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.”

The St. Joe’s Prep and Art Institute of Philadelphia alumnus took to Tumblr after seeing a Facebook posting from a high school friend and another friend noting the new Arby’s ‘Philly’ sandwich. It wasn’t the first time.

Mikey Il. Photo by Colin Lenton

“I see many former Philly residents or expatriates post  photos from menus or even photos of the offending aberrations themselves,” said Mikey Il, who lives in Queen Village, was born in Olney and grew up in East Oak Lane at 5th Street and 66th Ave. “The result is always the same, there’s shock, awe, disappointment and even insult.”

Mikey Il says he sees this as a hobby, with no real revenue plans, though if the blog were to take off, he wouldn’t fight it. He’s hoping for reader submissions of cheesesteaks gone bad, though he may in time also highlight variations that go a new route the right way.

“The point I’m trying to make in the time being is recognizing the difference between authenticity and lack thereof,” he said. For the record, Mikey Il says his favorite cheesesteak shop is the famed John’s Roast Pork, beating out Dalessandro’s.

Is there enough cheesesteak errors to drive a Tumblr?

“Bars, restaurants, food bloggers, fast food franchises, everybody is seriously abusing their creative licensing on our beloved sandwich,” he said. “I’ve even seen and had a terrible cheesesteak-like sandwich in the Philippines this past summer. It was beyond awful, I’ll be posting that at some point.”

Keep up to date with This is Not a Cheesesteak on Facebook and Twitter. Mikey Il says he plans on updating several times a day, usually Monday through Friday.

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?

“Our purpose: To connect people with great local businesses,” the site reads. And connect, they have. The number of Yelp users—dubbed “Yelpers”—has skyrocketed since Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons founded the site in July 2004. Last month alone, Yelp reported 53 million unique visitors looking to read reviews, write reviews or socialize.

“It’s really sucked me in,” said Brewer, 56, a daily Yelper with 379 reviews and the suburban Blind Pig visitor we met earlier. He began as a passive reader, like 90 percent of visitors, according to Yelp manager Daniel Holloway.

Soon, Brewer’s consistent review writing and social participation gained the administration’s attention. They asked him to join the Yelp Elite Squad, a role model group of the most experienced, active Yelpers.

While there’s no shortage of competitors, including Urbanspoon, MenuPages, and Citysearch, Yelp stands on top as the largest collection of online reviews. They recently crossed the 20 million-review mark and continue to grow.

Twenty-four-year-old Elite Yelper Nancy P., like Brewer, mainly uses Yelp to find places to eat. However, for her, not all Yelpers are created equal. While she will read most reviews on a page, she takes Elite Yelpers and Yelpers with profile pictures more seriously.

“Yelpers definitely need a face to the name, otherwise they are too cowardly to back up their convictions,” she said.

Experienced Yelpers know to automatically discount certain reviews. “Sometimes, someone gets really pissed off at a restaurant,” Brewer said. “They just go crazy, ranting about a restaurant because they had a bad experience. And then they never do anything again.”

However, casual viewers may not know how to read between the lines, and these kinds of reviews can damage reputations and business. In a 2011 survey by national restaurant supplies and equipment distributor Tundra Specialties, 43 percent of restaurateurs thought Yelp was the most damaging website to the food service industry.

In an effort to combat disingenuous reviews, including positive reviews posted by business promoters, Yelp instituted a review filter system run by proprietary algorithms.

The filter isn’t perfect, though. CEO Stoppelman admits that some legitimate content does get sacrificed while some bogus reviews fall through the cracks.

“It’s unfortunate, but this is what is required to maximize trustworthy content and provide value to consumers and businesses alike,” wrote Stoppelman.

Some offended restaurant owners angrily reply to Yelpers, as Susan Graeser, 27, has experienced.

“Someone once contacted me about their restaurant—which I had given four stars—and told me I knew nothing about food or pasta and said that I should be shot,” said Graeser. “That, I was disgusted by.”

Both consumers and business owners would likely benefit from developing thick skin.

Tommy Up, 37, owner of PYT in Northern Liberties, described a recent conversation with his friend Han Chiang, owner of Han Dynasty in Olde City.

