Going Postal: Penn GIS student Evan Kalish creates community around U.S. Postal Service, an early innovator

Evan Kalish

For much of its 220 year history, the U.S. Postal Service was something of a technology company: speeding communication and commerce through innovation, says postal geek Evan Kalish.

Today, in batch machines that can process 40,000 pieces of mail per hour, some 95 percent of handwritten addresses are properly dispatched by OCR technology, the 25 year old student in Penn’s master of urban spatial analytics program.

“[The machines work] from the ZIP code first, then to the address and select the proper street from the limited number of options available, tagging them with the bar codes that you can see on the bottom of first-class letters you receive. Human operators resolve the rest of the addresses remotely,” said Kalish, who lives in University City. “With Delivery Point Sequencing, another machine properly sort the mail for dozens of carriers in proper delivery order, based on their routes, with just two passes of the mail through the system.”

From today to the first ‘fully automated post office‘ back to the pneumatic mail tubes of the past, Kalish, a native of Queens, N.Y., has discovered new corners of the world’s original modern national postal system while writing his popular Going Postal blog, which has been profiled by Time magazine, the Washington Post, BBC and NPR.

All the stories use young Kalish as something of a juxtaposition for growing news of inevitable cutbacks at the U.S. Postal Service. While no doubt an important issue to Kalish, he says the best he can do is grow interest in what remains an impressive organization.

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What’s Poppyn: online youth media news show covers good stories from Philly’s teenagers

As you might guess, most teenagers in Philadelphia are, quite simply, not violent, flash mobbing ne’er-do-wells.

Like their counterparts elsewhere, they’re students, who like clothes and sports and friends. And they care a lot about how others see them.

So it might make sense that when organizers of the University Community Collaborative of Philadelphia, a youth leadership nonprofit housed at Temple University, were looking for a new outlet for the nearly 15-year-old group that its students wanted to create a news program to fight negative perceptions of themselves.

Not enough positive youth voices are being heard above the din of violent exceptions, the group argues.

Meet What’s POPPYN, a quarterly, half-hour online news show about teenage issues in Philadelphia: produced, starring and featuring the group’s participants. This month, the show’s sixth episode launched, focusing on global issues and how local kids are getting involved, and shorter segments are being produced every couple weeks.

“We highlight how young people are positively contributing to their schools, communities and organizations and their voices on local and national issues,” said Natalia Smirnov, the initiative’s media productions and communications manager. “Ultimately, we hope that POPPYN helps to change the perception of young people in the city as criminals, drop-outs, violent flash mobbers, poorly educated.”

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Workshop School: experimental project-based learning charter at Navy Yard follows HybridX program success [VIDEO]

Simon Hauger, one of the lead organizers of the Workshop School, an alternative high school experience launched this academic year at the Navy Yard.

Four years ago, Stefon Gonzalez was a freshman at West Philly High School.

Like others interested in working with his hands at the school since the late 1990s, Gonzalez joined the Hybrid X Team, an after school program that grew national fame for building electric and bio-diesel cars that outperformed college-level teams. Now Gonzalez is finishing his high school career at an experimental, project-based program at the Navy Yard.

This fall, the Hybrid X group, started by West Philly High teacher Simon Hauger, has launched the Workshop School, which embodies the science-driven, hands-on learning of the after school program but expands it to a full school day. Featuring 29 seniors from three different public high schools, Hauger’s effort is housed in a Victorian building overlooking hulking ships at the Navy Yard.

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I-SITE’s recipe for success after 50,000 downloads of its educational, not angry, birds app

What does it take to receive more than 50,000 downloads in Apple’s App Store with an education app dedicated to ornithology?

Sometimes, that kind of success is about a firm’s ability to be flexibile when projects don’t go exactly as planned.

Though an original pitch to an educational institution for a bird-watching app didn’t pan out, it gave Old City-based interactive firm I-SITE a chance to show off its iOS and Android development chops and to approach a new partner.

So it is that this summer, I-SITE and Iridescent Learning, a science education nonprofit, launched Build A Bird for iOS and Android, a free game that teaches children about bird science and ecology.

The app — which lets kids “build” flying creatures with a touch of physics for good measure — was even featured in Apple’s App Store, owing to the bump in downloads. The bird angle — considering the success of Angry Birds — surely didn’t hurt traffic.

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Saturday: Tape ‘n Type aims to revive closeted typewriters and boom boxes

This weekend, Trophy Bikes owner Mike McGettigan’s nostalgic technology showcase will be back on display.

As part of DesignPhiladelphia this Saturday afternoon, owners of old equipment, like typewriters, cassette tape records, boom boxes and hi-fi cabinets will gather at Fergie’s Pub to show off their dated gear at Tape ‘N Type.

The event will feature a speed typing competition, and the chance to swap mixtapes, with a slew of prizes. RSVP here.

