IBM Smarter Cities Challenge to support Freedom Rings initiative: Mayor Nutter [Video]

Nearly half a million dollars in consulting and technology support from IBM that yesterday were pledged to the City of Philadelphia are more about education than gadgets.

The Smarter Cities Challenge, announced fall 2010, is a three-year initiative from IBM that will spread $50 million in services and tools to 100 city governments in the world. In the next six months, a half dozen consultants from IBM will start landing in Philadelphia and 23 other cities in this the first year of the Smarter Cities Challenge. Philadelphia is the largest of eight U.S. cities chosen in this round.

“I want to thank IBM for the opportunity to help us work smarter and more strategically about how we tackle the many challenges that face this great city,” Nutter said a small press gathering Wednesday. “This will lay the groundwork to create a citywide strategy that uses technology to support literacy and workforce development programs.”

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Comcast CEO Brian Roberts likes ’30 Rock,’ Spectacor profile and more: Roundup [Video]

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.

DEFINITE READS

• Comcast-Spectacor’s ‘quiet, steady ascent’ [Philadelphia Business Journal] — Profile on the company, or a portion of it before a paywall is enacted.

MIGHT BE WORTH IT

• Comcast, modem maker Zoom settle [Philadelphia Business Journal] — “Philadelphia cable giant Comcast has settled a Federal Communications Commission complaint brought by modem maker Zoom Telephonics regarding Comcast’s requirements for modems on its systems, the Associated Press reports.”
• Comcast Courts the Cloud [Light Reading] — ‘cloud’ based technologies are more efficient than “the legacy set-top environment.”

Below, Brian Roberts interview on ‘Bloomberg West,’ Versus and NBC combining on NHL programming and more.

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IBM Smarter Cities Challenge: Philly one of 24 cities worldwide to win first piece of $50M

IBM today announced 24 winners of its Smarter Cities Challenge, the first of 100 cities worldwide that will receive $50 million in technology and services from the consulting giant.

Philadelphia is one of eight U.S. cities in this round of the program, which is planned as a three-year initiative. Mayor Nutter is holding a press conference this afternoon to share more details.

“IBM will send talent to help the city identify and streamline programs and services, worforce training, education training, digital literacy training,” city press aide Aviva Kievsky tells Technically Philly.

The program was first announced in November. Details can be found at CityForward.org and at SmarterCitiesChallenge.org.

Maskar Design: making visual sense of a ‘zillion bits of data’

Maskar Design data visualization of City of Philadelphia budget as the January portion of their Curious 2011 calendar.

The City has a ‘zillion bits of data,’ says Kate Maskar, but until it’s all pulled together and put into context, most of it doesn’t have a lot of meaning.

One of the best examples of Maskar Design, of which Kate is president and founder, doing just that isn’t even a core part of the Rittenhouse design shop’s portfolio.

Last year, Maskar, 52, and her team of six created a data visualization calendar [Beware: 9MB PDF], it was so well received, that the firm launched a second version, Curious 2011. Featuring a different visualization for each month, from the City of Philadelphia budget to the process of making bagels, Maskar is selling the calendars for $10 and $5 for each additional copy. It’s early enough in the year for the calendars to still be worth it.

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Startup Roundup: Smarter Agent acquires Toor.Me’s QR solution

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

Mobile real estate network Smarter Agent, based in Camden, announced Monday that it has acquired Toor.me, a mobile real estate platform that will help the Smarter Agent enhance properties with scannable QR codes on signage that integrate directly with Smarter Agent’s online listings. A company spokesperson also reported by email that the company is closing an additional round of funding as soon as next week.

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Digital Philadelphia: what it is, where it’s going and why you need to get involved

Two years ago this May, the City’s Digital Philadelphia initiative bore public birth. Some movement has been made and details secured, but what can we expect to come?

In front of 75 people at a Refresh Philly gathering in May 2009, then City of Philadelphia Chief Information Officer Allan Frank introduced an IT overhaul plan that would receive unprecedented city funding. The specifics were fuzzy then, but that summer Mayor Nutter signed an executive order that put Frank in charge of every piece of IT in the city’s gaze and there were growing budget plans, including the six-year $120 million IT capital budget authorized that year.

“My goal is for Philadelphia to be ground zero for the road map of moving an industrial city to the knowledge economy,” Frank told Technically Philly before leaving office.

What was meant to follow the incomplete Wireless Philadelphia initiative, became a platform on which Frank could fawn over the biggest and boldest plans. Those plans became the foundation of his legacy, the public face of on-going internal IT upgrade needs. By November 2010, weeks before his announced resignation, during public appearances Frank had his Digital Philadelphia pitch down pat, in three neat categories:

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Councilman Jim Kenney on tax policy amid a recession

Councilman Jim Kenney was a staunch opponent of the city tax reform proposal from Councilman Bill Green and Councilwoman Maria Quinones Sanchez.

Later this month, revised plans from Green and Sanchez are expected, ahead of Mayor Nutter’s budget address. So, in chatting with Councilman Kenney in February, we brought up his issues with the tax proposal. Below, with light editing for length and clarity, are his thoughts:

Where did you stand on the Green-Sanchez tax legislation?

I was not in favor of that legislation, and I thought it was dangerous how they wanted to reorganize and revamp the business privilege tax in the big picture of it.

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David Lifson: “I would definitely consider Philadelphia over San Francisco”

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.

When deciding on the headquarters for Postling, co-founder David Lifson said he had only crossed one city off of his list of possible locations: San Fransisco.

“The West Coast is so much of a tech bubble, it’s really easy to forget who your customers are,” says Lifson.

When Postling, a web application that allows small business owners to streamline social media campaigns, graduated from DreamIt Ventures, the company took some time to decide where to move next. After some thought, the company chose to leave Philadelphia for North Jersey and New York City.

We ask Lifson, why he decided to leave Philadelphia and why the state government impresses him.

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DailyWorth Raises $850k, Osage raises $100 million

Welcome to the VC Roundup, 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.

MUST READS

DailyWorth, the personal finance newsletter for women that we covered last year, has secured $850,000 in Series A funding. When we spoke to founder Amanda Steinberg for the story she was on her way to New York City to present to venture capitalists. According to the release, the round was led by local angel investment group RobinHood Ventures. Other participating firms include TomorrowVentures, Social Leverage, 500 Startups, Venture51, and Investors’ Circle. Individual investors include Joanne Wilson, David Cohen, Invite Media co-founder Scott Becker, and Carol Chow.

Tom Paine of Philly Tech News notices that Accel Partners lists Venmo has a portfolio company, despite there being no official announcement of any investment. Also from PTN: Morgan Lewis attorney Stephen Goodman is listed as an investor in cWyze.

Osage Ventures has raised a $100 million fund. According the the Inky, the fund will focus on partnering with universities, including the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University. The fund wasted no time, investing in a North Carolina-based pharma company.

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Municibid: the eBay for government surplus scores Philly, Boston contracts

Think of it like eBay for government surplus.

Headquarted in Pottstown and with offices at the Navy Yard, Municibid, the startup online auction platform built for governments to auction the tools, equipment, yes, even the infrastructure it no longer needs, has had two big wins in recent weeks: a year contract with the City of Philadelphia and a three-year deal with the City of Boston.

On the site, where only government agencies can sell but anyone can bid, typical items include vehicles, emergency equipment, heavy equipment, tools, furniture and commodity items like scrap metal, stone, wood and the like. Oh, and there was the one time when Municibid auctioned off that Montgomery County bridge.

Grabbing contracts from Philadelphia and Boston is a big leg up, even if founder Greg Berry isn’t getting a dime from the governments.

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