Comcast Roundup: The digital transition, rumors of partnership with T-Mobile and More

Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup.

My rabbit ears don’t work anymore.

Yes, the federal government spent $2 billion and 13 years to finalize the nation’s transition from analog to crisper digital television transmission, and yes, much to the delight of Philebrity, the FCC said the Philadelphia region was responsible for the fourth most complaint calls to a hotline dedicted to the transition.

The Associated Press reports that Comcast’s new $1.5 billion debt issue received an investment grade rating on from Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services. The rating was “BBB+,” with a positive outlook for the possibility of further upgrade. It’ll be a two-part sale, according to Reuters. To the markets!

But, look, it ain’t Comcast’s fault. In some coverage areas, the cable giant launched a “rapid response team” to perform same-day installations for those who still needed a digital TV solution. ‘Course that didn’t help resolve the need for the FCC to send its own additional support here to help viewers who still hadn’t made the transition.

I mean, people lost 6ABC and WHYY, for goodness sake.

Maybe that’s why, when Comcast filed comments to the FCC for a proposed national broadband plan, part of their advice was to undergo a massive education program.

After the jump, porn and children’s shows get a buffer, a partnership with T-Mobile, video of Comcast playing nicely with children, among others.

Read more

Shop Talk: Scribnia out of private alpha, releases my Scribes

A screenshot of Scribnia's my Scribes feature, to be released tomorrow.

The Web runs on opinion.

We Digg, Stumble, rate and recommend everything from books to blogs and, if Scribnia gets its way, you will be able to add writers to the list.

Scribnia is a University City-based Web site that allows readers to rate and recommend authors, writers and bloggers on a one to ten scale. Users can leave comments and rank authors in categories based on their writing topic. For example, a political writer can be rated as more liberal or conservative, or a tech writer can be rated on a scale of whether they write more for the general public or for tech experts.

“Readers are actually starting not to just read one-off articles on sites like Digg, but [they are] finding authors that they care about and want to come back and read,” said co-founder Russell D’Souza.

The result is a growing database of content creators that can provide users with recommendations based on previous rankings. Rate, say, baseball writer Peter Gammons high and you may be recommended other baseball writers that Peter Gammons fans rated highly. Tomorrow, the site will roll out my Scribes, an RSS reader within Scribnia that will provide author recommendations based upon the feed items the users read.

Read more

Ben Franklin Technology Partners threatened by 60 percent budget cut

In a restricted budget season, you have to make your case for survival.

Pennsylvania’s Ben Franklin Technology Partners program has earned the state $3.50 for every $1 invested, according to an independent study by the Pennsylvania Economy League for the years between 2002 and 2006, as cited in a Morning Call Op-ed.

In 25 years, the program’s Southeastern Pennsylvania branch — based at the Naval Yard in South Philadelphia – has provided more than $130 million to grow more than 1,600 regional enterprises, but still, lingering in the state Senate is a bill that would cut 60 percent of the body that funds the statewide BFTP program.

“This is an extremely challenging year for the state budget, and difficult decisions must be made,” wrote R. Chadwick Paul Jr., the president and CEO of the Northeastern Pa. arm of BFTP, in the Op-ed in the Call. “But decreasing funding for Ben Franklin would reduce Pennsylvania job creation and job retention, and result in a net revenue loss for the commonwealth.”

Read more

Ten Philadelphia tech organizations that should have Wikipedia entries but don’t

Look, this is down right embarrassing.

Earlier this month we retweeted Viddler founder Rob Sandie. He was self-promoting, but damn it if we didn’t agree with him. Why didn’t the growing video-hosting service have a Wikipedia entry? Now that Google News has begun to link to the Web’s largest community-edited encyclopedia, it’s clear it’s bypassed mainstream and shot straight to influential.

So, it’s become something of shorthand for the importance of a subject, person or organization. But, as we found, Philadelphia generally and its technology and innovation communities specifically are dismally represented in the Web 2.0 powerhouse.

When someone answered Sandie’s call to create a Viddler Wikipedia page, it was deleted because, as one Wiki editor wrote, the article was “about a web site, blog, online forum, webcomic, podcast, or similar web content that didn’t assert the importance or significance of its subject.”

Sounds like a call to make clear the Philadelphia technology scene is significant. Below, we share our list of 10 members of our community that don’t have Wikipedia entries, but should, including Viddler.

We respect the mission of Wikipedia, so don’t consider this spam posting. Rather, we think our community is very underserved by the online encyclopedia. This, my friends, is basic stuff we need to get down. Who’s stepping up?

Read more

State to lure tech workers to teach high schoolers

Governor Rendell announced a certificate program yesterday that would encourage science, technology, engineering and math professionals to take mid-career breaks to become school teachers.

The plan is to attract current workers to be “residents” in the state’s public schools and assign them a teacher to be their guide as they impart their real-world wisdom to students.

The program would streamline the teaching certification process, made difficult in the wake of No Child Left Behind. The country is due to have a shortage of 280,000 math and science teachers by 2015.

