Freedom Rings: stimulus-funded computer lab opens in homeless facility [AUDIO]

Photo: VOA - M. Petrillo

An update on the Freedom Rings partnership and the stimulus-funded, planned 48 mobile broadband centers, which have opened elsewhere, comes from Voice of America, including an audio report:

Lonnette currently lives with her mother at the People’s Emergency Center in Philadelphia. It serves as a transitional residence for homeless single women and their children. The dozens of families it serves had no in-house computer access until last week, when the city opened a computer lab in the center.

MORE

Geekadelphia founder Eric Smith, of Quirk Books, on his Textual Healing novel podcast

Geekadelphia co-founder Eric Smith in an artistic favorite of his friend Michaelangelo Ilagan.

Eric Smith is a friend.

Let’s not hesitate in sharing the disclosure. A figurehead of Philadelphia’s young blogging scene, there aren’t many people involved in web communities in this city who don’t know Smith.

But Smith, 27 (though he turns 28 this Sunday), is involved in enough cool projects that intersect with technology, the web and Philadelphia that it’d be something of a sin to not share them.

He is the newly minted chief of social marketing for indie Old City-based Quirk Books — famed for its Pride and Prejudice and Zombies title — after ending a three-year tenure at the helm of popular arts and entertainment blog uwishunu, and spends his weekends and nights, well, he spends them playing.

“I like to have fun,” Smith says, in what is much more an ethos than a cliche for him.

Read more

Museum Without Walls audio program tours the art of the Ben Franklin Parkway

The Iroqoius model at 24th Street north of the Ben Franklin Parkway by Mark di Suvero. The story behind the sculpture is part of a new audio initiaitve from the Fairmount Park Art Association.

Ben Franklin Parkway, the cavernous promenade that thunderclaps from City Hall to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, never developed the type of urban density that the French boulevard after which it was modeled in the 1920s.

In reaction, city and state officials announced this week the immediate launching of $19 million in improvements meant to make the signature thoroughfare more pedestrian and bicycle friendly.

Tomorrow, another, unrelated initiative launches to better connect the prize art and acclaimed cultural institutions that litter the parkway like trash blowing in a neighborhood breeze.

Read more

Links: MC Hammer at Wharton, chatting Jimmy Wales and More

DEFINITE READS

• Pittsburgh Tribune Review reports that that city will put a bid in for Google’s announced ultra-fast Internet product.
• Keystone Edge has a Q&A with University of the Arts professor and tech-art entrepreneur Slavko Milekic.
• The Inquirer reports that MC Hammer will be appearing at a Wharton event, and, yes, TP will try to crash the party.

Below, Gabe Weinberg talks with Jimmy Wales, comic book classes and more.

Read more

Nutter to Chamber: experiment with city biz taxes, retain tech firms

Comcast Exec. VP David Cohen, after introducing Mayor Michael Nutter. Photo by Rikard Larma for Metro

Life sciences, engineering, computer system design firms and the video game industry were among the members of the region’s creative economies whose fates were addressed during Mayor Michael Nutter’s address to the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce this week.

Those mentions, in addition to the rest of his speech, focused on the economy, noting that job creation is a top priority of the coming year and outlining an experimentation with the city’s tax structure. He also warned of another tight budget and tough economic year.

“When I took office one of my top priorities was to transform the way that city government interacts with business, to encourage investment and development, rather than chase it away,” Nutter said. “Now, with many Philadelphians out of work and small businesses struggling to survive, creating jobs and encouraging investment is no longer one of my top priorities, it is my top priority.”

Below, listen to Nutter’s speech.

Read more

RJ Metrics makes a rap video and admits it

Jake Stein at left and Robert Moore at right of business dashboard firm RJ Metrics performing in their "Business Intelligence" rap video.

And now for something totally different.

You may be tired of the ironic rap video — we know we are — but sometimes an old idea can pass. Does this?

Jake Stein and Robert Moore, the two Ivy League-educated entrepreneurs behind the business intelligence dashboard RJ Metrics that opened up shop earlier this month, have broken from their cipher and put business on wax.

Stein, who lives in Center City, sings the hook and plays straight man to Moore in their single “Straight Outta Camden,” noting their recent move to the Rutgers University-Camden tech incubator.

Peep the video and score an exclusive download after the jump.

Read more

How social media took Asher Roth from Philly suburbs to hip hop stardom

It’s going to be that anthem you hear over and over again this summer, and the artist behind it happens to have grown up in Bucks County, a half hour Regional Rail ride into Center City.

Like a growing collection of young artists, Asher Roth, the artist behind “I Love College,” found his path to a major label album by way of MySpace. But it seems likely he’ll see more than Internet fame.

I helped profile Asher Roth on the cover of today’s Philadelphia Weekly, but during our interview last month, we also spoke about the role social media have had on launching his career.

Read more