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

RJMetrics has received a friggin’ lot of buzz (search Twitter) over the past week for a study checking in on Google Plus engagement of 40,000 users. According to the report, the average post receives less than one +1, less than one reply and less than one re-share. BusinessWeek asks if Google Plus is a ghost town. Publishing these kinds of reports has been sound strategy for RJMetrics, delivering huge audiences direct to their doorstep. Our Entrance Exam with RJMetrics’ new chief marketer Ted Bockius, published yesterday.

It’s been a year since the University City Science Center opened its entrepreneur clubhouse Quorum. The organization is celebrating that its hosted 170 events and 8,000 attendees in that time.

The organizers of Philly Startup Weekend will be hosting a PitchSwap on June 14th: an event aimed at learning to pitch someone else’s business in order to learn from the process. RSVP here. They call it “karaoke for entrepreneurs.”

GIVE A GLANCE

DuckDuckGo has a new Chrome extension that allows you to embed DuckDuckGo’s one-click search results directly in Google’s results. Cheeky. In related news, the company’s founder Gabe Weinberg is featured on PhillyMag’s PhillyPost.

As we reported yesterday, SnipSnap has raised $480,000 on an angel round. SnipSnap has been making the rounds on mobile app blogs like iMore and Simonblog.

Fast Company has a bigger profile on Daymon John, star of ABC’s Shark Tank, mentioning his new role as brand ambassador to local startup TicketLeap. Its a good look at the rise of celebrity support of startups.

As we mentioned earlier this week, DreamIt Ventures is now accepting applications for its fall Philadelphia program.

On that note, Startup Beach House is now accepting applications as well.

LTLPrints is featured in a video series for CEO IntroNet, a members-only social network for CEOs.

Following last weeks report that PalmLing is headed to TechStars Boulder, co-founder Ryan Frankel tells us that they’re not tied down to Philadelphia and will be shopping around for potential locations after TechStars.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

VirtualPiggy, the safe commerce site for children and parents is continuing to grow its merchant roster, having announced 30 new additions.

Monetate‘s engineering blog has a report on web browser market share, analyzing data from a quarter-billion online shopping sessions over a 30-day period. Internet Explorer is still the champ.

PlaySay, the language-learning gamification company that split for Washington D.C. and then San Francisco, is the number one education app in Apple’s App Store.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here, or sign-up for its email newsletter.

Photo courtesy of SnipSnap

SnipSnap, the Philadelphia-based iOS coupon-saving app, has raised a $480,000 angel round, according to a filing with the SEC.

Founder Ted Mann said in an email to Technically Philly that as soon as some additional financial transfers land, the total will reach $555,000 so far on this note. He says that the round was led by several current and former executives at well-known local technology companies.

Mann says that the angels include GSI Commerce founder Michael Rubin, Pointroll founder Jules Gardner and current GSI Commerce CEO (and former Pointroll CEO) Chris Saridakis, among other family and friends. Mann tells us that Ben Franklin Technology Partners is in the round for $100,000, not $50,000 as previously reported.

According to the filing issued on Monday, the company can raise a total of $900,000 on the note. Mann says the company may consider working toward a Series A round instead.

The news comes after a company announcement yesterday that it has reached 100,000 devices after being featured in Apple’s App Store for a week.

Funds will go to operation costs, which will soon include new hires around business development and marketing. We first reported on the company’s plans to raise about a half-million dollars earlier this month.

The company will also be demoing the product at TechCrunch Disrupt at 2:30 this afternoon.

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

DogVacay, which announced a $1 million seed round lead by First Round Capital in March, has Philly roots, it turns out. The Inquirer’s Jeff Gelles covers the story here.

Comcast Ventures managing director and head of funds Amy Banse has joined Adobe’s Board of Directors. [h/t PhillyTechNews]

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

First Round Capital backed a $6.5 million Series A round for AxialMarket, an online hub for private financial transaction, Forbes reports. The firm has also continued to support ModCloth in the company’s latest $25 million round.

According to CityBizList, First Round has also backed a $1.5 million Series A round for elicit, a search company for private websites based in Chicago.

Edison Ventures has led a $7.5 million growth round for Vox Mobile, a managed mobility solutions suite.

GIVE A GLANCE

Well-known VC Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures says that the firm invested in local search firm DuckDuckGo for “the Internet anarchists, people that hang out on Reddit and Hacker News.”

Good Company Ventures is profiled on a Forbes contributor site. [h/t PhillyTechNews]

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.

Startup Roundup has had some technical difficulties for the past couple weeks, so we’re playing catch-up this morning. Consider things officially back on track.

MUST READS

Curalate, a marketing and analytics platform for Pinterest, has announced that it has received $750,000 in seed funding, TechCrunch reports. The round is backed by NEA, First Round Capital and MentorTech. The company features former leadership of storage space startup Storably, as we reported last month.

GIVE A GLANCE

Flyclops, the small iOS company that first built Brainarang, a zombie-killing game, has launched Domino!, a turn-based dominos game, in Apple’s App Store. Download it for free here.

tweeted:

DocPhin, a medical journal and research aggregation hub startup, has been aggressively pursuing a national footprint, having launched in 10 more medical centers nationwide, TechCrunch reports. We covered the company’s technology last December.

