DailyWorth partners with Mint, Viddler redesigns and sees 30% increase in sign-ups [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.

MUST READS

DailyWorth, the Philly-based startup that has raised $2.8 million and is focused on delivering practical financial advice for women, has recently formed a partnership with Mint, home to 8 million users, to provide it with content, TechCrunch reports.

Viddler launched a no-frills, less-is-more redesign last week that is seeing results. If it’s an inspiration for what a redesign of your site could bring, the company has seen a 30 percent increase in sign-ups.

TicketLeap has launched TicketLeap Anywhere for iOS, a new app which allows event organizers to sell, print and scan tickets on-the-spot at events with iPhone and iPad devices.

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Comcast brings low-income Internet access to 41,000 families in U.S., but only 463 locally

Five months after Comcast was mandated by a federal agency to institute a sweeping program to substantially improve Internet adoption rates for low income families, only 463 Philadelphia families have activated the service in the cable giant’s hometown, where more than 150,000 families are eligible.

A screen capture of the Internet Essentials report showing activations in top regions.

An internal report on Comcast’s Internet Essentials program issued last week shows 41,000 total activations across the U.S. from Aug. 16 to Dec. 22. The program, which launched in September, resulted from a mandate by the Federal Communications Commission as part of the company’s deal to acquire NBC.

Yet in Philadelphia, where 41 percent of citizens do not have access to the Internet at home — according to a 2008 report from the Knight Foundation — advocates are concerned about the program’s progress, and some experts say that a lack of support by the School District of Philadelphia is slowing its potential.

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What makes these Philly entrepreneurs successful? [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.

MUST READS

Sink or Swim Productions, a group of Temple business school students, has launched a video series showing Philadelphia-area startups tech and not. See one of the episodes below. [h/t CityBizList]

Gamification startup Hoopla Software intends to hire at least a dozen employees as a result of its recent $2.3 million round of funding led by Safeguard Scientifics, according to Fins Technology.

According to the Business Journal, ChoozOn, which describes itself as a “deal-hunting concierge,” and not a daily deals site, raised a $1.27 million round after a $2.5 million round last summer. The company has workforce in King of Prussia, San Francisco and Jordan.

Wildbit describes the reasons for shutting down its $75,000 per year profitable email marketing service Newsberry. Despite a troubled history as a “stepchild” pet project, as the company puts it, the project was profitable but it wasn’t one the company was proud of.

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Startup Weekend v3.0 announces dates during PTW; January is move-in month [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.

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Philly Startup Weekend confirmed that its next hackathon, which has seen the launch of several startups in the region, will take place during the kick-off weekend of Philly Tech Week, April 20-22. Tickets are on-sale here.

The Business Journal’s Peter Key reports that the clever CAPTA startup Solve Media that shows advertisements that are to be typed rather than words, raised a $3 million to $6 million Series B round of funding.

One of Poptent‘s user-generated commercials created for yogurt-maker Dannon will air during the Super Bowl, the Inky’s Joe DiStefano reports. Interactive Firm Red Tettemer was tapped to create a Super Bowl ad for Century 21 real estate. Supposedly, it’s the first time a Philly ad firm, no, two, have made the big show.

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Nominate Philadelphia’s technology community in the 2012 PA Tech Awards

Organizers are now accepting nominations for the 2012 PA Tech Awards across a handful of categories that we’d like to see Philadelphia sweep.

Now’s your change to vie for the winning spot as:

• Outstanding Leadership in Technology
• Technology Educator of the Year
• Technology Provider of the Year
• Best Application of Technology
• Public Service Innovation
• Technology Product of the Year
• Growth Company of the Year
• Technology Company of the Year

Also being awarded will be the People’s Choice Award, which will go to the company or organization with the most online votes.

The awards are hosted by TechQuest, a Harrisburg-based lobbyist group that works to protect the technology industry in legislation, according to the organization’s website. Ceremonies will take place Friday, March 30, 2012 at Whitaker Center in Harrisburg.

A list of last year’s winners showcases a number of companies from Central and West Pennsylvania. Nominations close on February 1.

Stephen Tang, Science Center CEO, puts down the politics that slow innovation [Friday Q&A]

Steve Tang discusses his participation with the Innovation Advisory Board.

The University City Science Center will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, but this month, Stephen Tang [Coverage] is marking his own anniversary: four years since being appointed President and CEO.

“I’m celebrating, but I don’t know if anyone else is,” Tang said, followed by laughter, in a telephone interview last week.

It’s hard to imagine that his staff wouldn’t: the Science Center has an increasing connection to regional and national innovation under Tang’s leadership, and if its programming is as successful as it appears, a closer connection to the regional community that is impacted.

The Science Center has stepped up its game in helping to define University City as a vital technology corridor in Philadelphia. Tang is actively seeking $20 million to fund in perpetuity its QED proof-of-concept incubation model. The rebranded Breadboard program has become a celebrated and energetic arts and sciences intersection that grew out of a once stodgy art gallery space. NextFab Studio, a high-tech prototyping workshop created in partnership with the Center, is now expanding to South Philadelphia. And though it just launched in 2011 and the Center’s Quorum entrepreneur clubhouse has yet to be measured completely, the resources of support are there.

