This is Not a Cheesesteak: new Tumblr follows the worst cheesesteak variations

From Tumblr user anacrisi, and referenced on This is Not a Cheesesteak.

Cheesesteaks don’t have to be just another cliche we’re saddled with, says Michaelangelo Ilagan.

The SAP web designer and Geekadelphia contributor is embracing the 80-year-old native hoagie variation by chronicling how far, wide and wrongly it has spread. Meet This is Not a Cheesesteak, a Tumblr that Ilagan is curating to collect new takes on the steak sandwich standard that he considers an insult to our roots.

“Unlike Rocky, we’re not revering something fictional. @visitphilly called it ‘Cheesesteak Pride’ when they tweeted a link to my Tumblr,” said Ilagan, 27, who goes by Mikey Il. “Let’s make that a thing. The cheesesteak is 100 percent real and absolutely delicious when done right.”

Read more

Yelp: a look at local attitudes for the online customer review giant

A cozy restaurant-bar sits on a street corner in Northern Liberties.

The decor is unassuming yet quirky, full of warm woods and cartoon pigs with Xs for eyes on the walls, light fixtures and menus. A handwritten chalkboard list displays the beers on tap and today’s special: Cabernet served in a mason jar for $3.

This is The Blind Pig, and Steven Brewer and his wife drove up from the suburbs of Philadelphia to eat dinner here one sweltering August evening. Although it’s only been open for about a month, he knew he had to try their signature Thanksgiving Balls: deep-fried turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing served with gravy and cranberry sauce.

Brewer, like two million others on any given day, used the popular customer review site Yelp to help him decide on that night’s dinner spot. It’s the modern soapbox and megaphone, and anyone can step up. While this can be a tremendous resource for both customers and business owners, visitors to Yelp should tread carefully, as—like anything else online—you can’t take everything that’s been “Yelped” at face value.

A week after Google made news for purchasing Zagat and two years following a failed bid to take over Yelp, what does the local scene of the wildly popular online customer review site look like?

Read more

Philly Steakout: Neiman Group uses Foursquare checkins to rank cheesesteak joints

For as limiting as the cliche can be, a social web outpost for cheesesteaks is long overdue.

While we’ve seen reviews and aggregations, lists and the like before, the new Philly Steakout project from the Center City marketing and design shop Neiman Group is a new height. Since April, the team has been tracking Foursquare checkins for the 25 cheesesteak joints that were called the best by Inquirer food critic Craig Laban’s landmark 2002 Cheesesteak Project.

Supplemented by the Yelp API and check-in breakdowns split between tourists and locals, who live within 20 miles of a given steak shop, Philly Steakout ranks the legends by registered visits.

Pat’s, Geno’s and Jim’s predictably top the list, but give it a look for more.

Philly Homegrown: GPTMC unveils new look food site and campaign by Maskar Design

You, the proud and savvy Philadelphian, might get more out of the new food site from the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. than, well, you know, tourists. And that would make for one hell of a strategy.

The updated VisitPhilly.com/food, unveiled this month, is now caught up to last year’s overall GPTMC rebranding campaign that was heavy in big photos, colorful serif fonts and a deluge of deep Philly strains. Understand, this new food site focuses on GPTMC’s new Philly Homegrown campaign, one the celebrates a rich food world and, seriously, doesn’t feel the necessity to use the c-word (cheesesteak).

Built and themed by Rittenhouse design shop Maskar Design, whom we highlighted this month, the Philly Homegrown initiative has a food-driven blog, a content-heavy Facebook page and a monthly newsletter (email phillyhomegrown@visitphilly.com).

In truth, there may be just too many directions here for an average tourist to not feel overwhelmed and come short of action. But, Technically Philly might suggest, if more proud and savvy Philadelphians were exposed to more of our rich and culturally significant food culture, then they may be the best messengers to go out in the world and celebrate our food, without ever needing to use the c-word.

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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.

Read more

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)

Read more

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.”

Read more