Events highlights for the week of May 25 – May 31, 2009

While you rested in your Memorial Day beverage- and feast-induced slumber, we couldn’t wait to wake up this morning and get cracking on this week’s event highlights.

Why? Because we love you. Not to mention we’re hoping to check out of here by noon, planning to feed off of leftovers in days to come, and reveling in the relaxation that comes with a four-day work week.

That said, we can’t stress enough that you drop in on one of Philadelphia’s many tech events this week. Not next week when you will be backbreakingly re-entrenched at work. No siree. We’re talking about this week, when you are truly appreciating the humidity and the slowed pace of life for the very first and last time this summer and will end up feeling guilty for not getting out there while you can.

We’re anxious to see how the The New Voice of Business kick-off party will go, what, with Mayor Nutter dropping in for the festivities. We’re as skeptical as the next guy about Philadelphia actually becoming the greenest city in America, but hell, let’s let loose Tuesday.

Speaking of letting loose, let’s drop your WordPress into fourth gear and truly get it pumping on the search engine internerds. SEO Grail has blog and new media consultant Michael Klusek to talk about how to mod the heck out of that out-of-box blogging experience. 409, baby.

And last, to echo our love of all things grilled, Philly Startup Leaders is organizing a committee to help plan its first-ever BBQ. Pass the Heinz and a sesame-seed level fund. Holy, we did not just say that. Technically Philly out. Hit the jump for more details.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more information, or follow us past the jump.
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Friday Q&A: John Pino, CEO of networking site i-Meet

John Pino loves launching companies and loves Philadelphia.

So where else would you expect him to launch what he says just might be the next big professional networking service?

In November, Pino founded and self-funded i-Meet.com, which utilizes social-networking features to connect like-minded people in their efforts to organize, plan and promote events. The South Philadelphia-native, who grew up near 17th and Oregon Avenue in St. Monica’s Parish, didn’t want his tech startup based anywhere else but Center City, which he says is on its way to being the next great corridor of innovation.

His “strong launch team” all learned the tech-business game in Philly.

“The impetus,” for the launch Pino says, was a “screaming need for a worldwide network in the meeting and event industry, and we decided we would make it happen. Especially when we figured out how to put a business overlay over the social aspects of the community.”

Now i-Meet has more than 7,000 members from 100 countries worldwide, Pino says, and, though he wouldn’t disclose specific revenue figures, the company has a real monetization strategy, including premium options.

We didn’t mention that we caught the social networker on Facebook, but he did mention how he’s going to make bank, why we don’t need another social network and that his parents were not part of organized crime.

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TicketLeap launches Anywhere, saves competitive biking

TicketLeap saved bicycle racing in Philadelphia.

Or at least the Center City-based event-planning ticketing service provider was one of many partners that helped make sure the 25th annual Philadelphia Cycling Championship was possible, even after a city budget hole left the international race short $500,000.

The company doubled their ticketing of VIP seating with merchandising and donation soliciting to help bring cash to the June 7th race, famed for its chase of the “Manayunk Wall”

While they were saving racing, TicketLeap was also introducing Anywhere, which just might be the first product allowing users to create a virtual box office out of an Internet-enabled computer.

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City CIO’s $100 million Digital Philadelphia vision

PhillyCHI chair Dave Cooksey and human-computer interaction PhD holder Kellie Rae Carter open Refresh Philly session before city CIO Allan Frank takes the stage.

The Nutter administration will invest $100 million during the next four years in city technology, according to plans unveiled tonight by Philadelphia Chief Information Officer Allan Frank.

How they will is far less clear.

Frank unveiled his vision for a Digital Philadelphia Monday evening in front of a crowd of more than 75 members of the Refresh Philly design and developer community, as rain mist drifted past wall-length windows on the 45th floor of the Comcast Center.

The CIO hopes to employ a strategy that would procure federal broadband stimulus dollars to fund a longterm initiative overhauling the city’s technology infrastructure and its Phila.gov Web site.

“I basically want to blow the damn thing up,” he said to members as they clapped in support.

Frank said he’ll be open to input from the Philadelphia tech community leading up to a rough deadline to submit a proposal for federal stimulus dollars on August 15.

