Events highlights for the week of July 13 – July 19, 2009

For those about to party, we salute you.

Drop your networking plans. Leave your business cards at home. This week is about having fun. Saturday will see you through two geekified parties that are sure to be ‘off the hook,’ as those darn kids are saying these days.

Join 8Static for its first chiptunes and classic video gaming-inspired party since May. And if you’re not down to dance, Philly Geek Party launches its inaugural and hopefully monthly party for the nerds out there. Both should be a trip. That is, if the G Lounge just ain’t your style.

Earn that ‘five o’clock somewhere’ philosophy with a handful of other events happening throughout the week.

Wharton Small Business Development Center will host a conference call Tuesday afternoon to talk you through how it can help you launch your dream biz. On Wednesday, learn intuitive interfaces with a joint meeting of PhillyCHI and UsabilityNJ. Also Wednesday, Philly Startup Leaders will help refine DocASAP, an online doctor’s appointment scheduling platform that we covered last week, in one of its informative fishbowl sessions.

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 Q&A: Gwen Shaffer, One Web Day organizer

On September 22, Philadelphia will celebrate its first One Web Day. Maybe celebrate isn’t the right word for it—this year’s event is about digital inclusion, or the lack thereof.

Modeled after Earth Day, One Web is an international event meant to raise the public’s awareness of Web issues. No, not the Facebook redesign. We’re talking issues like estimates that 50 percent Philadelphia does not have access to the Internet.

This year, organizer Gwen Shaffer is helping bring the event to Philly for the first time. “It’s an opportunity to demonstrate the positive impact broadband can have on people’s lives,” Shaffer says. She hopes to have a week of service built around the main event, a day filled with speakers, multimedia and stories about the Net’s impact.

“We will probably collect testimonials from either people who don’t have Internet and talk about how it would change their lives, and then get stories from people about how their lives were different before they had broadband,” she says. “Put a human face on what many of us take for granted.”

The organizers need your help. Shaffer says she is confident that the City will participate with the event, but the search for volunteers, corporate sponsors and additional partners has only begun. After the jump, it’s hard not to be persuaded into lending a hand.

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Friday Tech Links: Mount Airy teen hacker in WSJ, Digital Philadelphia summit video and More

Ari Weinstein, 15, in the computer lab of Germantown Friends School, where he just finished 9th grade. Yukari Kane/The Wall Street Journal

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.

Ari Weinstein is the youngest Mount Airy-based hacker we’ve featured on Technically Philly in our long and illustrious history.

Weinstein, 15, is apparently “getting job offers from Israel and all over the place,” and will follow in my footsteps and appear on Fox 29 Monday morning (See clip here), after his place in a Wall Street Journal cover story that ran this week, as reported dutifully by our boy Joe DiStefano.

Weinstein is a contributor to iJailBreak.com, a blog devoted to help users install unapproved software onto Apple’ iPhone and iPod touch products.

Dude is keeping it straight tech raw in northwest Philly, even while he’s in summer camp on the Left Coast. Dude’s father Ken is a developing playing a large role in something of a retail resurgence in Mount Airy, DiStefano reports, including his ownership of the Trolley Car Diner.

H/T Joey D

After the jump, more Ben Franklin Technology Partners dispute, a Digital Philadelphia op-ed and six other tech stories you should read, including our best read article of the week.

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Quaker Bioventures invests in Rapid Micro Biosystems

Quaker BioVentures, a venture capital firm based in University City’s Cira Center, has been on a roll the past month.

In June, partner David King was named to the board of the University City Science Center and the company was profiled in the Wall Street Journal for shifting some of its resources from biotech to medical devices.

The good news continued yesterday when it was announced that Quaker was one of the Series A investors in Rapid Micro Biosystems, a company that makes technology to detect troublesome microbes that can slow down the drug-making process.

When Technically Philly asked for the exact share Quaker BioVentures invested, the company said it does not disclose amounts.

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Job opening: Commission-based, ad-sales rep for Technically Philly

Here’s the next step in creating a sustainable news product to cover the technology and innovation communities of Philadelphia.

A month after announcing we would begin to slowly investigate opportunities to monetize Technically Philly so we can grow our coverage and create a solid foothold in the country’s fourth largest media market, we are seeking a talented, aggressive ad-sales representative to lead our push for profitability.

See our media kit online here.

