Comcast Roundup: Verizon says desist, NBA TV inks and More

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

It isn’t true, so you really ought to stop saying it.

That’s the crux of a cease and desist letter that Verizon Communications has sent to Comcast in response to the telecommunications giant’s series of advertisements called “Don’t Fall for FiOS,” in which, among other claims, Comcast calls a triple-play-like service for bundle from Verizon $400 more expensive per year than the ‘Cast’s version, as reported Tuesday by the Inquirer’s Bob Fernandez.

“Verizon’s been running a negative campaign against Comcast for years and its response to our campaign shows that they can dish it out but they can’t take it,” a Comcast spokeswoman says.

Boys and girls, that fight is getting as mean spirited as Boost and Cricket. Get more details in Bob’s story.

After the jump, Comcast reports to the FCC, a mildly awkward Comcast interview on Web teen safety and four other stories that would interest any Comcast-head.

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Shop Talk: Obama Girl’s Leah Kauffman on Phrequency.com redesign

Updated: 5:33 p.m. 6/10/09 with additional attribution

This is part of an irregular series of our Shop Talk department, called The Redesign.

On a Friday afternoon in early May, Leah Kauffman dons a t-shirt to show off her gang affiliation.

A pair of hands screenprinted on the bright red tee are positioned similarly to the Bloods street gang hand signal. Fingers on the right hand are contorted into the shape of the letters ‘b,’ ‘l’ and ‘o.’ The left hand is flipped upside-down, and the index finger curled, creating a hanging “g.”

‘Blog,’ it reads.

At first glance, it’s easy to miss. But it makes sense. Kauffman runs Philly.com’s Phrequency, a news portal that covers the movers, shakers and rattlers of Philly’s music community.

In April, Phrequency was redesigned with a more streamlined, blog-esque interface; dropping the clunky, genre focus that forced users to choose hip-hop or punk, R&B or jazz, for a content-oriented design that doesn’t split hairs on artists who span all of those.

It was a move that Kauffman had wanted to make for months.
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University City Science Center welcomes three new companies

University City incubator and research park the Science Center includes a series of facilities hugging the Market Street corridor between 34th and 38th streets. Photo courtesy of the Science Center.

Europe’s largest organization for advancing chemical sciences has landed.

The Royal Society of Chemistry, which has a worldwide network of members and an international publishing business, needed to set up an East Coast base to continue its expansion.

So, RSC and two other organizations, including a second foreign group making their first U.S. home in Philadelphia, have moved into the University City Science Center, the historic nonprofit� incubator and research park, according to a press release from the center [PDF].

With RSC, GADORE Center USA, an outpost of a German collaborative focused on renewable energy, is the newest participant in the center’s Global Soft landing program, which aims to help international companies develop a presence in the region’s life sciences and information technology markets. The program is housed at 3711 Market Street.

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Duck Duck Go launches shopping search filter to test advertising waters

Valley Forge-based Duck Duck Go has updated its snappy, no-frills search engine with the option to filter shopping results.

By typing a query and choosing between shopping, information and normal- mode, you can decide whether you’re looking to buy, looking for info or something in between.

“A top complaint about search engines is that you often have trouble finding real information about topics that have lots of shopping results,” Founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg said in a statement. “We built this new feature to address that problem.”

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 38 percent of users say they are unaware that search results are a mix of search content and sponsored links.

Currently, Duck Duck Go displays no sponsored advertisements, but in an interview with Technically Philly last month, Founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg said the company was planning to monetize the site with ads.
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MAC Alliance CEO Thomas Balderston steps down

Thomas Balderston

According to Peter Key over at the Philadelphia Business Journal, Thomas M. Balderston has resigned his post as the Chief Executive of the Mid Atlantic Capital Alliance.

The MAC alliance is an affiliate of the city’s Chamber of Commerce that works to link up entrepreneurs and those with capital in our area. The group regularly hosts events for local business owners and investors.

Balderston made the move known at the group’s annual awards luncheon last Thursday, presumably making the move to focus on his own fund at King of Prussia-based Balderston Capital that he started in 2001.

The move is a big deal for the MAC Alliance, and is its first change in CEO since the group widened its coverage area. When Balderston took the helm of the then-named Greater Philadelphia Venture Group in 2006, he announced that he would be stretching the group’s reach from New York City (a.k.a. the 67th ward) to Washington D.C. Using his 20-plus years in the venture business he did just that, helping MAC Alliance expand to outside of city limits while continuing its march back to relevancy.

Balderston is still listed as CEO on MAC’s Web site. He also is still on the Board of Directors for Ben Franklin Technology Partners and is listed as a Principal investor in Rosemont Investment Partners.

Hat tip to the Phildelaphia Business Journal.

