We’re expanding.

Technically Philly is a news organization that aims to help better Philadelphia through technology, by furthering dialogue and connecting its assets.

We earn revenue (and broader impact) through the mission-focused Philly Tech Week (coming again the last week of April), in addition to other events and some underwriting and foundation support. We’re excited about the model.

While we continue to grow here in Philadelphia, we want to have impact in another growing, fractured technology community. Today, we’re announcing that later this summer, we’ll be soft launching Technically Baltimore, with plans for a more formal launch in the fall.

Because we care a whole lot about authenticity and working with a community’s existing strengths, we’re particularly excited to note that we’ll be launching Technically Baltimore in partnership with StartupBaltimore.org, a blog and entrepreneurial community launched by local web designer and startup community organizer Mike Brenner, who will help us transition it into our new publication.

For now, we’re looking for the right Baltimore reporter for the job, someone who wants to get neck-deep in an innovative scene and be a part of what a reporter looks like in the future: one who takes responsibility for having positive impact in the communities she reports.

Check out the job description on BaltimoreTech.net here and JournalismJobs.com here.

For those of you in Philly, nothing to fear. We’ll have the same — if not stronger — coverage here, as we aim to better connect another great city and, perhaps in time, bring together a very strong East Coast technology corridor.

Technically Philly parent company Technically Media is excited to announce Ph.ly, a new URL shortener dedicated specifically to Philadelphia links and stories.

In one month of existence in soft launch mode, more than 250 links have been shared and clicked 20,000 times.

Alongside the URL Shortener, we’ve also announced the Ph.ly News Weekly, a weekly newsletter of Philly’s most important journalism. By signing up using the form at Ph.ly, you’ll receive a weekly email highlighting the three best stories in Philadelphia journalism from every source, curated by the team at Technically Media. It will always remain a free service.

In soft launch, more than 100 locals have already signed up. We’re hoping to grow the list to a few thousand users by April 30 before we start sending out the weekly email. Call it an email Kickstarter campaign.

The Ph.ly service features all the bells and whistles you’ll find with other URL shorteners: you can create custom vanity URLS (like ph.ly/keypulp) and you can check click statistics (like http://ph.ly/st9lp+). You can even add a custom this bookmarklet to your browser toolbar to instantly shorten URLs using the service, seen in the sidebar above.

In the age of microblogging, vanity URL shorteners have emerged as a way to share shortened hyperlinks on social media platforms that limit character use. Companies like The New York Times (nyti.ms), TechCrunch (tcrn.ch) and HootSuite (ow.ly), and more, have adopted their own services.

Future plans for Ph.ly include curating top weekly links shared on the service and offering Philly-wide statistics and reports.

We’ll give credit where credit is due: hyperlocal real estate development blog Brownstoner, which emerged in Philly in late 2010 and just as quickly left the market because of financial concerns here, first launched a URL shortener at the domain. We acquired the domain from the company earlier this year and built the service using the open source YOURLS platform.

We hope Ph.ly can help you show your Philly pride. Check it out today and sign-up for the new Ph.ly News Weekly.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it once more: helping bridge the digital divide in Philadelphia will need to be a concerted city effort. As vital members of Philadelphia’s technology community, you can help.

Join Technically Philly, the City of Philadelphia, KEYSPOT (Powered by the Freedom Rings Partnership), the Knight Foundation and the Free Library of Philadelphia for the launch of Connect Philly at City Hall’s Conversation Hall on April 5 at 3:00 p.m.

Mayor Michael Nutter and the Knight Foundation’s Donna Frisby-Greenwood will help kick-off the launch of the new set of tools, followed by a panel discussion about digital access in Philadelphia. Experts in the fields of broadband infrastructure and broadband adoption will help us understand how Philly is working to bridge the digital divide.

Earlier this month, we announced Connect Philly, a new set of tools which can help citizens find free and affordable access to the Internet and computer training.

The response has been astounding: citizens and stakeholders have come forward to express their intent to spread the word, to help make sure this tool gets in the hands of those that need it most.

Our panel will include Siobhan Reardon, President & Director of the Free Library of Philadelphia; Brigitte Daniel, Executive Vice President, Wilco Electronic Systems, Charles Kaylor, Visiting Assistant Professor at Temple University; and Bryan Mercer of Media Mobilizing Project.

The event is graciously catered by Saxbys Rittenhouse, which is doing its part to bridge the divide by providing free computer workstation access, free printing and more.

