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.

These new “smart” switches break up a circuit and automatically isolate issues that could cause outages. They’re even wired to communicate problems back to operation headquarters. If a circuit fails, a customer is automatically re-routed to an adjacent circuit and PECO is notified on which circuit the problem has occurred.

“These are one part of a smart system that utilizes these switches to minimize the effects of outages on customers,” spokesman Ben Armstrong tells Technically Philly.

The smart switches are known in the industry as reclosers and sectionalizers, which essentially do the same thing but on different lines of voltage.

Thirteen-hundred distribution circuits in the Greater Philadelphia area have already been augmented with the smart technology and PECO says that the switches have prevented outages for more than a half-million customers.

Armstrong didn’t immediately know how many total distribution circuits are on the system to compare with the number of smart switches.

The switch upgrades are part of a $400 million capital investment program which will upgrade facilities, improve delivery and increase energy efficiency. Sections of Northeast Philadelphia and central Bucks County have already been upgraded with the smart system.

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.

What does AnySourceMedia do?

We are all about providing a technology platform that provides a wide range of video content and other media content directly from the Internet into consumer electronic devices such as HDTV sets. Basically, [we want to] cut out any PC or middleman and stream video from a wide range of sources.

We’re kind of the behind the scenes technology enabler built inside the device, and then we have software that is out in the cloud that manages interactions with all of these content partners that we have.

So you sell the software to TV makers?

We don’t really sell it to the TV guys. We license it to them at basically no cost, and we generate our revenue through advertising and commission transactions that happen through our platform.

What kind of transactions?

Like renting a movie, subscribing to a service and even ultimately purchasing hard goods. Such as: you’re watching a movie on DVD and you want to buy the box set.

Do you guys view something like Boxee as competition?

It’s not completely different, it is in the space. It’s a very different approach to the business model and a very different approach to how they build their technology and how they create relationships. Conceptually, there are some similarities in the problems that we are solving, and that is bringing Internet video to people on a big screen TV.

I mean, they are doing it through a PC platform or hacked third-party boxes but we’re working with top-tier consumer electronics companies to embed it right in at manufacturing time … We’re only focused on doing deals with top-tier content providers. So we don’t get into the same kind of struggles with Hulu that they do for example.

Do you have a favorite video podcast?

I cant say that I have a favorite, we see a lot of different stuff … I like it all, as long as they agree to work with us [laughs].

So you have deals with content partners?

We have a wide range of traditional partners [that we talk to], the cable networks and broadcast networks, about taking everything from mainstream content to behind-the-scenes looks and new channels they are coming out with. But we’re also talking to new Internet channels. Guys like nextnewnetworks or OnNetworks. There’s a bunch of up and coming Internet-only channels. We are also seeing pretty interesting pick up in traditional print media. So magazines, newspapers … guys that have enough video content, but not enough to get on a regular cable channel. But they are really interested in new ways to make money based on what’s happening in print media.

What makes you TechnicallyPhilly?

I moved here in ’91. I’ve lived here longer than anywhere else. So, this is home. My wife was born and raised in Bucks County, we have a core group of people that are either Philly natives, or have lived here for a significant period of time.

We’re happy and proud to be part of this Philly community, so we’re doing some interesting stuff and growing. We’re always looking for talented people.

So you guys are hiring?

Yes, locally. We’re not trying to outsource to some foreign country … we’re trying to fight the good fight against the West coast.

Every Friday, Technically Philly brings an interview with a leader or innovator in Philadelphia’s technology community. See others here.

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.

U-TDOA compares the time difference of mobile-phone signals as they reach units installed on multiple cell towers. Based on the difference in the time it takes to reach each tower, the data is then triangulated to find the phone’s location. The data is 99.9 percent reliable and can locate a mobile device within 50 meters.

The cherry-on-top is that phones can be located at any moment they are idle, making a voice call, or sending or receiving text messages. As the company stated in promotional material, “U-TDOA can locate all mobile phones that want to be located, as well as those that do not want to be located.”

The company began getting calls from nations around the world, curious about how the location-based cellular technology could be helpful for national security and public safety.

“They’d say, ‘you know that really robust solution you deployed? Can you deploy that for us?,” TruePosition Director of Marketing Brian Varano said in a telephone interview. “The answer was an emphatic ‘yes.”

Last week, TruePosition acquired a source code license exclusive to safety and security applications from Profilium Inc., creators of geo-profiling technology that serves location-specific alerts and advertising. TruePosition also acquired a 20 percent stake in the company.

Profilum’s technology is a form of behavioral targeting, the kind that the FTC warned against as recently as last month. The technology combines subscriber preferences and demographics with mobility patterns, ultimately providing data on individual subscriber interests and habits. It then takes that data and delivers highly-targeted advertising to mobile devices.

What does location-based advertising have to do with national security?

The technology is a solution for safety around the world, Varano said, if the geo-profiles being recorded by Profilium’s technology could be linked with actual phone numbers. The patterns of usage that Prolifum gathers for its advertising data is kept anonymous.

Of course, linking trackable, real-time location-based data to citizens begins to raise serious privacy concerns.

In the U.S., law enforcement agencies wanting to link the data would need necessary warrants (except in the case of emergency exceptions—if lives are on the line— when real-time location-based data can be used immediately), Varano said.

“In other parts of the world, like the Middle East and Asia Pacific, that legislation isn’t in place, so government can do real-time tracking of suspects without warrants,” he said. He was quick to note that the company isn’t doing any of the tracking; that’s up to the governments.

While Minority Report comparisons could be apt, there’s validity to the security this technology can provide.

