The competitive real estate and built environment news community of Philadelphia has a new player.

Curbed.com, the New York City based blog network, which also has regional versions in nine other markets, today launches Philly.Curbed.com. The local site will be edited by Liz Spikol, the former Philadelphia Weekly columnist and editor of the now defunct Hispanic tech magazine Tek Lado.

“Curbed marries an obsession with real estate and neighborhoods with wit and entertainment,” said Spikol. “It’s fun.”

The site was launched in Manhattan in May 2004 by writer and sometimes entrepreneur Lockhart Steele, who has since built a small empire of focused niche sites beyond the Curbed network, which also has local versions in Boston, Washington D.C., Detroit, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco and the Hamptons.

The display advertising model will be tested, following the path of the short-lived Philadelphia expansion of Brooklyn-based real estate blog Brownstoner. Since then, the niche has been attacked locally by Naked Philly and Plan Philly’s Eyes on the Street, in addition to historically-focused Hidden City and others.

[Full Disclosure: PlanPhilly has retained Technically Media, this news site's parent company, for web strategy work in the past.]

It’s a place that Spikol says Curbed can distinguish itself with her local leadership, noting her “thorough knowledge of the city and its quirks.”

“People should come to the site if they have a sense of humor and if the following things make their hearts pound faster: castles in Mt. Airy; Frank Furness; confusing neighborhood renamings; community forum threads; mysterious new construction; urban ruins; street art; the fate of the Reading Viaduct; historical architecture; catchment issues; remarkable houses and apartments; hideous interior design; economic development; urban planning; sexy floorplans; Ed Bacon’s interest in skateboarding—and so much more,” Spikol wrote Technically Philly in an email. “I look forward to Philly readers helping us define the site.”

Below, watch Curbed.com founder Lockhart Steel talk real estate blogging.

Evan Kalish

For much of its 220 year history, the U.S. Postal Service was something of a technology company: speeding communication and commerce through innovation, says postal geek Evan Kalish.

Today, in batch machines that can process 40,000 pieces of mail per hour, some 95 percent of handwritten addresses are properly dispatched by OCR technology, the 25 year old student in Penn’s master of urban spatial analytics program.

“[The machines work] from the ZIP code first, then to the address and select the proper street from the limited number of options available, tagging them with the bar codes that you can see on the bottom of first-class letters you receive. Human operators resolve the rest of the addresses remotely,” said Kalish, who lives in University City. “With Delivery Point Sequencing, another machine properly sort the mail for dozens of carriers in proper delivery order, based on their routes, with just two passes of the mail through the system.”

From today to the first ‘fully automated post office‘ back to the pneumatic mail tubes of the past, Kalish, a native of Queens, N.Y., has discovered new corners of the world’s original modern national postal system while writing his popular Going Postal blog, which has been profiled by Time magazine, the Washington Post, BBC and NPR.

All the stories use young Kalish as something of a juxtaposition for growing news of inevitable cutbacks at the U.S. Postal Service. While no doubt an important issue to Kalish, he says the best he can do is grow interest in what remains an impressive organization.

The blog kicked off in September 2010 as a way to share photos and stories about the postal service with other devotees of the historic agency, says Kalish, who did his undergrad work at Brown University.

The first effort followed a cross-country road trip but has grown from there.

“My newer entries have also been more in-depth, and shares the broader experience and anecdotes of rolling into any given town, as opposed to just showing a photograph of its post office.  I think it’s more relatable and I’ve gotten positive feedback with respect to my unique telling of my postal visits,” he said.

While his post office trekking has taken him across the country, it has also helped him get to know Philadelphia better, by visiting 45 21 offices in the city’s neighborhoods.

“There were three post offices that I had to visit because I knew they were likely to close: the Adams Avenue, Girard Avenue, and Wissonoming stations.  Those were all discontinued April this year,” he said. “Two offices I’ve enjoyed a lot in Philadelphia are Spring Garden on North 7th Street and Southwark at 925 Dickinson. Both are historic buildings constructed during the 1930s as part of Roosevelt’s WPA program, and each features a great interior mural. This is how the government kept artists working during the Depression.”