At the panel, we’d like to learn how far have we come since a 2008 report that 40% of Philadelphia households lack access to the Internet. What has changed? What can be improved? RSVP here to discuss.

ABOUT CONNECT PHILLY

Connect Philly is an interactive map that visualizes neighborhood-level broadband access, along with showing more than 200 locations that provide Internet access in Philadelphia: recreation centers, library branches, computer centers, retail storefronts and more. See it live now at http://connect.technicallyphilly.com

Using any mobile phone, citizens can send their address by text message to find the closest available Internet access point. Try it now: type an address in an SMS message (i.e. “1515 Market St.”) to 215-240-7296. In a matter of seconds, you’ll be able to find the closest location that provides free, or nearly free, access to the Internet.

Another in the Entrance Exam series, as part of the Why I Love Philly campaign from Young Involved Philadelphia and Indy Hall. Tell the world why you love where you live by tweeting #whyilovephilly.

When it comes to covering a community, it has always been an asset to have a healthy mix of reporters with deep ties and others who bring fresh eyes. After three years of intensive coverage of the technology community here, it was time for a new perspective.

A young, curious reporter who was living in San Francisco but with family in the region here seemed like a fine choice to add to the Technically Philly team as our newest dedicated reporter.

Meet Yael Borofsky, who was most recently serving as a project director and associate editor at the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland, Calif. based think tank dedicated mostly to global energy and climate issues.

Borofsky, 24, was born at Thomas Jefferson Hospital and was raised with stints in the Art Museum district, Overbrook Park, New Jersey and Reading, though mostly in Oaks. To be fair, her Philadelphia authenticity needs no defending.

Despite her time in the Bay Area and dedicated Ivy League undergraduate career at Cornell, Borofsky was still penning a Flyers column for a small blog network. Yes. A Flyers column.

In the interview process, she stood out for other reasons too, so, like we do with other smart people who join the technology community here from areas far and wide, we wanted to learn more. Below, we talk more about her interests and how you can start a conversation with her before talking about your latest project.

Edited for length and clarity.

What is your interest in technology, specifically a local community of it?

The work I’ve done studying technological innovation at my previous job has made me interested in technology from a sociological perspective. What inspires someone to create something new? How do people — like me — react to new technologies and incorporate them into their daily lives? How do communities adjust to the positive and negative consequences of new technologies? These are the types of questions that make me so curious about reporting on the technology community in Philadelphia.

As a semi-outsider, there is really a sense in Philly that technologists are creating products and services to improve or enhance the lives of their fellow Philadelphians. I’m excited to understand how the tech community touches all the other communities that thrive within the city.

What are you most looking forward to about Philly?

I’m really excited to see the Phillies and Flyers play essentially whenever I want. I’ve also been following the renaissance of food and coffee in Philly and I can’t wait to discover my favorite spots. I love that feeling when you’ve got a go-to place in every neighborhood. It makes a big city feel like home. Oh! And I’m very happy to be so close to my family after living 3,000 miles away from them — Hi Mom!

Why should entrepreneurs and other tech community members come to you with their stories?

One thing I’m really fascinated with is how people come up with ideas and then bring them to fruition. I’m of the mindset that the most fantastic innovations are rarely the product of just one mind, which means technology creation stories are always full of quirky twists and improbable turns. I’m really curious to hear these tales so it’s a major perk that it’s my job to report on them.

Why do you think Technically Philly is a good fit for you?

Technically Philly is a great fit for me because it allows me to work at the intersection of some of my greatest passions: writing and journalism, technology and cities. It’s a pretty good deal that it’s my job to spend every day exploring and writing about technology in a vibrant and complex city like Philly. It’s also invigorating and motivating to work with people who share some of my passions.

What are you going to miss most about San Francisco/Oakland?

Aside from cheesy things like my friends — and our book club — roommates and my beautiful apartment in Noe Valley, I’m going to miss, in no particular order: the Saturday morning farmers’ market at the Ferry Building, Blue Bottle New Orleans style iced coffee, Cafe Sophie mochas with marshmallows, running through Strawberry Canyon to Grizzly Peak in Berkeley, beet balsamic ice cream and everything about hiking at both Big Sur and Point Reyes National Seashore.

