What’s Meridian do? Well, the Portland Business Journal summed it up quite nicely:

Meridian’s apps provide services such as turn-by-turn directions, highlighting points of interest at venues, among other things. It has more than 40 brands using its platform, including the Venetian and Bellagio resorts in Las Vegas, the New York City subway system, and Macy’s, which is using it to improve its own app with indoor GPS functionality.

Which is a little more difficult than one might think.

I don’t think everyone realizes is how challenging simulating GPS indoors can be,” said Jeff Hardison, Meridian’s vice president of marketing. “It’s not like you just build an app and it magically has a ‘glowing blue dot’ on the map.

“Outdoors, we have freely available satellite GPS. But, for indoors, our software developers had to spend years learning the ins and outs of wifi hardware. They’d be building beautiful software one second, and fiddling with metal boxes in server rooms and access points on venues’ ceilings, the next. If we want to achieve our dream of being able to learn more about the world around us through our phones, we needed a hardware partner we could trust.

“That turned about to be Aruba. They’re ethical, super-smart, hardworking and fun. Now, we can focus on what we do best—build amazing software—while providing input on the hardware.”

And of course a company named after Aruba would have unlimited vacation.

“I’m looking forward to taking a week off,” said Jeff. “Something that’s not always easy when you’re wearing multiple hats in a startup!”

For more information, see the Aruba Networks press release. For more on the company, visit Merdian.

Not familiar with Bitcoin? it’s an open source virtual currency.

Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Through many of its unique properties, Bitcoin allows exciting uses that could not be covered by any previous payment systems.

So what’s Gliph doing? Well they provide a way for users to obfuscate their identities, which allow two people to transact without knowing one another. In fact, it’s about as close to complete anonymity as one can get. And it’s perfect for Bitcoin.

According to Pando Daily:

Bitcoin’s potential for anonymous money transfer was the perfect use case for Gliph’s technology. Banagale set to work building an anonymous social layer on top of a bitcoin payment transfer system. The result launches today.

The first version of Gliph’s product is available on iOS and Android. It uses Coinbase and a secure messaging platform to facilitate seamless bitcoin payments and messaging. By combining both messaging and transfers, users no longer have to discuss payments in one platform and move to another for users to message and transfer separately.

For more information or to download the app, visit Gliph.

(Image courtesy Zach Copley. Used under Creative Commons.)

The two companies joined forces to build a Developer Sandbox demonstration that showcases Google Wallet API functionality by using Alaska Airlines loyalty program.

Urban Airship’s solution allows Google Wallet customers to build cards that include six industry use cases: Loyalty Programs, Coupons, Gift Cards, Member Cards, Event Tickets, Boarding Passes and a Generic template to cover other unique use cases.

Once created and stored in Google Wallet, card information can be dynamically updated through simple calls to Google Wallet’s API to reflect new membership levels, new offers or flight gate changes, for example. One interesting feature of Google Wallet cards is the in-card message center that can sustain and grow engagement and redemption by sending messages to audience segments through the Google Wallet API.

Want to get the chance to muck around with this stuff? Sign up for Urban Airship Android Rich Notifications service.

But those 360-degree shots were managed by none other than Portland’s 360Heros. Have a look.

For more information, visit 360Heros or Hello Beck.

Jeff does a great job on the interview. Even while staring into the face of Google Glass. But if you want more information on what they’re doing, visit Meridian.

For more information on the launch, read The Oregonian post. For more on the company, visit GlobeSherpa.

LuckySort founder Noah Pepper announced the acquisition—where else—via Twitter.

So excited to announce that @luckysort has been acquired by @twitter! We can’t wait to get to SF to @jointheflockluckysort.com

— Noah Pepper (@noahmp) May 13, 2013

The company’s home page tells the story of the acquisition.

Two years ago I started Lucky Sort with several friends. Our goal was to make huge document sets easier to analyze, summarize and visualize by building elegant and user friendly tools for text analysis.

Today I’m very excited to announce that our journey has entered a new phase: Lucky Sort has been acquired by Twitter!

Sarah Perez at TechCrunch provides additional insights:

In effect, Lucky Sort was a big data play – it used NLP (natural language processing) techniques to discover information from huge, unstructured data sets. Last November, the engine was put to practical use through a partnership with the social network for traders, StockTwits. The relationship offered the entire historical database of StockTwits (everything that had been tweeted or shared within the community), as well as a real-time feed coming into its service. These data sets were made available in Lucky Sort’s analysis interface, to allow investors to come in and examine how chatter in the StockTwits community has correlated with price action.

Portland’s Values of N was acquired by Twitter in 2008.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

For more information, visit Lucky Sort.

Michelle is the founder of Code Scouts, an organization that’s working to making coding careers more accessible to women.

According to Fast Company:

Computer programming jobs are hot: Coding gigs will grow 12% this decade, making it a popular choice for a mid-career switch. What’s not hot enough: clever ways for people to pull off the transition. Michelle Rowley is tackling this problem not with another solitary web-based course but with what the self-taught programmer calls “a community of learners.” Starting in her hometown of Portland, Oregon, Rowley’s Code Scouts gives members access to a flexible structure of monthly “troop meetings,” professional mentoring, advice on the best courses to take, and a closed online social network. She plans to expand her Scout troops to other cities, too.

For more information on the award, visit Fast Company. For more on the organization Michelle founded, visit Code Scouts.

[Full disclosure: Code Scouts is an alum of PIE. I am the cofounder and general manager of PIE.]

Check out the skydiving game they built using “multiple instances of Chrome mashed up with the Google Maps Javascript API v3, Web GL, 3D CSS, web sockets and node.js.”

For more on the skydiving experience, read Instrument’s blog post as well as coverage in The Verge and Engadget.

Using the tvQ iOS app, users can:

• See what’s on your personalized calendar
• Check in to the shows and movies you’re watching
• 2 way sync watched shows & movies
• Mark past watches seen
• Sync your shows & movies with tvQ
• Discover new shows & movies to watch

So if you’re into TV, you know, like most people, you might want to check it out.

For more information, visit Trakt.