While that push will likely begin with advertising, we have no intentions of depending on a profit-model that is now greatly diminished. Instead, we ask that the candidate be interested in exploring alternative revenue streams, in addition to display ads.
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Technically Philly makes brief appearance on Fox 29

After the School District of Philadelphia said in a statement to Technically Philly yesterday that it was investigating how one of its computer peripherals ended up in a landfill in Ghana, Fox 29 reports that the City Controller’s office is also looking into the issue.

John Atwater added good reporting to our piece from yesterday concerning the district’s e-waste. Most importantly, and as we suspected though couldn’t confirm, Atwater reports that Regentech, the district’s current technology recycler, wasn’t on the job in 2004, when the shipment that ended up in Ghana appears to have left Philadelphia.

As we tweeted last night, TP reporter Christopher Wink appeared in Fox’s 10 p.m. newscast, discussing with Atwater details of the story. To see the station’s coverage, follow the jump.

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Comcast Roundup: Olympic channel controversy, Justice Dept. on telecom abuse and More

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

The United States Olympic Committee and Comcast announced yesterday they would partner to launch in 2010 The U.S. Olympic Network, broadcasting the trials and training and everything else that goes into the international event.

Comcast’s corporate blog takes on the rosy dream of giving you superhuman mega athletes and their schmaltzy stories 24/7/365. Of course, the N.Y. Times and the Debbie Downers that they are focus more on the fact that, well, the International Olympic Committee has made clear they have not given name or TV rights for the project.

The Times reports that this is just the latest development in the tense relationship between the U.S.O.C. and the I.O.C.

Richard Carrion, an I.O.C. executive board member, told the Times that they were concerned about the viability of the network and its affect on longtime U.S. broadcaster NBC.

“We’ve given the rights to NBC to be the Olympic network,” he said. “I don’t think something else called the Olympic network will fly.”

After the jump, Verizon crashes Steel Town, what Pirate Bay wants to sell Comcast and five other stories for the faithful.

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Drexel boasts tech, with smart grid system and incubator entrants

The City Six school with the computer science cred boasted its tech influence from two different places in big ways in recent weeks.

Drexel University is planning on deploying a smart grid system that will provide real-time measurements of location-specific energy outputs across its 65-acre campus in University City, as reported by inTech yesterday. The real-time pricing technology, which will come from Conshohocken-based Viridity Energy, will give Drexel the wherewithal to purchase power at low-demand times of the day and sell excess power back to the general power grid for profit.

That bit of news followed an announcement from the school’s LeBow College of Business that three new startups were welcomed into its Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship business incubator, all with a touch of technology. The three new entrants are Ranter, a social-networking tool that allows users to text groups; Konnect.me, a business-to-business Web portal and Stabiliz Orthopaedics, which is developing bone fasteners with bio-absorbable materials, as first reported by Mike Armstrong of the Inquirer.

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Shop Talk: School District of Philadelphia launches probe into its computer recycling program

Refurbished computers in a technology recycling warehouse in Fairmount.

How at least one School District of Philadelphia computer monitor ended up in a massive e-waste landfill in Ghana remains unclear.

But, after a PBS Frontline documentary camera spotted the hardware and Technically Philly made repeated followup inquiries, the district has announced it will launch an investigation, according to a written statement given by district spokesman Fernando Gallard.

“The School District of Philadelphia does not encourage or condone the illegal dumping of any school district property anywhere in the world,” read the statement, given first to Technically Philly. “As a result… [we are] currently investigating the source and disposal record of the equipment found in Ghana.”

The computer monitor, which had a district sticker on it, was just a brief moment in the explosive PBS Frontline report on e-waste that was released last month. Likewise, the monitor is just a small part of the hundreds of millions of tons of e-waste that flood the West African country and other developing nations each year.

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Trail Reporter keeping tabs on violent crime along Schuylkill River Trail

Software Developer Jonathan Bringhurst considers himself a new cyclist.

He purchased a road bike several months ago to trek from his home in Manayunk along a 10-mile stretch of the Schuylkill River Trail to work, he says.

Yet his inexperience hasn’t stopped him from becoming an active part of the biking community. For what he lacks in biking mechanical know-how he makes up for in coding expertise.

He’s helping keep an eye on an apparently dangerous ride along the Schuykill with a no-frills incident report Web app he calls Trail Reporter.

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