PECO invests $4 million in smart distribution switches

PECO customers in the Philadelphia region could soon notice improvements to their electrical service. Or if things go as planned, they won’t notice at all.

PECO announced yesterday that 50 “smart” switches, which help prevent wide outages and improve service, are being installed on its grid in Delaware, Chester, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties this year, according to a press release.

At $50,000 to $60,000 per device, PECO has invested $4 million into the project. Installation will begin as soon as this month in Media, North Wales and the Roxborough section of northwest Philadelphia.

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Friday Q&A: Mike Harris CEO of AnySource Media

Malvern-based AnySource Media thinks it has a good guess about the future direction of online video. The company, founded in 2006, provides software to TV manufacturers that allows consumers to pull their favorite Internet content directly to their television.

If you had AnySource’s technology on your TV and hooked-up to the Web, you could order movies, browse your favorite video content and even purchase products without getting your computer involved.

The company, started by former Ravisent Technologies employees, recently closed a $3.2 million funding round provided entirely by local investors and is anticipating its debut and first revenue later this year. We sat down with CEO Mike Harris to discuss how his company makes money without charging TV makers, what he thinks of Boxee and his fight against the West coast. Oh yeah, and he’s hiring.
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Shop Talk: TruePosition knows exactly where you are right now

Stock photo courtesy of TruePosition.

In the mid-90s, the FCC mandated that mobile network operators would have to come up with a way to locate mobile handsets making emergency 911 phone calls.

In stepped Berwyn-based TruePosition.

Unlike a handful of competitors, the technology that TruePosition utilized—Uplink Time Difference of Arrival (U-TDOA)—required no hardware installation on the handsets themselves; instead, U-TDOA collects location data from hardware installed on cellular towers.

Since, the subsidiary of Liberty Media Corporation has installed 75,000 measurement units in the U.S., locates 5 million emergency calls per month and serves 100 million people daily.

Are you a customer of AT&T or T-Mobile? The carriers can locate you in a moment’s notice—using Philly hardware. TruePosition does more than $175 million in revenue each year.

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Philly gets no love from latest Ben Franklin Tech Partners investments

At its quarterly meeting this week, the Ben Franklin Technology Development Authority announced that several universities and Keystone Zones will receive state money to help foster the growth of green technologies. Absent in the latest round, however, were any local businesses, though Chester did get some cash thrown its way for its Keystone Innovation Zone.

Now, to be fair, the Southeastern branch of Ben Franklin Technology Partners certainly has shelled out some cash in the past. However, being the Philly cheerleaders we are, its hard not to be disappointed.

In addition to allocating some money for green initiatives, each branch of the four regional branches of the Ben Franklin Technology Partners also discussed where to place the money received from the Alternative Energy Investment Fund.

According to Governor Rendell, the Ben Franklin Technology Development Authority has invested $4 billion since 2003 and has created 27,000 jobs.

Read the full list of recent investments after the jump.

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Friday Q&A: Chris Barron of Bentley Systems

Bentley Systems, an infrastructure software company based in Exton and run by four brothers, might  ride the wave of federal stimulus dollars in the region.

With more than 450 employees in southeastern Pennsylvania, including at least 300 in tech fields, Bentley is a major player in the region’s creative economy.

“Bentley has a large number of users throughout Pennsylvania designing, building, and managing infrastructure for water and waste water, roads and bridges, rail and transit, power generation and alternative energy, and green buildings and environmentally sensitive land development,” said Chris Barron, the company’s vice president for corporate marketing. “Some” of their clients will be involved with projects that will benefit from the stimulus spending, though he declined to go into specifics.

Though four brothers are the top dogs, Barron says he’s never confused them — “They are all very unique individuals,” he says — but, after the jump, he does share with us his favorite Bentley clan story and suggests, if they were superheroes, just what superheros they’d be.

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