Links: hunting for DreamIT class, Sunoco looking to outsource Center City IT and More

DEFINITE READS

• As we tweeted, our reporter Sean Blanda is en route to Austin, Texas for South by Southwest. Drop us a line in the comments or otherwise to let us know you’re there or if you know someone else from the community is.
• Center Networks reports on the hunt for a new recruiting class at DreamIT in University City. H/T Philly Tech News
• The Philadelphia Business Journal reports that Sunoco has hired a consulting firm to explore the possibility of outsourcing positions from several departments, including IT and mostly from its Center City headquarters. Will Bunch of the Daily News and his legions of commenters have something to say about this too.

MIGHT BE OF INTEREST

• The Drexel Triangle reports on the redesign of university-sponsored Web food publication Table Matters.

GIVE A GLANCE

• The Philadelphia Business Journal‘s John George primes for last night’s Pennsylvania Bio‘s annual dinner and award celebration.

Every Friday morning, we make sure you didn’t miss anything with Friday Tech Links.

Shop Talk: Devon Segel CEO of Dining Info and GoBYO.com

This is something of a family business.

In 2005, serial entrepreneur Joseph Segel, a 1951 Wharton graduate who made a name for himself launching the Franklin Mint and the multibillion dollar home-shopping behemoth QVC, decided Philadelphia needed a database for its restaurants.

He started with his own personal Excel spreadsheets, detailing restaurant information, offerings and accomodations, but he wanted to expand it online.

So he turned to his 29-year-old, more tech-savvy granddaughter, Devon Segel, for help. She was busy building people-search databases for the American Red Cross with Comcast and Google during the melee of Hurricane Katrina, so occasional help and direction was all she could give.

He launched in spring 2006 an early incarnation of his idea, not just reviews or food writing but a comprehensive collection of information backed by deep data sets about the Philadelphia dining scene, which, of course, has a lot to do with BYO-style neighborhood restaurants.

But Joseph, now 78, wanted Devon to bring her design and development background to what he aimed to be another in a more-than-two-dozen-long list of business ventures.

“He and I have always had a great relationship. He’s a very serious and focused businessman. I am a young woman whom he tries to groom into a serious and focused businesswoman,” says Devon, now CEO of Voorhees, N.J.-based Dining Info LLC, which operates GoBYO.com and DiningInfo.com with plans of launching more. “He calls himself my ‘part-time adviser.’”

It wasn’t until 2007 that she took the job with pop pop, who splits his time between Bryn Mawr on the Main Line and Florida. Now, three years after first launching, their sites use a database that has some 100 data fields on 52,000 restaurants, including 17,000 BYOs, from 10 metro areas and growing.

Devon is sitting on a four-tiered revenue model, the funding to get there and, with a blurb mention due for the August issue of O Magazine, buzz surrounding a new look and focus.

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Ten Philadelphia iPhone apps that don’t exist but should

The iPhone application news has to be getting a little tiresome, no?

Google says the mobile application collection is a fleeting concept. The iPhone store is completely flooded with more than 36,000 and few are making money or much worth the time.

Still, they keep coming. We reported that Comcast has its own new iPhone and iPod touch mobile app. Educational software company Blackboard and freakin’ Harry Potter have apps. Newspapers on occasion have them, but big ones like the Wall Street Journal and USA Today are trying to figure out how to charge.

Philly has many apps made by Philadelphians, like one about old Abe Lincoln and a righteous one for Philly concerts, but they are hardly comprehensive.

So why doesn’t Philadelphia, rife with culture and on the cusp (and perhaps in need of a bit) of a technology renaissance, have more of their own?

That profit problem, of course. Because, really, with rare exception no real money is being made, so it isn’t likely that a crush of Philadelphia-specific iPhone apps are going to be made anytime soon. But it sure is fun to indulge.

So, after the jump, find the 10 Philadelphia iPhone (or Windows mobile) apps that should exist, but don’t and probably never will.

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Shop Talk: Daniel Delaney of Vendr.TV

Daniel Delaney is sorry.

He just finished a bit of a rant about how zoning laws that govern where street vendors can do business are putting a stranglehold on Philadelphia’s food cart culture, and seemed startled when I said I assumed he was now based in New York.

“I didn’t mean that as an insult,” he says. “I just look at this stuff a bit scientifically.”

Indeed, Delaney, 23, is taking his food very seriously since launching in February Vendr.TV, a weekly podcast devoted to finding the best-tasting street food in the world. It was just picked up by a network funder, Delaney says, though he can’t yet disclose who.

While the University of the Arts alumnus has made that not uncommon trek up the Jersey Turnpike and his podcast’s stock is on the rise, he might have reason to remember where he first got his taste for food entertainment.

Read what goes into Vendr.TV and how he says our great food city could become a great street food city, too, after the jump.

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Next Open Chefame event scheduled, discount for TP readers!

This is why you read Technically Philly.

Just weeks after the first, wildly successful Open Chefame event, another one is being thrown down, and we have an exclusive discount code for Technically Philly readers.

Open Chefame (pronounced �Chef-A-Me�) does to food what karaoke does to music. The event takes an amateur chef, and gives them the kitchen of a local restaurant for a night to cook whatever they wish. The amateur chef serves a meal to attendees who are free to comment, praise, critique and heckle the work of the amateur.

The next event, scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Monday, May 18 at the Dark Horse Pub in Society Hill, is primed to be smashing; last month’s night was sold-out. Tickets are $35, well worth the meal and the gleeful entertainment, but as a valued (and we hope obsessive) TP reader, you’re eligible for a deal.

Get the $5 discount code below! (Reading a TP story has never been so profitable)

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Technically Not Tech: Unbreaded

Since Philly blog Unbreaded launched its sandwich crusade earlier this year, co-founders Ben Kessler and Jeff Vogel have been getting noticed by foodies all over the city. CityPaper’s MealTicket sought their sandwich sage, and Phoodie.info served them up a cold dish. When we called Kessler Sunday afternoon, we found that their stake (pun unintended but appreciated in hindsight) isn’t ending in Philly.

The co-founders are attracting interest from sandwich aficionados across the country, and have plans to expand to other cities. Unbreaded was featured on Philly’s Thrillist this morning, and the creators have been chatting with a national magazine editor; about what, Kessler won’t let on. But we can guess the conversation wasn’t about with-Whiz or without.

Kessler and Vogel got the idea for Unbreaded from sites like Digg, where user-submitted sandwiches that test the limits of white bread are popular, and Hamburger Today, a vegetarian’s worst nightmare. They liked what they saw – and not because they were hungry. They decided Philly’s sandwich culture needed a voice. And what better timing? As Kessler puts it, “sandwiches are the ultimate recession meal.”

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