Tax reform legislation passes City Council committee, would exempt first $100k in city business receipts

City Council chambers. Photo by Albert Yee.

A bill that would make changes to the City of Philadelphia’s tax structure was approved Monday by City Council’s Committee on Finance, as the Daily News reported. If passed by Council, the measure would be phased into practice during a three-year period starting in fiscal year 2015.

The bill, introduced by Council members Bill Green and Maria Quiñones Sanchez, as discussed in our Q&A with her Friday, would exempt the first $100,000 in business receipts from both the gross and net income portions, a move aimed at startups and small businesses based in the city.

“This represents a higher tax reduction than [other] plans for a gross receipts reduction,” Sanchez told Technically Philly.

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As superfluid leadership splits, three new opportunities emerge [Startup Roundup]

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.

Updated Nov. 1, 8:30 a.m.: Rob Yoegel is leading Monetate’s internal content initiatives, not client initiatives.

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According to an email newsletter, superfluid, a social network to connect creative types and a marketplace for the barter exchange of creative work, is closing shop so its leadership can focus on the forthcoming Philadelphia Game Lab, which aims to create a physical space for Philadelphia game developers to connect, and Academe.io, a yet-to-be-launched social research tool. The group says that superfluid will live on in a new product called “thecoCreate,” but details are not yet available.

eGames Inc. in continuing its focus on acquiring the rights to integrate legendary celebrities in a new Facebook game it will call Retro World, to be released next month, with the announcement that Dick Clark will provide content for a tutorial to the game, Hollywood Reporter reports. Over the past few months, the company has made deals with the Elvis Presley and John Belushi estates.

According to a press release last week, Monetate has strengthened its content team by adding Rob Yoegel, formerly of Philly’s NAPCO, as a Content Marketing Director who will share best practices with Monetate for its content strategy.

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Rezscore: Gerrit Hall, Sean Weinberg grow free, online, algorithm-based resume grade service [VIDEO]

Rezscore is simple, fast, thorough and free. That’s how the algorithm-based resume grading startup is going to own its corner of the online jobs market, says co-founder and chief operating officer Sean Weinberg.

It works like this: visit the website, upload a document version of your resume and let the service’s robust algorithm review it, evaluating word choice, layout, experience and more. No registration required: it’s sleek and just might offer you the kind of advice you’re seeking during your job hunt.

No direct competition in the instant resume grading for consumers exists to date, though LiveCareer is due to launch a competing product, Weinberg, 26, said, and products like LinkedIn, Klout and Grader.com are near enough to keep Rezscore growing.

Those growth plans include introducing industry specific algorithms, noting that a resume for a professor’s gig might need to look different than that for a graphic designer.

Still, Weinberg and fellow co-founder and CEO Gerrit Hall say they already have a rarity among online startups: a service that can actually help its users.

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Vote in OpenDataRace: final days to show support for what city data you want

Cast your vote in the last days of the OpenDataRace, the contest that aims to get a sense of what city data most interests Philadelphians.The voting closes Thursday night.

Vote at opendataphilly.org/contest.

Nonprofits nominated some two dozen data sets related to their mission. Find more background on the contest here.

The top three winners will be announced at Friday’s OpenAccessPhilly forum, and small cash prizes will be given to the related nonprofits.

Then, the contests organizers — Azavea, NPower, the William Penn Foundation and, full disclosure, Technically Philly — will work with the city to highlight methods to release that city data.

SEPTA ‘Trick or Tweet’ to launch real-time updates on route-specific Twitter accounts Oct. 31 [UPDATED]

SEPTA will launch Monday, Oct. 31, “enhanced access to real time information” on customizable Twitter accounts.

Find the Twitter accounts at septa.org/alert/twitter.html

Though @SEPTA shares system-wide delays, these route-specific details will keep transit riders up to speed on their most commonly used lines. The announcement follows SEPTA’s involvement in a recent hackathon.

Updated: In addition, the email and SMS alerts of “ReadyNotifyPA will be changed so you can get alerts for those same lines, and of course, the API lets you query alerts for individual lines or get a dump of all of them at once,” adds Mike Zaleski, from the SEPTA emerging technologies team.