OK, that’s a lot of things. I’m really going to miss the Bay Area. But I’m also stoked about living in Center City and bragging to my dad that I can eat at his favorite restaurant, Charles’ Plaza, whenever I want, without getting caught in traffic on 76.

What perceptions did you confront in San Francisco of Philly?

I think San Franciscans are totally convinced that all babies in Philly drink cheap beer.

Tell us something surprising about you that’s going to be a great ice breaker for someone to talk to you about?

If you want to get me monologuing about something other than curly hair, ask me about my memory blog, Mneumozine, about San Francisco or about my love for coffee.

Turns out, despite the focus on them in technology news, there are lots of questions about what exactly a ‘startup‘ is.

Any new business might use the word as an adjective, but we at Technically Philly think we need a philosophy for what exactly constitutes a technology startup when we categorize and cover their work in the Philadelphia region.

Here’s our definition. Tell us what we’re missing.

• Broadly, a startup is a new business that is testing plans for scalable revenue.

Though not always, a technology startup typically has these common traits:

• Fewer than 20 employees
• Younger than three years
• Seeking or have secured early-stage investment, especially angel and Series A.
• Looking at scale of a product, rather than growth of a service
• Led by initial founders who describe themselves as entrepreneurs
• Focusing on disrupting existing processes through greater efficiencies
• Often involves technology solutions to create efficiencies through product over service

We want to hear from you, the reader, in our first ever readership survey, here. It’s just 10 questions and should take just five minutes of your time.

Almost three years ago, Technically Philly launched.

We wanted to cover technology how we thought it should be covered: locally, with an eye to urban renewal by creating jobs, making government more transparent and combating the digital divide. While we played newsman, we also focused on making the product sustainable through sales.

We launched a consulting practice, threw events, helped create Philly Tech Week and have gone about being a part of connecting a community. From our very original business plan, we wanted to grow to a membership, where we would be offering clear value for a community that would, in turn, help support us.

Our content will always be free and available, but we think there are other services we can offer and some we already do that are worth paying for. We want to hear from you to get a better sense of what you think we should focus on.

So, please, take our 10-question, five-minute membership survey here.

Today, we’ve launched the Philly Tech Week media kit, which you can flip through by clicking the embed above to active full-screen mode, or by clicking this link.

Using data and information we collected from attendees, this publication will help you understand the value of the inaugural Philly Tech Week, held in April, which brought together 4,000 people at 65 events and had city-wide impact.

The big takeaways are in the 2011 numbers:

• 65 events across broad range of technology industries
• More than 4,000 people attended events throughout the region
• Featured in more than 50 stories in newspapers, radio, television and blogs
• 35 participating sponsors signed on for inaugural year
• 30,000 unique visits to PhillyTechWeek.com and TechnicallyPhilly.com during month of event as well as 1,000 social media mentions

We hope this media kit shows why we need your help to make a success out of Philly Tech Week 2012, to be held April 22 through April 28, 2012. Check out the media kit here. Sign-up for email updates and look for a Fall launch of the 2012 website here.

If you’re already interested in getting involved, learn how to organize an event or how to sponsor Philly Tech Week.

Today, City Paper has an issue full stories about Philadelphia’s vacant land, which the publication calls, arguably the city’s “biggest problem, and also our biggest opportunity,” News Editor Isaiah Thompson writes.

The series was completed in partnership with PlanPhilly and well, Technically Philly, which we’re proud to report this afternoon. Our part? Helping the paper convene data and create an interactive property explorer that, interestingly enough, shows properties sold by the city’s Redevelopment Authority that remain vacant today. The raw data used to create the map are also available there.

The full series completed by City Paper is available here.

Hats off to Tim Wisniewski, who created the application (and put up with our meddling). Wisniewski has been tied closely to Philly’s hacker scene of late, after coordinating on several Open Data Philly hackathons that we’ve hosted. Be sure to check out his other big property data project, the OPA Data Liberator, recently rebranded as phillyaddress.com.

It was in the first days of publishing Technically Philly two years ago that we came to understand that the city’s broadband infrastructure played a crucial role in our technology community.

Wireless Philadelphia, an effort to provide free, wireless access to city dwellers, had ended a failure. Verizon had only recently been allowed to expand its internet connectivity services to residents here, and Comcast had staked a much bigger claim over the city by altering its skyline with its tallest building.

