ApostropheNow: P’unk Avenue launches hosted version of its open source content management system

Passyunk Square-based web development shop P’unk Avenue is angling for broader adoption of its open source web platform Apostrophe with last week’s launch of a hosted version.

Launched in 2009, Apostrophe, the company’s open source content management system, is built on Symfony and has, until the new launch, been for larger builds hosted elsewhere. With ApostropheNow.com, users can grab free and cheaply hosted options, meant to make the framework more flexible, said P’unk Avenue Geoff Di Masi.

“Think Apostrophe and WordPress,” said Di Masi, referring to the blog framework turned online publishing giant. “Apostrophe and WordPress are both open source projects. With both projects, you can still build a site using the code that we have open sourced on our .org websites. Similarly, we now both offer hosted versions on our .com sites.”

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Snipi is now Sidecar, First Round loves Google Ventures [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.

MUST READS

Last week we reported that Snipi, the Evernote-like application that allows users to share links over social media received $2.5 million in funding. Turns out that the company has since rebranded and shifted focus. Now known as Sidecar, the company holds to provide data to drive marketing decisions on the web. We’ll have more about Sidebar later this week.

First Round Capital has teamed up with Google Ventures to invest $2.1 million in CustomMade. The Cambridge-based company connects “skilled artisans” with shoppers looking for custom work. First Round had been partnering with Google Ventures quite a bit lately.

In case you missed it, we’re starting an irregular series here on Technically Philly to look back at Philadelphia during the dot-com boom. First up: Safeguard Scientifics CFO Stephen T. Zarrilli tells us how Wayne was nearly the center of the local technology community.

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City of Philadelphia, Code for America publicly launch Change by Us web tool to crowdsource civic action [VIDEO]

The Philadelphia iteration of Change by Us, a web tool to crowdsource civic action to improve communities, was unveiled publicly this afternoon.

The project, launched locally by the Code for America fellows, was launched in beta in October, as Technically Philly reported.

Visit the site to suggest ways to improve your neighborhood and find partners here.

At public launch, the project has more than 150 users, 23 active projects and 145 ideas, says Jeff Friedman, the Manager of Civic Innovation & Participation in the Mayor’s office.

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SEPTA developer showcase puts realtime schedule apps on display for transit agency officials [VIDEO]

Developer Reed Lauber presents NEXTSepta, his application using the SEPTA real time API. A dozen other projects were displayed at the showcase inside SEPTA headquarters to a roomful of transit agency officials.

Those in the open gov movement call it ‘evangelizing.’

By not letting technology be the end but the beginning and taking projects to decision makers to improve alternatives, the civic-minded technologist can make development easier for the next guy (or gal). Philadelphia has seen much more of that in the last year. Friday marked another installment.

More than a dozen local transit application developers held captive an audience of more than 40 SEPTA officials with a clear message: keep providing stable, real-time APIs and related data sources, and we’ll keep building cool, useful tools that the public will use.

The SEPTA developer showcase, organized by the transit agency emerging technologies lead Mike Zaleski, was a follow up to the October Apps for SEPTA hackathon, which Zaleski and SEPTA endorsed and was organized by Voxeo Labs hacker Mark Headd and the Devnuts crew. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly was a sponsor of the hackathon.]

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It’s Linux week in Philadelphia [Event Highlights]

We hope you had a great weekend, Philadelphia and special congratulation to anyone who ran the Philadelphia marathon yesterday.

Because of Thanksgiving, it’s a light week for events. In fact, we can only count one that wasn’t cancelled. So, if there was ever a time to learn Linux, it’s this week.

Philadelphia Linux Users Group West – Out in burbs, Eric H. Johnson reprises his “Building a LiveCD with Re-Linux” talk from PLUG North a few weeks ago. After the event, head over to TJ’s Restaurant and Drinkery for beers and good times. 7:00 p.m. Tuesday. Monday. Malvern. INFO.

Because we always promise three events and only have one, we think you should make some time for the Philadelphia Thanksgiving Day parade, the oldest one in the country.

Ilya Zhitomirskiy, 22, Diaspora* co-founder and Lower Merion high grad, dies in apparent suicide, services Sunday

Center City memorial services are scheduled Sunday for Ilya Zhitomirskiy, the co-founder of the much-hyped Facebook killer Diaspora*.