Technically Not Tech: Media Mobilizing Project closes grant, looks forward

Media Mobilizing Project founding member Todd Wolfson is interested in the role that media and communications can play in helping build movements to end poverty.

He hasn’t been the only one.

In 2007, MMP was awarded a $150,000 grant from the Knight News Foundation. With that money, the media organization has been helping other organizations use journalism to further their cause.

Since then, Wolfson and his team have helped create a network of 10 groups, like the Philadelphia Student Union, Pennsylvania Head Start Association, Casino-Free Philadelphia, Taxi Workers Alliance of PA and other service sector unions.

MMP’s aim is straight forward enough: teach the basics of new media concepts in order to help those groups get the good word out.

The grant helped MMP maintain a staff, create six six-week workshops to train organization leaders in Web, video and basic computer skills and purchase equipment and computers for each group’s respective community.

Now, Media Mobilizing is shifting gears.
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Events highlights for the week of June 8 – June 14, 2009

The city must have a case of “omgz it’s nice out now” as our event calendar is heavy on monthly meetups and light on, well, everything else.

That makes this week a good time to catch up on those groups and events that you have been meaning to get around to, but haven’t had the chance.

We hate to break it to you, but Monday this week is a empty void on our calendar giving you no excuse to take off today. Tuesday, however, be sure to make it out to The Federal Reserve Bank for some practical talk on social media with the Entrepreneurs Forum.

Continue the social media trend the next night out in the burbs, with a seminar on how to make money using Twitter. Then, make like Washington on Thursday and venture on over to Swanky Bubbles in Cherry Hill for the growing NJ and Philly Tech meetup.

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.
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Friday Tech Links: Startup double takes, Solar industry coming to town and More

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.

We found some redundancy in technology startup news this week.

Remember back in April, we introduced you to Stealth Rowing, which was constructing indoor training equipment for crew teams? Remember how you thought that was a novel idea and then forgot about it because no sensible person gets up at four a.m. to splash in the Schuylkill?

Well, maybe it wasn’t all that novel an idea.

As Inquirer business columnist Mike Armstrong reported late last month, two Philadelphia University graduates are rolling out the Benson rower, a piece of machinery that, yup, simulates rowing on open water. This city is silly with those silly narrow boats.

That isn’t it.

Callowhill-based Avencia has released two data-heavy, online mapping displays in recent weeks: on legislative data and election data. Well, there are other wonks in town. Mikey Armstrong, of Philadelphia Business Today fame, again introduced us to a player in startup bizarro world.

Center City-based neighborhood revitalization group the Reinvestment Fund has won some praise of late for its PolicyMap.com, a freemium-model display that maps block-by-block statistics on things like household incomes, foreclosures and employment.

The more the merrier, I suppose.

After the jump, Geekadelphia talks horror films, sex addicted principals on MySpace, the solar world comes to Philly and four other regional tech stories you need to read, including our most trafficked story of the week.

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The Hacktory receives $10,000 grant for long-term planning

Photo courtesy of The Hacktory.

The Hacktory has received a $10,000 grant from the Philadelphia branch of national financial and advisory service Nonprofit Finance Fund.

The money will be used to hire a consultant to help define a long-term sustainability plan to further the Fairmount-based group’s mission of promoting the use of technology in arts, Hacktory organizer Vanja Buvac told Technically Philly.

Since the grant was signed three weeks ago, Philly’s techno-hackers have been communicating with core community members and performing outreach for input on how the organization should grow, he says.

“What we’re hearing overwhelmingly is that the Hacktory empowers artists to embrace technology. Also, it empowers technologists to cross that boundary into art,” Buvac says.

“That’s what the people involved in the Hacktory are really passionate about.”

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Comcast Roundup: CEO eyes paid video streaming, Time Warner deal and More

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

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said two big things this week.

You’re gonna pay for online viewing of TV content and, yeah, this economy still sucks.

Roberts joined a growing group of cable company executives who are calling for a China Wall around online-streaming cable content, as Media Post News reported. They’re calling it an “era of authentication,” in which you won’t be able to pop in to watch episodes of your favorite gardening shows unless you prove you’re paying customer of HGTV. Time Warner and other top chiefs are mostly seen as on board — only technology and implementation stand in the way. The same obstacles for my jet pack.

Roberts also let us in on a little secret. The decline in consumer spending is still rattling Comcast here in the second quarter, as MarketWatch reported. Others have pointed to other reasons for the struggles, but those problems don’t seem to be disappearing anytime soon. Folks aren’t necessarily ditching their service any quicker, Roberts says, it’s just that no one else is calling up.

As if that wasn’t enough buzz, Roberts got some residual ink about the Time Warner deal from the Philly swoop by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who said he and Roberts are gal pals.

After the jump, what if Comcast bought TimeWarner, at least somebody cares about hockey and five other Comcast stories the truly faithful would read.

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