Ten Philadelphia Web sites then and now

Web designer in 1999

As the first decade of the 21st century closes, the Internet continues to change everything it touches.

Ten years ago, the Web was still working its way into everyday life of everyday people in Philadelphia. Now, it’s finding even more crevices of existence to transform. So, using the Internet Archive, we thought it might be a hoot to look back at the Web sites from ten Philadelphia technology institutions from the end of 1999.

It’s another in our completely irregular Top Ten Tuesday department.

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How to open a business in the City of Philadelphia, or 15 reasons people move to the suburbs

So you want to open a business in Philadelphia?

A Technically Philly reader recently launched her first venture in the city’s limits and thought the process was agonizing enough and the help non-existent enough to share.

She’s fairly straight-laced, she tells us, so she wanted to open her operation as legitimately and legally as possible. Yes, a good tax-paying business opening up shop in Philadelphia, so I’m sure we all expect the red-carpet treatment from the city.

Except, of course, as you know, the process was laborious and involved so many wrong turns, that we decided to give you all a short hand.

Below, in addition to the 15 steps and more than two months this passionate entrepreneur took to give money to the city, we show you the right way to launch your business in Philadelphia in five (oh my God, we know it won’t actually be easy) steps.

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Friday Tech Links: Fourth most innovative, BigBelly trash video and More

In which we link out to the tech news from Philly and elsewhere (when it matters) that slips through the cracks and make it way fun. See others here.

DEFINITE READS

• Innovation Philadelphia reports that our fair city was ranked the fourth most innovative U.S. city in a recent large survey by 2think2know. Philly lagged behind Boston, which was ranked No. 1 globally, San Francisco, New York and Washington D.C. We were 32nd globally.
• Good magazine hits Center City to talk the innovation surrounding the recently installed BigBelly trash cans that are showing up on our busy city streets. There’s a hotly edited video that includes Oscar the Grouch.

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Best of Philly nods to our community from Philadelphia magazine

The August issue of Philadelphia magazine has its annual and ever-popular Best of Philly awards, edited this year by Michael Callahan. It will come as no surprise that lot’s of familiar faces pop up, including a number from our creative communities of technology and innovation.

Below, we breeze through the names you just might stumble upon at the next community event.

• In the “ENJOY” section, the all-comedy acting company 1812 Productions gets the nod as the city’s best Theatre group. We’ve covered their work for an iPhone app about Abraham Lincoln to promote the Rosenblach Museum.

See seven others from the magazine’s nearly 300 listings after the jump.

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Technically Not Tech: The Travelocity Traveling Gnome

Courtesy of the gnome's Facebook page

For a city that is used to being voted to the wrong end of top ten lists, Philly is making a comeback. Ugliest? Fattest? Psh.

This is the birthplace of American democracy, and we are finally starting to show it. Earlier this month, Philadelphians rose up en masse and voted Phillies CF Shane Victornio to the final roster spot in the MLB All Star game, beating out players from San Fran, Washington and Los Angeles.

In our latest victory, thanks to the urging of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corporation, Philly won the right to host Travolcity’s traveling gnome for a week over Boston and D.C.
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Ten Philadelphia tech organizations that should have Wikipedia entries but don’t

Look, this is down right embarrassing.

Earlier this month we retweeted Viddler founder Rob Sandie. He was self-promoting, but damn it if we didn’t agree with him. Why didn’t the growing video-hosting service have a Wikipedia entry? Now that Google News has begun to link to the Web’s largest community-edited encyclopedia, it’s clear it’s bypassed mainstream and shot straight to influential.

So, it’s become something of shorthand for the importance of a subject, person or organization. But, as we found, Philadelphia generally and its technology and innovation communities specifically are dismally represented in the Web 2.0 powerhouse.

When someone answered Sandie’s call to create a Viddler Wikipedia page, it was deleted because, as one Wiki editor wrote, the article was “about a web site, blog, online forum, webcomic, podcast, or similar web content that didn’t assert the importance or significance of its subject.”

Sounds like a call to make clear the Philadelphia technology scene is significant. Below, we share our list of 10 members of our community that don’t have Wikipedia entries, but should, including Viddler.

We respect the mission of Wikipedia, so don’t consider this spam posting. Rather, we think our community is very underserved by the online encyclopedia. This, my friends, is basic stuff we need to get down. Who’s stepping up?

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Four Philadelphia ‘inner-city’ companies called nation’s fastest growing

Stroll’s company mission is nothing short of bold. They want to bring their customers products that are capable of “transforming” their lives.

And the audio-book Web retailer, which saw its revenue triple from 2004 to 2007 and ships mostly self-improvement merchandise, is doing it from 12th and Callowhill.

For that, Stroll is getting some congratulation. Along with three other Philadelphia companies, it was named to the 11th annual Inner City 100, a competitive ranking of the fastest-growing companies located in the “inner city” of a U.S. metropolis, last week. See what constitutes an inner-city here.

Only Denver and Boston, each of which had five companies headquartered there, were better represented. See the complete list here [PDF].

The list comes from the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a national nonprofit organization founded in 1994 by a Harvard Business School professor. The organization’s mission is to promote economic prosperity in U.S. inner cities through private sector engagement leading to job, income and wealth creation for local residents.

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Another city list: Philadelphia named top spot for tech jobs

Update 9:23 p.m. 5/19/09

Philadelphia is one of the 10 best cities in the country to find a tech job, according to PC World.

Add this to the heaping pile of other ways cities are ordered, grouped and ranked by magazines seeking attention.

This tech list, which doesn’t put the 10 in order, includes tech mainstays like the Silicon Valley and Seattle. Other major cultural cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston were also on the list.

Of course, it ain’t the first time one of these lists breezed by.
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