Three new fellows for the citizen hacking group Code for America were introduced Tuesday to OpenAccessPhilly stakeholders to kick-off their year with the City of Philadelphia.

OpenAccessPhilly, a public/private stakeholders group convened by the City of Philadelphia, worked with the inaugural Code for America fellows last year. Nearly 30 OpenAccessPhilly members, including city employees and other technologists, met in the PhillyStat Room in the Municipal Services Building Tuesday evening. The internal meeting was followed by a good old fashioned happy hour at Ladder 15 on Sansom Street.

All of the CFA fellows, Michelle Lee, Elizabeth Hunt, and Alex Yule, chose to spend their Code for America year in Philadelphia — Technically Philly wrote more about the trio here. Hunt said she chose Philly because the city demonstrates “the most focus on civic engagement.”

Philadelphia is the only participating CFA city to welcome fellows in each of the program’s first two years.

“Philadelphia was chosen for a second term because of the strength of its partnerships,” said Lee. “Particularly in city government.”

The City of Philadelphia isn’t another rust belt city and shouldn’t be treated like one. That about sums up the wide-ranging, tone adjustment that served as Mayor Nutter’s Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce annual mayoral luncheon address Monday.

“We can no longer measure ourselves as compared to other cities in the Mid-Atlantic or even throughout the United States,” tweeted:

Referencing Rome and Paris more than he mentioned Chicago or Baltimore, the half-hour speech, which addressed development, investment and a stake in the ground for Philadelphia as international city, featured a call that the technology and startup community is a means to continue to change perception. Read a transcript of the speech here.

“One of the best things to happen to Philly over the last decade has been the growth of organizations that bring big thinkers together such as our own Philly Startup Leaders,” tweeted:

It was the first time tweeted:

“But not the last,” she added.

Soon after 2 p.m., a crush of bankers, lawyers, nonprofit leaders and other corporate managers hit the escalators and spilled out of the Center City Sheraton at 17th and Race streets. The broad business community hasn’t always agreed with the administration, though Chamber chief Rob Wonderling lauded the mayor in his introduction. Still, a different tone is taken by some in the narrow technology business community, according to at least one voice.

“I really think you’re going to see a focus on entrepreneurship and economic development in his second term,” said Bob Moul, the recently named CEO of AppRenaissance and Philly Startup Leaders chief who Nutter mentioned as a model for the city’s future. “It’s an exciting kind of progress.”

Other news from Nutter’s speech:

• Comcast Executive Vice President and Chamber board chairman David L. Cohen kicked off the event by tweeted:
  .
• New Urban Outfitters CEO Richard Hayne was awarded the $100,000 Powell prize, which he donated to Drexel University.
• Mayor Nutter tweeted:
  .
• Among other development claims, Nutter pledged movement on three long-stalled efforts: to tweeted:
  of the Divine Lorraine Hotel and to move forward the revitalization of Market East.
• Among other broader efforts, he discussed the expansion of the Philadelphia International Airport.

Photos by Matthew Albasi and Erica DePascale for Technically Philly.

Hotdog hats, bright white lab coats and Rosie the Riveter costumes set the atmosphere Saturday for the Penn First Lego League Championship Tournament, held in the Irvine auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania Saturday.

FLL, a robotics program designed for kids ages 9 to 14, aims to get young students excited and involved in science and technology. Fifty-two teams from across the tri-state area traveled to University City to participate in FLL’s annual championship tournament after advancing in regional qualifying rounds in December. Like elsewhere in the region, the City of Philadelphia’s School District is grappling with the need for strong STEM education.

This year’s theme was ‘Food Factor Challenge’, where judges evaluated elementary and middle-school teams on three events.

“It’s basically an exhibition of elementary and middle school students to show what they’ve learned in the area of robot design, core vales, project presentation and robot performance,” said Kendrick Davis, the head judge advisor.

Photos by Matthew Albasi and Erica DePascale for Technically Philly.

