Event Highlights for March 15-21, 2010

The big event this week isn’t in Philly at all. But Philadelphia has quite a presence in Austin, Texas, this week for South by Southwest, for sure. Our reporter Sean Blanda is hot on the trial, chasing down Philly’s representatives. He’ll follow-up with a report later this week.

That said, there’s some great opportunities here in Philadelphia, too. Join Microsoft’s Malvern branch for its CloudCamp unconference to discuss the growing cloud computing industry and Philly Startup Leaders hosts a fishbowl of City of Philadelphia’s Digital Philadelphia vision with city officials.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more.

Read more

Poptent’s user-generated commercials undercut expensive ad agencies

Poptent's assignment board shows a handful of the available commercial projects, most of which start at a $5,000 payout.

Wynewood-based Poptent, a social network that connects businesses with advertising and marketing creatives, might just turn the video advertising industry on its head.

Back in 2007, Chief Marketing Officer Neil Perry, who’s worked in marketing as a senior leader at McDonald’s and as Vice President of Marketing at Monster.com, realized that creating high-cost video advertising campaigns in a universe of user-generated content just didn’t make sense.

“[We] produced a bundle of commercials and I got famaliar with how expensive commercials could be. I knew there could be a better way,” he says.

Three years after launching, Poptent has built a community of 14,000 members—climbing at about 500 users per month—comprised of professional and semi-professional videographers and ad creators looking to break into the advertising industry and make some cash doing it. The company has produced 65 assignments for national advertisers like Nestle, Anheuser Busch, Ben & Jerry’s and TurboTax.

Part of that growth is for the company’s affordability. In the world of marketing, Perry says, a 30 second spot might cost on average about $350,000, not including talent. Poptent campaigns start at $32,500, the cost of one video ad and the technical backend to place a brand on the site. Each additional ad costs a business $7,500. A company could purchase more than 40 viral videos from Poptent for the cost a single traditional advertisement. “The next time you need video, you don’t have to pay a national agency an arm and a leg,” he says.

Read more

Google launches Maps biking directions with Bicycle Coalition data

Google Maps new biking directions feature shows safe-to-ride bike paths in green. It's not the path we'd take to Citizen's Bank Park, but hey, Google does no evil, right?

You could say we’ve been welcoming of spring and the onset of the 2010 Grapefruit League. A bike ride down to Citizen’s Bank Park in a few weeks? Count us in. But how best to get there?

Google has launched a beta and buggy version of its new bike-friendly Maps features, including directions that utilize Philly bike paths and landmarks of local biking facilities, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia reported this morning.

Read more

Startup Roundup: WantsThis launches, Laan Labs is better than our Abe Lincoln app joke

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse 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. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

We’ve run into founder Peter D’Orsi III at a few tech events over this past year, and we have to say that his new Web wishlist startup WantsThis looks pretty sharp. Of course, he’s got some tight local competition with $1.4 million-funded wishlist aggregator Snipi.

Duck Duck Go’s Gabe Weinberg—who promised to pen at least 100 posts on his blog this year—writes about some of the features he’d like to integrate on the startup search engine, including O’Reilly Paragraphs, more topic sources, strong documentation and an instant message search service. Weinberg has also interviewed DreamIt Ventures’ Steve Welch in a 30 minute video. That’s alotta Welch.

Read more

Community launches support portal for Google gigabit fiber

Philadelphia’s tech community is looking for your support to bring Google to our backyard.

After announcing last week its intent to apply to be a test bed for Google’s ultra-high speed fiber, city officials have collaborated with community developers to launch an external initiative to drum up buzz for its proposal.

Working at Independents Hall over the weekend, the groups helped launch a portal—at gigabitphilly.com—that solicits feedback from local users to help fulfill Google’s Request For Information. The page drives home Philadelphia’s notability as a “city of firsts,” much like it would be for Google’s broadband pilot program.

Read more

Nutter proposes “unprecedented” $120 million IT budget, moves toward paperless

Mayor Nutter has announced plans to significantly invest in city information technology and pursue paperless government efficiencies in an attempt to improve tech infrastructure, cut costs and streamline city services.

“We may not be completely paperless, but we will use less paper,” Nutter said in his budget address to City Council this morning before a packed crowed that filled the historic Council chamber’s floor and balcony seating.

If City Council approves the budget, Nutter says that an “unprecedented” investment in city technology will provide $120 million to improve IT over the next five years, including $25 million in FY11.

Read more

Startup Roundup: myYearbook generating $20 million in revenue yearly, 123LinkIt and Mailroom launch

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse 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. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

Mashable reports that myYearbook is generating $20 million in revenue per year, up 70 percent from 2008 and growing, with its base of 20 million users. The company’s virtual currency and virtual goods model was estimated early in its existence to be generating a third of the company’s revenue, as we’ve reported. myYearbook is focusing on expanding its partnerships with gaming platforms like Zynga and SGN with new hire Scott Levine, formerly the Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Sony Music Entertainment.

Read more

Philadelphia to apply for Google’s experimental ultra-high speed broadband

It wasn’t at a press conference or inside the Inquirer editorial boardroom. The city’s announcement to join the rush for Google’s ultra-high speed fiber broadband came during a few minutes of a presentation, backed by dense slides at a technology community event inside a rock venue.

“Let’s light this joint up,” city Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank said, throwing his hands in the air and walking off stage at the fifth Ignite Philly, seemingly surprised by the cheers and laughs the slide earned.

The announcement at Johnny Brenda’s last night, a bar filled with mostly 20 and 30-somethings, came 10 months after Frank first unveiled his $100 million city technology investment vision to Refresh Philly, another young, hip, technology community event staple. Technically Philly urged continued involvement by the community and Frank and, in many ways, that’s continued.

The decision marks something of a marriage between likely the city’s two most prominent officials whom have hands in the region’s technology community: the son of a former mayor and, as City Councilman Bill Green put it last night, “the baddest ass CTO of any city, Allan Frank.”

Read more

Is local TV news exaggerating social media addiction?

It’s been a pretty standard affair for local news, recently.

Find someone “addicted” to social media—someone who is on sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter at work, perhaps utilizing it too much, too, by way of mobile phone. Then, seek an expert. Maybe a psychiatrist who’s work lately has perhaps included folks who are addicted to social media, though none claim to have evidence of an increase in these kinds of people and none specifically recognize of any of these types of patients in their clientele.

So far, NBC10 and 6ABC have covered the topic, overindulging in the mostly evidence-less theory to pandaemonium-like proportion.

And somewhere in the middle of it all—and very prominently placed in both news reports—is Nnamdi Osuagwu, local writer and owner of publishing platform Ice Cream Melts who recently penned a fictional book called Facebook Addiction.

Read more

Event Highlights for March 1-7, 2010

Updated 3/4, 7:32 a.m.: Fixed a misspelling.

Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but are there more birds chirping and an opportunity to wear one less layer before we head out the door? Is that Spring coming? We sure hope so.

If you make it out this week, you’ll want to stop by either Ignite Philly 5 or Net Squared Net Tuesday, on, uh, Tuesday evening. Or heck, do both. Who’s to stop you, rebel? On Thursday, hit up the PHP Area Meetup Group, where they’re gonna tell you that Notepad is just, like, sooo not cool anymore; by itself, anyway. Whatever you decide, just remember: the weeks of this cold abyss are quickly coming to an end.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more.

Read more