Philly Startup Leaders holds “fishbowl” to refresh, reinvent itself

Acting president Chris Cera addresses the PSL Fishbowl

Chris Cera will be the first person to tell you: Philly Startup Leaders is at a crossroads.

The acting president and chairman of the board of directors, Cera is one of the group’s original members. Founded in 2007 by Blake Jennelle and nearly a dozen of local entrepreneurs after a magazine called Philadelphia a “technological backwater”, Philly Startup Leaders has had an identity crises of late, amplified by the departure of president Jameson Detweiler.

To help refresh Philly Startup Leaders, its existing leadership held a “fishbowl” last night at the Univeristy of the Arts to solicit feedback from members.

In his introduction, Cera offered a brief history of the organization and its struggles to define its goals and live up to its manifesto, repeatedly touching on the “pandora’s box” of who the group should consider a member. After the introduction, the roughly 60 attendees broke into six groups to offer solutions to a specified set of issues that included membership, sustainability, communication and content.

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OpenDataRace: contest from OpenDataPhilly to partner city data and nonprofits

A new contest launching today solicits votes on what currently obscured city data should be made open.

Dubbed the OpenDataRace by those behind the nascent OpenDataPhilly.org, the project this month solicits nominations of civic-orientated city data sets paired with relevant nonprofit missions. Next month, votes will be cast trumpeting what data sets most interest Philadelphians, with $3,500 in small cash prizes for the nonprofits connected to the three winning entries.

Find the brief nomination form HERE.

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Hidden City Philadelphia launches daily news site

Hidden City Philadelphia, the festival celebrating “remarkable but obscured” heritage sites, has launched a daily news site dedicated to coverage of historical preservation in the region.

Hidden City Daily will feature content covering the developed world and architecture in Philadelphia. To launch, the site will have some two dozen contributors. It soft launched Friday.

VISIT THE SITE HERE.

Hidden City was a celebrated summer 2009 urban exploration art showcase, hosting fitting installations inside otherwise forgotten developed wonders, like Girard College’s Founders Hall or the Metropolitan Opera House. The second version of the festival is scheduled for 2013.

The initial festival was funded by the Knight Foundation and conceived by Thaddeus Squire, with whom Technically Philly spoke in June. Squire, aiming to stabilize and strengthen Hidden City, now a client of his CultureWorks program, said he hopes to build a community leading up to the next festival.

In a unique step forward for a nonprofit’s web presence, the editorial team playing the dominant site role. It’s a flip of the model. Think: instead of a news site like Technically Philly launching events, this is an event series launching a news site.

The site will work with the festival to bring in memberships and some advertising to fund the work.

School District controversies mocked in iOS game “Teachers of Philly”

The Inquirer’s Kristen Graham, who’s been vigilant with live coverage of recent School District of Philadelphia controversies, wrote a story lighter than usual last week.

An Angry Birds clone poking fun at Philly’s public schools, called “The Teachers of Philly,” was released earlier this month, featuring the likeness of some well-known characters in controversy, including Arlene Ackerman, Mayor Michael Nutter and martyr teacher Hope Moffett.

As Graham puts it:

In it, three teacher characters emerge from the rubber room, reopen closed schools, and scoop up supplies. Their weapons are an oak ruler, a paper clip, and a Japanese fan – “because there’s no AC in my school, or any of the schools for that matter,” teacher Hope notes [in the game].

App shop gameMian is responsible for the creation, which has both free and paid versions.

Startup Roundup: Philly’s new $1 billion business, says veteran entrepreneur

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

Following on an Inquirer report that GSI Commerce‘s Michael Rubin was set to launch a new startup, Kynetic L.L.C., it appears as if Kynetic will be the parent to those e-commerce spin-offs from the GSI/eBay deal earlier this year, including sites Rue La La and ShopRunner. Rubin is predicting that the company will make $1 billion in revenue in 2012.

The Philadelphia Business Journal reports that Ben Franklin Technology Partners and Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp. will each receive $1 million in federal grants to invest in startup companies $200k at a time.

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PlaySay language learning tool raises $1.3m, demos at TechCrunch Disrupt

Updated 9/14, 10:47 a.m.: corrected company name “Voxy.” Story previously indicated that talent was poached from Voxeo, which is incorrect.

PlaySay, the Temple University-born startup that hopes to make learning a new language more fun and social, demoed its now venture capital-backed company at TechCrunch Disrupt this evening.

Originally a mobile device-based language flashcard platform, the company has created a Facebook application that allows users to learn language by associating photos, like one of a man that resembles what you’d assume to be a grandfather. The application congratulates a user by playing the recorded pronunciation of the correct word: “el viejo,” in Spanish, meaning “old man.” The app is slick.

