Zonoff wants to make your iPad the remote control for your entire home

A screenshot from Zonoff's iPad remote control software.

Mike Harris has been down this road before.

The former CEO of AnySource Media has been laying low after his last company exited to Divx in 2009. The company helped make software to connectt TVs to the Internet, a precursor to the long-rumored Apple TV set. But now, he’s taking that idea to the next level.

“Zonoff is the next frontier of that, connecting everything else in the house to the Internet,” says Harris. And he means everything. “Thermostats, blinds, refrigerators .. you name we want to connect it.”

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Seed Philly: Center City nonprofit startup accelerator collecting business data, hosting first event

Chatter about the need for a post-incubation home for technology startups outside of the life sciences realm in Philadelphia has been a topic of conversation among investors and entrepreneurs since at least the late 1990s.

In the past year, the seriousness of those conversations has grown, with a handful of new initiatives launching in recent months focused on the concept of offering support to build largely fledgling consumer-facing efforts seeking investment.

The long-rumored startup accelerator Seed Philly is aiming to differentiate itself by placing mission over profit and featuring a heavy reliance on data, Technically Philly has learned.

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Curbed.com: new Philly outpost of real estate blog network from NYC to be led by Liz Spikol

The competitive real estate and built environment news community of Philadelphia has a new player.

Curbed.com, the New York City based blog network, which also has regional versions in nine other markets, today launches Philly.Curbed.com. The local site will be edited by Liz Spikol, the former Philadelphia Weekly columnist and editor of the now defunct Hispanic tech magazine Tek Lado.

“Curbed marries an obsession with real estate and neighborhoods with wit and entertainment,” said Spikol. “It’s fun.”

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MyHeartMap Challenge launches contest and mobile app to crowdsource map of Philly defibrillators

Automated external defibrillators are life-saving devices located in buildings and public spaces like fire extinguishers across the country. But no one really knows where they are in any broader way.

With the MyHeartMap Challenge, launching this week, a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania is hoping to crowdsource the location of every AED in Philadelphia and raise awareness about the tools, as Technically Philly previously reported.

Here’s how the challenge will work: interested participants should register at the MyHeartMap site and download the contest app to a smartphone. If you find an AED, take a picture of it. The app will geotag the photo for the Penn researchers who plan to use the information to create a database and comprehensive map of all the AED’s stashed throughout Philadelphia county.

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Soapy by Griffin Boyce: SOPA legislation is shelved for now, but University City developer has work-around for later

University City developer Griffin Boyce built Soapy, a SOPA work-around browser plugin.

Before the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) blackout took hold last week, Griffin Boyce, a University City-based web developer, thought up a more practical way to protest a piece of legislation that many believe would amount to censorship — create some software to work around it.

In less than three hours, the self-taught Boyce built Soapy, a web browser plug-in that would allow a user to see a website blocked under SOPA by automatically redirecting the user to the site’s IP address. Designed to be easy to use and open source, the software is free, can be downloaded by anyone and has caught attention nationally.

Download it here.

The idea, Boyce explained to Technically Philly, was to build and publish the software as soon as possible before a Senate vote on SOPA’s sister bill, Protect IP Act (PIPA), originally scheduled for tomorrow, knowing that if the bill passed, distribution of Soapy would be illegal. Though the legislation has been shelved for now, the issue will likely be heard again.

“With Soapy,” Boyce said, “you’re popping the censorship bubble, and slipping past information blocks.”

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Code for America 2012 Philadelphia fellows announced: Elizabeth Hunt, Michelle Lee, Alex Yule

After being among the inaugural city governments partnering with the Code for America program, the City of Philadelphia is starting another cycle.

From 550 applicants, there are 26 Code for America 2012 fellows to be broken into teams for eight partnering cities this year. This month, the fellows are in San Francisco in a CFA bootcamp before landing in their cities for the month of February for research and finishing out the year back on the West Coast building and working with the city from afar.

Though they don’t land until Feb. 1 and Technically Philly will speak to them in greater detail, here’s an introduction to the three 2012 Philadelphia fellows. (Remember the 2011 fellows here.)

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Venturef0rth: new near-Center City incubation space from three serial entrepreneurs seeks applications [VIDEO]

Updated, 1/12/12, 1:08 p.m.: The base price for Venturef0rth’s rental fees is $395, not $345 as previously reported. A 12-month commitment brings the fee down to $345.

A new early stage incubation space opened its doors for the first time last night in what could have been a familiar setting for some in the creative realm of Philadelphia.

