How business privilege tax reform in Philadelphia helps: Philadelphia Business Journal
The Philadelphia Business Journal reports on the broader impact of the City Council tax reform legislation that Technically Philly first reported on:
Archive for November, 2011
FactCheck.org launches spoof site to combat lies in politics [LINKS]
- Bentley Systems buys 2 software companies [Philadelphia Business Journal] — Bentley “has bought an English software company and an Australian software company for sums it did not disclose.”
- Aweber announces enhanced web form integration for WordPress [Aweber] From the suburban startup. More here.
- NextFab Studios Giveaway: Win Some Handmade Speakers From Jesse Gerard [Geekadelphia]
- The State of OpenData in Philly [Open Knowledge Foundation Blog] — Written by Voxeo Labs hacker Mark Headd
- Pass Me Another One of Those Hive76s [Hive 76 blog] — The hacker space stars as an energy drink in a computer wallpaper
- FlackCheck.org: using comedy to combat lies in politics [Newsworks]
Thanks to our weekly sponsors
Technically Philly is made possible by advertisers and sponsors that are important to Philadelphia’s technology community. This week we’d like to thank:
Springboard Media — Springboard Media is a certified Apple Specialist and retailer with two locations in Center City, including its newest in Midtown Village. They’ve got a ton of accessories and a great trade-in program that can score you up to $1,500
Reed Technology — Reed Technology’s Web Archiving Service is a litigation protection, web compliance and e-discovery solution for all your online assets. Your Local Security — Providing affordable home security systems in Philadelphia. Top of the line equipment and monitoring services from ADT keep your home and family safe. Caffeine Fish — Caffeine Fish develops iOS apps including Trainboard and PhillySubway and offers consulting in the Philadelphia area. MOGO Media — MOGO Media provides best-of-class training for designers and developers through world-wide conferences and seminars. The organization will host a Dreamweaver seminar on December 15 in Philadelphia. Newsworks — NewsWorks is the online home of WHYY News and its growing network of journalism partners. This public media service covers the Philadelphia region, Delaware and South Jersey, with a focus on regional issues, neighborhoods, health and science, and arts. Morgan Lewis — Morgan Lewis provides comprehensive transactional, litigation, labor and employment, regulatory, and intellectual property legal services to clients of all sizes—from global Fortune 100 companies to just-conceived startups—across all major industries. Interested in joining these organizations and individuals in supporting Technically Philly? Check out our ad packages and contact our Ad Sales Manager. Can’t find something that fits? We’ll customize a package for you.
Play Eternal waiting on major release to become first AAA video game studio in Philadelphia, VGI update
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.
Mike Worth and Lou Tranchitella realized the need for a big-budget video game studio in Philadelphia, and in February, co-founded Play Eternal.
Now they’re just waiting for their big break.
The duo, along with more than a dozen other members of their team, have a prototype in the hands of major publishers to fund what could be on Xbox Live Arcade or the Sony Playstation Network. If that, or another of a handful of major projects come through, a nearly three year effort to build out the city’s video game development culture will reach another height.
There are steps to go, but the movement has inched forward since early 2009.
With the growth of Worth’s Videogame Growth Initiative movement and a local technology community here, along with excellent video game development programs at Drexel and Penn, the absence of a “Hollywood-level quality” shop, called a AAA studio, seemed unwarranted to Worth and Tranchitella.
“There are studios in lots of different states, there’s no reason for it not to happen here. Philadelphia seemed like a great place to do this,” Tranchitella said. “The technology is here.”
Comcast, others try to make young consumers TV subscribers with ‘data-first packages’ [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.
- The children are our future, and they don’t pay for TV [Gigaom] — Comcast “execs said the company has benefited from a number of marketing programs aimed at college students and recent grads that push data-first packages.”
- NBC Struggles for Its Footing [New York Times] — The TODAY Show has seen its ratings falter, along with others at the Comcast owned property
- Comcast Posts 4.7% Profit, With Mixed Results From NBCUniversal Acquisition [Media Decoder: New York Times]
- NHL Network Selects Comcast Media Center For Network Origination and Transmission Services [Market Watch]
- No HBO Go for Roku users on Comcast or DirecTV [Gigaom] — H/T Philly Tech News
- Comcast switching from analog to digital [News & Advance]
- Drug-Sniffing Dogs at the Comcast Center? [Patch]
- Lazarus: NBC Sports Network Changes Will Be ‘Done Well, Not Fast’ [Multichannel News]
- Suspect in Fairhaven Comcast holdup sought [SouthCoast] — In Connecticut
- Comcast, Ambercrombie And Fitch: 2 Stocks On Sale For No Good Reason [Seeking Alpha]
- Comcast Promotes Peter Kiriacoulacos to Executive Vice President of Comcast Cable and Appoints Him Senior Vice President of NBCUniversal [Business Wire]
- McGinn Named VP of NBC ‘Multi-Station Local Programming’ [Broadcasting & Cable] — Meredith McGinn
Philly election results look a bit friendlier in Google charts
Graph of City Council election results.
