Unisys, the other scary military agency working around Philly, nabs $7.1 million army contract

Blue-Bell-based information technology company Unisys has won a task order to provide IT support and services to the U.S. Army Logistics Innovation Agency, a military organization that focuses on improving military logistics readiness.

Yeah, Canada is screwed.

The order has a one-year base value of $2.3 million, followed by two one-year options for a total estimated value of $7.1 million. It is a follow-up to a contract Unisys has held since 1999, according to a company press release.

Unisys will handle unclassified networks, which may or may not include e-mail invitations to tea parties, in addition to classified networks, which may or may not include e-mail invitations to secret tea parties.

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Friday Q&A: Roz Duffy of Refresh Philly

[Update: expanded list of contributors]

To tell the story of Refresh Philly, you have to go back to last November. It was then that Web developer Roz Duffy and friend J.P. Toto planned Philadelphia’s first ever BarCamp. In the spirit of BarCamp’s success, Duffy and BarCamp attendees Aaron Held, Arpit Mathur and John Riviello of Comcast Interactive Media decided to start Refresh Philly.

Coming up with a succinct description of Refresh Philly can be rather difficult for two reasons. The first is that the organization’s motto of “refreshing” industries purposefully leaves a lot of room for interpretation. And second, the group is in its infancy with only three meetings under its belt. But under the guidance of Duffy, Held, Mathur and Riviello, Refresh Philly is growing. The next gathering is planned for March 5th at the Comcast Center (Disclaimer: I am scheduled to give a brief presentation at the March event). Technically Philly sat down with Duffy to get the details behind one of Philadelphia’s newest meetup groups. Q&A after the jump:

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Biden in Philly to talk green jobs, hospitals buy wind

Vice President Joe Biden is in Philadelphia today, launching an initiative focused on creating green jobs in middle class communities.

He rides through University City in the same week that several prominent Philadelphia hospitals announced they would buy wind-power as part of sustainability efforts.

The hospitals involved in the group purchase are Albert Einstein Healthcare Network, Frankford Hospitals, Thomas Jefferson University, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital Inc., Main Line Health System, and Magee Rehabilitation, according to an Einstein press release.

Biden will be part of the first hearing of the middle-class task force, meeting in the Irvine Auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania. Presentations at the invitation-only event will focus on the potential of green jobs to motivate economic recovery and discuss ways to train workers for those jobs.

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New York Times Open uses Philly company for nerd merit badges

The idea for Nerd Merit Badges began innocently enough. After a long day working on an open source project in their shared office space, Randy Schmidt of Umlatte and John Young of Tikaro commented to each other that they thought they deserved a merit badge.

“And we thought ‘aw, what a good idea’,” said Schmidt who wanted to motivate nerds everywhere to contribute to open source projects.

And thus Nerd Merit Badges was born. Basing a lot of their work on Tikaro’s experience making patches with QR codes, the two began creating small badges with Velcro backing. So far, there are only two badges up for sale. One for the achievements of finding “Inbox Zero” and another for contributing to an open source project. Much to the surprise of Schmidt, nerdmeritbadges.com has since sent out nearly 600 badges with 100 more on backorder while garnering the attention of the New York Times.

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Bala Cynwyd’s First Flavor on Today Show

Bala Cynwyd marketing company First Flavor President Jay Minkoff was on the Today Show yesterday during this week last year promoting its “Peel ‘n Taste” technology, which they say is, “a way to market the most important sensory aspect of your product.”

It was the beginning of what has become a long line of recent news for the five-year-old Montgomery County company, who, we’re happy to share, formulated its business plan at Philadelphia’s own University of Pennsylvania and has since signed on a host of new clients.

Read how and see video of Minkoff’s Today Show performance after the jump.

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Editorial: There’s no better time to develop a database to track local government

In Trenton this week, lawmakers will discuss creating an online database that would track state contracts, loans, and other expenditures and would be easily accessible on the state’s Web site. We like the sound of this project, which according to officials, would be comparable to relative budget tracking systems that cost in the ballpark of $400,000.

Lest we concede technological superiority to our brethren in the East, Philadelphia’s tech community has a unique opportunity to demand the same accountability from our local government by developing a citizen-managed online database that would track important public records.

Tomorrow, the metropolitan area will lose a valuable contributor of government accountability. Hallwatch.org is closing shop, according to an announcement made on the site on January 23.

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SEPTA adds AT&T cell phone service on Broad Street Line

Edit: SEPTA gave us a call to clear up some details

Continuing their subterranean domination of the city, AT&T and SEPTA have recently announced that AT&T customers will be able to receive cell phone signal while riding the Broad Street Line. The service is available between the Walnut-Locust and Fairmount Erie stops.

If I were SEPTA czar, first I would worship my Barack Obama poster for all of the recent stimulus money that came my way. But then I would use the new service to encourage advertisers to include text messaging in their promotions. Or maybe send out text alerts when trains are running late.

Last year AT&T and SEPTA announced a similar deal that rolled out coverage on the entire Market-Frankford line. According to spokesman Felipe Suarez, the idea to give cell phone service to riders on the subway lines originated when AT&T approached SEPTA. SEPTA never put the contract up for bid to other networks.

While we’ll stay out of the debate on whether having more opportunity to yak on a cell phone is a good thing or not (the R5 even has a quiet car), kudos to SEPTA for thinking of ways to improve their service.

IndyHall Labs gaining momentum and legal model

Last week, IndyHall Labs launched a new Web site highlighting their four flagship products and announced that two of the products, Multiplex and MultiFirefox, were chosen as Apple Staff Picks in the Apple’s Mac download directory. As a result, Multiplex has seen a spike in traffic and an increase in sales of the discounted, Pre-v1.0 version of the ripped-DVD cataloging software.

Labs is gaining momentum since the software incubator was first announced last year, perhaps the most since iSepta, a Labs initiative, made headlines with Philadelphia Metro last May. We called Alex Hillman, a partner in Independents Hall, the organization responsible for Indy Hall Labs, to see what all the buzz is about.

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An official welcome to Technically Philly

Anyone within earshot knows the Philadelphia region’s tech scene is blossoming, but it’s surprisingly disjointed and often disconnected.

Welcome to what we hope will become its central home, Technically Philly, a blog covering the community of people who use technology in Philadelphia.

For those who have already found us, check out our events calendar for Philadelphia technology lectures, meetups, free conferences and other tech-related dates in the region. We’re launching it today. We’re already proud of it but hope to build it into the single most comprehensive resource for tech-themed goings-on around.

For those who are here for the first time, well, we at TP aim to cover the trends, the news and the people that affect and the events that include the Philadelphia region’s growing technology community. I hope you’ll follow us along.

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SunGard Availability Services opens new data center somewhere in Philadelphia

Wayne-based information-technology company SunGard Availability Services opened a third data center in Philadelphia last week, a spokeswoman told Technically Philly.

“Customers can buy solutions that include hosting, application services, email and collaboration services, network services, managed security services, storage services and replication services,” said company spokeswoman Valeria Maltoni. “The idea is to have a secure, highly available and redundant IT environment. ”

The specific location of the $25 million, 120,000-square foot structure is, well, somewhere on Spring Garden Street, though specific locations are not disclosed by the company for security reasons, said Maltoni.

The unity of parent company SunGard Data Systems has two other data centers amounting to 350,000 square feet in the city, the others being on North Broad and Chestnut streets. These centers offer business continuity, which means your operation keeps chugging, irrespective of power outages, technical failure, attack or accidentally flipping the wrong switch.

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