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Comcast reports 5.4 percent increase, subscriber growth drops

Today, Philly’s cable giant is surely feeling Comcastic.

Despite poor economic conditions, Center City-based Comcast reported a 5.4 percent increase in net income in the first quarter of 2009 to $778 million, or 27 cents per share, according to financial results released today.

Cable network revenue has been well-off this quarter. Time Warner, Walt Disney and Viacom all reported stronger than expected quarterly profit, Reuters reported yesterday. Comcast beat analyst expectations by 4 cents per share.

Still, Comcast declined to provide a forecast for the upcoming year; Chief Financial Officer Michael Angelakis cautioned that the company is “conservative” about the use of its cash as the year progresses.

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Shop Talk: Philadelphia Weekly redesign with Keith McGinnis of Review Publishing

Update amended: 8:50 p.m. 4/19/09

From time to time in the recent past, one of the most trafficked Web sites in Philadelphia has gotten a major redesign.

Unfortunately, there was never one source that covered the whys and the hows. Now there is: Technically Philly.

So, here’s the first in an irregular series of our Shop Talk department, called The Redesign.

Both of Philadelphia’s big alternative-weeklies have changed their online looks in recent months. It just so happens that the one that came out last may have started first.

At the end December, CityPaper, founded in 1981 by Bruce Schimmel, went from this to this. And then, early last month, Philadelphia Weekly made its own jump from a cluttered display.

“We knew we needed to step up our platform online, not just re-skin the site,” says Keith McGinnis, the IT Web head over at Review Publishing, PW’s Samson Street-based parent company. “Now we have a platform that can help us rise to the occasion.”

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Comcast set to launch “enhanced cordless phone”

Comcast is due for a nationwide launch of what has been called an “enhanced cordless phone,” connecting its VoIP service with e-mail, voice mail, Web access and other features, according to Cable Digital News.

Finally some news about which they want to boast; Comcast has taken a brusing lately.

The announcement comes on the heels of a company investigation into widespread reports from Comcast.net free e-mail users that their accounts were down for long portions of Saturday and they claimed messages were lost. Though less than in previous years, CEO Brian Roberts took some heat when it was announced he was the country’s 13th highest paid chief executive.

Please, $24.7 million ain’t no thang.

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Solve the Philadelphia budget crisis online

Somebody please figure out this city’s budget shortfall so we can go back to prospering.

It can be Mayor Michael Nutter or city council or, Hell, maybe Larry West.

Maybe you can figure it out with a new, very cool online toy from the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, the research and analysis nonprofit based on the Avenue of the Arts.

At EconomyLeague.com/Budget, users get a snapshot of the budget battle, by having to close a $200 million hole with 15 options.

“Through the Philadelphia Budget Challenge as well as the Mayor’s budget forums in February, citizens are getting a look behind the curtain at the real trade-offs city managers have to make,” said Allison Kelsey, a spokeswoman for the Economy League. “It makes for better-informed constituents and voters who can then be better advocates for themselves, their neighborhoods and their city.”

See what went into the project, read how I fared and share your own choices below.

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American Airlines to expand Internet service; sorry no porn

Finally, flight travel will be civilized.

American Airlines is going to install Gogo Inflight Internet on more than 300 of its domestic aircraft during the next two years, according to a boring company press release.

Forth Worth-based American Airlines, which has Market West offices, claims to be the first U.S. airline to launch the service, which they did last August on 15 Boeing 767-200 aircraft. It (lamely) primarily served nonstop flights between New York JFK and San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Miami.

Requests for the airline to apologize for not focusing their efforts on the Philadelphia International Airport were rebuffed by a marketing intern.

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Ladies and gentlemen, we have a war: Boost Mobile trucks crash Cricket party

It’s on.

Technically Philly reported Wednesday that Cricket had the world’s largest cell phone outside the the Shops at Liberty Place. Yesterday, Boost crashed the party.

Less than a half hour after Cricket’s promotional team set up its cell phone and surrounding activity for Thursday’s lunch-time crowd, a flatbed truck – depicted above – hauling a Boost Mobile advertisement and playing an endless loop of Boost boosting began circling the Market West corridor.

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