllable cluster of vowels). From their email:

LAUNCH is a free, bi-monthly, online publication focusing solely on Utah’s entrepreneurial experience- written by entrepreneurs, and those that mentor, support and invest in them.

Featured in this issue:

• Fueling your startup in Utah- pros and cons
• Columns on working with mentors, getting funding, sales and the daily life of an entrepreneur
• Building a top-notch management team
• Special “entrepreneur-to-entrepreneurâ€? interview
• Spotlighting one of our own
• Dashboard of what’s happening in Utah

Useful resource or just another venue for entrepreneurs to toot their own horn? Time will tell.

www.launchutah.com – hat tip to Rob Merrill

Yesterday I posted about a couple of new tools we’ve developed to aid the freelance and web community in Salt Lake City.

What about mashing up some RSS classified ads from Craigslist into their own area? Perhaps mix in a dash of results from Indeed.com?

Over the weekend I made some decent progress on two new tools for Salt Lake’s mobile web set. While both are works in progress hopefully there is already enough there to make them useful to a few folks.

The first is a Google Maps page with displays the location of free (or nearly free) WiFi zones. I’ll be adding more information as I have time. If anyone has a location not listed or would like to update one of the existing points please leave a comment among the original set of addresses. I’ll also be doing one for Utah County (Provo, Orem) is short order. Most likely it will be the same set of points (for scrollers) but with a different start position.

Next is incorporation of a Google Calendar feed into its own dedicated page. Earlier this year Jordan Gunderson created a ‘Utah Tech Events’ calendar. Unfortunately, it hasn’t become the rich resource of Utah geek events as it could have been. Hopefully, by giving it a bit more visibility and showing how that data can be repurposed we’ll see event organizers take a more proactive role in its upkeep. I’m not entirely enamored with how the plug-in renders the feed; the layout may change in the future.

Got any other ideas for useful tools? What else would make you a better mobile new-media mercenary?