“One day we’re eating there and he’s on his phone looking at Yelp. He starts cursing like, ‘This stupid customer! Argh!’” said Up, raising his hands in mock anger. “They’re complaining about something like his hallway was cold. I’m like, ‘Dude, your restaurant’s the best Chinese food I’ve ever had. Just don’t go on Yelp, you’re gonna drive yourself crazy.’ Yeah, I don’t need that stress.”

On the other hand, restaurateurs like Jason Evenchik, 38-year-old owner of Vintage Wine Bar in Market East and Time Restaurant in Center City, use Yelp for improvement.

“I’ll check to see if there are any valid criticisms or points that need addressing, food- or service-related,” said Evenchik. Yelp complaints started dialogue about a bartender Evenchik was employing. “Once I personally received an actual complaint, that was the final straw. I take everything online with a grain of salt.”

For Yelpers like Brewer and Nancy P., that’s the goal. They hope that customer opinions get through to business owners.

“This is almost like free marketing advice for them,” said Nancy P.

However, restaurant owners like Evenchik and Up agree that Yelp reviews take a backseat to other forms of feedback, like in-store complaints, phone calls, or emails.

“Anybody that contacts us personally, we make our best effort to get back to right away,” said Up, who does not check PYT’s Yelp page, but focuses on his existing customer base.

“We’ve developed a strong following of people who love our place who don’t go on a lot of social critique sites,” said Up. “They’re actually doing things. They’re here, living in the city, having fun, and they don’t spend a lot of time talking about if the bread was stale at different restaurants. Not that our bread is.”

What does get Yelpers out into the city is Yelp Elite events, exclusive events where Elite Yelpers eat, drink, and be merry while restaurant owners foot the bill.

“They’re looking to build up business and they understand that the really good Yelpers, if they write good reviews, can have an impact. So everybody understands that the restaurant’s doing it for very self-serving reasons,” said Brewer.

Brewer described an event this summer at the Continental in Old City. “Stephen Starr really rolled out the red carpet. It makes you more inclined to visit his other restaurants, because he did such a great job for us.”

However, the concept behind Yelp Elite events has raised controversy.

“It’s basically free food so it becomes a little biased,” said Ashley Primis, 31, food writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. “These Yelp parties may be unfair and skew the vision of the experience.”

Restaurateurs realize that one memorable event can generate a flurry of publicity.

“That’s really good experiential marketing for the brand,” said Up. Yelp creates a separate event page from the restaurant page, so, ideally, Yelpers separate their opinions of the event from their opinions of the venue. Elite events end up helping Yelp as a business, too. Just like the “Elite” badge next to a username indicating status, events are an incentive for the Yelp consumer base to grow and increase usage.

Zhongmin Wang of Northeastern University conducted a study on social review sites called “Anonymity, Social Image, and the Competition for Volunteers: A Case Study of the Online Market for Reviews.” He concluded that the reputation-building aspect of Yelping has been an integral component of its success.

However, the field is always changing. Primis compares the reaction to the Zagat Survey’s debut in 1979, the now Google-owned guidebook compiling ratings by diners in various cities.

“People are just going to have to adjust,” said Primis. “It forces people to be on their toes all the time, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

Up, who’s been running PYT for two years, said he stopped reading Yelp after the first year.

“As I made the transition from someone who reads about restaurants to someone who’s running one, I realized it’s impossible to please everybody. But what you can do is make the people who love your place very happy. And at the same time, you’re going to alienate a bunch of people,” he said. “And that’s fine, because if you try to make everyone happy, you’re going to make no one really happy.”

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.

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.

DEFINITE READS

• As tweeted:
  . 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.

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.

THE PRODUCT AND ITS FUTURE

“My grandfather will say to me, ‘de gustibus non est disputandum – there is no disputing tastes,” she says. “So we’re trying to make the objective out of subjective.”

For GoBYO.com, which Devon, 29, calls their “crown jewel” and a pattern for their future expansion, they are doing that with their “quartet of ratings,” which includes aggregating ratings from their secret stash of Web restaurant guides, a wine-friendly ratings list, Yelp ratings and a most popular list.

The Cherry Hill-native says her company is also doing restaurant listings differently with its “patent-pending find-reviews process for each restaurant.”

