Open Data Portal Launched in Oregon
On the new State of Oregon data catalog, perhaps not unlike the forthcoming OpenDataPhilly.org.
Archive for March, 2011
MSNBC, Chris Matthews settling on Comcast ownership: Roundup
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 subscri ption for our Comcast news updates.
- MSNBC aims for the gap [Inquirer] — MSNBC employees, including host Chris Matthews, seem to think Comcast ‘has a plan.’
- TV Everywhere Starts Getting Somewhere [Light Reading] — “The battle lines on TV Everywhere content rights are still being drawn by MSOs and programmers, but the authentication systems that will make those services easier for consumers to access and help the category achieve some scale before industry-wide standards are adopted are finally starting to take shape.”
- NBCU International Loses Top Exec in Comcast Reshuffling [The Wrap] — ” Roma Khanna, a top executive for NBC Universal International, is stepping down in the management shakeup that installs Jeff Shell as NBCU International’s president.”
- Local Dwarf Couple Sues E!, Comcast [Fox 29] — A Collingswood, N.J. couple is suing Comcast, E! and Talk Soup host Joel McHale for what they allege are inappropriate comments. [Not sure what's the appropriate term here.]
- Mnet Inks Carriage Deal With Comcast [Multichannel News] — “Asian-themed entertainment network Mnet has reached a carriage deal with Comcast that will give the upstart channel digital basic carriage in several major Comcast systems.”
- Comcast Beefs Up Customer Service [The Street]
Ohanarama: BrainRewards launches public beta of new family game network
Ohana means ‘family’ in Hawaiian. Ohanarama is the new family game network from a mother, serial entrepreneur and her team.
Switch Philly Details: Ohanarama will be one of five startups demoing during Philly Tech Week
When: Tues., April 26, 6 p.m.
Where: Huntsman Hall, University of Pennsylvania
Price: $9 (Tickets close morning of the event)
Ohanarama, which recently launched public beta, is the signature platform from BrainRewards, a co-educational gaming startup co-founded by Jane Hoffer (@janehoffer), the mother of three and president of the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs.
“The old story is that, yes, adults are flocking to social networks like Facebook,” says Hoffer. “In doing our initial prototyping, we found two really interesting things: that children under 13 are very interested in playing with family online and that there are 70 million grandparents, 50 percent of whom live more than 200 miles from grand kids and there’s no real interactive way for an extended family to play from a distance, other than maybe Skype.”
“So we said, ‘Let’s bridge that.’ The family is the original social network. It’s how kids socialize,” Hoffer says. “So we are taking the best of gaming and the best of social networking and bringing it to the fore to the multi-generational family online.”
Three top priorities for $120M Digital Philadelphia capital budget, says interim CTO Tommy Jones
Digital Philadelphia is the branding for the city’s broad technology vision, as we discussed in detail earlier this month, but the term is also under which Mayor Nutter pledged a five-year $120 million investment in city IT.
In January, as former city CTO Allan Frank was transitioning out, the Division of Technology was receiving the first portion of the $25 million for the fiscal year. Frank told Technically Philly that a sizable chunk of it and the year prior was going to switches, the pieces of technology that connect computers across the city’s network. When Technically Philly spoke to interim CTO Tommy Jones in January, before he became the top dog, he outlined his priorities for the year, which were focused on internal relationships.
What wasn’t included were his priorities for the Digital Philadelphia funding, priorities that largely follow Frank’s path and suggest foundational infrastructure concerns, unlike initiatives to create platforms to share data. That might be why a private partnership like OpenDataPhilly.org may prove so vital.
Startup Roundup: More on the GSI Commerce deal; Startup Leaders executing
Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup parses 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 newsletter or RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.
MUST READS
The $2.4 billion GSI Commerce deal is everywhere. Mike Armstrong wonders how First Round Capital’s Josh Koppelman might have impacted the deal, considering he joined GSI’s board in February and sold his own company, Half.com, to the auction giant. Law firm Morgan, Lewis and Bockius worked on the deal locally, along with a handful of other local advisers. ABCNews reports that GSI is doing well on the market, up almost $10 to $29.16 after Monday’s announcement. The Wall Street Journal ran a piece about eBay’s poor bets on deal-making, including acquisitions of StumbleUpon, Shopping.com and Bill Me Later. Reuters reports that two of GSI’s merchandise businesses, Rue La La and ShopRunner, won’t be important to eBay’s long term strategy.
Startup Leaders is gearing up for Entrepreneur Expo tomorrow. Forty folks will be showing off their startups. The group also posted a link to its Philly Tech Week event Tech Talent Found, which hopes to pair startups with talented developers. The site was down this morning, but tickets are available here.
Colin Weir: “there’s no startup culture around video” in Philly
This is Exit Interview, a weekly interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.
In a few weeks, Colin Weir will be gone.
The Toms River, N.J. native video producer is leaving April 19 to work for TWiT.tv in Petaluma, Calif. A Rowan University alumnus, Weir, 25, is leaving a job as a video production specialist for a Center City hospital to chase dreams westward.
Though he wants to stay in Philly, he says there just isn’t a culture around video like Philly is developing in other creative fields. Below, Weir talks about how he sees Philly on his way to the airport.
BioNanomatrix raises $24 million Series B
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
Nearly a year after its last investment, BioNanomatrix has raised nearly $24 million dollars in a Series B round.
Kerry Rupp of DreamIt Ventures sits down for a five page interview with Irina Patterson and Praveen Karoshi. It’s a must read for anyone that is considering applying to the Fall edition of DreamIt here in Philadelphia.
GigaOm and the Wall Street Journal both have a take on the huge GSI Commerce deal that went down yesterday. Of interest to VC Roundup readers is WSJ, which notes that GSO recently acquired Rue La La, whose investors will be receiving another payout from the eBay deal.
Read more
Open Angel Forum presenter Contently aims to clean up Google
There’s a good chance you’ve noticed the recent decline in the quality of Google’s search results.
While the search giant says it considers dozens of factors in its search rankings, most believe that the culprit is “content farms” like Demand Media and Associated Content that pay writers as little as $15 for a formulaic blog post or article, often laden with keywords to ensure a high ranking.
Contently, based in Philadelphia and New York City, hopes to stop these junk search results by helping to better crowdsource professional writing.
eBay Acquires GSI Commerce For $2.4 Billion In Cash And Debt
King of Prussia-based GSI commerce exits big to eBay. eBay is plenty familiar with Philly, snapping up Half.com in 2000.
via eBay Acquires GSI Commerce For $2.4 Billion In Cash And Debt.
“Broadband is available, but the overall quality of that experience is highly variable,” says Drexel Research Vice Provost
While interviewing Drexel University Vice Provost Deb Crawford last month, she highlighted research that particularly interested us, in our future of broadband coverage.
A timely example that might be of interest to your readers is research that is being done by Tony Grubesic, from Drexel’s i-school, and his colleagues. Tony’s team has combined the use of GIS and mathematical programming to develop a spatial optimization model for improving both market coverage and quality of service (QOS) for digital subscriber line (DSL) infrastructure provision. Their work explores how supply-side factors can influence the quality of service for broadband subscribers. While issues concerning the digital divide are typically discussed in the context of urban v. rural – there are more subtle divides present in most urban areas. Broadband is available, but the overall quality of that experience is highly variable – a function of pricing, location, etc… This research is timely as Philly expands broadband access and opportunities available to its citizens through projects like Freedom Rings undertaken by the Urban Affairs Coalition and its partners, including Drexel, with funding from the Recovery Act’s Broadband Technology Opportunities program.
Download the full paper here [PDF].
