Shop Talk: Philadelphia Weekly redesign with Keith McGinnis of Review Publishing

Update amended: 8:50 p.m. 4/19/09

From time to time in the recent past, one of the most trafficked Web sites in Philadelphia has gotten a major redesign.

Unfortunately, there was never one source that covered the whys and the hows. Now there is: Technically Philly.

So, here’s the first in an irregular series of our Shop Talk department, called The Redesign.

Both of Philadelphia’s big alternative-weeklies have changed their online looks in recent months. It just so happens that the one that came out last may have started first.

At the end December, CityPaper, founded in 1981 by Bruce Schimmel, went from this to this. And then, early last month, Philadelphia Weekly made its own jump from a cluttered display.

“We knew we needed to step up our platform online, not just re-skin the site,” says Keith McGinnis, the IT Web head over at Review Publishing, PW’s Samson Street-based parent company. “Now we have a platform that can help us rise to the occasion.”

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Comcast set to launch “enhanced cordless phone”

Comcast is due for a nationwide launch of what has been called an “enhanced cordless phone,” connecting its VoIP service with e-mail, voice mail, Web access and other features, according to Cable Digital News.

Finally some news about which they want to boast; Comcast has taken a brusing lately.

The announcement comes on the heels of a company investigation into widespread reports from Comcast.net free e-mail users that their accounts were down for long portions of Saturday and they claimed messages were lost. Though less than in previous years, CEO Brian Roberts took some heat when it was announced he was the country’s 13th highest paid chief executive.

Please, $24.7 million ain’t no thang.

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American Airlines to expand Internet service; sorry no porn

Finally, flight travel will be civilized.

American Airlines is going to install Gogo Inflight Internet on more than 300 of its domestic aircraft during the next two years, according to a boring company press release.

Forth Worth-based American Airlines, which has Market West offices, claims to be the first U.S. airline to launch the service, which they did last August on 15 Boeing 767-200 aircraft. It (lamely) primarily served nonstop flights between New York JFK and San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Miami.

Requests for the airline to apologize for not focusing their efforts on the Philadelphia International Airport were rebuffed by a marketing intern.

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Friday Q&A: RedLasso CEO McGowan and President O’Kane

Last year, to the dismay of bloggers everywhere, the popular RedLasso video sharing service – which allowed users to search, customize, and embed video clips from national networks – was forced to shut down after Fox and NBC filed suit against the company.

On Monday, the Center City-based company announced that it had reached a licensing agreement with Fox Television Studios allowing users of the online video sharing platform to syndicate online customized clips from 27 of Fox’s regional television stations.

Technically Philly sat down with RedLasso CEO Al McGowan and President Kevin O’Kane Thursday evening to discuss how the deal went down, where they’re looking for funding, and what Philly entrepreneur Pat Croce has to do with the video sharing company.

Transcript of interview was edited for length and clarity.

Explain what’s been happening with RedLasso and the recent licensing deal

Al McGowan: When Kevin and I got together a few years ago, we said look, ‘This marketplace is changing. The way people are consuming media is changing. Let’s work with our friends in the media and figure out a way to help solve that problem for them.’ Kevin found some technology and put it on top of media, which allowed them to digitize it and extend the life of that content, especially on the news and information side.

Broadcast goes out on the air and right into the garbage can. Why not capture and digitize it and let it have another life on different platforms, like mobile and the Web. So we designed a platform that allows extending the life of that content to keep monetizing it. That’s the whole basis of RedLasso.

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Ladies and gentlemen, we have a war: Boost Mobile trucks crash Cricket party

It’s on.

Technically Philly reported Wednesday that Cricket had the world’s largest cell phone outside the the Shops at Liberty Place. Yesterday, Boost crashed the party.

Less than a half hour after Cricket’s promotional team set up its cell phone and surrounding activity for Thursday’s lunch-time crowd, a flatbed truck – depicted above – hauling a Boost Mobile advertisement and playing an endless loop of Boost boosting began circling the Market West corridor.

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