The Robot Game challenged teams to create a Lego-based autonomous robot that performs on a playing field in order to score points for their team. The project portion allowed teams to create a solution to a food-based problem they have identified, all while following FLL’s core values.

“It’s a little overwhemeling, we’ve never been in such a huge competition,” said Marlene Houlihan, the mentor for Beck Robotics Team from Beck Middle School in Cherry Hill, NJ. The competition provided pit areas for teams to practice with their robots and fix potential kinks in their designs before heading to the main stage competition. On stage, rounds of three teams cheered on their teammates while judges evaluated robotic performance. Separate judging allowed individual teams to present their Food Factor topic in conference rooms.

“They’re amazing, look around at all these kids. All they have is me. I don’t know much about this stuff, it’s all them,” Houlihan said.

After a day full of judging, teams finished out the day with a ceremony in the main hall. Awards went to teams with best performance, design, project, and core value.

“The most exciting part for me is when the kids feel like worked so hard and they don’t have everything together as much as they would like and they win an award and they’re like ‘Oh my god!’” Davis said.

Updated, 1/12/12, 1:08 p.m.: The base price for Venturef0rth’s rental fees is $395, not $345 as previously reported. A 12-month commitment brings the fee down to $345.

A new early stage incubation space opened its doors for the first time last night in what could have been a familiar setting for some in the creative realm of Philadelphia.

Venturef0rth — with a zero, not an ‘o’ — offers cheap, collaborative space for a curated group of small entrepreneurial teams and access to the initiative’s three founders, all of whom have experience in building and exiting technology businesses in Philadelphia.

The freshly painted new space adorned, fittingly enough, with a ping pong table and bean bag chairs, is the former home of Razorfish, the digital marketing firm that was scooped up and then sold again by Microsoft, at the 417 N. 8th building above Callowhill Street with a water tower on its roof featuring an aging Philly.com advertisement. Venturef0rth is across the hallway from nonprofit IT services program NPower PA. Though pitched as Center City, the neighborhood is often described as Callowhill, just north of Chinatown, and is home to a bubbling creative sector.

The new space’s three founders are friends Elliot Menschik, who exited on his healthcare services startup Hx Technologies Inc. in May 2009, Jesse Kramer, who leads marketing for AWE Tuning, and Jay Shah, president of consulting firm Star Advisory Services.

The flexible space, with a dozen workstations for teams of up to a half dozen, will cost $395 on a month-to-month basis, with discounts for longer three, nine and 12 month leases. The costs include utilities, like internet.

“We even throw in the coffee,” said Menschik, 40. The event space was opened up Wednesday night as a Founders Happy Hour from Philly Tech Meetup. Venturef0rth organizers are seeking applicants for the space, Menschik said.

Below, watch video of Technically Philly talking to Menschik about the initiative. Above, watch a video tour of the space, during last night’s happy hour opening.

Addressing the group's annual meeting at WHYY is Campus Philly board chairwoman Joan McDonald, who is Drexel University's Senior Vice President of Enrollment.

Better tying employer needs with degrees conferred at regional universities is a major next step in a broad, years-long effort to bolster retention at and broaden awareness of higher learning opportunities in and around Philadelphia.

That was a primary claim from Deborah Diamond, the president of regional brain drain combatant Campus Philly, at the nonprofit’s annual meeting held at WHYY Thursday morning. Diamond was joined in Old City by Mayor Nutter, CEO for Cities President Lee Fisher and others in trumpeting the successes of the region and calling for greater heights.

“Education is economic development,” said Nutter in tweeted:

[Full Disclosure: This news site's parent company led the new redesign of Campus Philly's website, and this reporter was involved in the effort.]

