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.

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Friday Tech Links: Our life sciences sector rocks, the Commodore and More

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun. See others here.

Our region’s life sciences sector ranked first in the “current impact” category, and second overall (to Boston, bah), in a biotechnology industry study conducted by the Milken Institute, according to a report by the Philadelphia Business Journal’s John George, a proud graduate from Temple University-Ambler. As we earlier suggested, this is really one of the more impactful, meaningful and substantiated stupid lists Philadelphia has been put in during recent years.

That news preceded the announcement of one of the year’s largest life sciences venture capital deals happening here. University City’s Avid Radiopharmaceuticals scored a $34.5 million financing, led by a San Francisco VC firm, but assisted by a couple of local boys, BioAdvance, also a Penn neighbor, and Safeguard Scientifics of Wayne, as also reported by George of PBJ.

California tries to ban violent video games for kids, a (sorta) regional Web site management company makes a big aquisition and a lot of messed up Craigslist stories you should read — in addition to our most trafficked post of the week — after the jump.

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