Urban Jacksonville

Cliqset is a two-man development team in San Marco that has made some big news in national tech news, yet remains practically undiscovered by local media.

Cliqset, founded by Darren Bounds and Charlie Cauthen, is taking a shot at combining all of your user data that’s sure to be smeared in a hundred places across the internet.

It’s like this – if you have a profile and lots of friends on NotFacebook.com, and NotFacebook is using Cliqset profile info, and then you create a username on ILoveBurritos.com, your user data can come with you, keeping any existing friends, updates and profile info with you. Cool. Super cool.

I have no doubt that Cliqset has the vision and talent to pull this off, but any one familiar with the web knows that Google and OpenID are racing towards the same thing. What will keep Cliqset ahead of the game? One thing I think will help – their open API. At this point, anyone can take the heart of Cliqset, modify it any way they want and plug it into the user data of their own site.

In fact, Cliqset just announced a $30k developers challenge, ripe with big money prizes (I’m talking $5,000 and $10,000 chunks). If you think you have what it takes to develop some nifty Cliqset API wizardry, head over to the contest page.

A few ways to keep with the guys at Cliqset: the official Twitter feed, Darren’s personal twitter (almost 10k followers, I’m jealous) and the official blog.

If you’re looking to inject some awesomeness into your weekend, check out Bogda this Saturday night. The art will be super and the beer will be free. Thanks to Joe Napier for the word and Sarah Kay (who’s in the show) for the wicked poster.

In case you’ve never been before, Bogda is at 1253 McDuff Avenue South, just across from Robert E. Lee High.

As always, let me know what else is happening in Riverside and I’ll make sure to have it here. nuinca(at)gmail.com

What up dearest internet people. My name is Jonathan Bennett and I’m the newest kitten in the Urban Jacksonville household.

Joey has been kind enough to offer me the Riverside/Avondale beat for Urban Jacksonville, and I couldn’t be any happier to oblige. This needs no saying, but Joey Fresh rocks, and I’m honored to be a part of his efforts.

As for myself, I’m a Riverside resident, South Carolina native and 6’2″ ginger. By day I’m the social media editor at The Florida Times-Union and Jacksonville.com, co-host of Urban Jacksonville Weekly and by night I’m one helluva cook. If anything’s happening in RiverDale that needs a word, let me know and I’ll make sure it gets here. Find me on Twitter (I’m Jaxdotcom!!) Facebook and Linkedin (if that’s your thing). Send me an e-mail at nuinca(at)gmail.com.

If you want to say hello in person, I’m at Bold City Brewery every Thursday around 9:30pm. I’m the one drawing robots on napkins.