In backing her claim, Diamond used three data points showing differences in the region between where the jobs are and where the job candidates are:

• Too many jobs: 6.3 of regional degrees are in computer science, engineering and math, yet 11 percent of regional jobs require those degrees, Diamond said, requiring the importation of talent or exportation of jobs. (Many of those IT jobs are in the suburbs, though that number is changing.)
• Too many grads: 19 percent of regional degrees are in marketing and business management, yet just one percent of jobs require those degrees, she said, meaning a lot of hunters go hungry. (Though regional graduates still tweeted:
  .)
• Just about right: 18 percent of regional degrees are in biomedical and science and 13 percent of regional jobs require those degrees, she said, adding that other opportunities in health and life sciences make those degrees valuable here.

It was Campus Philly that unveiled a much heralded report in 2010 that showed that from 2004 to 2010, the rate of non-native college graduates who chose to stay in the region jumped by a fifth to 48 percent.

In keynoting the morning affair, Fisher, who recently joined the organization that lobbies for and connects stronger urban environments, highlighted that group’s Talent Dividend Prize, which pledges $1 million to the U.S. city that most increases its percentage of higher education degrees conferred. In its role as an umbrella group for the region’s 101 colleges and universities, Campus Philly has set a goal of 20,000 additional new degrees over recent norms.

Fisher, who led his speech with a rousing, humorous and well-received tale of going to the wrong place for the meeting, made sure to point out that an increase in per capita income by educated residents helps all, with tweeted:

Drexel University Senior Vice President of Enrollment Joan McDonald, who also serves as the Campus Philly board chairwoman, kicked off the morning by highlighting how important the retention battle is in an increasingly knowledge-driven economy.

“The retention of college-education talent will determine the success of cities,” she said.

Chris Urban, the president of MacBUS, speaks at a meeting held in Connelly Auditorium in the University of the Arts.

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods program, the capstone class for the Temple’s Department of Journalism.

While most tech groups around Philadelphia were founded in the 21st century, the Macintosh Business Users Society, known as MacBUS, has been around since the Macintosh 128K computer in the 1980s.

Once a month, businesspeople, lawyers, engineers or retired persons convene to discuss the latest happenings around the Mac world and exchange tips and tech support from a business angle. The group usually meets the last Tuesday of the month in Center City. Membership is encouraged.

“MacBus was always specifically geared toward business users, it’s not so much for people who used their Mac for drawing, painting or writing, it’s for people using them professionally,” Chris Urban, the president of MacBUS, said. “They were doing pre-press, design, photography and anything else you can imagine using a Mac for professionally.”

At a recent meeting at the University of the Arts in Center City, some of the major discussion topics centered around Apple and tech industry news, such as Apple’s push to have its products integrate with cloud technology. Cloud technology is the concept of delivering and sharing resources, software and information between devices that can access the Internet, such as phones and laptops for example.

Another piece of news that hit home for members was the rise of external hard drive prices due to the recent flooding in Thailand. Urban advised members to wait if they wanted to purchase one in the near future. The group has a blog that offers Mac user advice here.

Running a personal business remained the main topic of discussion that night, such as when members discussed the Square, a device that acts as a credit or debit card reader that plugs into an iPhone or iPad. Over the years, MacBUS users have taken notice of the business applications of Apple products becoming more commonplace.

“If you look at it in the long term, there’s been a change in the way people use their Macs. It used to be for hobbyist or hardcore professionals, you really didn’t see people using their Mac for accounting. It wasn’t as mainstream,” Urban said. “Now it’s all across the board.”

The second local version of Random Hacks of Kindness to be held at Drexel University is this weekend. It’s the fourth global RHOK, which are held in cities throughout the world.

Like last June, the weekend hackathon is being kicked off with a reception at Indy Hall in Old City where developers and non-developers alike can talk about what could be built, designed and delivered.

RSVP for the free Friday night reception here and the hackathon here. All are welcome. The hackathon is organized by Drexel PhD student Mike Brennan and, full disclosure, the reception is sponsored in part by Technically Philly.

Though participants will be able to choose from problem definitions offered by U.S. AID, Voxeo Labs, NASA, like last June, Technically Philly has collected a few other ideas:

• Change By Us — The newly launched civic action crowdsourcing tool has a couple hundred ideas and could likely be pushed forward itself. What could come out of that?
  
