Newspaper chain Journal Register Company announces move to open source

The open source movement isn’t exactly won, but, in a surprise, a newspaper giant from the region just went that way.

The Journal Register Company, based in Yardley, Bucks County and once called among the 10 worst managed companies in the country, announced on July 4th that its 18 daily websites and newspapers were published that weekend using free tools and “crowdsourced journalism.”

“Does this mean that [moving forward] all newsrooms will publish using Scribus or will tone all photos using Gimp? No, but if an operation — part Journal Register or an outside company — wanted to, they could,” the press release read. “The tools we discovered, trained on and used as part of the Ben Franklin Project could allow a news organization to throw away their old methods and start anew.”

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Comcast Roundup: Agreement with CBS, ABC and Fox, the Trail Blazers object 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

• Updated  7/9/10 @ 9:04 a.m.: The Los Angeles Times reports that Comcast has promised $20 million in investment capital for minority-owned businesses as a condition of its deal for NBC.
• Los Angeles Times Company Town blog reports that Comcast has reached an agreement with CBS, ABC and Fox stations over its proposed acquisition of NBC, hoping to eas regulatory approval.
• A Forbes blog speculates on why Netflix should be an $82 stock, comparing it with Comcast.
• Visiting Princeton University Law Professor Susan Crawford writes on her blog about a Comcast-NBC deal public filing from NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, who reported the organization fears further consolidation would allow Comcast unfair control for local sports.
• The Huffington Post has a piece on net neutrality and how Comcast inspired one activist for the cause.

Below, net neutrality lobbyists, Comcast works with the Banana Republic on ‘Mad Men’ wear and more.

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Wharton’s WIMI can predict your future

This is first in a series of posts profiling speakers at this month’s Supernova conference, a technology conference at Wharton that is co-sponsored by Technically Philly.

Wharton professor Eric Bradlow sees his department as a matchmaker between guys in suits and guys in lab coats.

“We want to connect companies with large data sets with academics that want to build data models,” he says.

Bradlow along with fellow professor Peter Fader started Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (WIMI) in August 2008 to help companies take the large mounds of user data and use it to predict customer behavior.

WIMI is able to predict the viewership of ESPN programming across cable, online and mobile. They’ve told Omnicom what online advertising methods are most effective and they’ve helped Hulu forecast user consumption “with ridiculous accuracy.”

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Republican governor candidate Tom Corbett stumps on tech at Bentley

Bentley MicroStation visualization expert Jerry Flynn (left) shows Attorney General Corbett photorealistic 3D renderings specially created in MicroStation for use with 3D glasses.

The man who polls say would be Pennsylvania’s next governor if the election were held today spoke last week on the importance of high technology companies in creating high-paying jobs.

State Attorney General Tom Corbett, whose double-digit lead in the polls over Democratic gubernatorial challenger Dan Onoranto is slipping – though Corbett still enjoys a 10 point cushion – was out stumping at the Exton headquarters of infrastructure software giant Bentley Systems Wednesday.

Some in the region’s technology community may remember Corbett for his subpoenaing Twitter in May to unveil a series of anonymous users who were criticizing his candidacy.

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Zivtech, Old City Drupal shop, hires half of Canary Promotions + Design

Old City Drupal and Alfresco design and application shop Zivtech announced today they’ve hired the co-founder of a smaller, competing, if friendly, design firm.

Mason Wendell, whose cultural website work we profiled in March, will take on the creative director role at Zivtech’s new design department, leaving his post as principal designer at Canary Promotions + Design. Wendell founded the firm in 2001 with his wife Megan Wendell.

It’s an amicable divorce on the professional side, as Wendell the fairer will maintain the publicity side of Canary Promotions and, so far as has been disclosed, marital bliss remains in place.

Wendell of Zivtech is a leader in the region’s Drupal community, as a co-organizer of Drupaldelphia, an event that was led with Zivtech co-partner Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg, who has also had a prominent hand with his brother in the Young Philly Politics blog community. Wendell’s Drupal background and design focus made it an important hire, Urevick-Ackelsberg told Technically Philly.