Searching for a restaurant in a search engine will bring you a lot more choices “and a lot more noise” than you need, Devon says, so searching on Dining Info sites will more effectively help you find what restaurant you want and know if you want it. While the Web is chock full of restaurant ratings and listings, few are as complete, deep and growing as DiningInfo, she says, which brings returns from the 33,000 table-service restaurants its database has, or GoBYO.com, which pulls from the 17,000 BYO listings of its 52,000 database total.

And that’s just why GoBYO has become the lead project. Their vision for a major part of the company’s growth, Devon says, is expanding on its full database of restaurants to feed more niche-specific sites — like ones for sports bars, karaoke joints or family-friendly restaurants.

But first, Devon says, the focus is to make their current products, which are still operating on the elder Segel’s startup funding, profitable.

To do that, four primary revenue streams have been identified: merchandising, like the stealth wine caddie the company introduced today; offering their restaurant data to third party Web sites like community-focused sites; sponsorships with wine merchants, distributors and other industry players, and information and development-based sales like their iPhone application they say is being reviewed by Apple now. For $2.99, Devon says, it lets users find nearby restaurants based on dozens of data fields like offering wi-fi or being pet-friendly or a combination thereof.

“We have a lot going on,” she says.

DEVON THE ENTREPRENEUR

If this all seems pretty involved, don’t think Devon just walked into a sweet job from a deep-pocketed relative.

“My grandfather made me earn my position,” she says with a laugh.

She certainly has serious Web entrepreneur credentials. She has a design background with a fine arts degree from Muhlenberg College, a Master’s in marketing from Wharton, an MBA from Drexel and coding experience from her time with the Red Cross.

“We can develop an authority on restaurants,” she says. “We want anyone who wants to find the best places to savor wine or information on the best restaurants out there to do it with us.

That’s a long way from her grandfather’s Excel spreadsheets.

“Philadelphia has to be at the top of the list of the most BYO friendly restaurants in the country,” she says. “That’s where we started… I hope to grow together.”

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Watch Devon on an April episode of podcast StartupsLive.TV, hosted by a very energetic young woman.

Every Wednesday, Shop Talk shows you what goes into a tech product, organization or business in the Philadelphia region. See others here.

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.

Our 10 best:

1. SEPTA Everywhere — OK, they got in cahoots with Google, which was, uhm, five years behind, but they opened their data up to third party developers. So, let’s think big. Nearest bus, trolley, regional rail and train routes, stops, directions, schedules and plan your route features. With all mass transit ensnared with GPS, the realtime location of the next bus is easy to find. How about being able to swipe your iPhone in place of cumbersome tokens or flimsy passes? One of these bus stops would be just around the corner. Who should make this happen? SEPTA, of course. Can we get one of the nine SEPTA blogs to work on this, too?
2. Parking Wars parking spot finder – We’ve heard this before, even in our comments, but it makes it no less a good idea. Digitize the city’s parking meters with weight sensitive monitors. Make money by being able to dispatch the Parking Authority to unpaid meters and announce open spots using GPS to users. Cuts down on traffic and keeps the authority moving. Add a traffic news and prediction element, by using collected data about traffic, create an algorithm to predict when and where traffic might happen. Give users the likelihood of traffic at certain places in the city and give directions around those problem areas when folks are looking for parking. Who should make this happen? A partnership between A&E, the channel that produces the controversial reality TV show Parking Wars, and the Philadelphia Parking Authority, which is the show’s focus. Consider it the show’s promotion and could include the show’s hours and upcoming episode schedule.
3. The Fumo Files — It’s a government transparency application that lets you scroll through miles and miles of open-source databases, documents and information. You can create your own graphs, tables, PDFs and more. It lets you save, highlight, promote via social media and cruise hundreds of years of this information that Allan Frank digitized himself, unencumbered by a suddenly larger staff. Who should make this happen? The Committee of Seventy or whoever steps up and replaces Hallwatch. Or, hey, a partnership between the city government and the Inquirer once every Philadelphian dutifully signs up for a subscription. OK, or host an awesome competition like the 67th ward did.
   
4. iSteak — We take the best 50 or so cheesteak and roast pork joints in the city and geomap them. So, when you’re on the 66 crusing Frankford Avenue and you get that hankering, you can immediately find the nearest best place to grab the city’s most famous grub. Photos, prices, hours, aggregated ratings from other sites are all there. Who should make this happen? Dudes at Unbreaded or Caroline Wyman‘s promotions team.
   
