Mobile, frameworks, focus of 2010 Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise

More than 100 folks packed the room for the "Refactoring legacy applications for SOA using Spring Technologies" session led by Oleg Zhurakousky.

On Thursday, about 450 software developers, IT managers and business executives from around the world ventured to Old City for Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise, a locally-organized, two-day conference for high-level enterprise software development discussion.

Patrons packed the Society Hill Sheraton’s outdoor patio, breaking from sessions—comprised of mobile, frameworks, agile development, management, infrastructure and languages tracks—talking and fielding phone calls beneath the stunning pink blossoms of Cherry trees. The hotel offered more space than last year’s conference, held in Conshohocken.

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On Sunday, Wikipedia takes Philadelphia fills the city’s gaps

The utility of Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anybody can edit, is only surpassed by its ubiquity. That is, if something isn’t on Wikipedia, does it even exist?

As Technically Philly has written previously, the city’s presence on the site leaves a lot to be desired. Many institutions have “stubs” as articles if they have an entry at all.

But one group, Wikipedia Takes Philadelphia, is helping to right that wrong by going on a tour of the city this Sunday to snap pictures of all the local landmarks that are photoless on the site. And you can help.

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Apple Store architect profiled, Walnut Street retail space due to open in July

The Walnut Street location today and its proposed look upon opening.

Updated 4/8/10 @ 2:14 p.m.: Brownstoner has an interior shot of the current location.

The “computer illiterate” architect based outside of Scranton that helped envision the Apple retail store aesthetic and who is leading plans for the company’s much-heralded first Center City location was profiled by the Inquirer’s Inga Saffron recently.

While Saffron’s profile focuses much on Peter Bohlin’s noted Fifth Avenue “cube” location in Manhattan, the piece did touch on the 1607-1609 location that she reports is scheduled to open in July:

The Philadelphia store won’t be a signature design like the Cube, but it will incorporate key elements of the BCJ prototype, from the minimal scrim of the glass facade to the strict linear arrangement of the tables and products. A second-floor seminar room should help make it a gathering place.

We reported the store was hiring as far back as December.

Comcast Roundup: FCC loses court appeal on net neutrality, could NBC just be a start 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 New York Times reports on a federal appeals court decision that says the FCC has no authority to keep cable companies from blocking or slowing specific sites and charge high-volume video sites to have their content delivered faster.
• Bloomberg reports that at least five states are involved in the regulatory review of the Comcast acquisition of NBC, in addition to an independent inquiry from the Florida attorney general.

Below, a radio interview on net neutrality, could Comcast want more content than NBC provides and more.

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Gretjen Clausing of Philly CAM talks the technology behind public access TV

Gretjen Clausing thinks it’s “just perfect” that she grew up in Media.

She has lived in Philadelphia since 1989 — currently Roxborough — but from studying film and photography at Ithaca College to helping organize the first Philadelphia Film Festival to working at the Prince Music Theater or the Scribe Video Center, Clausing says she’s always had a hand in some form of media.

Gretjen Clausing

And now, the 45-year-old has a new role in the same industry.

Last June, Clausing took on the role of shepherding Philadelphia Community Access Media, the city’s long-awaited public-access cable channel. It’s a big role, considering, as she says, “that Philadelphia had the dubious reputation of being the last big city in the United States without a public access channel.”

There are public broadcasters like WHYY and WYBE, which has recently been rebranded as MiND TV, but Clausing says it’s time Philadelphians have a source for their best shot at getting the most local voices on the air. Now, Clausing is tasked with making a public-access cable channel that just launched in October a serious player in a two-decades old game, but she says she has all the advantages in the deck.

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Startup Roundup: Wharton-backed NearVerse raises $1 million in funding, Viddler developing for HTML5

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. Follow along with the Startup Roundup’s dedicated RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

NearVerse, which develops LoKast [iTunes] a proximity-based social network with Wharton talent backing it, has raised $1 million from Meakem Becker Venture Capital, TechCrunch reports. The funds will be used to look beyond wireless 3G and 4G network connectivity.

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Brownstoner, Brooklyn real estate blog, launches in Philly

Something about “rowhouser” didn’t sound right to Jonathan Butler.

So today, the founder of popular Brooklyn real estate, renovation and restaurant blog Brownstoner, launches a Philadelphia edition under the same brand. That expansion, Butler says, will dictate greatly the direction of the five-year-old site.

Launched in October 2004, Brownstoner is no small force, pulling roughly 200,000 unique visitors and 1.5 million page views a month, Butler says — see the always debated public traffic figures for the site from Quantcast and Compete — and it just so happens to not be the only blog born in New York to open up shop in Philadelphia this year.

Like Midtown Lunch, Brownstoner brings a brand name with a decidedly New York tone to a city not known for a healthy appreciation for its younger brother to the north. So, its expansion just might make for a hell of a conversation on authenticity and the future of growing hyperlocal news. And it all came about because one of the site’s contributors wanted to move.

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If we could design Philadelphia’s 311 iPhone App

In an informal partnership with Philadelphia magazine‘s new Philly Post daily news blog, Technically Philly will be offering our insight on Philadelphia technology to a broader audience of tech-interested individuals every Tuesday. As is true of so much of our effort, this is yet another opportunity to voice the triumphs and concerns of the community to a broader audience in the city and beyond.

Yesterday it was revealed that the City of Philadelphia is developing an iPhone application for its 311 non-emergency call system that will allow users to submit requests for city services using an Apple smartphone.

As city Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank told the Inquirer, users will be able to track and retrieve the same information they can from the city’s 311 telephone service. The mobile interface, though, will allow for more, like snapping a photograph of a pothole to request that it be filled. Frank hopes the application will launch next month as a bare-bones preview of what’s to come, before the “rocket-science stuff.”

Though Frank is vague about the future of the software, we’ve got some initial suggestions for what could be easily (and not-so-easily) implemented and advice for the city programmers tasked with developing it.

Read more at Philly Mag’s Philly Post.

VC Roundup: MAC and ETC merge, MindSnacks accepted into DreamIt

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
Peter Key reports that the Eastern Technology Council and MAC alliance are merging. Both organizations focus on connecting business owners with investors. Dean Miller, managing director at Novitas Capital will be the new organization’s CEO. The new organization will reveil its name June 3rd, during the MAC Alliance Awards Luncheon as reported in Key’s followup post.

Either someone is lying, or DreamIt Ventures has started to notify companies that have been accepted in the program’s Summer 2010 class. MindSnacks, a social game dev shop, claims it has been accepted to the University City-based incubator and has posted that it is looking for a “generalist developer” to possibly serve as a co-founder. A social media search by Technically Philly revealed no other companies coming forward.

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Gigabit Philly relaunches as Gigabit City, bigger goal with or without Google

Update on 4/6/10 @ 2:56 p.m. on other collaboration

As expected, the Philadelphia initiative to court Google and its ultra-high speed broadband Web access today relaunched its Web site. But Blake Jennelle says it’s so much more.

Recast as Gigabit City, from its previous incarnation as Gigabit Philly, the Philly Startup Leaders co-founder who worked with other community members and city officials on the project says the Google pitch is just a starting point.

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