Philly invades South by Southwest

Indy Hall founders Alex Hillman and Geoff DiMasi lead "How Geeks Grabbed Philadelphia by the Balls."

AUSTIN – In the Courtyard Rio Grande Hotel, just across the street from the Austin Convention Center, BarCamp Philly organizers Roz Duffy and Kelani Nichole walked up the escalator with a burlap sack and hustled down the hall.

“It’s our bag of balls,” said Duffy with a smile.

Culminating Philly’s strong presence here (TP has seen our share of Phillies caps and jerseys) was the Saturday session “How Geeks Grabbed Philadelphia by the Balls,” a panel led by Indy Hall co-founders Alex Hillman and Geoff DiMasi that aimed to help residents from other cities foster a tech community.

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Avencia becomes Azavea, relents on trademark dispute, to launch redesigned site

Robert Cheetham doesn’t want to change his name.

The founder of Avencia doesn’t want to be forced to develop a new brand for his Callowhill-headquartered GIS software firm.

“Avencia will now be known as Azavea – pronounced like ‘azalea’. There is no particularly good reason for this, and this was not a change that we sought,” Cheetham says. “We liked our name just fine.”

But the change has come just the same, the result of giving into the financial pressures of a three-years-old trademark dispute.

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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.

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P.Y.T.’s Tommy Up uses Foursquare to pack the house… in a blizzard

Last week, as Philadelphia was crying mercy from its second snow storm in less than a week, most local restaurants and shops closed up business for the day as Philadelphians were unable to even see down the block.

Yet, nestled in the back of the Piazza in Northern Liberties, P.Y.T. was packed to the brim. Every table in the burger joint was filled with indicators that its inhabitants had settled in for the long haul: empty beer pitchers, stacks of winter gear shoved into the booths and plates filled with onion rings and burger crumbs lettering the tables.

So, how did P.Y.T. fill a restaurant when SEPTA wouldn’t even dare run busses?

Being located under an up-and-coming apartment complex doesn’t hurt, but owner Tommy Upgegrove (better known as Tommy Up)messaged his 300 Foursquare friends that those who arrived early to the restaurant would be able to take advantage of an open bar.

By 1 p.m. the offer had been rescinded, but it didn’t matter. P.Y.T. turned a blizzard into one of its best days of the season and its owner proved why, thanks to social media, he was the restaurant world’s undisputed king of low-budget promotion.

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TNT: MobiStories children books entertain anywhere

What does the color green sound like when it swooshes? Rick Toone and the rest of the crew at Doylestown-based MobiStories could tell you.

“We get wrapped up in all these little details,” he says, that go into creating the business’s interactive children’s books made for PCs and mobile devices.

The more-than-40 available MobiStories titles don’t feature any animation, but rotating thought bubbles, transitioning story text and high-quality voice acting help keep kids’ attention. They’re designed as if someone is reading right from the book.

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Technically Not Tech: Midtown Lunch invades Philadelphia

Update: Added blogger interview.

Let the record show that Technically Philly has two immediate reactions to MidtownLunch.com, the blog that aims to showcase cool places to eat during your lunch break for under 10 bucks:

1. Wonderful idea, a man can only go to Wawa so many times for lunch.
2. “Midtown?” C’mon now.

The site, originating from The 67th Ward, first expanded to downtown Manhatten and on January 13th expanded to Philly. The site is popular among Manhatten-ites, even landing coverage in The New York Times . According to Compete.com data, Midtown Lunch’s traffic (which is presumably is mostly due to its NYC content) is more than most of its new Philly competition, even the ones with an established presence in The 67th Ward.

The site author, Jamie (she prefers not to give her last name) is from Flushing and has taken the trip down the turnpike to go to law school (though she won’t disclose which one).

“I just really dislike going to generic [lunch] places,” she said in a phone interview with Technically Philly.

Jamie did her undergrad in the state and said she was always visiting friends in the city while at college. She maintained her own food blog and was profiled by Midtown Lunch before becoming the site’s Philly writer. She said hopes to make Midtown Lunch an outlet where people can find a “more fun lunch for people that work in the city for under ten dollars.”