Kalish lobbied the Postal Service to donate a unique sign from the Wissinoming office to the Post Mark Collectors Club museum in Bellevue Museum and adds that Manayunk’s is unique for featuring a street level parking garage beneath the post office.

I have never seen that before or since,” he said, but, of course, being in Philadelphia, it’s hard to top the B. Free Franklin Post Office in Old City that was the nation’s first.

“Overall, my favorite post office, at least in terms of architecture, is that of Greenville, PA.  Its sheer grandeur, combined with unique materials and fantastic architectural details, make it a true standout,” Kalish says. “It’s tough to pick a general favorite since I’m fortunate to have had great postal experiences all across the country.”

If nothing else, a hastily launched blog can speak to a moment in time.

This weekend, local street artist devotee Conrad Benner launched Nutterbook, which highlights the more memorable comments on Mayor Michael Nutter’s Facebook page. Simple enough that it might be confused with the inane, instead, Nutterbook is a fun way to follow a communication tool still in its infancy, said Benner, 26, who also runs StreetsDept.com, dubbed the ‘Huffington Post of Philly street art‘ and made famous for following a subway ‘yarn-bombing.’

Visit Nutterbook here.

“Mr. Nutter is, I believe, the first sitting [Philadelphia] mayor to have a Facebook page, and it’s fun to watch this new forum for democracy take its baby steps,” said Benner, who works as a social media manger for a local ad agency. “I’m sure this is not what the Mayor of Philadelphia’s Facebook page will look like in 15 years, if there even is still a Facebook.”

From non sequiturs like a professed Nutter family member leaving his phone number and asking for a call back to the outrageous and downright spammy, Benner, who says he has been commenting himself on Nutter’s Facebook page for months, says that while many of the less constructive comments appear to be the norm of higher-volume, potentially partisan web traffic, there might be a lesson for the mayor’s communications staff.

“I think it might be interesting for the mayor, or his people, to interact with some of these more serious commenters however,” said Benner, a Fishtown native who attended the Community College of Philadelphia for a few semesters before pursuing other interests. “Right now Mr. Nutter seems to be using the platform to broadcast news and information, but it would be interesting, and potentially very benificial for him, to interact with the commenters. They are, after all, citizens of Philadelphia and potential voters. Perhaps he should see this as a modern day public forum.”

After announcing a three-city expansion in September, Old City-based TheDrinkNation.com and its related mobile app have launched a slew of new features, including a pitch for event submissions, in an effort to grow a robust events listings calendar.

See a blog post from the nightlife news site here and the press release here.

Four NBC affiliates will partner with nonprofit news organizations in those markets, as the New York Times reports, in another initiative Comcast brass pledged to the FCC in the cable operator’s takeover of the storied entertainment brand.

Locally, NBC 10 will partner with WHYY, the region’s Old City based public media outfit.

In January, the planned project to bolster local news was first heralded as a noteworthy tradeoff for the consoidation of two large content and delivery companies. The model was due to follow an existing partnership in San Diego between voiceofsandiego.org and KNSD, which, as Poynter reported, “cooperate to produce regular fact-checking segments, explainers on public policy and other features.”

The details of the partnership between WHYY and NBC 10 have not been made fully clear.

In July, NBC 10 put out a request for proposals to partner with nonprofit news organizations in the region.

With the pressure of updating a daily news blog in addition to his regular column in the Philadelphia Inquirer, columnist Joseph N. DiStefano says that the biggest change over the last few years in the newspaper offices at 400 N. Broad is acceleration.

“It’s a lot easier to get a hold of key documents and get answers to a lot of basic questions online,” says DiStefano, who pens the Inky’s PhillyDeals column.

“But reporting is reporting. News is information that someone else wants to suppress.”

DiStefano has the gruff exterior one might expect of a veteran newspaper columnist who writes hard news about regional business.