5. Insult My Team — Let’s be real. A little part of you never wants, expects or looks forward to winning anything. The 700 level crew from the Vet wouldn’t have been anything if the Eagles ever won a freakin’ Super Bowl. And, Hell, things are starting to seem a little too cheery after the Phillies victory, even Charlie Manuel agrees. So next time Chase Utley grounds out, and you can’t help but want to hug him anyway, type in player and game, and the app — which aggregates in real time Philly pro sports teams’ standings and in-game statistics — gives you an insightful and witty insult for your own team, beacuse that’s what we do best. “Utley, in the sixth inning with runners in scoring position, you go left more often than Arlen Specter in federal funding votes.” Who should make this happen? Our boys from the 700 level blog with some funding from 610 WIP.
   
6. Philly to English Translator and Dictionary — This goes two ways. Philly accents and slang are decoded and more traditional verbiage can be brought into the local tongue. Finally, “Yo, can youse toss me that lager jawn, nahmean?” will be as easy to say for you as it is for Vinnie in Pennsport. Hey, and we’ll give a bonus if it can translate Philly to English to other useful foreign languages, like Russian for Bell’s Corner, Italian and Spanish for Ninth Street, Mandarin for Chinatown, French for the Sansom strip, various African languages for West Philly pockets and others. Who should make this happen? The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.
   
7. Oral History — This isn’t yet a city overrun by artists and writers and filmmakers. While we have plenty, we remain a city whose stories and secrets are largely untold and unshared. They remain on the streets and in the minds of the people who live here or visit here. Dig this: starting with requested submissions from hundreds of Philadelphians of all stripes, 30-second stories or memories of a given location are geotagged throughout the city. On a map you can see where they are and GPS can lead you there, but you can’t hear the audio until you’re actually at that spot. Registered users can submit their own, all of which will be ranked — the better the ranking the larger and easier to find the geotag. Who should make this happen? The Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corporation.
   
Philly iPhone games
• Chase Utley’s WFC Dog Catcher — How many stray dogs can Chase bring to safety before Mr. Met gobbles them up? Look for a sponsorship deal from P.A.W.S.
• Frogger on the Boulevard — If you thought crossing the street with that little frog was hard in the iconic arcade game, try maneuvering that sucker around the 1993 Buick LeSabre barreling down Roosevelt Boulevard toward Red Lion Road at 5:15 p.m. in this sure-fire classic mobile game.
• Scrapple for You — An interactive Choose Your Own Adventure-style game in which you make choice how to convince hungry tourists to eat the (really) most Philadelphian food there is. Example: “Mr. Delaware suburbs says no. Do you (A) lower your prices, (B) mock his masculinity in front of his wife and children or (C) Make an equal parts lame, vague and threatening allusion to your “friends in South Philly.”
8. My Philly ‘Hood — I’m tired of arguing with my girlfriend and bartenders and my postman. This app has the final say on the street by street neighborhood lines on an interactive map with important landmarks included within the region of the city. No, South Philly ain’t good enough anymore. With Wiki-style editing, it stays accurate and includes aggregated news, events and updates by tags from big media, new media and locals. It includes suggested news, places to go, eat and drink and more. And, yes, you can toggle between how those neighborhood lines have changed through every five or 10 years; so, you’ll see just when Northern Liberties was birthed from generic North Philadelphia and what parish you’d be living in if the Archdiocese had any freakin’ sway anymore.
9. Our Corners — We’re the most historically significant city in this country (suck it, Chester), and that history extends far beyond Old City. This app would let users peruse historical photos, building histories and historical Inquirer headlines from any location within city limits. Who should make this happen? A partnership between the city’s Historical Commission, PhillyHistory.org and the National Park Service.
   
10. The ‘They Ain’t Closed Yet’ Library application — This app lets you search for and reserve books at any Free Library branch. A calendar of events and hours for all the branches are available, in addition to branch and library history, information and contact information. You can also pay late fees, get directions, chat with libraries and download free ebooks. Perhaps a partnership with the School District, the city’s universities and research institutions could add their private collections to the list for scholars or their own members. Who should make this happen? The Free Library (just use the cash for the expansion of the still stalled central branch).

