It Happened Here, a location-based, news-driven U.S. city exploration application for iPhone and Android, has launched a Philadelphia version.

Featuring 200 geo-located events and growing for Philly — from the familiar Revolution-era notes to more modern sites like film locations and celebrity sightings — the application has versions for five other cities. The $2.99 price gets a user a single city.

Built by D.C.-based development firm Mobile Surroundings, the application adds to the discovery craze by doing a good job of including both the historic and the modern. Though the density of events are reliably highest near Old City, other inner-ring neighborhoods are represented, too.

“We think the addition of Philadelphia, another city rich in American history and pop culture, is going to let a lot of Philly natives really rediscover their own city,” said spokeswoman Kim Lianthamani.

After giving the app a location, the user is directed to the nearest locations of note, offering context and a Google map for directions. Simply, if you’ve given the tour to your grandmother one too many times, this app could go a long way to offering a fresh experience. If not the sleekest of the scavenger apps, it is among the most helpful for urban wandering.

The other cities available are D.C., New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston, which launched with Philly this month.

Find it on iTunes here and find screenshots here.

Click to enlarge.

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods Program, the capstone class for the Temple Journalism Department.

In February 2010, the National Endowment for the Humanities Office of Digital Humanities awarded the Philadelphia Department of Records a Digital Humanities Startup grant to investigate the use of augmented reality applications for mobile devices.

The prototype application, AR by PhillyHistory.org, is available for free download on iPhone and Android. It allows users to view historic photographs as 3D digital information overlaid atop their current location using the camera, GPS and many other sensors that came stock with nearly all consumer smartphones.

Tamara Manik-Perlman, Software Development Team Project Manager reviewing data at her desk within Azavea’s headquarters at 304 N 12th Street.

“As a historian,” explains Project Manager Deb Boyer in an interview with Technically Philly, “I find it exciting to be able to combine the old and the new like that.”

The historic photos are among 93,000 collected by Philly History.org from the City Archives.

“We are taking advantage of this database that already exists,” said Robert Cheetham, President and CEO of Azavea, “and experimenting with different software techniques for making that visible on a smartphone.”

Watch Cheetham speak more about the project in the video below.

Advancing cell phone technology is going to make AR technology more interesting, Boyer said, but that will also challenge software developers.

“One thing we found is that what might work on one phone may not work on another, so in terms of development, that is a challenge,” she said. “If you think developing between Chrome, Google and Firefox is difficult, imagine trying to switch between four or five different phones.”

The PhillyHistory.org AR application combines advanced smartphone technology with history to create a unique environmental experience.

Though AR technology is not a brand new concept, bringing the technology to smartphones unlocks a whole new range of possibilities and potential uses, ranging from education to improving city functioning, Cheetham explained.

“For example, imagine that a city water main had broken,” Cheetham said, gesturing with his hands, as if holding an invisible tablet and swiping it over the table of an Azavea conference room. “A technician could pass an iPad or Android tablet over the surface and see what is underground and approximately where it is located.”

“With the available sensors in smartphones—the GPS, the accelerometer, and more recently, the gyroscope—all working together, we can show things very specific to a location,” said Cheetham.

Robert Cheetham and Tamara Manik-Perlman, talk business at Azavea’s headquarters at 304 N 12th Street.

Further exploration of AR technology is at the mercy of more adequate funding, Cheetham said, but plans to develop an open source toolkit that would allow more flexibility, as well as leverage for newer sensors such as the gyroscope, are future goals with the project.

AR’s potential as a resource for fostering growth and appreciation of humanities and the arts have given it a tremendous response from members of those communities.

“It was incredible getting people excited in new ways,” said Boyer. “In some cases, it involved combining pictures that are 150 years old with technology that is barely two years old.”

Azavea’s White Paper detailing the Philly History AR application and the research and development behind it is available for free download from their website here.

Every Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m. EST, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup. Get an e-mail subscription for our Comcast news updates.