Weinberg on DuckDuckGo funding: “traction trumps everything” [VC Roundup]

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.

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Our good friends at Silicon Prarie have posted a video interview with Mark Ecko. The fashion mogul is also a partner in Artists and Instigators, the newly renamed fund of SeventySix Capital, based in Conshohocken. We’ve been told by sources that the fund plans on becoming a brand much like Ecko’s clothing line with the goal of being the “Nike for entrepreneurs.” We’ve even heard about a possible storefront in Old City.

As we reported earlier this month, DuckDuckGo has raised $3 million in its first investment round. The Valley Forge-based search engine is operated by Gabe Weinberg who also founded Founded in Philly and brought the Open Angel Forum to Philadelphia. Weinberg has all of the details about the funding on his personal blog. We highly recommend you give it a read.

Investors Circle Venture Fair, the socially-minded investing and pitch event, is coming to Philadelphia for the first time this week. The three-day event will feature pitches and, hopefully, investments in companies focusing on solving a social issue or environmental problem.

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TEDxPhilly speakers announced for Nov. 8, limited 20 percent off ticket special [VIDEO]

TEDxPhilly has announced a new round of speakers, making it 22, ahead of the Tuesday, Nov. 8 second installment of the local speaker series, its lead organizer Roz Duffy said.

See the speaker list here.

Also, a limited round of tickets are being offered to Technically Philly readers at a 20 percent discount, using the code “TECHPHILLY.”

The $100 ticket goes toward the venue, catering, refreshments, printing, technology and speaker travel and accommodation.

Check out the promo video below:

Philly Rap Sheet: web scraper shows new arrests in Philadelphia, made by Andrew McGill

Interested in who’s getting arrested in Philadelphia?

Then visit Philly Rap Sheet, “a web scraper that scans Philadelphia’s municipal court system every half hour for new arrests and posts them online,” says the developer, Andrew McGill. “You can filter by date, by bail amount, by crime, by the arresting officer and by the judge.”

Though for now the tool is dependent on court clerks uploading docket sheets, McGill, 23, said “they’re pretty prompt with getting this information online after an arraignment.”

McGill said the city courts online docket sheet database interface is fine for finding specific people but has always come up short in showing any more nuanced requests, like recent arrests or specific crimes on specific days.

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After fourth sold out BarCamp Philly, leadership looks on

Updated, Mon. Oct. 24: Sarah Feidt, who helped organize the event, is likely to be an organizer moving forward.

As BarCamp Philly leadership wrapped up a sold out and successful unconference on Saturday, on the mind of at least three attendees was what was in store for the future of the event.

Kelani Nichole, a co-organizer of the popular event — which in its fourth year, has been and was an early catalyst of the young technology community in Philadelphia — said that she and her fellow founding organizers JP Toto (of CognisIT) and Roz Duffy (known well for organizing TEDxPhilly), were planning on letting off the gas.

The tone didn’t suggest letting go, but in long hallway on the second floor of Huntsman Hall at the University of Pennsylvania, where the event took place, Nichole suggested that it might be time for a change in leadership.

In an email exchange Sunday evening, Duffy agreed. “This was definitely my last BarCamp as an organizer. I kinda want to shout it from the rooftops,” Duffy wrote. “I’m so proud of what we have created and I think yesterday’s event was the best yet.”

Organizers are still deciding to whom to pass the torch, but Sarah Feidt, a web development and communications consultant who has helped organize the past two BarCamp Philly events, and volunteered with the first two, is likely to lead the change.

That coming change sounds aligned with what was maybe the more important takeaway of Saturday’s event: there’s no shortage of talent, ambition and leadership emerging in Philadelphia’s tech and creative communities.

LessFilms checks out the event’s pre-party. Full story after the jump.


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Piano concerts, venture fairs and Philly Tech Meetup [Event Highlights]

We hope you’ve recovered from BarCamp Philadelphia. And for those of you who ventured to attend Startup Weekend and BarCamp Philadelphia during the past two weekends, you’re a trooper.

But it’s not time for rest, there are plenty worthy tech events on our calendar.

This week: get serenaded, get social and then get pitched.

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