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.

City Council President: “Why are we are still having a problem with the Internet?”and other Links

City of Philadelphia Coming Into High-Speed Internet Age At Last, Official Promises [KYW] — City Council President Anna Verna questioned interim CTO Tommy Jones about slow City Hall internet speed. As VisitPhilly & Mayor Nutter Want YOU to be Mayor [Geekadelphia] — GPTMC on FourSquare

Bluecadet Interactive is again up for Webby Awards; Vote to support them [Bluecadet blog]

Facebook faceoff: Artist embarks on ‘social networking stress test’ [Newsworks]

Hacking Education: A Contest for Developers and Data Crunchers [DonorsChoose.org] — “We’ve opened up that data, and invite you to make discoveries and build apps that improve education in America. Help to shape your school system’s budget by revealing what teachers really need. Build the first mobile app for hyper-local education philanthropy. We’ve got a list of suggestions to help get you thinking.”

5th graders suspended for Facebook pics in school [NBC 10] — H/T NewsWorks

View more videos at: http://nbcphiladelphia.com.

Philly’s top 10 techie hotspots

In an informal partnership with Philadelphia magazine‘s new Philly Post daily news blog, Technically Philly will be offering our insight on Philadelphia technology to a broader audience of tech-interested individuals every Tuesday. As is true of so much of our effort, this is yet another opportunity to voice the triumphs and concerns of the community to a broader audience in the city and beyond.

Coordinating your friends for a night out in any city can be chaotic. The texts and phone calls required to get everyone at the same place at the same time can get tiresome. Luckily, as Apple says, there’s an app for that.

Mobile geolocation app Foursquare allows users to “check in” wherever they are, sending a notice to friends and online followers. Ideally, friends can then potentially catch up with each other during a night out.

Though the app is primarily used to for the purpose described above, the site Social Great has tapped-in to the data trail left by all those check-ins to compile the city’s top venues visited by Foursquare users, which typically tend to be young, tech-savvy folks with smartphones.

After the jump, we count down the 10 most popular places on Foursquare users and offer our insight on what makes the venue so damn popular among the city’s young techies.

Read the whole story at Philly Mag’s Philly Post.