TicketLeap has announced that it has brought on Daymond John to serve as a “brand ambassador and advisor.” John is most recently known for his post on ABC’s Shark Tank, but is perhaps more widely known for founding clothing brand FUBU.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Family organization startup AboutOne has launched an app exclusively for Windows Phone.

As we reported last week, SnipSnap, the Ben Franklin Technology Partners-backed and Inquirer/Daily News-housed startup has seen more than 70,000 downloads since launch during Philly Tech Week.

Safeguard Scientifics-backed Internet-of-Things startup ThingWorx has upgraded its platform to version 3.0, according to a release.

RJMetrics writes about improvements to its dashboard visualizations.

According to a study apparently published by the Kauffman Foundation and being promoted as an infographic by DocStoc, a company dedicated to small business services, Pennsylvania is one of the “worst” states to be an entrepreneur, and among the states that have the fewest entrepreneurs per 100,000 people. Take a look at the infographic here.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here, or sign-up for its email newsletter.

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

First Round Capital managing director Josh Kopelman officially announced that the firm closed on a new $135 million fund, First Round Capital IV. The fund is mostly the same as previous funds: the size, partners and strategy will stay consistent, building on previous rounds of success. The firm also announced that Kent Goldman and Phineas Barnes are new partners on the fund. TechCrunch notes the significance of the round in relation to early-stage investment. We first reported on the firm’s commitment to stay on target in February and on its SEC filings a month ago.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Fort Washington-based Audience Partners, an advertising and directing marketing firm, has raised $750,000 according to an SEC filing.

Agilence, which helps retail companies analyze performance thru video monitoring of point-of-sale transactions, has raised $4.2 million in a private equity sale, according to an SEC filing. The company is based in Camden.

Adaptly, the Facebook ad campaign manager that grew out of DreamIt Ventures in 2010 and moved to New York, announced late last week a $10.5 million Series B round of investment. As of October, the company was reporting revenue of $10 million. The round was led by Valhalla Partners and is backed by Time Warner Investments and Vivi Nevo, AllThingsD reports.

GIVE A GLANCE

A history lesson and a great read from the Daily Pennsylvanian about successful entrepreneurs turned investors that stand by the UPenn entrepreneurship community. [h/t InnovationAmerica]

Serial entrepreneur Rick Rasansky spoke at cowering space Venturef0rth last week, noting that there “aren’t a lot of early stage investors in Philadelphia.”

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.

Startup Roundup has had some technical difficulties for the past couple weeks, so we’re playing catch-up this morning. Consider things officially back on track.

MUST READS

FirstMark Capital managing director Amish Jani writes on BusinessInsider why the investment firm decided to back Bob Moul a second time with a $1.5 million seed round in appRenaissance. It’s a great look behind-the-scenes at why proven entrepreneurs get money.

Our own Yael Borofsky writes about a very public courting of Airtime’s Dan Shipper by San Francisco startup 42Floors. Shipper declined. In related news, Airtime now features seamless Outlook integration. We particularly enjoyed this comment: “The early history of Silicon Valley has already been written. But the early days of the Philly startup community are being written right now.”

GIVE A GLANCE

TicketLeap announced a first-in-industry reserved seating system, which allows event organizers to create maps of their venues and sell seats accordingly.

Monetate, which is growing at an incredibly rapid pace, has been detailing its hiring escapades on its online blog. Potential developers are asked to do some on-the-spot (if not fun) coding. In related news, the company recently signed on Brooks Brothers as a client.

Only five months after launching there, TrapCall has pulled support for its service with Canadian carriers. Maybe it was the cold, our words. Or, in the company’s words: “We’re also sorry that you don’t have a more competitive, innovative and embracing, wireless market.” Ouch.

ElectNext gets love on Mashable, as well as, at press time, 123 Facebook likes, 826 tweets, 8 Google+ shares, 125 LinkedIn shares, 4 Pinterest, uhm, pins, and 202 stumbles. You can’t buy that kind of publicity.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

The Daily News’s Jonathan Takiff covers Philly Tech Week’s Entrepreneur Expo, focusing on startups Lokalty, Startup Weekend, PalmLing, ManCaveKingdom and others.

Though the company has since split for New York, Coursekit, the higher education-focused social networking education tool has rebranded as Lore, in case you’re following along. The company also announced that Peter Thiel has invested in the company, Betabeat reports.

Startup Weekend Health, set to take place June 1, is offering early-bird tickets with Technically Philly, a media sponsor [See our coverage here]. Technically Philly readers can enter “technicallyphilly” to receive $40 off Early Bird tickets, which are only on sale until May 11.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here, or sign-up for its email newsletter.

