Startup Roundup: Celebrate your startup

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

Hey, it’s National Small Business Week, so celebrate your local startup community. But as Inky’s Mike Armstong notes, the national Small Business Person of the Year won’t be from Philly.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners has invested $2 million in 10 early-stage companies, including AboutOne (subscription-based household information data repository), ClickEquations, Green Power Technologies (WiFi-controlled smartplug to eliminate power waste), and regular Startup Roundup company vcopius, among others.

DreamIt Ventures has announced it’s lineup of New York startups, TechCrunch reports. Philly applications open tomorrow.

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PhillyTreeMap.org: crowdsourced census of Philadelphia’s tree canopy

Map rendering of some 180,000 cataloged trees in Philadelphia, via PhillyTreeMap.org.

Philadelphia is crowdsourcing a census of its trees, and, yes, would you mind helping?

Unveiled on Arbor Day during Philly Tech Week, PhillyTreeMap.org is a wiki-inspired web application that allows users who register free to collaborate with the project partners — City of Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission – to map,  inventory and preserve the Philadelphia urban forest. The project was built by local mapping company Azavea.

Nearly 180,000 are already cataloged, though the species and other core details are missing.With guidance from the site, users can ascertain species type, estimate trunk diameter and height and fill in other specifics that will help the coalition of groups to better ascertain what is lacking and what is working in Philadelphia foliage.

PhillyTreeMap is meant to help Parks & Rec with its 30 percent tree canopy goal outlined in Greenworks Philadelphia by engaging residents around tree planting and stewardship, Azavea Project Manager Deb Boyer said during the Green Tech Showcase unveiling. Currently Philadelphia has an average of roughly 20 percent canopy across the city, though some parts have fuller coverage and other parts have far less.

Funding has not yet supported a mobile interface, which would allow users to more easily update entries while at the tree, Boyer said, but the browser experience is a user friendly one. Team members will offer some project oversight in case of false information, but the hope is for Philadelphians to help with this cause, she added.

According to a press release [PDF]: “Azavea built PhillyTreeMap using open source code contributed by the Urban Forest Map project in San Francisco and plans to collaborate with the group on future urban forestry projects.  The development of PhillyTreeMap was supported by a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture.”

Philadelphia 2011 primary election endorsement roundup

The 3,500 Philadelphia voting machines being tested. Photo courtesy of KYW

Technically Philly is not endorsing any candidates for today’s primary election, but it just feels like our civic duty to remind you of this election.

To do so, here’s a roundup of some other relevant endorsements and perspectives worth giving a look before you hit the polling place today.

• Inquirer Editorial: Pa. Primary endorsements
• DN Editorial: The Philadelphia Daily News endorsements in the May 17 primary
• Ten Things You Need to Know Before Primary Day on Tuesday [Metropolis]
• An Annotated Guide to the May Primary [Metropolis] You can also read about the ‘bullet ballot’ here.
• As always the Committee of Seventy at Seventy.org or  1-866-OUR-VOTE begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 1-866-OUR-VOTE end_of_the_skype_highlightingis a great resource for elections.
• City Paper’s 2011 Ultimate Primary Poll! — A Poll Dadddy showing where some of its readers stand
• GPCC PennPAC Recommends Slate of Candidates for Council [Chamber of Commerce] — Recommends Council candidates and features video here.
• Three Council Candidates Who Will Fight Corporate Power: Cohen, Hornstein and Paulmier [Young Philly Politics]
• Philadelphia Voting Machines Pass Inspection, Even If All Ballot Names Don’t [CBS]

Collaborations for the future of Philadelphia

Some of the more than 150 attendees at the Philly Tech Week signature event

When we began receiving the first additions to the calendar for Philly Tech Week, we noticed a trend: groups were working together to take advantage of venue space together, to reach a wider audience, and to help one another plan great programming.

It’s why we moved on making the week about collaboration, and the ways in which already existing collaborations are strengthening Philadelphia’s technology community.

That much was true when we asked leaders in the community to talk about the relationships they’d already forged and ones they hoped to see happen. During the photo shoot for the inaugural week’s Program & Magazine [PDF], a print publication we distributed at each event and at more than 60 retail locations around the city with the help of Philadelphia Media Network (publishers of the Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com), we asked those leaders to talk collaboration. See the video of that shoot below.

During our closing Philly Tech Week signature event, we brought the week’s theme to an actionable conclusion. We asked the 150 attendees to draft partnerships they thought would be interesting, fun or powerful, and could make Philadelphia a better place to live.

On a sheet of paper, we laid out a Mad Lib-style format that we thought might encourage some bold ideas: “I think that PARTNER ORGANIZATION should work with PARTNER ORGANIZATION to PROJECT TO MAKE PHILADELPHIA BETTER.

The 10 best of those drafts, submitted anonymously, are below the jump in no particular order. We hope it can become a list that is real.

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Girl Geek Dinner: Philadelphia chapter kicks off during Philly Tech Week

Girl Geek Dinner Philadelphia chapter kickoff during Philly Tech Week.

