Friday Q&A: Keith McGinnis on Philadelphia Weekly’s free Happy Hour Guide app

No one is suggesting that iPhone applications are going to save legacy media. But the conversation so often turns to profitability on mobile platforms, that it may be a surprise there are so  few truly local products from Philadelphia media.

NBC10 and 6ABC have free apps developed with the help of their national parents. Shopiks offers Philly coupons, and there’s the popular Philadelphia Concert Hub.

A screenshot of the app's interface. Click to enlarge.

“The rest are tour guides, canned content, RSS readers of Philly feeds or some sort of national content that is supposed to relate to our area,” says Keith McGinnis, who recently left a role heading up IT for Review Publishing, whose flagship brand is Philadelphia Weekly.

In December, PW likely made the region’s strongest big media play into mobile by launching a McGinnis-led Philly Happy Hour Guide application for the iPhone and iPod touch. The application offers users the chance to search and find the best happy hour deals at specific locations, specific bars, specific neighborhoods or wherever is nearest. There are options for calling a cab, getting directions and tracking just what’s your favorite.

Last month, the app became free to use, after a paid trial version, and so now, McGinnis says, PW has an excellent opportunity to test the waters of localized mobile profitability, ahead of anyone else in Philadelphia (No particular provision is being made for the few hundred who paid $1 for the app, McGinnis says, “I figure you saved $1 on your first drink special.”)

McGinnis is now joining the staff of Northern Liberties Web development firm o3world, but the Happy Hour Guide is still close enough to his heart that he took the time to chat with Technically Philly about how the app plans on making money, how it got made and what it means for PW’s always active competition with crosstown rival CityPaper.

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Shop Talk: XIPWIRE mobile payment platform lets you text cash

Sharif Alexandre wants you to text more.

The founder of Fitler Square-based mobile payment platform XIPWIRE lets consumers send and receive money by SMS message. After registering for the service and linking a bank account, users can send a simple message which automatically pulls money from a virtual wallet or bank account.

“Xip $10 to Bill.” Bill’s got your dills.

The service works, Alexandre says, for inconvient circumstances when someone’s forgotten a wallet or has to divvy up a tab. “If you go out to lunch and have to split the check, you go to ATM, you don’t know how much you owe,” Alexandre says. “If everyone has a XIPWIRE account, you can literally xip them money.”

Currently in soft-launch, plans are for XIPWIRE to be available to consumers next week.

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More details on Motivas purchase of PhindMe

Word first leaked of Motivas Mobile purchasing Phindme Mobile when, as a Phindme spokeswoman puts it, “a Google crawler made its way through a Wordpress preview.”

It took five days for the deal between the two regional mobile technology companies to be finalized, announced and now celebrated.

“It’s about people and the chance to join forces with well-respected entrepreneurs and innovators who share a common vision,” Suzanne Harris of PhindMe told Technically Philly.

Details of the deal continue to become clear.

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TNT: The ballet wants you to take your phone out. No, really.

The Rat King from the Pennsylvania Ballet

Among the pantheon of social faux-paus in our society, having a cell phone make even a peep during a live theater performance is high on the list. However, for one show next week, the Philadelphia Cultural Alliance is encouraging patrons to bring their cell phones.

“And that’s the irony of the whole thing,” says Philadelphia Cultural Alliance spokesman John McInerney.

Thanks to a $50,000 grant from PNC Bank, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, an independent non-profit organization funded through grants and member dues, is launching its “Turn Your Cell Phone On!” campaign, a new effort to increase the interactivity of Philadelphia cultural events using mobile technology. The latest implementation of it is due this week with the Pennsylvania Ballet’s performance of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker. Audience members will be able to vote on their favorite characters and scenes using their cell phone.

“A lot of the times you go to a performance and right afterward you leave … but this is actually encouraging people to talk amongst themselves,” McInerney says. Though patrons will still be asked to keep their phone off during the performance, at intermission there will be flat screen TVs and staffers available to display the results and answer any questions, respectively.

The Alliance hopes that the slow implementation of more technology attracts a younger crowd to shows.

“We saw some great interaction where a grandchild was showing her grandmother how to text,” says McInerney.

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Friday Q&A: Clearwire Philadelphia General Manager Andrew Kupiec

You might be surprised to hear that Clearwire’s General Manager of Philadelphia Andrew Kupiec thinks the city’s mobile market isn’t crowded. It’s a big market, he says, and there’s plenty of room in the proverbial sandbox.

“Mobility and speed is our focus … We don’t need to unseat any of the incumbents, the major players in the market,” the Phoenixville resident—who grew up outside Bryn Mawr—said in a telephone interview with Technically Philly Tuesday.

Since we reported that Clear’s next-generation 4G mobile network had soft-launched in early October, the company has been on a major marketing push in Philadelphia. In recent weeks, you might have spotted branded buses and billboards or browsed across localized Internet ads with the company’s slick, green logo.

But it’s just as likely that you’ve walked past one of Comcast’s High-Speed 2Go 4G wireless demo kiosks that have been setup throughout the city. Sprint, too, quietly launched 4G service in late October.