DEFINITE READS

• tweeted:
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• Dick Ebersol Resigns From NBC Sports [New York Times] — “Dick Ebersol, who had defined NBC’s formidable Olympic presence since the mid-1990s and who was the last of the high-profile TV sports impresarios, resigned abruptly on Thursday after negotiations on a four-year contract collapsed. ” Ebersol profile by LA Times here.
• As New Owner of NBC Universal, Can Comcast Merge the Corporate with the Creative? [Knowledge@Wharton]

MIGHT BE WORTH IT

• House oversight chair questions FCC Baker’s move to Comcast [Post Tech: Washington Post] — Further probe into Comcast’s hiring of Meredith Attwell Baker, just months after she voted to endorse the company’s purchase of NBCU.
• Comcast makes rare public relations misstep in Baker hire [Company Town: LA Times]
• Comcast is king of its empire [Cherry Hill Courier Post] — From Comcast EVP David L. Cohen’s speech to the Chamber of Commerce of Southern New Jersey, including hinting that ‘NBC News might produce a news magazine to compete with “60 Minutes.”‘
• Comcast executive hosts Obama fundraiser in June [Politics Now: LA Times]  — David L. Cohen hosting a high-ticket fundraiser
• Comcast boss on sports, parks, deals, Internet pricing [PhillyInc: Inquirer] On Comcast CFO Michael Angelakis investor conference, more from Hollywood Reporter here and a webcast here. H/T Philly Tech News
• The Uncertain Future of ’30 Rock’ [The Atlantic] — With contracts expiring for Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey and Comcast ownership looking for success

GIVE A GLANCE

• Comcast On-Demand… launches Xfinity awards [Philadelphia Business Journal] — For most viewed content
• On Demand Reaches 20 Billion Views [Comcast blog] — More here
• Comcast asserts right to set rates [Boston Globe] — Company says Boston Mayor Thomas Menino’s bid for control ignores competition. Perhaps ahead of the storm, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is also vying for pricing control.
• Comcast’s next generation Xfinity Spectrum DVR shows off quad tuners, new menu and apps [Engadget]
• Comcast, Moto Invest in CMAP Startup [Light Reading] — “Comcast Interactive Capital , Motorola Mobility Ventures and Spark Capital Partners LLC are seeding a startup that’s developing a next-gen edge device that could play an important role in cable’s migration to an all-IP access network infrastructure,” the company is called Benu Networks and is out of Massachusetts.
• Comcast Streams Video To iPhone [Multichannel News] — “Comcast released a version of its Xfinity TV app for Apple iPhone and iPod touch devices, and has boosted video-on-demand content available through its apps to almost 6,000 hours with the addition of several new programming partners.”

Patrick Cassidy, the developer behind phillysubway, has a theory about mass transit iPhone applications.

“Transit systems have quirks and you need to be user of the system to write an app for it,” he says.

A SEPTA rider and the lone employee at Caffeine Fish, Cassidy followed up regional rail scheduling application Trainboard with phillysubway, an iPhone app that provides up-to-the-minute subway schedules. Users can hold their iPhone normally for the North/South Broad Street Line, or turn their phone sideways for the (mostly) East/West Market Frankford Line.

A functionality that, Cassidy says, had him fearful that Apple would reject the application form its App Store.

[Disclosure: Caffeine Fish is a Technically Philly advertiser. This post is not part of any advertising package.]

Currently, the app does not take into account any subway delays, something Cassidy says is due to the data set.

“GTFS is good for putting stations and times on the map, but it doesn’t have an aspect for a delay feed. Someone needs to come up with an open data format for relate time transit information,” he says. Cassidy added that SEPTA, thanks to help from Google, has embraced making its data easily available for developers.

To close out Caffeine Fish’s series of SEPTA iPhone applications, Cassidy says he’d like to create an application to track the location of SEPTA buses, displaying their average speed and current location.

As of now, phillysubway has 800 users and is free to download.

No, it’s not because Jason and C.C. Laan spend their weekends deejaying local club parties that they decided to create Tap DJ, an iPhone app that lets users mix songs and create samples, mimicking the experience.

“It started with a coffee shop conversation. Our goals were initially based around the fact that Apple had released new APIs to access the iPod library. We asked, ‘what can we make with this?” C.C. says. “The first thing that came up was a DJ app.”