So it was with much bewilderment that when we browsed through the Planning Commission’s comprehensive Philadelphia2035 plan, the first undertaken in more than 60 years, there was little mention of the copper, cable and fiber-optic lines that run deep beneath the city, helping connect it with a global economy. Though the plan is incomplete, summaries of the plan have under-represented what we believe is vital to the city’s economic growth: broadband connectivity. Without more detailed plans to implement next-generation connectivity, the city risks missing an important opportunity.

A few weeks ago, the Commission released the first draft of the plan [PDF], seeking comments from city residents.

That’s where you come in.

Today, we’re asking for some input that we can provide immediately to the Planning Commission on your vision of this city’s needs to support and expand broadband access. What needs are unmet for your individual or business purposes? What problems have you witnessed regarding broadband infrastructure that you’d like to see changed? What are other cities doing that are a benchmark for success? Respond in the comments below, or send an email directly to info@technicallyphilly.com before Monday, March 28, and we’ll make sure your comments are heard. Now’s your chance to help shape the future of Philadelphia’s broadband access.

And after the jump, more details on the Broadband2035 project, the editorial series that we’re officially announcing today, which will take a deep look at this city’s broadband infrastructure.

In March, the Division of Technology announced plans to compete for Google’s ultra-high speed Gigabit fiber pilot program, electing separately University City — where the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University are located — and a stretch of neighborhoods from Old City to Fishtown which relies on commercial infrastructure. Though it is assumed that both areas would attract more businesses with higher-speed access, some neighborhoods in the city struggle to provide little affordable broadband access.

What lessons can be learned from these areas that can help inform the city’s comprehensive Philadelphia2035 plan? Does broadband investment in University City and along the city’s waterfront translate to increased economic activity? How does the investment unique to each of these two areas compare with a neighborhood with little investment? Finally, how can the city best support the creation of next-generation high-speed connectivity to spur growth?

In partnership with online news provider PlanPhilly, which covers planning, design and development in Philadelphia, in November Technically Philly was awarded $5,000 from J-Lab, a journalism innovation think tank based in Washington, D.C., to produce Broadband2035, a series of reports that will help examine the impact of broadband infrastructure in the region.

Through June, freelancer Chris Reber will write a series of seven reports covering such topics as Philadelphia’s broadband failures, Comcast and Verizon’s involvement with connecting the city, dark fiber that runs beneath our city’s municipal buildings, the role of broadband in encouraging business relocation in neighborhoods here, and overall, a report we hope will help impact the Planning Commission’s comprehensive plan.

Look for the first of those reports in a few weeks.

Philly Tech Week is starting to focus in on impact. Today we have four big announcements for the April 25-30 week of events.

HEADQUARTERS: WHYY, the region’s public media organization based in Old City, will be the official headquarters for Philly Tech Week, offering up its beautiful, modern Dorrance H. Hamilton Public Media Commons.

Working with TEDx, Barcamp Philly and Refresh Philly event planner and community builder Roz Duffy, WHYY will play host to a brown bag lunchtime speaker series that week, in addition to our Friday night signature event, which will serve as the week’s highlight. More details to come there.

CIVIC HACKING: In other exciting news, as part of the third annual national BarCamp NewsInnovation, held Saturday, April 30 at Temple University, we’ll also be hosting the Open Gov Hackathon organized by Tropo. Coders, designers and developers will be creating civic-minded tools, largely using newly shared government data. We want the hacker crew and journalists to work together to create projects that will be utilized and have the best chance to make impact. It’s a good fit with our Transparencity coverage. Find out more on the BCNI blog here, and expect more to be finalized soon.

GETTING THE WORD OUT: We’re also proud to announce that we’re working with Grid magazine publisher Red Flag Media to land the first Philly Tech Week print supplement on the streets that week, which will feature the week’s calendar, but also fresh content on our community and sponsor shout outs. That’s in addition to that hot Philly Tech Week website from the Jarv.us development team in Northern Liberties and the forthcoming Philly Tech Week app from Alkali Media.

NEW PARTNERS: New sponsors include the City of Philadelphia Commerce Department, Chariot Solutions, Reed Technology, the University City Science Center and Tropo, and new event organizers include Wharton, First Round Capital, the Philadelphia Science Festival from the Franklin Institute, Indy Hall, the African American Chamber of Commerce and more. Many, many more conversations are still alive.

Check out our Sponsorship one pager and Event organizer guide to become a part.

Expect lots more events, partners and details soon. Clear your calendar for April 25-30 and get involved!