Philly Post: Philly 311 – There’s no app for that

Last week, while the City of Philadelphia was busy celebrating the country’s 234th birthday, another anniversary passed by with little fanfare. July 5 marked three months since the city announced it was developing its own 311 iPhone application to allow citizens to access city data on the go. It also marked the day the application was two months late.

In an April 5 announcement, Division of Technology chief Allan Frank said the application would be available in May, yet there’s still no sign of it on the city’s 311 site or in the App Store.

While we’re certainly on board with city government embracing new technologies, there were several alternatives to the city developing the application itself that would have sped up its development and saved precious taxpayer dollars.

Read more at Philly Mag’s Philly Post.

Museum Without Walls audio program tours the art of the Ben Franklin Parkway

The Iroqoius model at 24th Street north of the Ben Franklin Parkway by Mark di Suvero. The story behind the sculpture is part of a new audio initiaitve from the Fairmount Park Art Association.

Ben Franklin Parkway, the cavernous promenade that thunderclaps from City Hall to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, never developed the type of urban density that the French boulevard after which it was modeled in the 1920s.

In reaction, city and state officials announced this week the immediate launching of $19 million in improvements meant to make the signature thoroughfare more pedestrian and bicycle friendly.

Tomorrow, another, unrelated initiative launches to better connect the prize art and acclaimed cultural institutions that litter the parkway like trash blowing in a neighborhood breeze.

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A new iPhone… but not for Verizon

Update, 12:00 p.m.: Verizon Wireless Public Relations Manager Sheldon Jones contacted Technically Philly to make clear that the carrier has no immediate plans to make available the iPhone on the Verizon Wireless network and that the company talks to many vendors about the possibility of working together. “We have no immediate plans of offering [the iPhone] and we do talk to all of the companies. We’re very confident in the line-up we have, a porfolio which is bigger and better than anyone out there,” he said.

Yesterday in San Jose, California, Apple CEO Steve Jobs was on-hand for what has become a June tradition: the unveiling of the company’s latest iPhone.

The new smartphone has a handful of new bells and whistles: a stainless steel rim, a thinner form factor, a faster processor, better battery life, a video conferencing camera and an impressive new high-resolution display, among other technological advancements.

But one new feature that didn’t crop up was support for Verizon Wireless’s network. Currently, the coveted phone is only available for AT&T Wireless.

It’s no surprise, really. Analysts and fans have been predicting since the iPhone was first launched in 2007 that the phone will someday land on Verizon store shelves, to no avail.

So when Technically Philly spoke to Verizon Wireless regional president Mario Turco a few weeks before yesterday’s announcement, the iPhone issue wasn’t even on the docket. It seemed a tired conversation. Yet, as the call was wrapping up, a Verizon public relations rep reminded us that, yes, it was still very much on the docket for Big Red.

Read the rest at PhillyMag’s Philly Post.

Shop Talk: Philly Beer Week gets an app

Update: The new version is out.

Edit: Corrected some minor features that aren’t in latest version, clarified Bilotta’s position.

Thanks to a new iPhone app, navigating Philly Beer Week just got a whole lot easier.

Philly Beer Week is a yearly festival – started in 2008 – where the city’s breweries, taverns and restaurants hold tastings and other events to back up the claim that Philly is America’s best beer-drinking city. Something that gets other cities (ahem, Portland) all hot and bothered.

To help Philly Beer Week attendees navigate the hundreds of events as efficiently as possible, the non-profit has enlisted the help of six members of Philly’s CocoaHeads to make a free iPhone application.

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Philly.com releases iPhone app, ranks third in app store

According to a press release, Philly.com has released its first iPhone app made by Verve Wireless.

The news app sells for $1.99 and is sponsored by long-time print advertiser TD Bank, something Philebrity got a kick out of.

The app is pretty standard fare for news applications theses days, acting as an optimized version of the mobile layout with seperate sections for news, sports, blogs and video. The app also allows users to read all of the day’s Inquirer and Daily News content, making the morning trip to the honor box a little less appealing.

Early reviews have been positive, and the app is third in the news app rankings.

We haven’t had much time to poke around, but as news nerds we dig the iPhone friendly story layout, videos and the ability to submit a story on the go.

However testing it in the Fairmount neighborhood, the app had some minor speed issues but all together it’s a solid start for Philly.com. Though we hope they can do more with the iPhone platform in the future (geolocation anyone?) However, as the future of the business is in question after this month’s auction, it will be tough to predict if the company will be able to dedicate future resources to mobile development.