The timing is no coincidence. Sprint and Comcast both have a financial stake in the Clearwire WiMAX network, and are utilizing the Philly rollout to offer their own next generation high-speed services. Yesterday, it was announced that Sprint will invest $1.176 billion in Clearwire, with Comcast promising an additional $176 million in a new round of funding. Google, an initial investor in the network, has chosen not to fund Clearwire in this round. Some analysts see Google’s decision as a loss off faith in WiMAX technology while next generation Long Term Evolution technology gains support from major network carriers.

If we ought not say Philly is crowded, then we can certainly say that residents have mobile broadband options, and more to come. We talked to Kupiec about the Clearwire roll-out, how it is differentiating itself from Sprint and Comcast, what the company is doing to address the digital divide and more, after the jump.

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TrainLogic updated significantly to v2.3, now called RailBandit

The RailBandit transit scheduling application appears in a mock-up on a BlackBerry phone.

RailBandit may look familiar.

Since we reported on the original iteration of the mobile train scheduling software in March—called TrainLogic before it changed its name—the Princeton-based team has been hard at work updating the application. RailBandit’s staff has doubled — to two — and they’ve added a bevy of features and support for more devices.

“We’ve added enhancements to the product that has made it take off,” Barry Engle, RailBandit’s new marketing co-founder tells Technically Philly. “We really want to grow this thing.”

RailBandit now features support for U.S. transit lines in more than a dozen cities, including Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Baltimore and San Francisco. Version 2.3 of the transit software dropped in September, with support for most BlackBerry, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG devices. Windows Mobile support is there with a little customization, if you gotta have it.

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TNT: “The Carrier” gives comics the iPhone treatment

A quick read of Ben Franklin’s bio will tell you that Philadelphia is home to many American firsts. Now you can add another: the first iPhone-exclusive comic.

According to the publisher, StopWatch Media, “The Carrier” is the first comic available only on the iPhone. That is, it was not also published in print or online. [iTunes link: paid, free]

“The Carrier” is a story about a man who awakes in Thailand to find a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist and must figure out the origins of the briefcase while he regains his memory.

“If you are a fan of the Borne movies, you’ll love it,” says writer Evan Young, who lives near South Street.

The story takes full advantage of all the features available in a programmable, GPS-enabled device. The story’s 35 chapters unfold in real-time. If chapter two takes place 45 minutes after chapter one, it will be available on your phone exactly 45 minutes after you view the last panel of chapter one.

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Clear 4G WiMAX mobile broadband network launches; AT&T completes subway network

A map illustrating Clear's WiMAX network coverage in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia mobile users have options and plenty of them.

Last week, Philadelphia saw the launch of fourth generation WiMAX mobile broadband network Clear and the completion of AT&T’s cellular network on two SEPTA subway lines.

Clearwire’s wireless 4G network launched quietly on Oct. 1, promising download speeds of up to 4Mbps and uploads of up to 500Kbps throughout the Philadelphia region.

The network’s in-home and mobile packages are priced competitively and could raise alarm for other networks in the area.

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Comcast Roundup: Uh, yeah, Comcast probably won’t buy Sprint and Time Warner, Diane Sawyer and More

Updated: 9/17/09 @ 6:24 p.m. about Delaware County upgrade

Every Thursday morning, find all the stories you need to know about your friendly telecommunications giant in the Comcast Roundup.

Note: Loyal fans of our Comcast Roundup — and our Web metrics show there are many of you — can now get an e-mail subscription of your Thursday morning update. That is, of course, just a specialty subscription, in addition to our full site e-mail subscription and its RSS feed. If there are any problems, questions or suggestions, please contact us or leave us a comment below. Thanks.

Let Comcast build up some reserve capital, add time and watch the speculation blossom. Ready for this?

The Inquirer’s Joey DiStefano reports on an analyst’s report that says Comcast should buy Time Warner Cable. A Barrons blogger then asks if that would ever happen — noting some doubts it could gain regulatory approval.

DSL Reports moves on from that right quick and wonders why Comcast doesn’t purchase Sprint instead. Silicon Alley Insider instead covers why T-Mobile wants to make the Sprint grab. Gigaom tries to give the final say by describing why they say Comcast should go after Sprint instead of T-Mobile.

The trouble is that much of the discussion isn’t based on anything more than how much fun it is to talk about multi-billion dollar, fantasized mega mergers.

After the jump, Comcast wants to make TV mobile, a Diane Sawyer spotting and six other Comcastic stories.

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Friday Q&A: Shawn Glisson of Boost Mobile

You already know the prepaid market is thick and crowded.

That’s particularly the case for Philadelphia, the largest market in the country that has opened the floodgates to no-contract, unlimited plans, as you can well guess by the advertisements from Metro PCS, Cricket Wireless and Boost Mobile that line SEPTA trains.

As Verizon and AT&T take hold of valued contracted customers, T-Mobile and Sprint Nextel, the parent of Boost, are fighting over lower-margin prepaid plans, so the fight is only spreading.

The competition has at times raged hotly, as even Shawn Glisson, a Boost PR spokesman can admit. But then, Glisson, who had a run with former legendary West Chester electronics and 1980s home computer innovator Commodore International, knows a thing or two about Philadelphia.

He’s now based in the Irvine, Calif. headquarters of Boost, now an arm of Sprint-Nextel, but after the jump, he handicaps the prepaid battle in Philly, tells us what’s next for the market and says something nice about Cricket.

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