Last December, McGettigan launched his Type-in event at 30th St. Station, similar in scope. The new event calls back to the charm of audio equipment before compact discs and digital downloads.

Below, NewsWorks covers the Type-in.

SpotCrime.com: former Philadelphia resident turns tragedy into data

SpotCrime.com screenshot showing its database goes back several years, older than many other services online.

On May 7, 1998, 23-year-old Wharton Ph.D student Shannon Schieber was strangled to death on her second-floor apartment by Troy Graves, who would later be characterized as a serial Center City rapist.

That’s about the time when Colin Drane first moved near 22nd and Chestnut streets in Center City.

“I believe this was part of my inspiration to inform the public and help catch bad guys,” Drane, 41, said. It felt like a Penn student was assaulted every day that September, he added.

His form of detective work? Data. In 2007, Drane launched SpotCrime.com, one of a handful of national city crime data aggregation tools. Drane has been collecting crime reports in Philadelphia for more than four years, first by scraping news reports, then through a daily data dump from the police department.

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JobMuncher: startup aims to centralize the hiring process

For anyone that’s tried to hire a job candidate, using a traditional jobs board can be a challenge.

In many cases, after a job has been posted, applications, resumes and material have to be collected manually through email responses from candidates.

To solve this problem, Cherry Hill’s John de la Rosa and Philadelphia co-founder Kotaro Fujita recently launched JobMuncher, a SaaS product that aims to centralize the hiring experience for employers and potential employees.

Using the site’s online dashboard, employers can communicate with applicants and offer jobs to them directly on the site. Candidates then have the opportunity to accept or decline an offer in the dashboard.

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Bashpole Group: Center City invention house launches first product, the Pocket Grill [VIDEO]

Ben Ashpole has a technology company, and its first product is the infomercial-ready Pocket Grill, boasted to be “the first full-sized grill that fits in your pocket.”

And with a Kickstarter campaign, he’s aiming to push the first round of the grills into the market.

After leaving a job working on software for “a certain large defense contractor with offices in the region” in 2006 and earning a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania, Ashpole starting growing a list of software clients for what would become Bashpole Inc. in 2008. But all along, he had hobby projects, tinkering and tweaking existing products and dreaming up new ones.

By spring 2009, Ashpole’s hobbyist tinkering had grown enough that he thought there might be another business there. He posted an ad on Penn’s student job listings and on craigslist: “something like ‘entrepreneur has backlog of projects, seeks assistance,” he said. One of those projects on his mind was a pocket-sized grill that could actually withhold a hearty slew of meat and vegetables.

Ashpole, 30, took on three engineer masters students, one of whom helped develop the application that led to the company’s first patent, which covers the grill’s particular flexible folding joint, something that could be used in other products, Ashpole said. By the end of 2009, he found Jay Olman, his first full-time employee who helped push forward the design, manufacturing and implementation of the product and that new company, the Bashpole Group.

Not, of course, to be confused with Bashpole Inc., the software company that now has four programmers in a narrow Center City office — “the two companies are named so similar because I’m that creative,” Ashpole said with a laugh.

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NextDocs CEO Zikria Syed: ‘rapid growth’ in a niche life sciences market from King of Prussia

Beyond the bubble, a technology company of stability and promise is probably solving an old problem with new solutions.

Zikria Syed

And that’s how Zikria Syed describes his King of Prussia-based company NextDocs, a Microsoft SharePoint-based company specializing in the life sciences that was called last month Microsoft’s best partner in that industry.

Think of the company like this: a smattering of info products that walk pharmaceutical and biotech companies through their varied, highly-technical compliance processes, often involving the Food and Drug Administration or its equivalent abroad.

CEO and co-founder Syed says, with operations in six countries and projected $15 million in revenue for 2011, NextDocs is seeing all the growth he could have imagined and more.

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Vascular Magnetics, a startup, spawns out of Children’s Hospital

Vascular's treatment, displayed on the left, coats artery walls with iron-infused medicine nanoparticles (in red), compared to existing treatment on the right. By zooming, one can see only small red areas of medicine in existing treatment.

Updated Tue., July 19: Updated in response to comment from Woodward: “We don’t use a stent coated with medicine – we use a temporary, catheter-borne targeting device made of the superparamagnetic steel. In the magnetic field, this device develops gradients which force the drug-loaded nanoparticles into the arterial wall. The nanoparticles are delivered through the same catheter that carries the targeting device,” he wrote in an email.

Folks with Peripheral Artery Disease, a circulation disorder that affects more than 27 million older adults in North America and Europe, often have pain involved with simple tasks such as walking.

Stent-based solutions that treat the disease, which force open arteries and release medicines into the passageways to prevent reblockage, are only temporary. The treatments allow reblockage to occur in about 50 percent of cases after the first year.

But a startup company spun out of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia says it has created a new system of treatment that does a better job, and might have a future in stem cell research.

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