Be sure to see our interview with Philly.com president Ryan Davis earlier this year.

Disclaimer: The members of Technically Philly have all freelanced or worked for the Daily News or Inquirer at one time or another and have a few friends there.

Friday Q&A: AT&T regional VP and General Manager Dan Lafond

As we wrote in a column last week, AT&T is championing its mobile stability in the region. And Dan Lafond, AT&T’s vice president and general manager in central and eastern Pennsylvania, wants you to know about it.

The wireless carrier has received its fair share of criticism since the iPhone launched in 2007. Though the smartphone galvanized the mobile industry, AT&T—which, for now, exclusively sells Apple’s iPhone—has been beaten into the ground for network capacity concerns. A report released in October said that more than half of iPhone users would jump to another network if given a chance.

But the carrier has also responded with substantial infrastructure investment. In Pennsylvania alone, $725 million has been spent on capacity. And it seems to be paying off.

But, as Lafond notes in the interview below, in San Francisco and New York where the network is most congested, there exists the most news outlets reporting on technology, hence more negative coverage. Here in Philadelphia, he says, AT&T has reason to brag.

After the jump, we discuss with Lafond AT&T’s infrastructure investments in Pennsylvania, how mobile is affecting the digital divide and of course, the impact of the iPhone and what will happen if Verizon cuts a deal with Apple, too.

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Trainboard takes on iSEPTA with regional rail iPhone app

There’s a new SEPTA app in town.

We must confess, ever since iSEPTA, we have been hard pressed to find a Philadelphia transit iPhone application that we would actually, you know, use on a daily basis. As of now, the Apple App store is mostly filled with nationally-focused apps that offer a Philadelphia version, such as iTransitBuddy.

Trainboard (iTunes link), however, is locally produced by Patrick Casady, as Caffeine Fish, out of his apartment near Girard College. Casady maintains the company part-time as a side project.

“New York has really good transit apps, but I looked at Philly’s selection and it sucked,” says the Drexel grad.

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There’s no place like Philadelphia for iPhone users

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.

Since launching three years ago, the iPhone has undeniably altered the mobile market.

The iconic device changed the way manufacturers design and price mobile phones. It introduced mobile data consumption to the masses. And it’s been a testament to Apple’s ability to capture and reshape markets, like it once did with the iPod portable music player and like it’s trying to do once again with the recent launch of the iPad tablet computer.

Yet in the wake of Apple’s success, the smart phone’s pivitol backbone, AT&T, the wireless network on which the device exclusively relies to deliver data, has been on the receiving end of much criticism for dropped calls and data dead-spots. In a report released in October, half of loyal iPhone enthusiasts surveyed said that they’d leave AT&T for another network if given the chance.

But as we’ve thought often and as a regional AT&T executive is quick to point out, much of the criticism is coming from San Francisco and New York, where tech media outlets thrive and where smart phone users are more prevalent, hence, the network’s more strained. So, what about here in Philadelphia?

Read more at Philly Mag’s Philly Post.

If we could design Philadelphia’s 311 iPhone App

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.

Yesterday it was revealed that the City of Philadelphia is developing an iPhone application for its 311 non-emergency call system that will allow users to submit requests for city services using an Apple smartphone.

As city Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank told the Inquirer, users will be able to track and retrieve the same information they can from the city’s 311 telephone service. The mobile interface, though, will allow for more, like snapping a photograph of a pothole to request that it be filled. Frank hopes the application will launch next month as a bare-bones preview of what’s to come, before the “rocket-science stuff.”

Though Frank is vague about the future of the software, we’ve got some initial suggestions for what could be easily (and not-so-easily) implemented and advice for the city programmers tasked with developing it.

Read more at Philly Mag’s Philly Post.

City to release free 311 iPhone application

The City of Philadelphia will release a free iPhone app for its 311 non-emergency call hotline as soon as next month, reports the Inquirer.

City Technology Chief Allan Frank is painting a bold picture for the application, which he tells the Inqy will let users “log requests for city services and track them from their phones.”

“Anything you can do with 311 when you call, you’ll be able to do on your iPhone, and then some. OK, you can take a picture of, say, the illegal dump with the iPhone, and you can geo-locate it for us with the iPhone. All that fancy stuff,” Frank said.

Frank says future edition will become more sophisticated, trumping other cities that have already released similar apps.