“I used to tell CEOs that if you’re indicted, I will cheerfully write that story on page one. Not to celebrate indictment, but because we have the space there,” he says. “It’s an adversarial role.”

Since 2007, DiStefano’s distinct attitude has been on display in that column, which covers a broad range of business topics, including development and real estate, finance and Philadelphia’s technology community.

DiStefano, who grew up on the Main Line, has been in the reporting business since 1988, when he was looking for a steady line of work after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in economics and U.S. history.

He’s gone on to report finance at Bloomberg and in 2005, published Comcasted, about Comcast’s cable strategy, all while he and his wife were raising six kids.

After the jump, we ask to borrow DiStefano’s crib notes for business and technology reporting in Philadelphia.

Edited for length and clarity, as always.

How long have you been covering technology in Philly?

I joined the Inquirer in 1988 and I’m on my third shift. If you want to get a raise in a mature industry, leave. I went to Chicago, New York. I came back [to Philadelphia] in 2007 and started writing a daily business column and blog. I covered financial institutions for most of 10 years before that and covered tech investments on the side, including the boom and bust during the dot com years.

I’m not the only person that writes about tech at the Inquirer. I’m kind of the cavalry. The artillery is investigative, infantry is the day-to-day, covering the city. The technology scene, which is trying to make companies and careers in tech — now that it’s cheaper than the dot come era to get in the business — is just one part of my job covering business in Philadelphia.

Despite the blogosphere, getting a story in the Inquirer is still a big deal — share the experience with us on having that ability to really get someone’s name out there.

I probably get 500 emails a day, 20-30 phone calls, messages on LinkedIn and Twitter. I still get faxes.

A lot of these people are ready to talk, give substantial information about really interesting stories. [But I look for stories that have] an easy way to separate out what I can do with this information. If you’re trying to get us to tell your story so you can reach customers that are our readers, that’s something people advertise for. If you’re going to hire or lay off 100 people, that’s news.

Looking at the bigger picture, where/what is Philly’s tech ecosystem? What has changed?

You’ve got this whole history with legacy companies, collectively tens of thousands of people, some are growing, some are part of international systems. Then you’ve got small, really focused software companies. Bentley Systems for example. Invite Media. Indy Hall, the companies at the University City Science Center.

The [dot com] crash made it tougher for a lot of the old line companies. They’re growing again, adding clients. You have Comcast buying NBC—I don’t think we’ve yet seen the full impact of what that’s going to be. And then there’s the creative stuff, basically a lot more people not necessarily seeing their career as being completely corporate.

What do you know that would surprise people that have only been active in the Philadelphia technology community since 2008ish?

Every company you think is new is in someway is connected to an older company. So many people … have links to that older story.

What needs to change to make Philadelphia a stronger hub?

What people complain about, and not just in Philly, is that there are so many layers of government. Zoning, planning, nonprofits, promotional groups. Everyone is trying to get a piece of the action. In some respects, we have too much government, and some respects not enough.

Companies like Comcast, developers like Bart Blatstein, who have been here a long time and know how to navigate the system, they know who to go to, how to get what they need. But it’s not so friendly for a casual small business that may or may not be the business of tomorrow. The Nutter administration gets it, but there’s an awful lot of obstacles in the way. Too many people have a stake in the system staying the way it is.

In all your research, why is Comcast in Center City? Is there anything to learn to attract or retain others?

For years Comcast was in Bala Cynwyd, not primarily a Philly cable company. It was fairly late to this market.

What happened is that they made a promise that if they got Philly business, they would move their headquarters here. Ralph Roberts is originally from New York, but here, he doesn’t have to pay New York rents and he still has access to all the New York services that he wants. They are probably biggest employer in the city outside of hospitals and universities. The question is how far that’s going to go in bringing other companies here. Will they eventually be the center of a really thriving system?

Do you ever feel a pull to advocate for tech business in Philly, having covered it for so long and knowing the intricacies?