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

Ben Franklin Technology Partners announced $675,000 in funding for six early-stage companies yesterday, according to a press release. Among those that received funding, with a mix of models ranging from business services, to healthcare, to social web, include Cross X Platform, GroupAppz, PeopleLinx, SnipSnap, Syandus and Zonoff. It’s not posted yet, but look for the release at BFTP’s website for details.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

As we reported on Friday, local venture capitalists Josh Kopelman (First Round Capital) and Adele Oliva (Quaker Partners) were recognized by Forbes in the publication’s top 100 VCs list. [h/t CityBizList]

GIVE A GLANCE

A new report says that more angels are investing more money across the country, according to an article by ReadWriteWeb. The 2011 Angel Market Analysis says that angel deals reached $22.5 billion in 2011, a 12.1 percent increase year-over-year, and the number of companies invested in climbed 7.3 percent.

Those angels are an important part of the forces disrupting venture capital, according to a cursory glance at the market by TechCrunch contributor Semil Shah, worth the read if you’ve not been following along.

Perhaps a lesson for Philadelphia coming out of Portland: a small startup market that, with a new initiative called Techlandia (note the play on words), hopes to grow 100 companies to a $100 million liquidity event or $100 million in sales.

Local arts coverage in mainstream outlets is struggling to adapt to changes in a new media landscape.

It’s estimated that since 2006, half of 5,000 arts beats have been cut from American newspapers, according to study by the Knight Foundation. Just last week, the grant-maker announced that the Philadelphia Daily News, in partnership with Drexel University, was awarded one of three arts journalism grants for its “Art Attack” project.

Those newsroom losses are also actively being supplemented by independent media locally, if the active community at last night’s Philly Tech Week event on arts blogging has a say in the matter.

At contemporary arts space PhilaMOCA last night in Callowhill, four prominent Philly arts bloggers chatted about the day-to-day operations and aspirations of their publications at Blogging about Philadelphia’s Creative Spaces, a panel put together by Philly.com entertainment editor Leah Kauffman.

The coverage and expertise of the four participating bloggers spanned across the arts community: G.W. Miller III’s Jump Magazine covers Philly’s diverse music scene; Chaucee Stillman’s Streets and Stripes focuses on style and culture in the city; Eric Smith’s Geekadelphia gives the wide geek community a voice; and Conrad Benner’s Streets Dept, is a tribute to local street art (and not the city department).

There was a common bond among them, which they shared with the crowd, a mix of bloggers and artists and those looking to join in the conversation: write about what you love—and start now.

Smith, who founded Geekadelphia in 2008, remembers launching the publication with partner Tim Quirino a few days after coming up with the idea, nodding to the mantra of JFDI: “Just Fucking Do It.”

The conversation explored financial sustainability—all on stage are operating on a part-time basis—with diverse responses.

Stillman worried that advertising could, for now, compromise her voice, while Miller says he has been hitting the streets to sell ad space. For him, the pitch hasn’t been about wide reach; it’s been an ask to support a local community in Philadelphia. If we don’t give musicians a spotlight, they’ll move to New York, he said.

“Philly is at a turning point,” said Benner, who grew up in the Fishtown neighborhood. “It’s great to watch it happen.”

Tax delinquency is an issue in Philadelphia many of us are witness to nearly every day, yet we may not even know it.

Inquirer columnist and PlanPhilly freelance reporter Patrick Kerkstra has been closer to the issue than any of us can claim: he’s covered the issue in-depth for some time, most notably in his award-winning Deluge of Deatbeats series, a partnership between the two above news organizations.

Philadelphia’s delinquency issue is an epidemic, he wrote in the series, with nearly 111,000 delinquent properties, or about 19 percent of all parcels. To put it in Kerkstra’s words, vacant property is “an old problem with serious consequences for the City of Philadelphia.”

At 12pm on Wednesday, April 25, at WHYY as part of Philly Tech Week’s ongoing FREE lunchtime series, Kerkstra will demo a public tool created in partnership between PlanPhilly and the Inquirer to help shed light on the issue.

He’ll also join a panel of delinquency and news technology experts to discuss the issue, how the tool came to be, how it was used in Kerkstra’s reporting and what’s next.

RSVP for the free event HERE.

The panel will include:

• Patrick Kerkstra, freelance journalist
• Rob Kandel, Philadelphia Inquirer
• Julie Busby, Inquirer City Editor
• Kevin Gillen, eConsult
• Moderator: Matt Golas, PlanPhilly Managing Editor

It’s all part of a new series of events PlanPhilly has been working on in coordination with Technically Media.

Lunch is provided courtesy of Saxbys Rittenhouse. RSVP for the free event HERE.

On Monday afternoon, more than 700 students and teachers attended Central High School’s Philly Robotics Expo at Drexel University’s College of Engineering hub, the Bossone Center.

At the event, focused on programming related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (known as STEM) and Philadelphia’s rich public education robotics community, students attended workshops across all skill levels, competed in mini-tournaments, and in general, had a chance to play with a variety of autonomous robots made by Philly teams.

The event was organized on conjunction with Philly Tech Week 2012 Presented by AT&T and the Philadelphia Science Festival.

WATCH VIDEO OF THE EVENT FROM NEWSWORKS

The event was keynoted by Penn Engineering professor Daniel Lee, who spoke about the history and future of robotics.

For more on local STEM education issues, see our ongoing coverage.