New Media Unplugged: Uncapped Live Technically Philly + 215mag.com welcomes indie publishers

How communities find news and information is of great importance and often has a tease to technology.

Next Tuesday, Sept. 6 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., Technically Philly and 215mag.com are hosting New Media Unplugged, something of a workshop and meet-and-greet with Philadelphia indie publishers. Consider it a slightly more evolved blogger meetup. It’s happening at the historic Sigma Sound, 212 N. 12th, just north of Race Street.

More info here and the Facebook invite here. We’ll have some free beer, so please RSVP so we know what to plan for.

The event is sponsored by Vitamin Water, as part of its #UncappedLive event series, spread over 16 days.

Doors open at 6 p.m., at 6:30 p.m., we’ll highlight some of the coolest things happening in Philadelphia web communities and from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., we encourage everyone introduces herself to every other person in the room.

Among others, we’ll welcome a handful of Philly’s best talk about who they are and what they’ve learned:

• Generocity.org: David Raible, the executive director of the new nonprofit-focused niche news site will talk about its launching and plans for scale.
• NakedPhilly: Mr Fox will be in attendance to talk about his strategy for building a community.
• Geekadelphia: Co-founder Eric Smith will talk about the recent Philly Geek Awards and having success with events
• NEast Philly: Shannon McDonald, the founder of the Northeast hyperlocal, on helping partnerships with sites like Yahoo and hurting partnerships with coverage like the popular Right NEast/Wrong NEast feature.
• DrinkPhilly: Adam Schmidt, the president and founder of the popular nightlife news site will talk about building a business around news.
• Technically Philly: Co-founder Chris Wink, yes, this author, will talk about Philly Tech Week.

Little Giant Media, a sponsor of Philly Tech Week 2011, is working with Vitamin Water to host the event series.

Startup Roundup: The 18 Philly companies on Inc’s fastest growing list

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 a weekly email newsletter by clicking here and selecting the Startup Roundup button or follow Startup Roundup’s RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

MUST READS

Several companies reached out about their place on Inc Magazine’s Inc 500, the nation’s fastest growing companies. Inc’s got a full list of Philadelphia metro companies that made it in its top 5,000 here. At 24, re2g, at #48, Leadnomics and at #67, NextDocs, all placed within the top 100 in the Philadelphia region. Sixteen other companies, like myYearBook and TicketLeap (and see Inky’s JoeD’s recent coverage here), made it in the top 500, and include: Petplan, Optimal Strategix Group, Free For All, Magic Hat Consulting, Aromatic Fusion, Decision Distribution, Ohana Companies, Renavatio Healthcare Communications, SevOne, QuadGen Wireless Solutions, MRops, HeadStream, Adept Consulting Services and Magellan Hill Technologies.

The Inky’s Mike Armstrong has more detail at PhillyInc.

And if you were wondering about last week’s NuPathe headlines, the company announced Monday that it will not be launching its migraine patch in the first half of 2012 after the FDA requested more information about the patch’s chemistry, manufacturing and safety. The announcement prompted its stock to plummet, and as FierceBiotech put it, effectively “wiping out half of the biotech’s stock value in a matter of minutes.”

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Eric Smith as Master Chief from Halo visits Rittenhouse

Eric Smith of Quirk Books and Geekadelphia fame was traipsing around Rittenhouse in yesterday’s sunshine dressed as Halo’s Master Chief. He made good on a pledge to shake things up a bit in Center City with the costume from one of his favorite video games, as Technically Philly first told you in the fall.

See more photos of Smith causing hijinks in the suit, in addition to the assembly process on his Flickr photostream here, or read Smith’s recap here.

His favorite experience in the suit?: “Little kids running up thinking I’m a robot or a Transformer. It’s freaking adorable. I love seeing them smile. As lame as that sounds.”

He has two upcoming plans for the suit, in addition to any other impulse needs to wear a video game-inspired suit of armor. First, Smith hopes to visit kids at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania and in November, following the Halo remake. Second, he plans to get a video of him going to FYE to buy the game wearing the armor.

Smith previously tried the outfit on a smaller trip along a couple blocks of his house and in the fitting setting of Philadelphia Comic Con.

Osage and MentorTech raise new funds

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

Two local firms have raised a new fund. Osage Partners, which contains three branches: Osage Ventures, Osage University Fund and Osage Industries, has raised $47 million for its third fund. Cursiously enough, Osage Partners gets its name from Osage County, Oklahoma home of the fund’s original financiers. Additionally, MentorTech Ventures has raised $10 million of $40 million for its latest fund.

New York Magazine reports on Ben Franklin Technology Parters’ effort to create a “Wall Street West” in Northeastern Pennsylvania. BFTP’s Southeastern chapter is located in the Navy Yard. Speaking of BFTP, Martin Lehr of Osage Ventures writes about state-led venture funds including a detailed history of Pennsylvania’s Ben Franklin Technology partners. We suggest you Instapaper that one for the ride home.