Clearly, what’s good for Philly is good for our company. The more people here, more active younger people, the more there is to write about and the more folks employed. But the job of a reporter, columnist, is not to advocate for one place over another, but to point out what’s going on, what’s important, how things work, how they break down, what’s successful and what isn’t. You’re describing reality. You’re giving the raw material so people can make decisions.

If we confuse describing what’s going on with defending or pushing our city or region over others, we risk not telling the truth, not giving the full story. I believe this is an attractive area for business. Every morning when I ride to work, I’m reminded why all the ethnic groups came here, to work here and to run businesses of their own. The advocacy we do is to tell the truth.

Thirteen months since being named publisher and CEO of the Philadelphia Media Network, Greg Osberg addressed the local Online News Association chapter Wednesday, updating the industry on the company’s direction.

The first half of that year was focused on stabilizing the core print products — the Inquirer and the Daily News — and the second half featured a flurry of technology-infused initiatives meant to begin reshaping the legacy news operation. Those latter initiatives largely fit under the Project Liberty umbrella, which include the much hyped Android tablet project and the incubation program.

The event, which was part of the local ONA’s monthly meetups and was held at the Inquirer building, featured a short speech and Q&A session with Osberg. [Full disclosure: This reporter is involved in the local ONA group.]

Some highlights from Osberg:

• Recent reports on the company’s tablet initiative have pointed to sales slower than Osberg’s original pledge that they would sell out “in the first week.” But Osberg says that comment was just a failed marketing ploy: “I was trying to create a scarcity in the market,” he said, adding that the company is “truly” pleased having sold half of the original 5,000. The company will have a Black Friday strategy for moving a good portion of the second half, he said.
• In an update of the incubation program, 35 companies applied and 10 are interviewing next week for a position,  he said. [Full disclosure: another Technically Philly staff member submitted a proposal that was not accepted.]
• Philly.com continues to see satisfactory traffic growth and the plan is to continue that, Osberg said, though metered reading and pay-walled content channels are still possibilities.
• “How long will newspapers be around? I hope I don’t offend any one here, but I say I don’t care. I care how long people will pay us to create content,” he said.
• Ten to 15 percent of Philly.com’s traffic comes from mobile devices. The company has three iPad apps and may continue to expand that.
• In stabilizing the print product, Inquirer daily subscriptions have stopped declining and there has been a slight uptick in Sunday subscribers in the year, Osberg said. The Daily News decline has also lessened, he added.
• Roughly 85 percent of the Inquirer was made of wire copy a year ago, Osberg said, noting that now at least four of five local section stories are staff written.

More photos of the event on Facebook here.

For those who gauge startup success by ‘traction,’ Mark Schoneveld says Poptent might be the region’s biggest web 2.0 success story.

Poptent, which hosts contests for brands for its community of video creators to make viral marketing videos, has continued to grow since launching in 2007, welcoming new users and bigger companies. It is hiring in Conshohocken, including engineers and social media savvy community leaders, and, adds Poptent Director of Community Schoneveld, the company has reached a positive cash flow, is now up to 40,000 registered users and is about to cross $3 million in creator payouts.

“What we started doing was totally experimental. Brands were getting used to crowd sourcing and giving up control,” said Schoneveld. “We’ve been at the forefront of crowdsourcing for years and now we’re taking it new places.”

The company takes a fee from big brands — like Southwest Airlines, Netflix, Anheuser Busch, Quiznos and others — and negotiates a rate for commercial video production, putting the bid out to its open community or specific members.

Last October, the 50-person company announced it had raised $6.8 million in venture funding, following a move to reincorporate in tax haven Delaware. Though holding a staff of 25 in their Conshohocken-based Spring Mill Corporate Center, Poptent lists its Orange County, Calif. office as its headquarters and the home of CEO Andy Jedynak. But the company is looking more international, having a handful of employees in Sao Paulo, Brazil and working on plans to expand again with European offices in 2012, said Schoneveld.