A rare feat of turnover in a Philadelphia municipal election Tuesday led to a visit or two to the unofficial online results that are updated by the City Commissioner’s office.
One developer decided to visualize the results, if only in the most basic fashion: Google charts. But Technically Philly has to point out that Joseph Russell, 27, is barking up the wrong tree.
See his basic charts here.
The one major citywide race he didn’t chart? The city commissioners and, well, yesterday’s election brought in two new faces to the board — Democrat Stephanie Singer and Republican Al Schmidt — both of whom have expressed interest in drastically updating that office’s web presence, through realtime data and visualizations. Make it happen.
Russell, a Rowan University alumnus who grew up in South Jersey, actually lives in Massachusetts, where he moved in 2009 with his girlfriend who took a job in Watertown. He works for Lycos on the WYSIWYG site editor at Tripod.com, but Philly and civic web work still have his heart.
Saxbys in Rittenhouse: A new, free, kind of Internet cafe
Store manager Lynh Pham holds up one of the coffee shop's tethered iPads.
In Rittenhouse, a young, corporate world expat is hoping that his experience with technology will help boost sales at his new franchise coffee shop.
Andrew Kupiec, who opened a Saxbys located at 20th and Walnut with several business partners in April, says it was the real estate potential of the location that really caught his eye when he first noticed the vacant property while he was the regional General Manager of wireless Internet provider Clearwire. In November 2009, we interviewed Kupiec in his role at Clearwire.
“I thought it could be a Clearwire retail store,” he told Technically Philly on an early morning last week, as customers filled the spacious shop.
But new leadership at the investment-backed WiMAX Internet provider brought with it a new vision which changed things for Kupiec. He left the company, and using his contacts in the real estate and investment worlds, he pitched the idea that the block could use a high-end coffeeshop. They looked to Saxbys as a Philly-known brand, and have added a custom food menu and catering opportunities to set it apart.
But the shop isn’t just high-end, it’s also high-tech. The model that Kupiec is most excited about is that the coffee shop’s tech amenities come at no cost.
Read more
K’House: info session bar crawl on Indy Hall cohousing project Friday
Envisioning of the K'House, the cohousing project from Indy Hall, set for the 1700-block of Howard Street.
K’House, the Indy Hall cohousing project, will be the focus of a fireside chat information session this Friday in a lot in Kensington.
Uh, well, the lot is 1711 Howard Street, which is due to become a sustainably-minded private residence with communal space to foster collaboration and community. In true Indy Hall fashion, they’re going to light up a fire pit and have a conversation right out in the open. In addition to discussion, more drawings will be unveiled for the K’House, dubbed by excitable Indy Hall co-founder Alex Hillman and pronounced KA House, like kaboom, as noted in this month’s Philadelphia magazine profile.
RSVP on Facebook here.
The lot is right above Cecil B. Moore Ave. near Front Street, nearly equidistant from both the Girard and Berks El stops.
The information session, which will be followed by a bar crawl, will update those interested in renting one of the initial spaces, in addition to those curious and supportive.
TEDxPhilly 2011: “Cities are the most complex man-made artifacts of our time” [STORIFY]
Urban communities should be seen as complex computing programs that can operate efficiently and smartly, offering the infrastructure for innovation and entrepreneurship, said Temple University Fox School of Business Professor Youngjin Yoo.
That assessment of smarter, leaner cities, owned and operated by the people to make the world a better place, was the central message from the second TEDxPhilly, which boasted a theme of ‘The City.’ The event was first held in Philadelphia at the Kimmel Center last November, bringing some 600 attendees.
“Cities are the most complex man-made artifacts of our time,” said Yoo, who is leading the university’s new Urban Apps and Maps Studio. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly was a TEDx media sponsor]
Held at Temple’s newly renovated eponymous Baptist Temple, the local iteration of the popular, innovative lecture series, organized here by designer Roz Duffy and dozens of volunteers, drew some 200 people for the high-price, high value day-long conference Tuesday.
Below, find Technically Philly’s notes from the two dozen speakers and a Storify of the Twitter chatter.
Startup Roundup: LaunchRock raises $800,000, Entertainment Games launches Retro World
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
Former Philly startup LaunchRock has announced a round of funding to the tune of $800,000 from a myriad of investors, TechCrunch reports. The company has also officially opened to the public, allowing anyone to sign-up for the service.
That retro Facebook game being published by Entertainment Games, Inc. , which we’ve been covering for the past few months, and which is now publicly being called Retro World, launched on Facebook yesterday. We found the design, well, retro, and the gameplay entertaining. Retro World, which it turns out will be an ongoing series of different game plots — which utilizes rights for celebrities Elvis Presley, Dick Clark and Marilyn Monroe and others — was also recently covered in Reuters, the most revealing article to date. If the company can continue to market on that level, it could have a hit on its hands.
Read more