What was originally a few cool and interesting features, says C.C., grew organically. “Once we saw the features we had, we thought it could be pretty good app. We created a website and added the extra polish that might push it.”

And those extra features helped. Since launching after six months of development, Laan Labs‘ Tap DJ has been featured by Apple at least 3 times, placing the application in the spotlight, and bumping it within the top ten iOS applications in February. It has been one of the best successes for the company’s independent line of applications. “There were a lot of iPhone DJ apps that do similar stuff. Ours just put all the pieces in the right order.”

[Full Disclosure: Laan Labs will be demoing Tap DJ at Technically Philly's Switch event on April 26, a part of Philly Tech Week. Tickets are available here.]

So, is there a formula for great app sales?

“It’s such a touchy black box, the App Store. We try different things and we’ve certainly failed several times before.” The firm says its independent apps, like AR Soccer, are mostly “break-even experiences,” that get them attention and pay them back for the time put in.

“But if Apple takes notice of you for some reason, it dwarfs other marketing,” C.C. says. “We took a look at other apps they featured. Most had a nice looking website, everything worked as intended in the app, and it had to be polished and user-friendly.” Every detail was perfected for Tap DJ, even the app’s icon, which is a uniquely three-dimensional representation of a turntable.

The company declined to offer any sales numbers, but said that being featured by Apple did provide spikes. As for news marketing, the company didn’t get traction on sites like TUAW or Gizmodo, but some international iOS review sites did reviews and brought sales.

The Northern Liberties-based company spends half its time developing in-house apps to sell (with more than a dozen produced), like iVideoCamera — the first iPhone 3G video camera application — and half its time consulting with companies on mobile applications. The firm developed TweetDeck’s iPhone application and it’s currently working on video site Vimeo‘s iOS foray.

Though most of the work is completed by Laan brothers Jason and C.C., Laan Labs also contracts out to folks in the region that do mobile application work, looking to groups like Cocoaheads, based at IndyHall.

For now, the company is working on the next version of Tap DJ and focusing on its consulting gigs.

The brothers say that they likely will not charge for new Tap DJ effects packages using Apple’s in-app purchasing system. “Sales were terrible,” C.C. says, when they tried that with the company’s iVideoCamera app. Instead, they may raise the $1.99 price tag of Tap DJ, as comparable apps range anywhere from $5 to $20.

That would only happen, the company says, if they added some more professional DJ features. There are a ton of common requests — in the more than 8,000 feedback emails they brothers have received — like BPM matching, the ability to match two songs up automatically based on beat speed, and more.

How about an iPad version?

“It looks really great on the iPad,” C.C. says. But the company hasn’t yet released an iPad version, citing competition from larger desktop DJ companies.

An educated decision from a group that has experimented in the iOS space.

Another in the Entrance Exam series, as part of the Why I Love Philly campaign from Young Involved Philadelphia and Indy Hall. Tell the world why you love where you live by tweeting #whyilovephilly.

Tonight at National Mechanics in Old City is the campaign’s kickoff event from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. RSVP here.

How did a girl from Michigan and a guy from California end up living in the Italian Market?

I met Jake (@flailmonger) and Amanda Feifer O’ Brien (@forkspoonknife) in early 2007, soon after they moved to Philadelphia. We were enrolled in a continuing education class called Center City Savvy. The class was epic – our persistent teacher managed to secure us private audiences with the Secret Service, Le Beq Fin chefs, and Mayor Nutter, among others.

Four years later, Jake and Amanda could lead their own tour.

Jake has become a stalwart at coworking space Independents Hall, joining forces with artist, gamer, and closet zombie Parker Whitney to build addictive iPhone games. Their new venture, Flyclops, was featured in a recent issue of Flying Kite magazine.

Amanda has taken the story-telling scene by storm, winning the most recent First Person Grand Slam with her inspired and personal tales of love and justice.

Below, learn more about what restaurants and communities they frequent, and how this talented and fun-loving couple came to call Philadelphia home.

Where did you grow up? Where do you live now?

Amanda: I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, but I’ve lived a lot of places since I turned 18. Philly’s the first city I’ve lived in for longer than 20 months since my parents’ house, and it’s the first place that has felt like home since then, too.