I mean, dudes, we could do this forever. Zipcar has an app, so why doesn’t Philly Car Share let you find, purchase and open cars using your iPhone? I’d pay for an ‘I didn’t say that’ application in which entirely falsified quotations are attributed to the city’s elite (Philly Turkey, are you on that?) Every time I’m in Fairmount Park or Pennypack or FDR, I want the elusive bug app that can tell me the details of any insect I snag a photo of.

But we figured this was a good start. OK, who is going to get any of these done? What ones did we miss? What is the best of our ideas? And, can we be clear that if you make any of these and earn some scratch, we totally deserve a cut? We’ll keep reporting the news if you do.

…We won’t hold our breath.

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Skyline photo credit: Emy111, stock photo c/o Apple, Illustration by Brian James Kirk

This is a semi-regular department we may or may not call Top Ten Tuesdays. There’s no judging in brainstorming. See others here.

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.

“I had interest in food, but when I went to school in Philadelphia, my interest exploded,” says Delaney, who graduated with a multimedia BFA from UArts in May 2008. “Really, Philadelphia has my favorite food scene. It’s originally a blue collar city, and I like unpretentious food. With Pennsylvania and its liquor laws, the BYOBs that have developed in Philly are my favorite food scene of all, of anything, I think.”

He noted South Street mainstay Pumpkin and Little Fish, the celebrated Queen Village haunt, as among his favorites.

But food ain’t Delaney’s only thang.

THE TECHNOLOGY AND PROFIT

He’s making a self-financed food podcast look and feel clean cut and professional.

The food geek with bushy black hair and matching rimmed glasses has a rotating crew of three cameramen and a traditional boom operator — after finding wireless microphones unreliable in the wind and noise of street food. He lucks out by having talented friends — all of whom are currently working for free.

His team films in HD, mostly on a Panasonic HVX. Vendr’s hot film look comes from shooting at 24 frames per second in 720 p — the actual size of HD — and also swinging a wide-angle lens.

Delaney proves his diversity of skill by adding to his on-camera work by handling most of the editing, doing so in Final Cut Pro, though his operation is expanding. The show’s pre-roll graphics were created by motion designer Eden Soto, who has done work for Diggnation and Yahoo.

Justifying its professional look and crew, Delaney says he’s confident in bringing Vendr.TV to profitability.

Delaney, who will apparently always be known as that guy who started a Rittenhouse Square Twitter account, declined to give specifics, but says he’s in talks for long-term sponsorships, content-sharing and other monetization excitement. There are licensing agreements in the works for distribution online with MySpace and others. He also points to plans for advertising, merchandise sales, micro-donations and even long-term hopes for publishing the best recipes he finds.

Later this month, the WordPress-based site will see a complete redesign.

IS IT PHILADELPHIA?

Delaney says he fully intends on Vendr to become a national brand that finds street food around the world, but his academic and culinary ties to Philadelphia make it hard not to call him one of our own.

Two of his first nine episodes were in Philly — others being in New York, Washington D.C. and at Rutgers University — including his most recent on Jamaican D’s near the Community College of Philadelphia, seen below.

It’s perhaps important he remember the country’s fourth largest media market because it’s city is one that takes its food very seriously. But it is important Delaney brand himself separately because the food media market is certainly a saturated one (see sidebar at right)

Delaney thought it important enough to personally welcome the cluster’s new entrant, Salt.Pepper.Ketchup, which quickly received love from WHYY and uwishunu after launching.

But Vendr seems simply the most professional product of them all. So it just so happens that the best Philadelphia food podcast isn’t in Philadelphia at all.

An old head of mine once told me, as we walked on Pine Street near 15th, that there are only two kinds of kids who go to UArts.

“Those who want to be in Philly,” he said, looking toward Broad Street and the school’s landmark Hamilton Hall on the Avenue of the Arts. “And those who want to be in New York.”

After graduating, Delaney found himself going to New York more often and staying in Philly less. He decided to leave.

