Google Street View back in town

Spotted at 9th and Bainbridge, photo by Dana Vachon

Google’s famous Street View cars are circling Philadelphia, spotted this morning at 15th and Arch streets and in South Philadelphia later today at 9th and Bainbridge.

What gives?

As Google spokesperson Anne Espiritu tells us by email:

We’re excited about re-driving in the Philly area to provide both locals and visitors of Philly with refreshed street-level views. Updating imagery is something that we do from time to time as part of our effort to provide our users with the richest, most up-to-date maps possible.

A video about how the cars are designed, by Google, below.

Video game co.’s to receive 25 percent tax credit

Nearly two years after VGI Philly first urged state officials to consider supporting the state’s burgeoning video game community, State Senator Daylin Leach (D-17) has introduced the video game tax credit bill to the state legislature [PDF link].

State Senate Bill #700 proposes a 25 percent tax credit for video game businesses based in Philadelphia. According to VGI Philly director Patrick DiFerdinando a similar bill was passed in Montreal that created 1200 jobs in 12 months.

Senator Leach’s office offered these details to Technically Philly in April:

The tax incentives would work just like the film production tax credit. A company would apply to the Department of Revenue for a qualifying production expense (or group of expenses such as physical space or computers, music or employees) and after approval and incursion of the expense in producing a video game in PA they would be awarded a tax credit. This tax credit can be used by the company that incurred it or it can be transferred to someone else. This helps the small companies be able to use the credit if they maybe dont have the tax liability of a larger production company and therefore dont have the income to offset with a credit.

The caps apply per production so each company can only apply for $1 million per production per year. The full program (or the dollars available as tax credits across PA) would be capped at $20 million. Once $20 million worth of productions had claimed credits the program would be done until the next fiscal year without a further appropriation of credit.

If passed, the resolution takes effect in 60 days.

h/t Ben Gilbert & VGI Philly

Alphabuyer running lean on angel investment, seeks Series A investment

The folks at AlphaBuyer, a suburban Philadelphia startup, want to remind you that in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, energy has been set free.

And it’s a nice reminder. After all, customers of the group buying service — similar to Groupon — can tap into deals that make the switch from their current electricity or gas provider more appealing.

As we reported in February, the company could save customers $100 per year or more, according to a quick test we ran on the website comparing the price of energy through PECO.

The service provides deals to customers by allowing them to purchase energy from wholesalers in groups, which can earn them a better deal then if they went it alone.

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PredictiveEdge launches Proactive Parenting Network, new tool for child-safe browsing

"Who you going to call?" is what PredictiveEdge CEO asked when discussing how the Proactive Parenting Network compares to safety features on Facebook and other social media websites.

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods Program, the capstone class for the Temple Journalism Department.

Hanging from one of the cabinets of PredictiveEdge CEO Bill Thompson’s desk is a piece of paper that reads, “Parenting Problems? Who You Going To Call?”

Under the text are two pictures: the first of Facebook creator and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the second is the logo for PredictiveEdge’s behavioral social media program, called ‘the Proactive Parenting Network.’

With more than 500 million active users, children of all ages are increasingly influenced by Facebook and other social networking websites, many of which don’t go beyond basic safety features for users.

“The Internet’s not going away. Facebook’s not going away. It’s going to continue to become more and more dominant in our kids’ lives. We’re the generation that has to adapt to that,” Thompson said.

The newly launched Proactive Parenting Network serves as a resource for parents to better understand and protect their kids in the digital realm. It’s a package of resources to help combat the internet-age old problem of safe browsing for kids, including more adaptive and advanced tools like a keyword-driven firewall and more powerful browsing history and data collection.

But is it sapping away privacy?

Read more

White House Honors Unsung Open Data App Developers: Gov Tech

From Government Technology:

A motley group of 16 “open data geeks,” several of humble beginnings, accepted surprise invitations to the White House for national recognition at the Champions of Change event on June 10. The gathering aimed to demonstrate the diverse potential of Web apps utilizing data sets made available by federal, state and local agencies.

MORE

Smarter Agent, Proton Media raise cash; Boni named “Master Entrepreneur”

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 (and other TP content) as an email newsletter. If you have any VC-related news to pass along to us, please drop us a line.

DEFINITE READS

Virtual world developer ProtonMedia has raised $4 million led by Kaplan Ventures. Kaplan Ventures is the strategic fund of Kaplan, the test tutoring service owned by the Washington Post. Local VCs Osage and Originate Ventures also participated in the funding. We profiled the company in 2010.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Comcast Ventures is among the handful of companies that invested $2.5 million in Ortiva Wireless, a San Diego-based company that focuses on technology that optimizes streaming across wireless networks.

Our bud Mike Armstrong writes about how tabacco lawsuit money has been used for venture capital purposes, funding over 41 companies.

GIVE A GLANCE

Peter J. Boni was named Master Entrepreneur of the Year 2011 by Ernst & Young. Regular Venture Capital Roundup readers will know that Safeguard Scientifics has been on a roll in the past few months with several exits and a soaring stock.

Comcast Ventures is among the seven companies investing $50 million in iControl. The Palo Alto-based company writes software that allows home devices to be used with energy management processes.

In case you missed it, we interviewed Donald Caldwell of Cross Atlantic Capital Partners about the future of his fund and his pending lawsuit with Facevok.

Tweetalicious, a deal-finding Twitter client, launches today

A screen shot from the Tweetalicious dashboard

Inil Koh

Harrison Lee

Harrison Lee says he spent most of late 2010 experimenting ways to make Twitter more useful.

“It was lots of time in my living room to flesh out an idea,” says Lee.

After some tinkering with ideas along with co-founder and developer Inil Koh, the duo founded Tweetalicious, a Twitter client  launching today that focuses on helping its users find the most relevant deals and coupons.

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Zivtech launches Houston Command Center open source glue for Drupal, Salesforce, other connectivity [VIDEO]

A demo of Houston Command Center, a tool designed to integrate common local and cloud-based systems, has been released by Zivtech, the Old City Drupal design shop behind the project.
“The main idea behind Houston is to create a single application out of a couple of disperate systems,” said Zivtech co-founder Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg. “The whole is bigger than the sum of its parts, so it creates, in some sense, a central command center for all of your local and remote apps.”

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Power Map of Philadelphia: identifying board and commission members [chart]

Philadelphia, you now have an online resource to find out all the members of the often obscure boards and commissions that wield power and influence around the city..

Following up on its Philadelphia tax digest, the It’s Our Money team from the Daily News and WHYY have launched, in partnership with the Fels Institute and with funding from JLab, the Philadelphia Power Map. [Full Disclosure: JLab funds Technically Philly's Broadband 2035 project.]

The Philadelphia Power Map lets users click through to find information on 29 boards and the members on those boards that have significant impact.

Check it out here.

Event Highlights: June 20th – 26th, 2011

We hope you had a happy Father’s Day, Philadelphia.

Whether you paid a visit to pops, or are a dad yourself Technically Philly offers a belated happy Fathers Day to you and yours. And if your dad didn’t like the tie you gave him, perhaps he’d like a subscription to one of our many Technically Philly newsletters?

This week, learn SEO from the master, mingle with the city’s most prominent business incubator and explore the unbreakable tie between programming and beer.

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