More than 30 self-proclaimed “geek” women met up at Triumph Brewing Company in Old City on Tuesday, April 26 to kick off Philadelphia’s Girl Geek Dinner chapter during the first ever Philly Tech Week.

The event started at 6:30 p.m. with the opportunity for attendees to network and enjoy drinks from the cash bar. At 7, chapter organizer Tristin Hightower welcomed the group and gave a brief introduction to the overarching organization, explaining why she started the chapter and her goals for it.

Maggie Avener of the Prometheus Radio Project spoke about demystifying technical topics to make them accessible to less geeky audiences, emphasizing techniques borrowed from popular education. She covered tips on audience-appropriate advertising for beginner technical trainings, assessing and acknowledging what participants already know, designing trainings that reach people with varying learning styles and pushing people beyond their comfort zones while maintaining a feeling of safety. Click to see slides from Maggie’s presentation here [PDF].

Hightower closed out the speaking portion of the evening by thanking everyone for attending and answering questions about where the group could go from there. Attendees ate dinner and mingled until about 9pm.

Pictures from the event can be found on Flickr and Facebook.

Up next for Girl Geek Dinners Philadelphia will be a May Happy Hour welcoming to all. To stay connected with upcoming events or activities, follow @GGDPHL on Twitter, like them on Facebook or join the GGD PHL
announcement mailing list. Visit www.ggdphl.com for more information.

Event Highlights: May 16 – 22, 2011

It’s a beautiful time to be in Philadelphia during the precious few weeks sandwiched between a rainy Spring and the inevitable Summer heatwave. Thanks to Mother Nature it should be especially easy to take an after-work stroll to our events this week.

Up this week: Bring your “A” game to the SEO Pot Luck, grab some pizza and Python and get the low down on Philly’s own OC.

Note: Event Highlights finally has an email newsletter. Get all of the week’s events emailed to your inbox every Monday morning at 11 a.m by signing up here. It makes for wonderful lunch time reading.

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Penn’s new billionaires, @FakeAPStylebook from South Philly and more Links

DEFINITE READS

• Fake out: Twitter group writes the book on its grammar spoof [Inquirer] — South Philly resident RJ White is a contributor to the @FakeAPStylebook that is now publishing a book
• Study asks well-to-do Philadelphians how they’re investing [Philadelphia Business Journal]
• Penn’s new billionaires: FarmVille creator, Groupon backer [Inquirer] — Mark Pincus of Zynga and Russian investor Yuri Milner
• Philly’s Food in Jars a finalist in Saveur Magazine’s best food blog awards [Geekadelphia] Marisa McClellan

Below, see what Philly startup is moving into a church, big startup perks in Pittsburgh and more.

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Cipher Prime on blowing up the App Store and helping Philly musicans

A screenshot from Pulse, by Old City's Cipher Prime.

Everything you need to know about Old City-based Cipher Prime can be found on the company’s business cards.

“We don’t take out titles too seriously … it’s really who can get a particular job done faster,” says Dain Saint whose official title is technical director. However his business card reads “Time Traveling Hobo.” Creative director William Stallwood’s card? “Pink Deluxe.” And Content Developer Kerry Gilbert’s reads “Resident Hipster.”

The company, which started a freelance Flash shop, doesn’t take itself too seriously yet has been impessively prolific over its three year lifespan, releasing popular Flash games Auditoirum and Fractal.

However, the company has been making waves throughout the independent gaming community this week with the release of Pulse, an addictive music-based touch game with striking visuals for the iPad. The game has been featured on the App Store, in Kotaku, on GameSetWatch and on the cover of Inde Game Magazine giving Philadelphia indie game makers one of its first hits.

We sat down with the three guys as well as marketing coordinator Suzy Grimberg to talk about how Cipher Prime plans on boasting Philly’s indy rep, in both the video game and music industries.

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Viva Amiga: documentary from Zack Weddington on Amiga, early consumer computer culture

Local filmmaker Zack Weddington is making a feature length documentary on a popular network of 1980s and 1990s-era computers, as Geekadelphia reported.

The film, dubbed Viva Amiga, is currently in production and features the place the Amiga computers played in the development of tech culture.

Donate to his Kickstarter here. Watch the trailer below.

Boston Mayor asks FCC to let the city control basic cable prices: Comcast 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.

• Comcast defends its local rates for cable TV [Boston Globe] — “Cable television giant Comcast Corp. yesterday defended its local rates as Mayor Thomas M. Menino filed a petition asking the Federal Communications Commission to give the city control over the price of basic cable service in Boston.”
• Massachusetts Sen. Kerry steps into Comcast-Boston brouhaha [Fierce Cable]
• Comcast annual meeting lasts 35 minutes [Inquirer] — Attended by 50 people, the Inquirer reports it far shorter than ones in the past
• Only AFL-CIO Rains on Comcast’s Parade [AdWeek]

More below, including how Brian Roberts brought Stephen Spielberg to Center City.

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