FOOD PASSION

But his street vendor obsession came with a senior thesis he did on how design affected business of Philadelphia’s mobile vendors. That said, the New Jersey-native says he has always had an eye for entrepreneurship, starting with his dog-walking business at 12-years-old — “complete with business cards and contracts,” he says.

“I particularly believe in low-level entrepreneurship,” he says, “And I don’t think you can get much lower level than a guy chucking hot dogs out of a cart to people on a sidewalk.”

He promises more Philadelphia-based episodes, including spots on roast pork carts and a cheesesteak crawl, partnering with Ben Kessler of Unbreaded, whom we have covered. In mid-March, Delaney was shooting at University City’s vegetarian cart Magic Carpet.

But because city street vending licenses are tied to specific locations, Delaney says, many cart owners sit on a single corner for decades, relying on the cheapest, most common fare and not taking any chances. Licenses without guaranteed locations, like they are in New York, he says, breed competition and bring more diverse choice.

It’s here when Delaney seems most excited and passionate — food legislation.

That enthusiasm and the glut of other food blogs are all possible because of an increasingly better-versed public, he says, which is in thanks to the Food Network.

“It has built a new vernacular for food and entertainment,” Delaney says. “And then in just the last three years, there has been a complete change of how entertainment is being created. The Internet is democratic, and the tools to use it are cheaper than ever.”

He’s leveraging that trend of online communities. Vendr.TV will begin to give away merchandise, like T-shirts, to viewers and will soon launch regular “Five Dollar Dinner” meet ups.

He hopes it all will help him get further faster in the development of his product, he says. And for that, he isn’t apologizing.

Every Wednesday, Shop Talk shows you what goes into a tech product, organization or business in the Philadelphia region. See others here.

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)

Indy Hall co-founder Bart Mroz, Srcasm�s Jesse Middleton, musician Louis Brice and corporate finance worker Evan Kaplowitz are behind this crazy event, so blame them. We’re just the messenger.

On March 30, Mroz cooked up Polish delicacies with sous chef Magda Kozak. On May 18, CityPaper food writer Felicia D’Ambrosio and Chef Alyssa Shilliday will try to best them.

Here’s your chance to peep it, cheaper than the fools who don’t read TP.

Go to Open Chefame’s newly relaunched Web site, and buy the tickets — which must be bought ahead of time — using the TP2009 code for a $5 discount off $35 tickets, that’s nearly 14.28572 percent off!

We love you, readers.

That’s my photo.

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.”

This isn’t the first venture Kessler has set forth on. He recalls that when he was a young teen, he attempted to make an online video game store before there was such a thing. “When I tried to [have distributors ship] video games to me, distributors would ask ‘what’s your business tax ID number?’ I didn’t even know my social security number. I was just way too into technology.”

Kessler found himself years later still interested in tech and trying to harness his writing talent as a marketing student at Drexel, where he is currently a senior. He landed an internship with Center City-based The Neat Company handling web marketing, where he met Unbreaded’s co-founder Vogel. Both men watched the company, which produces and markets consumer scanners for things like receipts and business cards, blossom from 10 employees to more than 150. Over the summer, Kessler set forth for San Fransisco and worked at a private technology PR firm, who dished out relations for Evernote, a popular online notekeeping platform, among others.

Having been surrounded by technology for so long, hacking together a WordPress install for Unbreaded was cake for the young marketer. Cake? Maybe grilled cheese. As it turns out, people love sammies. Kessler says he was surprised by a 3-page e-mail from one fan, and the site boasts an tweeted:

Kessler says they’d like to keep expanding Unbreaded. What’s in store? They hope to have sandwich showdowns between restaurants (“What’s the best of the five best roast pork places in Philly,” Kessler asks), traveling correspondents, and neighborhood sandwich beat reporters. The Unbreaded crew would also like to see more user-generated content that can drive the site.

Kessler jokes that what he really wants is a deal with the Food Network. “Hopefully someone will fly me around the world like [Zane Lamprey, host of Have Fork Will Travel], to eat sandwiches.”

We’re rooting for you, Ben. But if you end up in Italy, skip the sandwich for Europe’s finest dining. Or at least grab a Panini in an outdoor cafe.

Each week, Technically Not Tech will feature people, projects, and businesses that are involved with Philly’s tech scene, but aren’t by definition “technical.” Hopefully there will be more sandwiches involved.