Interested in teaching at your local high school? The Governor’s office provided the following requirements for eligible teaching certificate candidates:
Read more

Technically Not Tech: NPower PA gives IT support to nonprofits in need

Updated: added grant details @ 4:35 p.m.6/16/09

It just might take a miracle to help lead at-risk Philadelphia teens away from the obstacles that have become something of a cliche in the urban education saga.

It will take a miracle or, perhaps, youth organizations that share information with each other through a sophisticated network of information sharing technologies.

That’s what NPower PA does.

The Center City organization fundraises for, organizes, implements and maintains IT for nonprofits that can benefit but don’t have the capital to do so on their own.

In January, this six-year-old group, one of 11 in the national NPower Network, completed perhaps its most ambitious project. After winning the grant in July 2007, NPower PA began integrating a collaborative data collection system in four communities — three in Philly and one in Chester — in the hopes of helping those young people better navigate the pitfalls they face.

Read more

Events highlights for the week of June 15 – June 21, 2009

Yeah, so last week was a little thin for Philly tech events. You were bored, confused, even lost without a daily dose of tech goings-on.

Think of it as a savings account for all the cool stuff going on this week. You didn’t want to go out in that rain, anyway.

On Monday, hit up Philly.rb‘s Pub Night and don’t even say you’re sorry that you once were down with Python. Can’t we all just get along? Central NJ Drupal will host an info session Tuesday to help you get involved with the Project. We call it the Project with a capital P because damn if they ain’t been working hard. Maybe it’s time to throw in your two cents.

Wednesday, Mike Welsh of Newgrounds.com and ActionScript coder for Xbox Live Arcade’s best-seller Castle Crashers will lead Philadelphia Flash Users Group‘s discussion on AS3 game development. We never understood why Super Mario went 3D anyway, and we think Mike would agree.

We hate when this happens: a dozen blocks West, Philly Startup Leaders will host a second can’t-be-missed Wednesday night event. Neat Company co-founder Rafi Spero will give his “Unplugged” presentation on the blood, sweat, tears and scanners that went into the company’s successful receipt organization software.

Last but not least, PhillyCHI will host a happy hour to celebrate all things human-computer interaction. Why a happy hour? Because it’s 5 o’clock and someone’s got a bad UI somewhere, that’s why. More details on all of these events after the jump.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more information, or follow us past the jump.
Read more

9 local Facebook names we could have registered

So after my wild and crazy Friday night was drawing to a close, a little alarm on my phone reminded me that it was high time for the Facebook username land rush. In case you were unaware, Facebook had previously given all users URLs that were an indecipherable set of numbers.

So, Saturday at 12:01 a.m., the social network finally made “vanity URLs” publicly available so instead of http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=823408803, you could be facebook.com/awesomeTPreader. Below are some local names that could have been yours at around 12:06 a.m.:

1. /thephiladelphiainquirer

Read more

Friday Q&A: Ben and Kelly LeDonni of Adography

Philly-based Adography's new look

At your typical startup, the founders will often have to go through the trouble of hiring an outside public relations firm. That is, unless you are computer developer Ben LeDonni, in which case you can just shout across the house to ask your wife.

Ben, along with his wife Kelly, a public relations representative, joined forces to work on Adography, a site that connects amateur photographers with companies looking for specific candid photos to be featured in advertising materials. A company might place a request for, say, a mother hitting her head on a van steering wheel. Photographers submit their photos, and advertisers can pay a fee to the photographer ranging from $20 to $100 with Adography taking a ten percent cut.

Thus far, the couple has bootstrapped the entire operation, and they are beginning to pick up some momentum. In February, the site was featured on TechCrunch and, subsequently, Digg. The site is growing with nearly 500 users and recently, the couple has been hard at work on a new redesign (pictured above) that will unroll a bunch of new features such as Flickr integration.

We sat down with Kelly and Ben to ask them how many users they have, what was it like getting featured on TechCrunch and how a boogey board spurred their entrepreneurial spirit.
Read more

Friday Tech Links: Philly tax criticism, Webby awards and more

Read about what's going on here after the jump.

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun. See others here.

Philadelphians are the highest taxed people in the United States. So says eminent Philadelphia Daily News legacy columnist John Baer.

That’s enough to crack any red-blooded American’s Liberty Bell.

In a column, Baer was railing against Mayor Nutter’s calls to Harrisburg for legislative authority to hike the city’s sales tax from seven to eight percent. The story actually has a good dialogue in the comments section, too — a rarity for Philly.com.

The topic came up elsewhere this week.

Joe Distefano, the Inquirer’s top bearded business columnist, wrote an absolute must read on Nutter’s stalling of and his administration’s subsequent rethinking of continuing the move to “eradicating”the city’s two-pronged business privilege tax.

By no account should you think this is strictly a Philly problem these days.

Fast Eddie Rendell said this past week that if he was forced to push for a hike in the state’s income tax, he would vie for it to return to its normal state three years later, according to reporting from foxy Inquirer state capital correspondent Angela “It’s Greek” Couloumbis.

After the jump, why ET is with a Philly cop above, why 600 people paid $500 to be in Delaware and more than five other itches you need scratched, including our best read story of the week.

Read more