Part of that growth is coming from Shoneveld’s community role, developing, attracting and retaining the best video production and creative talent.

So, while the company made its start in lower paying gigs that came with a higher risk because more competition was having at them, the company is supplementing those open assignments with match-making.

“The new wave of crowd sourcing companies is more about talent discovery than just cheap production,” Schoneveld said. “If you curate that community, the talent rises to the top quickly.”

Schoneveld, a 1999 alumnus of Penn State, has been active in Philadelphia’s web and music scene for years. He’s been working with Poptent since June 2007, when he was doing freelance video work and running popular video podcast Illadates. He’s now on the board of directors for Weathervane and writes on a handful of local blogs, including YVYNYL.

In recent months, the most dependable, most creative, strongest talent from their community have been invited to apply for higher paying, less risky opportunities. It’s a move that works especially well for more discreet partners who are, for example, releasing new products. Other times, businesses want production work from specific markets, Schoneveld added.

“Cool things are coming from this little company in Conshohocken,” he said at an event in September.

Last week, G-Town Radio, the upstart Germantown-based Internet radio station run by music and radio enthusiast Jim Bear announced that it’s picking up steam.

According to a news update announcing a $5,000 funding drive, in 2011, the organization was granted 501(c)(3) nonprofit status (hence, the drive), it launched its documentary project Sounds of Germantown and its looking to hire a full-time worker in 2012.

The organization also expanded programming and partnerships:

Every single candidate for City Council’s 8th district came in for interviews and we partnered with WHYY’s Newsworks to present and broadcast a debate between all seven democratic candidates. Our live programming also increased to twenty-two shows each week covering a broad array of topics from under exposed music to personal finance to social justice.

We’ve published a number of stories about the organization, but two profiles stand out: one published in May 2009, and a follow-on profile published a year later.

To donate, follow the instructions here.

The local outpost of the Occupy movement, the wide-ranging, peaceful uprising turned tent city, has made fine use of the social web for connecting groups around the world. Most viscerally though, the weeks-long demonstration is captured by a sea of people and their signs — messages inscribed for a soundless moment.

Michael Bixler is seeking to bring those local moments back to the web, by way of his straight forward Tumblr 99 Faces, 99 Signs.

The Point Breeze freelance writer, photographer and videographer was motivated to capture Occupy Philly after he and his girlfriend visited the Wall Street demonstrations on their seventh day.

Now it’s gone much further than he had planned.

Michael Bixler

“On the first day of Occupy Philly I decided I really should find an angle that furthered the story on a more individual, human level. Something niche, that stands on it’s own and a bit more personal than a slew of action photos or videos of divergent political rants,” said Bixler, originally from South Carolina. “Something clicked and I ended up spending seven hours at City Hall taking 250 photos, 99 street portraits of which became the basis for 99 Faces, 99 Signs.”

He first posted just 99 pictures but decided that, as the demonstrations moved on, so should he. Now, the tent count is pushing 300 and he’s had more than 150 people and their signs, he said.

“I’m very sympathetic to the movement, despite my, albeit loose, adherence to the non-partial, non-political ‘journalism code’ I’m theoretically bound to, even if this is just a hobby. I feel like my personal politics don’t interfere very much with simply taking a picture of someone and their protest sign,” he said. “Yet, I maintain that Occupy is, at it’s core, a very nonpartisan movement and therefore I am relinquished from any judgement or journalistic guilt for participating.

Bixler came to Philadelphia from Asheville, N.C. almost a decade ago, “for more opportunity,” having grown tired of the politics and economy there. He had been visiting Philadelphia since being in middle school.

The photos come from Bixler’s visits to the Occupy Philly tent city, two or three times a week for a few hours. He follows their marches and finds himself talking to participants and, of course, scanning the crowd for clever or poignant signs.

“I don’t really have a stopping point now that I decided to keep it going,” he said. “I think it’s important for people to see the vast diversity of ages, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds populating the movement up close.”