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Broadband for business: varied needs, many providers

Before the second Independents Hall location opened in 2009, volunteers installed cable for Internet services. Credit: Alex Hillman

Updated, Sept. 2, 2011: Added Cogent clarification and fixed typos.

Consumers hear a lot more about competition for residential services, but Internet service providers are equally focused on the fight for the business market in Philadelphia.

While residential customers generally get one-size-fits-all service from ISPs, business customers have wide array of needs and many companies to choose from.

“Probably one of the most competitive parts of the industry is services for businesses, it’s very profitable for different companies,” says Lee Gierczynski, Verizon spokesman.

Residential ISPs are successful because of their wide availability. Verizon and Comcast are forced to cast a wide net across the entire city, in part because they are legally required to do so, and in part because it’s the only way to make such a network profitable.

In the commercial sector, ISPs only have to respond to market forces. In Philadelphia the market includes everything from small one-user firms to large universities providing service for thousands. All of them have a variety of needs for bandwidth, but they all need service that is reliable and within their budget. All of them face a variety of interesting issues with getting service in Philadelphia.

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JobMuncher: startup aims to centralize the hiring process

For anyone that’s tried to hire a job candidate, using a traditional jobs board can be a challenge.

In many cases, after a job has been posted, applications, resumes and material have to be collected manually through email responses from candidates.

To solve this problem, Cherry Hill’s John de la Rosa and Philadelphia co-founder Kotaro Fujita recently launched JobMuncher, a SaaS product that aims to centralize the hiring experience for employers and potential employees.

Using the site’s online dashboard, employers can communicate with applicants and offer jobs to them directly on the site. Candidates then have the opportunity to accept or decline an offer in the dashboard.

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Event Highlights: Ruby wants you to forget about Irene

From our family here at Technically Philly to yours: we hope you made it through Hurricane Irene unscathed. Whether you had just a few leaks in the basement or something much more serious, we’re glad you’re with us, and wish you the best in cleaning up this week.

However, if you need to get out of the house after this weekend, August has one last week of technology events. This week: get hacking and then get Drupal.

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Jarvus Innovations: Northern Liberties web development firm grows up

Updated, Fri., Aug. 26, 3:10 p.m.: Added detail that Indy Hall’s Alex Hillman is a partner in Dynamic Wear.

Before the sun rises on North Third Street, just south of Liberty Lands Park, one can spot delivery trucks in front of a local bakery.

It’s a scene reminiscent of Philadelphia’s past, and a reminder of industry that was active before white collar jobs began taking root in places other than Center City, like Old City and Northern Liberties.

One of those companies is Jarv.us Innovations, a small, private web development firm that has been renting office space at a rehabbed, former glass-blowing studio just down the street from the bakery, and it’s contributing to a growing movement of young workers that is interested in changing how business works.

The firm is the anchor tenant of the space, which it rents to partner companies and freelancers under branding that represents its collaborative workspace: “Devnuts.” What Devnuts means literally is that they’re nuts about web development. Figuratively, Devnuts is the mission of the collaborative inhabitants: actionably trying to change business and workplace culture.

The Devnuts model is not unfamiliar to coworking facilities like Old City’s Independents Hall: by making desks available to anyone — for a fee, of course — minds can meld and talents combine.

We’ve written about the organizations in the past — Jarvus and Devnuts — but it’s worth another look to see how the organizations are growing. Can this culture shift support strong commerce?

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Freedom Rings: stimulus-funded computer lab opens in homeless facility [AUDIO]

Photo: VOA - M. Petrillo

An update on the Freedom Rings partnership and the stimulus-funded, planned 48 mobile broadband centers, which have opened elsewhere, comes from Voice of America, including an audio report:

Lonnette currently lives with her mother at the People’s Emergency Center in Philadelphia. It serves as a transitional residence for homeless single women and their children. The dozens of families it serves had no in-house computer access until last week, when the city opened a computer lab in the center.

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Philly Geek Awards recap and other Links

• Philly Geek Awards: Recap and Thank Yous [Geekadelphia] — We rounded up the media coverage here.
• Q&A: Brandon Yoshimura, Loffles [Flying Kite] — After we chased their initial SEC filing and then reported on the Philly part-time startup Loffles and its co-founder Brandon Yoshimura, Flying Kite follows up. Yo, thanks for the link! Oh, wait…. Don’t worry the Business Journal did the same thing again.
• Q&A: Tayyib Smith, Little Giant [Flying Kite]
• Philadelphia’s 50 biggest firms’ stock prices fall [Philadelphia Business Journal]
• The Jawn: Explore, Discover & Improve Philly [Geekadelphia]
• A look at Philly-area companies on the Inc. 5000 [Philly Tech News] — Including the fast moving NextDocs, as we have reported recently.