Earlier this month, Tang joined the Innovation Advisory Board — a national advisory committee to the United States Department of Commerce — in releasing a report [PDF] about the economic competitiveness of American innovation.

The board, comprised of 15 well-known innovators like Arthur Levinson, Apple’s new Chairman, and Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs, had a notable local presence. Tang joined Natalia Olsen-Ortecho of Center City-based EG.

For those with an understanding of the issues confronting American innovation competitiveness, the report was certainly not groundbreaking in its overarching research:

• Federal investments in research, education and infrastructure were critical building blocks for American economic competitiveness, business expansion and job creation in the last century;
• Failures to properly invest in, and have comprehensive strategies for, those areas have eroded America’s competitive position; and,
• In a constrained budgetary environment, prioritizing support for these pillars are imperative for America’s economic future and provide a strong return on investment for the U.S. taxpayer.

The outcome of the report now rests in the hands of the Secretary of Commerce, who will put together a plan to confront these challenges. But in an election year, as Tang puts it, that process “is likely to be highly politicized.”

After the jump, we caught up with Tang to hear his thoughts on the report and on the fourth anniversary of his joining the Science Center as President and CEO.

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CliqSearch raises $840k, PopTent ad gets National Championship treatment [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.

MUST READS

CliqSearch, the Philadelphia-based social search company that debuted at Philly Tech Meetup in September announced that it has raised a round of funding from angel investors to the tune of $840,000, TechCrunch reports.

PopTent, the crowd-sourced viral video creator based in Philadelphia, must be celebrating the fact that one of its user-generated videos made for Dell was aired during the BCS National Championship. The story also features an interview with the commercial’s creator Sam Akina.

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RedSnakePhilly 2012: a collaborative conference between the competing languages Python and Ruby

Like the fan bases of sports teams, the communities that follow competing technologies can get in each other’s faces.

There’s examples that stretch to the origins of personal computing: Apple vs. Microsoft, Firefox vs. Internet Explorer, Adobe Flash vs. HTML5. Fire any of those into your search pane for a history.

The same is often true of competing programming languages and frameworks, like Python and Ruby.

An event that came together last year took the rivalry head on: RedSnakePhilly. It’s an annual conference of alternating lightning presentations that show off the two languages, together, in one room. This playoff season, try that with your friends that identify as Steelers fans.

This year’s upcoming February 21st event is free, and has limited seating. The organizers say to follow @redsnakephilly on Twitter for details on how to secure a seat.

Mat Schaffer, one of RedSnake’s organizers from the “red” camp of Ruby fans, compares the rivalry between Python and Ruby enthusiasts to the political spectrum. “We’re like the democrats and republicans of dynamic languages,” he says.

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National publications react to Philadelphia Media Network incubator [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.

MUST READS

GigaOm reacts to Philadelphia Media Network’s announcement that it has accepted three startups into its incubator program Project Liberty. ReadWriteWeb’s John Paul Titlow posts his notes, too. In related news, Peter Key writes about CloudMine and its recent inclusion in Philadelphia Media Network’s incubator.

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Under Mauro, Langhorne’s Entertainment Games looks to social and mobile and away from retail channel

This summer, Langhorne’s Entertainment Games, Inc., a publicly traded company, announced that it had acquired Heyday Games, a social networking-focused gaming company.

Since June, we’ve watched as Entertainment Games has managed to quickly change its focus from the retail sales channel — essentially, getting gaming titles in the big box chains — to social networking focuses made famous by companies like Zynga, known for its FarmVille Facebook title.

This fall, the company launched Retro World, a series of Facebook games that hopes to tap into the increasing demographic of baby boomers landing on the social network. By acquiring rights to media that feature famous stars of the past, like Marilyn Monroe and Dick Clark, the company is hoping to create through Retro World a gaming experience that is a trip of nostalgia for the demographic.

So far, it seems to have been a success. In media alone, the company enjoyed a round of coverage from publications like VentureBeat, Inquirer, NBC10, CBS3, Games.com, Reuters, and The Hollywood Reporter, among others.

In the acquisition, Entertainment Games brought on much of Heyday’s management team, including Gene Mauro, who joined on as the company’s new President and Chief Operating Officer.

Mauro, who works from Connecticut, but bounces between that location and Entertainment Games’ locations in Los Angeles and its headquarters in Philadelphia, has been in the game business for close to two decades.

He says he had history with Entertainment Games as an outside director, a friend of the board since 2005. But because the retail sales channel has been in decline, he says, his task coming onboard to the company was to think about strategy and growth and how Entertainment Games could make an aggressive play in the emerging channels of social gaming and mobile.

Mauro says that adoption of Retro World has been strong, with over 30,000 active monthly users.

After the jump, we caught up with Mauro to hear about the acquisition, its new Facebook title Retro World, and the company’s new direction.

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