Shop Talk: Obama Girl’s Leah Kauffman on Phrequency.com redesign

Updated: 5:33 p.m. 6/10/09 with additional attribution

This is part of an irregular series of our Shop Talk department, called The Redesign.

On a Friday afternoon in early May, Leah Kauffman dons a t-shirt to show off her gang affiliation.

A pair of hands screenprinted on the bright red tee are positioned similarly to the Bloods street gang hand signal. Fingers on the right hand are contorted into the shape of the letters ‘b,’ ‘l’ and ‘o.’ The left hand is flipped upside-down, and the index finger curled, creating a hanging “g.”

‘Blog,’ it reads.

At first glance, it’s easy to miss. But it makes sense. Kauffman runs Philly.com’s Phrequency, a news portal that covers the movers, shakers and rattlers of Philly’s music community.

In April, Phrequency was redesigned with a more streamlined, blog-esque interface; dropping the clunky, genre focus that forced users to choose hip-hop or punk, R&B or jazz, for a content-oriented design that doesn’t split hairs on artists who span all of those.

It was a move that Kauffman had wanted to make for months.
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State agencies to “aggressively pursue” $8 billion in high speed rail investments

Pittsburgh, meet Philadelphia. Philadelphia, meet Reading.

A rail system high-speed rail system could connect Philadelphia to Pittsburgh through Harrisburg and a second system could link Philadelphia to Reading if state agencies win funding being set aside by President Obama from the economic stimulus package for high speed rail corridors.

State officials have been practically giddy about the administration’s proposal to invest $8 billion in high-speed rail corridors, including ones in Pennsylvania.

“What was so gratifying today was to have President Obama offer a forward-looking vision for high speed rail that will provide mobility options for the nation and contribute to a much needed strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Pennsylvania transportation secretary Allen Biehler said in a press release issued by the Governor’s office.

Officials say that the state’s Keystone Corridor—between Harrisburg and Philadelphia—and an oft proposed link between Philadelphia and Reading, are two projects that could qualify for funding. Biehler told KYW Newsradio that PennDOT will also explore additional services between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg.
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Emerging Technology for the Enterprise conference rolls into Philadelphia

Unlike the last major expo to roll through the city, the Emerging Technology for the Enterprise conference was all business. The event, presented by Chariot Solutions, had a target audience of developers and IT managers, so serious businessman were rubbing elbows in the lunch line with young 20-something programmers in XKCD t-shirts. If you listened, you heard the names of management philosophies mentioned in the same breath as up and coming programming language, and yet, everybody was on the same page.

The day’s sessions were organized in “tracks.” Two of the five rooms were focused on development and programming. Another room was devoted strictly to topics pertaining to the AGILE development model. Cloud computing and management rounded out the other rooms. Until Technically Philly masters the art of omnipresence, we could only attend a few of the first day panels including the keynote by RedHat’s open source evangelist Michael Tiemann. We were also unable to swing by today for an anticipated keynote by Jascha Franklin-Hodge, CTO of Blue State Digital, which spearheaded Obama for America’s online initiatives. If you were able to attend, be sure to let us know your thoughts in our comments.

Our take on yesterday’s keynote and sessions after the jump.
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