For one more intersection, take note that Urevick-Ackelsberg’s fellow partner Jody Hamilton formerly worked for Canary, which was once based in Mount Airy but moved to Glenside, Montgomery County in May.

Startup Roundup: Monetate real-time marketing platform helps power ModCloth

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

First Round Capital-funded ModCloth—which has been all over the news this week for its $19.8 million round of fundraising—happens to be local Conshohocken-based real-time marketing platform Monetate‘s first client. In 2008, ModCloth generated $3.2 million in revenue. In 2009, it shot up to $19 million. We covered the tech behind Monetate—and by extension, ModCloth—back in February.

Old-school-style Final Form Games, which we covered in December celebrated its first birthday last week. In three blog posts, the company talks where it’s been, where it’s at and where it’s going. The game design company is still working on its 17th-century sci-fi thriller tentatively called Jamestown. Looks sharp and slated for a 2011 PC release.

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VC Roundup: It’s a little too quiet.

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.

Looks like VCs take the Fourth of July off too, who would have known? We’ll skip ranking our two stories this time and hope that the cash starts flowing this week for next week’s roundup.

According to SEC filings Accolade has raised nearly $17 million from Comcast Interactive Capital and other firms. The Plymouth Meeting-based healthcare services company isn’t in Comcast’s typical investing wheelhouse, so this one has us stumped. Any ideas, dear reader? Drop us a line.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners has partnered with World Trade Club to give the organization space in its Lehigh offices. The World Trade Club is a group created by by Air Products, Mack Trucks and Bethlehem Steel to exchange business information and network, according to the Allentown Morning Call.

The VC Roundup will deliver Philadelphia private equity news hot and fresh every Tuesday morning.

Tourism on your phone: How Philly is leading and why it matters

With tourism, it’s all about where you are. Exactly where you are.

In Philadelphia, the past month has seen a wash of mobile geo-location tourism applications launch in and around the Cradle of Liberty. Trends say those deals and the mobile tools they employ today will help to profoundly reconfigure how tourists experience this greene country towne in the future.

City tourism officials announced last week with great fanfare a mobile app that puts users onto competitive ‘treks,’ sending them throughout the city to find and explore and earn points for what they find and how they find it. Philadelphia is the first city to use the platform, developed with SCVNGR, a now Boston-based company rooted at Princeton and Drexel universities.

In May, a deal was announced that partnered Commonwealth booster agency visitPA with geo-location social media powerhouse Foursquare, offering users digital badges for checking in at locations across the state in one of three categories: dining, buying and museum-going. Visit Bucks County has also launched a Foursquare deal, and the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. is starting to play there too.

Then in early June, the Fairmount Park Art Association unveiled its multi-platform Museum without Walls, in which visitors to the Ben Franklin Parkway can dial a phone number and choose to hear professionally-produced, rich oral histories of the art and sculptures that line that famed promenade.

All are giving users choice.

Read more at Philly Mag’s Philly Post.

Broadband stimulus grant to provide $6.4 million for public computer centers

Federal broadband stimulus dollars will bring 800 new public computers to Philadelphia, the same number currently available throughout the Free Library‘s 54 regional branches.

On Friday the Division of Technology announced that it will receive $6.4 million in federal dollars to fund public computer centers, new and old, throughout the city, according to a press release.

Twenty-five existing computer centers will be improved and 48 centers created at anchor institutions that include city recreation centers, homeless shelters, public housing and community-based organizations. Hours of access at the existing public centers will also be increased, providing for 14,000 more people per week.

The project—led by DOT—includes partnerships with the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Free Library of Philadelphia. Philadelphia FIGHT, the People’s Emergency Center, Philadlephia OIC and Media Mobilizing Project will also be involved.

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Event Highlights: July 5 – July 11, 2010

It’s back to the daily grind after a weekend of barbeques and fireworks, but the good news is there are plenty of great tech events to move your week along.

You’re in luck if you’re taking a long holiday weekend, as most events are later in the week. As always, there is some overlap, and since you can’t be in two places at once, we’re here to help get the week’s agenda together.

This week, finally get your podcast off the ground, brush up on your PHP and learn how to ask for money.

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