• City priorities widget — Representatives of the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities want an interactive web-based tool graphing tool that would allow the office to plot potential projects by cost and policy benefit. Tools with similar functionality exist but something simple, sleek and easily used by other city agencies could have real output.
  
• Philadelphia Neighborhoods — Using city regional boundaries and GIS neighborhood layers created by local shop Azavea, create a tool that could layer services: legislative representations like what Seventy has, zip codes, city trash days, street paving, news coverage and more. Everyblock is limited in neighborhoods, and the Planning Commission and CML maps are dated and inflexible.
• OpenDataPhilly.org — The civic data catalog is always a place for ideas.
• Hacks/Hackers brainstorming — The new developers group in Philly put together some ideas here.

What other ideas would you like to see built?

See ideas from last June’s RHOK here.

Developer Reed Lauber presents NEXTSepta, his application using the SEPTA real time API. A dozen other projects were displayed at the showcase inside SEPTA headquarters to a roomful of transit agency officials.

Those in the open gov movement call it ‘evangelizing.’

By not letting technology be the end but the beginning and taking projects to decision makers to improve alternatives, the civic-minded technologist can make development easier for the next guy (or gal). Philadelphia has seen much more of that in the last year. Friday marked another installment.

More than a dozen local transit application developers held captive an audience of more than 40 SEPTA officials with a clear message: keep providing stable, real-time APIs and related data sources, and we’ll keep building cool, useful tools that the public will use.

The SEPTA developer showcase, organized by the transit agency emerging technologies lead Mike Zaleski, was a follow up to the October Apps for SEPTA hackathon, which Zaleski and SEPTA endorsed and was organized by Voxeo Labs hacker Mark Headd and the Devnuts crew. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly was a sponsor of the hackathon.]

After a morning tour of the SEPTA command center in Center City, developers were given a podium in a conference room and slowly, with Zaleski’s prodding, SEPTA officials of various backgrounds and roles came in to watch.

Events like these can help encourage SEPTA leadership to focus more on scalable, secure and reliable data and less on front-end tools, freeing up resources, Zaleski has said.

The set list:

• iTrans by Adam Ernst — A versatile, unreleased SEPTA iPhone app from a Brooklyn-based iOS developer.
• SEPTAlking by Mark Headd — A voice and instant message SEPTA schedule command tool. Github here. This was initially developed during the Apps for SEPTA hackathon.
• beta.SEPTA.mobi by Devnuts — The wide-ranging SEPTA web app built by a few coders from the Devnuts crew was demoed. See it here.
• NextSEPTA by Reed Lauber — A sleek subway, trolley and bus web app from the South Philly developer. See Technically Philly coverage of this project here.
• Travel board by Maurice Gaston and Justin Walgran — A dashboard of upcoming schedules for frequent trips. Development details here. The project won second place at the SEPTA hackathon. See video of their hackathon presentation here.
• Transitfone by Joseph Tricario — An app that tracks, stores and analyzes common SEPTA delays, built by an Azavea developer.
• Railbandit by Yuriy Yakimenko — With native apps for iPhone, Blackberry and Android (including free trials for the last two), this years-old tool, which Technically Philly covered in November 2009, features schedules for transit agencies beyond SEPTA, including NJ Transit, Boston, NYC and others.
• Transit Power by Frazell Thomas — A boldly designed Windows mobile app
• PhillyBus by Tim Wisniewski — Text message an intersection and a bus route line (i.e. Frankford and Berks #3) to 215-987-5416 and receive the nearest bus stop and upcoming bus times. This was another project from the SEPTA hackathon.
• Just Missed It by Lloyd Emelle — Tracks upcoming departures and integrates QR codes for line schedules. It debuted at the SEPTA hackathon — see video of that presentation here.
• Septority Report by Chris Alfano and Matt Monihan — Using the open-source technology behind Xbox Kinect, the Jarv.us pair built a tool that allows users to motion-sensor scroll through SEPTA schedules. Video of their presentation from last month’s SEPTA hacakthon here. Video of their presentation Friday below or here.