Venturef0rth — with a zero, not an ‘o’ — offers cheap, collaborative space for a curated group of small entrepreneurial teams and access to the initiative’s three founders, all of whom have experience in building and exiting technology businesses in Philadelphia.

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IndyViews Video: member testimonials from Indy Hall, largest Philadelphia coworking community

Members of Indy Hall all seem to agree that what makes the Old City coworking space so great is, to summarize, themselves. That’s the takeaway from “IndyViews,” a rough cut of Indy Hall member interviews conducted as part of an introspective analysis of its impact.

An earlier draft of the report was released in July, without the video accompaniment, which is the first step in a new effort by the four-year-old coworking scene to brand its impact. More on that effort will be announced next month, said Indy Hall co-founder Alex Hillman.

“The people here are the best around,” said freelance designer Johnny Bilotta, who is also one half of the “Two Guys on Beer” podcast. “The people that come here and stay here and contribute to it, they’re second to none in Philadelphia as far as I’m concerned.”

From the beginning, co-founders Hillman and Geoff DiMasi have made great pains to stress that Indy Hall is less a building and more, to use their feel-good word of choice, “a community,” which they say is a testament to their growing success.

Cliff Stevens, serial entrepreneur and CEO of startup Lokadot, called Indy Hall a “people platform” and, based on this series of nearly a dozen interviews, his description is apt.

Check out the early video, produced by Real Arts Media, above to hear more about what members say makes Indy Hall a hotbed for all kinds of creative-types, technology and otherwise, in Old City.

pureNANO Technologies will be ‘the Intel of nanotechnology,’ power flat-screens and solar panels of future: CEO Lev Davidson

pureNANO leaders: CEO Lev Davidson and Eric Borguet

If you want to talk about the Philadelphia region’s distinction for startups, it lies in the slice of life sciences called nanotechnology, says Lev Davidson.

Davidson is the CEO and co-founder of pureNANO Technologies, which produces proprietary, ultra-pure carbon nanotubes said to be some 50,000 times narrower than a human hair and 100 times stronger than steel.

How do you make money on really tiny tubes?: by producing “the world’s most energy efficient flat-panel displays, high-performance flexible thin-film solar cells and advanced mobile water filtration systems,” boasts the company’s promotional materials.

“pureNANO will be the Intel of nanotechnology by providing the material that will enable technologies which will fundamentally disrupt innumerable industries,” said Davidson, 28, who lives in Center City and grew up in Lafayette Hill, Montgomery County. “We will do for nanotech what the Intels of the world did for computing.”

To start, in May, the company took top honors and $125,000 in cash, prizes and services at Temple University’s Fox School of Business 13th annual Be Your Own Boss Bowl. With co-founder, chief scientist and Dublin-native Eric Borguet, 48, pureNANO was also a standout in the last GoodCompany Ventures incubation class.

That’s a good start but not yet the global disruption that Davidson is seeking. So what’s next?

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Frank Taney: open office hours for entrepreneurs from @ScaryLawyer of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney

Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney commercial litigation attorney Frank Taney hosts open office hours for young tech businesses in the region.

Since starting to host free, monthly open office hours in June, Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney attorney Francis X. Taney has met with nearly two dozen entrepreneurs he never knew before.

“Some become paying clients, some I never see again, but almost everyone walks away with some knowledge they needed, which is really the point,” said the Center City commercial litigation lawyer better known on Twitter as @ScaryLawyer. “The bigger, the stronger the pie in Philadelphia, the better it is for all of us.”

(Which is a good perspective, as Technically Philly is hosting another startup advice open hours on Jan. 19, albeit more focused on investment than potential litigation.)

Taney’s effort started at the Corzo Center at the University of the Arts by answering questions from students who were mostly starting industrial crafts and other creative arts businesses. Now it’s grown into part lead generation and part giving back, he says, helping startups the fourth Wednesday of each month. The next opportunity will be Jan. 25 from 6-8pm.

“I’m typically very useful to people who are trying to figure out the legal bases they have to cover in launching a business, whether that relates to entity selection and formation, contractual and IP issues or other related issues,” said Taney, noting he has walked through actual disputes with young businesses.

One advantage of sitting with so many startups, says the South Jersey native and Cherry Hill resident, is that he’s been able to get a good sense of where the broad entrepreneurial community is headed in Philadelphia.

“You’ve always tended to see less of a bubble here, and that’s still the case” he said. “Nobody’s chasing the sizzle. They’re building businesses.”

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