Ford Fiesta gets branding help from community members

At the risk of seeming too complicit in helping to promote a car company, two teams with technology community ties are representing Philadelphia in a 17-city Ford Fiesta social media branding binge.

Team Philadelphia features Geekadelphia contributor and QVC multimedia designer Tim Quirino and Web developer Michaelangelo Illagan.

Team Philly features the scenester power couple of Lime Projects creative marketer Laris Kreslins and Kendra Gaeta, the founder of online allowance and chore rewards platform Kidszillions.

Like their counterparts in cities across the country, each team was given the keys to a new Ford Fiesta in exchange for posting wildly about their experiences via every social media platform you ever heard of, to, as the site suggests, “re-imagine the way Fiesta gets advertised.”

The campaign features a promotional competition component which will crown one of the participating teams the winner, earning a 2011 Ford Fiesta.

Links: hunting for DreamIT class, Sunoco looking to outsource Center City IT and More

DEFINITE READS

• As we tweeted, our reporter Sean Blanda is en route to Austin, Texas for South by Southwest. Drop us a line in the comments or otherwise to let us know you’re there or if you know someone else from the community is.
• Center Networks reports on the hunt for a new recruiting class at DreamIT in University City. H/T Philly Tech News
• The Philadelphia Business Journal reports that Sunoco has hired a consulting firm to explore the possibility of outsourcing positions from several departments, including IT and mostly from its Center City headquarters. Will Bunch of the Daily News and his legions of commenters have something to say about this too.

MIGHT BE OF INTEREST

• The Drexel Triangle reports on the redesign of university-sponsored Web food publication Table Matters.

GIVE A GLANCE

• The Philadelphia Business Journal‘s John George primes for last night’s Pennsylvania Bio‘s annual dinner and award celebration.

Every Friday morning, we make sure you didn�t miss anything with Friday Tech Links.

StartPhilly: SemperCon’s cloud computing

This post originally ran on Start Philly. It is re-purposed here with permission, as part of a previously announced partnership.

In talking with people in technical fields, day-to-day verbiage can sometimes come across to the layman as robotic jargon. That’s when the interpreter comes into play.

When SemperCon‘s CEO described his work as “cloud-based,” it took some dissecting to understand his reference to the Internet.

SemperCon first appeared on StartPhilly at the beginning of the year, with a contribution by President and CEO, Rick O’Brien.

O’Brien started this software development enterprise for young startups or already established companies. SemperCon works closely with its clients to build web-based and mobile Internet applications that leverage its motto of “always connected, cloud computing capabilities”…

Read the rest here.

Comcast Roundup: Fourth NBC Senate hearing, NBC promotions and More

Every Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m. EST, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in�the Comcast Roundup. Get�an e-mail subscription for our Comcast news updates.

DEFINITE READS

• The Washington Post reports that the Senate Commerce committee has called Comcast and NBC Universal back for a fourth hearing on the merger. The Post also reports that the chairman of the FCC and a Department of Justice antitrust executive will testify at the hearing.

Below, promotional plans with NBC, the stock is good but the deal is bad and more.

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Poptent’s user-generated commercials undercut expensive ad agencies

Poptent's assignment board shows a handful of the available commercial projects, most of which start at a $5,000 payout.

Wynewood-based Poptent, a social network that connects businesses with advertising and marketing creatives, might just turn the video advertising industry on its head.

Back in 2007, Chief Marketing Officer Neil Perry, who’s worked in marketing as a senior leader at McDonald’s and as Vice President of Marketing at Monster.com, realized that creating high-cost video advertising campaigns in a universe of user-generated content just didn’t make sense.

“[We] produced a bundle of commercials and I got famaliar with how expensive commercials could be. I knew there could be a better way,” he says.

Three years after launching, Poptent has built a community of 14,000 members—climbing at about 500 users per month—comprised of professional and semi-professional videographers and ad creators looking to break into the advertising industry and make some cash doing it. The company has produced 65 assignments for national advertisers like Nestle, Anheuser Busch, Ben & Jerry’s and TurboTax.

Part of that growth is for the company’s affordability. In the world of marketing, Perry says, a 30 second spot might cost on average about $350,000, not including talent. Poptent campaigns start at $32,500, the cost of one video ad and the technical backend to place a brand on the site. Each additional ad costs a business $7,500. A company could purchase more than 40 viral videos from Poptent for the cost a single traditional advertisement. “The next time you need video, you don’t have to pay a national agency an arm and a leg,” he says.

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Philadelphia magazine launches blog Philly Post

Updated 3/10/10 @ 12:17 p.m.: Added item from comment field

Philadelphia magazine wants to get back into the daily conversation.

The century-old glossy publication and regional staple has launched a general interest blog, the Philly Post.

“The goal is to be in touch with our audience not just monthly, as we are with the magazine, but daily,” said Editor-in-Chief Larry Platt in a release. The platform is WordPress-based.

Phillymag Executive Editor Tom McGrath will take the helm of the project. McGrath told Technically Philly that the venture will follow top stories in the region, use both original reporting and aggregation and will include pieces from both staffers and contributors in a Huffington Post-like structure.

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Google launches Maps biking directions with Bicycle Coalition data

Google Maps new biking directions feature shows safe-to-ride bike paths in green. It's not the path we'd take to Citizen's Bank Park, but hey, Google does no evil, right?

You could say we’ve been welcoming of spring and the onset of the 2010 Grapefruit League. A bike ride down to Citizen’s Bank Park in a few weeks? Count us in. But how best to get there?

Google has launched a beta and buggy version of its new bike-friendly Maps features, including directions that utilize Philly bike paths and landmarks of local biking facilities, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia reported this morning.

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Startup Roundup: WantsThis launches, Laan Labs is better than our Abe Lincoln app joke

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

We’ve run into founder Peter D’Orsi III at a few tech events over this past year, and we have to say that his new Web wish list startup WantsThis looks pretty sharp. Of course, he’s got some tight local competition with $1.4 million-funded wish list aggregator Snipi.

Duck Duck Go’s Gabe Weinberg – who promised to pen at least 100 posts on his blog this year – writes about some of the features he’d like to integrate on the startup search engine, including O’Reilly Paragraphs, more topic sources, strong documentation and an instant message search service. Weinberg has also interviewed DreamIt Ventures’ Steve Welch in a 30 minute video. That’s alotta Welch.

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VC Roundup: BFTP invests in 5, Venmo gets funded

Welcome to the VC Round-up, where we�ll parse through venture capital news related to Philadelphia-based private equity firms and the companies they fund. Subscribe to the roundup�as an email newsletter. If you have any VC-related news to pass along to us, please�drop us a line.

DEFINITE READS

Ben Franklin Technology Partners has invested $800,000 in five locally-based companies. Three of the companies (Aklero, EyeIC and Jenrin) are getting their second round of funding from BFTP, while Glastone Associates and Quantason are receiving thief first round of funding. The companies are in the medical and financial industries.

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Community launches support portal for Google gigabit fiber

Philadelphia’s tech community is looking for your support to bring Google to our backyard.

After announcing last week its intent to apply to be a test bed for Google’s ultra-high speed fiber, city officials have collaborated with community developers to launch an external initiative to drum up buzz for its proposal.

Working at Independents Hall over the weekend, the groups helped launch a portal - at gigabitphilly.com - that solicits feedback from local users to help fulfill Google’s Request For Information. The page drives home Philadelphia’s notability as a “city of firsts,” much like it would be for Google’s broadband pilot program.

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