NBC Universal drives better-than-expected quarter for 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 email subscription for our weekly Comcast roundup or other news updates

• NBCUniversal Helps Lift Comcast’s Quarterly Results [New York Times]
• U.S. Asks Judge to Approve Proposed Comcast-NBC Takeover Settlement [Bloomberg] — “The U.S. Justice Department urged a federal court to approve the settlement outlining conditions for permitting Comcast Corp. (CMCSA)’s takeover of NBC Universal in response to a judge’s threat to block the deal. “
• Telemundo Stations to Expand Local News Programming by 25% [Hollywood Reporter] — Part of the Comcast-NBC deal, the programming will initially focus on New York and LA because, you know, those places need more local coverage
• Comcast to offer low-cost Internet access to poor families in Del. [Courier Post] $9.95 to some, as part of Internet Essentials program agreed to as part of NBC deal, something also beginning in Miami.
• Executive stock holdings in cable giant Comcast a bit less giant [Philadelphia Business Journal] — Everyone hurt by the market apparently, including Ralph Roberts
• A heavy hitter hangs up her cleats [NewsWorks] — Inquirer City Hall bureau chief Marcia Gelbart is leaving the paper to become Comcast’s communications director for the company’s community investment group
• Versus Renamed Again [New York Times] — More on the Comcast sports channel being rolled into NBC Sports
• NBC Sports channels to telecast Major League Soccer, three-year deal [Philadelphia Business Journal] — a deal for what is still, for now, called Versus, the Comcast sports channel to become part of NBC Sports Network
• NBCU Targets End Of August To Pick Online Content Partners [Multichannel News]
• A behind the scene look at Comcast’s new VOD delivery network [Comcast blog]

GirlDevelopIt launches in Philadelphia, first class Aug. 25th

Founded in June 2010 in New York by Sara Chipps and Vanessa Hurst, GirlDevelopIt was created to help balance a technology field that it says is 91 percent male.

123LinkIt founder Yasmine Mustafa says she began taking the BoltBus to classes to the 67th Ward before inquiring about a chapter closer to home and three months later she received the go ahead to open GDI here in Philly.

Intended for beginners, the group’s first class is August 25th and will cover HTML and CSS with Happy Cog designer Jenn Lukas as instructor.

“There isn’t a comfortable place where women can learn at their own pace and not be afraid to ask ‘stupid questions,” says the site’s Meetup page. “We decided it was time to provide a place where all questions are OK and everyone can learn in a supportive environment.”

Mustafa says that more advanced classes coming later in the year.

The group is the latest of many in Philadelphia to help promote women in technology fields. Others include Girls Geek Dinner, TechGirlz and Web Start Women giving Philadelphia an embarrassment of riches for women technologists who would like to learn more about the industry.

Daily News: “The openness of Open Records just became a concern”

As It’s Our Money from the Daily News shares:

For half a century, Pennsylvania had an embarrassingly bad open-records policy. The 1957 law held that all government records were closed to the public unless a citizen met the legal burden of explaining why they should be available. A 2009 law, championed by Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, turned this idiocy upside down: It made government records open unless the government could show they were covered by one of a number of exceptions. And it created an Office of Open Records (OOR) for citizens to appeal to when agencies denied their requests. That office has thus far been a staunch advocate for open government, taking a generous view of what records should be made public and helping citizens get them. But a new court decision, reported in the Inquirer on Monday, threatens to shut the door on open records, at least part way. It forces citizens to jump through hoops in order to get the help of the OOR…

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CrimeReports.com partnership with latest six months of Philadelphia Police crime data

Homicides, assaults and robberies between early February and early August 2011 according to CrimeReports.com, using newly released Philadelphia Police Department data.

Updated 12pm 8/10/11 details on existing police department mapping tool.

Preliminary public safety reports from the last six months, the deepest public archive to date, are now being published online by the Philadelphia Police Department in a partnership with CrimeReports.com.

“We want to help create a cycle in which police departments share more data and the general public delivers value back with more information from their communities,” said Greg Whisenant, the CEO of Public Engines, which publishes CrimeReports.

The five-year-old Salt Lake City firm is offering at no cost its proprietary software that is installed on the police’s private server to extract, clean and publish incident reports, said CEO Whisenant. Normally the software would cost at minimum “a few hundred dollars a month,” he said. There is currently no API for the Philadelphia police data, though Whisenant said his company could provide one.