Say a suspect is visiting a government building or embassy on a regular basis. The hardware installed on cell towers notices that the same phone has been casing the joint for a number of days, and enables officials to begin building a profile of that phone number.

Or take Improvised Explosive devices (IED), sometimes wired to mobile phone detonators that fire as soon as a phone call or text message is sent to it. TruePosition’s tech is able to notice if a phone has been stationary for an inordinate amount of time.

“If this phone has been sitting next to a government building for four hours, is it someone asleep on a park bench, or a bomb stuffed in a duffelbag?,” Varano asked.

Another aspect of the technology enables government agencies to setup “geo-fences,” virtual tripwires that will notice if a known suspect or terrorist comes within a certain distance of critical infrastructure. Governments can also use the geo-fence concept to extend virtual borders where they’re unable to install tactical infrastructure. In nations hoping to keep out illegal immigrants, for example, any mobile phone could set off the tripwire.

But if a suspect or terrorist knows he’s being tracked, won’t he just switch phones?

The researchers at TruePosition did their homework. Varano noted that individuals often switch SIM cards from device to device or cycle through new pre-paid phones to get law enforcement off their trail.

“They may walk around with four phones; one to call Steve, one to call Frank, another to call George, so it disguises the link between the associates,” he said. “With location information, we can see these four phones traveling together, so you can deduce that it’s the same person.”

The technology can also track influxes of newly purchased pre-paid phones that are ending up visiting the same locations. Same locations, same individual.

Whatever the case, feel safer (or more paranoid) knowing this technology is coming from the Philly region.

Varano said that the company has plans to bolster its presence in Philadelphia between the second and fourth quarters of this year. “We’re a company that’s been around since ’92, does $200 million in revenue, and no one in the Philadelphia area knows what we do,” he said.

Sure, it may be hard to find TruePosition. But trust us, the company won’t have any problem finding you.

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.

The investments were broken into two categories: university research projects and Keystone Innovation Zone funding.

Research projects

1. Lehigh University, in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, received $900,000 to develop nanotechnology materials.
2. The Pittsburgh-based Pennsylvania NanoMaterials Commercialization Center received $500,000 to help grow new and existing energy companies and research projects.
3. The bane of every Temple student’s existence, Penn State, received $850,000 for its Institute for Energy and Environment Faculty Recruitment program.

Keystone Innovation Zone

1. Pittsburgh Central Keystone Innovation Zone received $125,000.
2. York Keystone Innovation Zone received $125,000.
3. Pittsburgh Central Keystone Innovation Zone received $177,975.

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.

Check out our notes from Barron, and we didn’t even get into Bentley chief technology officer Keith Bentley, who still flies coach.

Transcript of interview was edited for length and clarity.

1. If Bentley’s software could be used to improve any piece of infrastructure in Philadelphia, what might you want it to be?
   Hands down, it would be an upgrade of the Schuylkill Expressway to handle 21st-century traffic loads with an integrated mass transit line to reduce both automobile traffic and carbon emissions.
2. Now that the initial federal stimulus has passed, does Bentley have a clear sense of how, where and when it will be involved in any federally-invested projects?
   Because Bentley provides software to the engineers and owner-operators who design and build, and operate infrastructure, we’re a step removed from the process.  Our civil engineering software is used by 47 of the 50 state departments of transportation, including PennDOT, and the U.S. DOT has released $26.7 billion to the states for highway projects.  A small percentage of that money may be used by the states and their consulting engineers to invest in Bentley’s design and engineering software, but most of the stimulus will go to the actual construction costs.
   Also, the majority of our revenues come from subscriptions – that is, our users pay us an annual fee based on the amount of their software usage – so there is a built-in lag time between the increase in software utilization by our users and the increase in Bentley’s revenues.  At Bentley, we’re thrilled with the new found interest in infrastructure, but infrastructure – from buildings to bridges, power plants to waterworks – is all we do, so we’ve always thought that infrastructure is both interesting and a good investment.  In the end, this kind of investment in our infrastructure is not just about stimulating our economy and our business, it’s about sustaining it.
3. Have any good Bentley brother stories?
   When founders Keith and Barry Bentley developed their first product in 1984, they showed it to a group of prospective users and polled them as to how much they would pay for it. As good engineers, they averaged the responses and came up with the price of $7,943.
4. How does Bentley’s software used to design infrastructure projects compare to competitor’s? What is different about your company?
   One of the key differences about Bentley is that we are uniquely dedicated to providing software for the design, construction and operation of infrastructure – that’s all we do.  We are also known for the breadth and depth of our applications, enabling our users to tackle any design challenge, from the longest bridge to the greenest building. This approach has made Bentley the world leader in the fields of water modeling, roads and transit design, bridge engineering, building energy performance and plant operations.
   Bentley is also unique in that it generates over 60 percent of its annual revenues on a subscriptions-based model, where our users pay an annual fee for the use of our software. This business model compels the company to deliver a sustained stream of value to our users as Bentley fosters a long-term relationship with them.
5. Bentley has offices around the world. How strongly do its ties to Philadelphia and the region remain?
   Four Bentley brothers – Keith Bentley, co-founder and chief technology officer, Barry Bentley, co-founder and executive vice president, Ray Bentley, executive vice president, and Greg Bentley, CEO – have lifelong ties to the region and work in our Exton, Pa., headquarters.  Now in our 25th year in Pennsylvania, we look forward to the next twenty-five as a Pennsylvania-based company.
6. If each of the Bentley brothers were superheros, who would they be?
   The Fantastic Four.

Barron didn’t say which one would be the Thing… or the Invisible Woman.

Every Friday, Technically Philly brings an interview with a leader or innovator in Philadelphia’s technology community. See others here.