Jake: I grew up in Silicon Valley, at the same time as, and 10 miles away from where, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were forming Apple in a garage. But I never owned an Apple product until I came to Philly and now I am an iPhone developer.

We live half a block from the Italian Market, near the crazy Mexican cake shop with the dripping frosting. It’s awesome. It’s like being in the churning belly of the city. One thing amazing about it is that it’s a completely old world institution, but it’s not a museum piece, it’s thriving. Look at pictures of the market from a hundred years ago, and, except for the outfits, it looks pretty much the same.

Yet still, every week, hundreds of Philly residents walk up our street with bags full of groceries. And it’s crazy. The produce vendors yell out specials like circus barkers. There’s a live poultry shop that sells pigeons. The vendors keep warm with trash can fires. The place is as far as you can get from a strip mall full of chain stores.

What brought you to the Philadelphia area?

We have both moved around a lot and were looking for a place to settle in for a while, where we could get to know it and start making friends that we could talk to in person instead of via email.

We wanted a city that was walkable, affordable, had plenty of stuff going on and felt like a city. Philly is really the best combination of those things. We only visited here for a couple of days before we moved. But we’re very happy. In addition to what we were looking for, Philly also has tons of character, which is what we have really come to love about it.

Amanda and Jake at the Geekadelphia Indy Hall Halloween Party at Tattooed Mom

Was there a specific event or moment when you realized you wanted to make this your home?

We came down to Philly to scope it out after being in NYC for a week. There are two things I can think of that were sort of tipping points.

First, we stumbled, totally blindly, upon Horizons, which is, bar none, the best vegetarian (let alone vegan) restaurant in the United States. Yes, including San Francisco, LA and New York. I remember thinking that if that place could exist and not be on the front page of every guide book, then the food scene in the city must be out-of-control good.

The next day, we went to DiBruno’s, bought a whole bunch of stuff and the total was like $11. I know it sounds crazy, but I think we were both kinda of like, “wait, why don’t we live here again?” The realization that we were in this amazing city with so much going on and such great energy, and that it was a city we could afford to have a good life in was pretty jarring.

When someone visits from out of town, what are the first places and events you show them?

We like food, so we take people out on the market to buy fresh ingredients (veggies, tortillas (Tortilleria y San Ramon), pasta (Talluto’s) Cheese (Dibruno’s but Claudio’s for fresh mozzarella) to cook with and to Fantes, always, because it’s awesome.

We both love walking, so if our guests have city legs, we usually try to spend days exploring the different sites of different neighborhoods. Beautiful buildings (I really love City Hall and the Kimmel Center to start), galleries, the Constitution Center and tourist stuff, Eastern State Penn, Greensgrow, Reading Terminal, the Art Museum…I guess it depends on who is coming and what they like. We always eat at the Royal Tavern and Morning Glory because they’re close, delicious and cheap.

When you are out of the region, how do you describe Philadelphia?

Amanda: I do really think this is the City of Brotherly Love. There seems to a be a strong spirit of competition in other cities. In Philly, it’s replaced by an immense spirit of community and support. From Indy Hall to First Person Arts to our neighbors, it’s a community of people that I like to be around.

I also say many parts of the city are really dirty, but I feel that the blatant lack of enforcement of open container laws compensates for that, so I’m good with it. I can sweep my own stoop when it needs it.

Jake: Philadelphia isn’t for everyone. If you want a sterile and harmless environment, this is not it. But if you don’t mind a little grit and an occasional challenge, Philly goes as deep as you want it to go.

In a (tweet) sentence, why do you love Philly?

Opportunities for communities you can’t find in other cities. Gritty, tasty, nasty, fun. It’s the real deal. It’s home.

Salas Saraiya is a YIP board member and freelance web developer who works full-time at co-working space Indy Hall. He lives in the Graduate Hospital neighborhood.

“They said, ‘if you ever hear us ‘strongly recommend’ something, you do it. You might not understand why. It might add cost. But we’re seeing something that’s forward-looking that you can’t see.”

So when Jauss got the contract from Apple to be able develop PARAT’s solution with the coveted MFi Apple-supported sticker, he didn’t ask questions about some of the changes they made in the design specs.