Coverage by the New York Times and Gawker recount the unsettling possibility that the apparent suicide could have been precipitated by, at least in part, the hype around the more secure, community-driven social network that had thus far failed to have any real traction. Though Zhitomirskiy’s death happened in San Francisco, the Inquirer dutifully reminds us that the Moscow-born New York University dropout spent part of his childhood in Lower Merion and graduated from that high school.

Officially, suicide and other details have not been confirmed, though multiple reports are pointing in that direction.

As the Inquirer reports: “The memorial service for Zhitomirskiy will take place at 3 p.m. Sunday, November 20, at the First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut Street.”

Wayne was nearly the center of Philadelphia’s tech community [Friday Q and A]

This is the first in an occasional series about Philadelphia’s technology community during the dot-com bubble over ten years ago. First up: Safeguard Scientifics.

A little over ten years ago Philadelphia was a different place. John Street was our mayor, Allen Iverson was our most captivating athlete and technology businesses everywhere were getting funded with little more than a business plan.

By funding over a hundred other venture funds and companies in 1999-2000, Safeguard Scientifics was one of the companies at the center of Philadelphia tech boom, investing in Internet Capital Group and QVC among many others. Subsequently, it was also one of the companies hit the hardest when it all came crashing down. Its triple digit stock price fell as low as $1.86 and Safeguard was forced to consolidate its 100 portolfio companies into just nine or ten.

We spoke with current Safeguard CFO about the company before and after the tech boom. Like many investors, Zarrilli started his career as an entrepreneur and even raised capital from Safeguard for US Interactive in 1998. Zarrilli tells about the dramatic difference that a few months in the late 90s made and how Safeguard bounced back.

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Open Chattanooga: open data catalog for Tennessee city uses OpenDataPhilly source code from Azavea

The OpenAccessPhilly public-private, open gov movement highlighted by April’s OpenDataPhilly.org launch, has helped spur another group in Tennessee.

Months after OpenDataPhilly.org was discussed at the Chaos Conference in Berlin, a group of civic hackers and good government-minded officials used the site’s open source framework built by Azavea to launch OpenChattanooga.com.

Visit OpenChattannooga here.

The site was built during the 48 Hour Launch program from the Company Lab this past weekend and organized by Tim Moreland, an analyst with the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency, and Teal Thibaud, a communications director at community vision group Chatanooga STAND.

“Right now Open Chattanooga is just a collection of interested individuals without any formalized structure or support. The group consists of city employees, nonprofit organizations, interested citizens, local tech geeks and people in higher education to name a few,” Moreland tells Technically Philly.

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Mayor Nutter signs tax relief bills from Council [LINKS]

• Nutter signs business tax relief bills  [Philadelphia Business Journal] — The bills were passed by Council here
• Master Grief [Bygone Era] — An essay from Geekadelphia’s Eric Smith, who describes how a broken heart caused him to get that full-sized Halo character costume we told you about.
• NuPathe CEO: Getting migraine patch OK’d shouldn’t be headache [Philadelphia Business Journal] — Conshohocken CEO Jane Hollingsworth had its Zelrix migraine patch turned down by the FDA in August, but they’re regrouping to resubmit in the first half of 2012
• NextDocs Establishes Asian Presence with New Office in Tokyo [NextDocs blog]
• Transit Hackers Take Philly for a Ride [Programmable Web] — On the Apps for SEPTA event we sponsored

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Improv Everywhere: Youtube prankster Charlie Todd speaks at Drexel University [VIDEO]

Drexel University mp3 experiment led by Improv Everywhere's Charlie Todd, a Drexel alumnus. Photo Will Tanksley

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.

Since 2002, Charlie Todd has been making a name for himself by starting flash mobs.

Charlie Todd

They’re meant to be the good kind of flash mobs, which Todd organizes as the creator of Improv Everywhere. The prank collective based in the 67th Ward performs large-scale stunts and publishes videos of said stunts on YouTube, where some of his handiwork has received tens of millions of views.

As part of Drexel University’s Comedy Week, Todd visited University City where he conducted an mp3 experiment where some 250 participants performed pre-recorded instructions from Todd as a flash mob-esque stunt. See video from the Inquirer of the prank below.

Todd was brought to the school by student group Urban Playground and its founder Ari Melman, a junior business student at Drexel. It was Todd’s and the group’s first time in Philadelphia, he added.

After the outdoor  Todd, gave a behind the scenes look at how Improv Everywhere got started, how it operates today, and he held a question and answer session with the audience.

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