Drexel University mp3 experiment led by Improv Everywhere's Charlie Todd, a Drexel alumnus. Photo Will Tanksley

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods program, the capstone class for the Temple’s Department of Journalism.

Since 2002, Charlie Todd has been making a name for himself by starting flash mobs.

Charlie Todd

They’re meant to be the good kind of flash mobs, which Todd organizes as the creator of Improv Everywhere. The prank collective based in the 67th Ward performs large-scale stunts and publishes videos of said stunts on YouTube, where some of his handiwork has received tens of millions of views.

As part of Drexel University’s Comedy Week, Todd visited University City where he conducted an mp3 experiment where some 250 participants performed pre-recorded instructions from Todd as a flash mob-esque stunt. See video from the Inquirer of the prank below.

Todd was brought to the school by student group Urban Playground and its founder Ari Melman, a junior business student at Drexel. It was Todd’s and the group’s first time in Philadelphia, he added.

After the outdoor  Todd, gave a behind the scenes look at how Improv Everywhere got started, how it operates today, and he held a question and answer session with the audience.

The idea for Improv Everywhere started in a New York bar when Todd was 22. Upon being told by a friend that he resembled the musician Ben Folds, he and the friend pretended he was the actual singer as they met strangers. The prank was a success — Todd never revealed that he wasn’t Folds — and Improv Everywhere was born. He developed the idea while trying to pursue acting opportunities in the city.

“From there, I got the idea of public pranks,” Todd said. “Rather than waiting for an opportunity, I went out and started performing on my own.”

And the scale of the pranks have grown. There was a fake U2 concert on a rooftop near a real rooftop, pantless subway rides and one of Improv Everywhere’s greatest hits was “Frozen Grand Central,” where a large group participants or “agents” as Todd refers to them, froze in place for two minutes in Grand Central Station before walking away randomly and leaving passengers both amazed and confused.

Todd ended the evening with a teaser into his next yet-to-be-released prank, which involves surprising couples in Central Park. Todd credits his success to being able to publish his own content on YouTube and that it is an excellent platform for performance art.

“You don’t need permission to put something online,” he said.

Two competing software tools focused on ‘authorship recognition’ from a Drexel University computer science group are scheduled to be released publicly for the first time at a conference in Berlin at the year’s end.

The Drexel Privacy, Security and Automation Lab
work, led by Dr. Rachel Greenstadt and PhD student Michael Brennan, began in 2009 with research on the shortcomings of software used to uncover the identity of an individual based on writing style, like word choice and sentence structure.

“We have come a long way since then and are currently working on two tools that can be used both to recognize and to anonymize authors,” said Brennan, who organized June’s Random Hacks of Kindness and will organize another again in December. See the sidebar below for details. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly have sponsored both events.]

Yes, at the next Chaos Communication Conference in Berlin in late December, Greenstadt and Brennan will unveil two pieces of software, each meant to outdo the other.

“One is called JStylo and the other is Anonymouth. JStylo is a tool that allows individuals to run authorship recognition tools on documents for either research or discovery purposes,” said Brennan. “Anonymouth helps people modify their writing style by running samples of writing against many example texts and many different methods and suggests changes that can make their writing style less distinctive.”

PhD student Ariel Stolerman is the lead developer of JStylo, which is both a stand-alone tool and the backend for Anonymouth, which is being led by undergraduate researcher Andrew McDonald. Find all the research papers on the project here.

Does this research concern public safety officials who might want to be able to track the efforts of anonymous online users?

“We haven’t received pushback from law enforcement on it. I don’t suspect that we will, but you never know,” Brennan said. “Anonymous communication tools have been just as essential for law enforcement as they have been in thwarting law enforcement.”

Brennan has addressed before this research at the Chaos Conference, another celebrated event from the group that welcomed a discussion this summer on OpenDataPhilly.org. Watch below video of Brennan discussing his research in the past.