But will the site’s Philadelphia section catch on here, where food blogs are as abundant as Phillies hats?

We explore using the same +/- rating system that the site uses in reviewing restaurants:

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TNT: National Liberty Museum launches interactive touchscreen exhibit

It’s probably not often that you consider how you learned basic values that shaped your moral views in life. But the folks at the National Liberty Museum think about it constantly—and believe that a lot of it has to do with believing in heroes.

Likewise, they believe that Old City—where the museum is based—isn’t a bad place to begin those lessons. After all, museum executives say, it was there, 234 years ago, that many brave Americans signed a document that began one of the most important moral battles in world history.

Today, the museum is focused on educating folks, especially children, with those lessons in mind, and earlier this month it announced a new exhibit that uses technology to do just that.

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TNT: coIN Loft brings coworking to Wilmington

According to Wes Garnett, Delaware is the only mid-atlantic state that does not have a coworking space.

“It’s not just because no one has started it,” he says, “but because no one has even heard of coworking.”

Much like many Philadelphians, Garnett sees a northern neighbor taking technology talent from his city when there are plenty of reasons to stay home. Though Delaware is well-known as a tax shelter for large corporations, the state hasn’t exactly been rolling out the red carpet for entrepreneurs, something Garnett and his partners hope to change through coIN Loft.

“In 2007, Delaware was ranked 50 out of 50 for attracting entrepreneurs. The next year we jumped to 35,” he says. “Either way we suck.”

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TNT: The ballet wants you to take your phone out. No, really.

The Rat King from the Pennsylvania Ballet

Among the pantheon of social faux-paus in our society, having a cell phone make even a peep during a live theater performance is high on the list. However, for one show next week, the Philadelphia Cultural Alliance is encouraging patrons to bring their cell phones.

“And that’s the irony of the whole thing,” says Philadelphia Cultural Alliance spokesman John McInerney.

Thanks to a $50,000 grant from PNC Bank, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, an independent non-profit organization funded through grants and member dues, is launching its “Turn Your Cell Phone On!” campaign, a new effort to increase the interactivity of Philadelphia cultural events using mobile technology. The latest implementation of it is due this week with the Pennsylvania Ballet’s performance of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker. Audience members will be able to vote on their favorite characters and scenes using their cell phone.

“A lot of the times you go to a performance and right afterward you leave … but this is actually encouraging people to talk amongst themselves,” McInerney says. Though patrons will still be asked to keep their phone off during the performance, at intermission there will be flat screen TVs and staffers available to display the results and answer any questions, respectively.

The Alliance hopes that the slow implementation of more technology attracts a younger crowd to shows.

“We saw some great interaction where a grandchild was showing her grandmother how to text,” says McInerney.

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TNT: Historical Society’s interactive PhilaPlace Web site needs your stories

The Keystone Sewing Machine company, based at Second and Poplar in Northern Liberties, is located in a building that was once a dance hall built in the late 1800s.

Frankford Avenue’s Bike Stable was built in 1890 to house horses, once sharing a wall with a Kensington police station on neighboring Front St., before Kensington was a part of the city.

These stories, along with more than 150 others, are being shared with accompaniments of video, audio, images and scans of historical documents at PhilaPlace, a new site designed by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, a three-year project that launched last week.

“[We focus on] neighborhoods ‘beyond the bell,’ beyond the revolutionary history. The history of neighborhoods of people who built this city, who make Philadelphia, Philadelphia,” project coordinator Melissa Mandell says.

PhilaPlace had very different beginnings, after a modest grant from Pew’s Heriage Philadelphia program helped the Historical Society package together two trolley tours in South Philadelphia and Northern Liberties.

It was a mandate to talk about 19th century ethnic and immigrant working-class history, Mandell says. “Not being in the trolley tour business,” HSP decided on focusing on a virtual environment as it moved forward.

And the project got bigger—much so.

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