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Startup Roundup: Ship It Society hackathon in video, Jarv.us launches CreditScoutApp for movie studio tax incentives

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

Flying Kite covers the Ship It Society Hackathon, which took place this weekend, in text and video, above.

Jarv.us Innovations has launched CreditScout, which aims to automate and simplify the process of locating state tax credits for video production studios based on budget line items. The company says its already signed on 40 customers for the service, which costs from $19/mo to $249/mo. [Full Disclosure: Jarv.us Innovations developed the 2011 Philly Tech Week website and is a 2012 PTW partner.]

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APCO public safety conference: Motorola, others show off law enforcement technologies [VIDEO]

The 77th annual conference of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International will close at the Pennsylvania Convention Center tomorrow after four days sharing and selling the latest and greatest in law enforcement technologies.

Technically Philly caught up with Motorola representatives, who have been pitching the Philadelphia Police on an array of upgrades to its existing contract partnership, including the 4G broadband network for video surveillance the Motorola team demoed this spring. Philly cops are still evaluating those build outs with the city’s Division of Technology, confirmed Motorola spokesman Matthew Messinger.

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Monetate raises $15 million from OpenView Venture Partners

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

Monetate has raised $15 million from OpenView Venture Partners. The funding made headlines in TechCrunch. Last December, we interviewed CEO David Brussin after the company raised $5 million and went on a hiring spree.

Remember Guggenheim Venture Partners? The firm that received a cover story from Philly Mag that was too interesting to be true? Well the company announced that it has changed its name to Alara Capital.

Frist Round Capital and Genacast Ventures team up to invest $3 million in follow up money in New York-based Double Verify, an advertising verification company. The two firms also co-invested in Invite Media, another advertising startup that eventually exited to Google last year. Genacast, a firm that counts Comcast as a managing partner, has been quiet of late. Though Genacast has told Technically Philly that it hopes to invest in a handful of companies by the end of the year, its portfolio lists no new 2011 investments.

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LIVESTREAM: White House entrepreneurs forum today at Fox School

Today, more than 250 local entrepreneurs are connecting with federal agencies, leaders in Philadelphia’s entrepreneurial and technology communities, and one another, at an event co-organized by the White House aimed at discussing urban entrepreneurship.

To help take the message to a wider audience in the city and the region, the all-day event — featuring a handful of panels — is currently available as a live-stream video. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly is an organizing partner and will participate on a panel this afternoon].

The event kicked off this morning at Temple’s Fox School of Business, with remarks from Mayor Michael Nutter.

“I think the folks in D.C. fully recognize that Philadelphia is a place where innovation is taking place. I have suggested that Philadelphia a great incubator of innovation. It’s the largest city closest to Washington D.C., 101 colleges and universities in the tri-state area … Today, we’re at the forefront of America’s new economy,” Nutter told the crowd.

Natalia Olsen-Urtecho, who was recently appointed to a task force to explore innovation and entrepreneurship, the U.S. Innovation Advisory Board, helped bring together dozens of participants and sponsors in July. That the event was put together in such haste last minute and organizers able collect a recognizable list of event participants is a testament to interest in the primary focus of the forum: promoting entrepreneurship in cities and in particular, minority communities.

Attending briefly this morning, it was clear that the intent of the event was about action rather than pontification, with bigger picture keynote discussions trickling down into actionable takeaway-based roundtables about obtaining capital, creative funding and partnerships.

After the jump, follow along with the live stream and read the event’s schedule, or connect directly to it here.

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DreamIt Ventures accepts three companies

As we reported in last week’s VC roundup, DreamIt Ventures is beginning to notify companies about being accepted into its Fall 2011 class. Different this year is a partnership with Comcast and the Minority Entrepreneur Accelerator Program and the program’s Fall start time.

The incubator will likely accept over 15 companies, and we’ve stumbled across three companies that have claimed to be in the latest class.

See the lucky three after the jump.

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Event Highlights: August 8 – 14, 2011

Guys, we all want Philadelphia to become the next great technology city but there’s no need to fight the other contenders.

This week be a lover, not a fighter, as we have enough technology events to make even Shane Victorino happy.

This week: talk videos games but quickly, Android Alliance will see you now and The Hacktory desires your brain power.

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