“It was data communication stuff, something to do with the interference between multiple devices,” he explains. “But it was a great thing. Because we carry that badge, it adds credibility.”

Since, the company has been focused on improving its innovative docking solutions for Apple products. Take its PARASYNC product, which allows for the ability to charge and sync up to 20 iPod and iPhones to a single iTunes library. For institutions and large organizations — like schools, universities, museums and resorts — which manage a large number of the mobile devices, it’s a lifeline.

Jauss heads PARAT, which is the Philadelphia subsidiary of Germany-based PARAT-WERK Schönenbach GmbH & co. KG.

The company landed here when it was expanding to American markets with laptop charging carts, which allow up to 20 laptops to charge and provides a single access point for updates and software changes. The carts sold like hotcakes, Jauss says, to the primary education market, before the recession hit.

But then it found resiliancy in its line of Apple accessories.

“It sells itself. Show someone a picture who isn’t using our product, but has a ton of devices,” Jauss says. The company shipped 1,000 of its most recent generation of docking units in 2009 at a cost of $980 per device, with a “healthy margin.”

The company also generates revenue from secondary products built around the docking solution, like a case that covers Apple’s Home button to be able to lock users into a specific section or app on the device.

At the end of the day, it’s all about reducing the headache of managing large quantities of devices.

Take the Fairmount Park Arts Association, which unveiled its Museum Without Walls podcast arts initiative this summer, as we reported in June.

The program, which lets users download or call-in to listen to a selection of 35 audio segments, highlights art sculptures throughout the park. A successful venture, the Park has since purchased iPod Touch devices to rent out to tourists.

Using PARAT’s technology, the Association is able to easily charge 20 devices at a time. If there’s updates to the audio segments, all it takes is plugging in one USB connector to a computer and they’re all immediately updated from the same iTunes installation. One GB of content takes 20 minutes to sync to all 20 devices.

The company also works with large clients like Royal Caribbean cruise lines, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust and the Empire State Building.

“It’s really neat in the museum space. Audio tours have been around for a long, long time, with companies developing their own propreitary [listening device],” Jauss says.

“The iPod offers a visual experience, apps, games and geolocation content. And it’s a lot easier to manage,” he says.

Great news for all the iPhone-addicts out there: Philly’s ever-increasing number of techies has been up to more than just taking up all the seats at your favorite Wi-Fi café. They’ve been busy developing truly Philly-centric apps, from the genius (SETPA travel, local concert information and traffic reports) to the just-for-fun (zombie braining and saving kittens).

Some of these Philly finds may take a little digging through the app store, and with tens of thousands of apps to choose from, who has time for all that? Well, we do! Get those downloading fingers ready for these 12 awesome iPhone apps by Philadelphians, for Philadelphians.

Read the rest at Philly Post.

Disclosure: Trainboard, an app on the list is one of Technically Philly’s sponsors.

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.

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.

At an 11 a.m. presentation tomorrow Thursday, June 10 at LOVE Park, the Museum without Walls, a groundbreaking new multi-platform audio program from the Fairmount Park Art Association, will be unveiled.

The initiative, funded by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage through the Heritage Philadelphia Program, featured 35 professionally-produced audio segments featuring more than 100 richly recorded voices of people involved in the creation, maintenance and preservation of 51 outdoor sculptures that line the Ben Franklin Parkway to Kelly Drive.

Most segments are between three and fives minutes and discuss the history and meaning of the celebrated artwork that have become a calling card of Philadelphia: from the inscrutable to the profound to the noted.

Listen to other samples here.

The audio pieces, which will be available by cell phone call in, audio download and online streaming, bring a sense of clarity for, cohesion between and connection to the hulking masses of art that dot among Philadelphia’s most culturally significant streets.

There is now permanent outdoor signage located at each sculpture and features dialing instructions for accessing the program by cell phone by calling (215) 399-9000 and then choosing the desired numbered piece.

The project can also be accessed by way of an iPhone app, designed by and released this week from Juncanoo, based at the Wharton Venture Initiation Program.  Pittsford, N.Y.-based audio tours company OnCell Systems is behind the mobile call-in component.

Listen to one of the audio segments below.