Founder Ryan Meinzer called to tell Tecnically Philly after the demo tonight that the company raised a $1.3 million Series A round of funding in February led by Novak Biddle Venture Partners and has relocated from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.

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Philadelphia Media Network Android tablet Arnova 10 G2 hands-on [VIDEO]

Philadelphia Media Network, which publishes the Inquirer, Daily News and philly.com, last night unveiled its Android-based tablet, the Arnova 10 G2, to a room full of partners at a cocktail party at 400 N. Broad, the Inquirer building.

It’s a remarkably quick turnaround since the company announced the decision to launch an Android device bundled with applications created for the company’s publications in July, as we reported. Philadelphia Media Network is the first in the country to launch a tablet that is bundled with newspaper subscriptions.

The device has a 10.1-inch capacitive screen and is running on a 1GHz Processor with 512MB RAM, standard fare in the tablet market. But it’s something new for the news business. Essentially, digital subscription sales helps subsidize the cost of the device.

Users can purchase a one-year subscription to the Inquirer and Daily News and receive the tablet for $285 or pay $339 for a two-year subscription. That makes it a sub-$150 tablet device, which beats the cost of an iPad (by $250 or more), but puts it on par with the competitively priced Kindle (starting at $139).

Video hands-on after the jump.

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Google’s Philadelphia office hideout

One of the largest, most successful companies in the country opened up an office in Philadelphia. And, for some reason, they’d rather you not know about it.

Since acquiring Invite Media, a real-time advertising startup, last year, Google engineers have been working from the 12th floor of a 1500 Market St. high-rise. Yet, the company does not list the office on its official “locations” page and it has gone through great pains to make sure that the office remains off of the radar.

Evidence of the office’s existence includes Foursquare check-ins and a WiFi network named “Google,” which is visible from Technically Philly’s offices across the street. Building security also acknowledged Google’s offices when asked by Technically Philly.

Formerly located at 1714 Chestnut Street, Invite Media does not disclose its new Philadelphia location on its website either, simply stating that its office is located in “Center City.” A phone number previously attributed to the company is no longer in service.

Invite Media CEO Nat Turner declined to comment on the 1500 Market block office, confirming the company’s general Center City location and that the company is still growing. Google’s official PR department would only confirm “we have a very small presence in Philadelphia, primarily focused on Invite Media.” Several former Invite Media employees also declined to comment.

We’re glad that the search giant has decided to base some of its operations in Philadelphia. We just wish they’d at least acknowledge it.

Yelp: a look at local attitudes for the online customer review giant

A cozy restaurant-bar sits on a street corner in Northern Liberties.

The decor is unassuming yet quirky, full of warm woods and cartoon pigs with Xs for eyes on the walls, light fixtures and menus. A handwritten chalkboard list displays the beers on tap and today’s special: Cabernet served in a mason jar for $3.

This is The Blind Pig, and Steven Brewer and his wife drove up from the suburbs of Philadelphia to eat dinner here one sweltering August evening. Although it’s only been open for about a month, he knew he had to try their signature Thanksgiving Balls: deep-fried turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing served with gravy and cranberry sauce.

Brewer, like two million others on any given day, used the popular customer review site Yelp to help him decide on that night’s dinner spot. It’s the modern soapbox and megaphone, and anyone can step up. While this can be a tremendous resource for both customers and business owners, visitors to Yelp should tread carefully, as—like anything else online—you can’t take everything that’s been “Yelped” at face value.

A week after Google made news for purchasing Zagat and two years following a failed bid to take over Yelp, what does the local scene of the wildly popular online customer review site look like?

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40% of Philadelphia households without Internet access, says Mayor Nutter: what’s being done

Mayor Michael Nutter and Comcast's David L. Cohen tape an edition of NBC 10's @Issue with Steve Highsmith, discussing access to the internet in Philadelphia and the new 'Internet Essentials' program. Photo by Mitchell Leff for City of Philadelphia.

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

Forty percent of, or at least 230,000, Philadelphia households are without Internet access, according to a speech Mayor Nutter gave last week, introducing the Comcast Internet Essentials low-cost web offer to the city.

That disparity is concentrated in very specific areas: for example, just 10 percent of Kensington homes have Internet access while in Society Hill, the number is beyond 90 percent, Nutter said.

When the majority of residents in a given area do not have Internet access, the entire community is at a disadvantage. Web-enabled computers are among the most overwhelmed resources at Free Library branches, as residents seek and apply for jobs, students research and do school work and everyone tries to keep up with normalizing communication patterns.

For years, this divide has been on the minds of both city government and businesses both local and national, and a variety of initiatives have taken root recently.

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