The artistic headquarters of AppRenaissance, at 309 Cherry Street in Old City Philadelphia, which new CEO Bob Moul describes as representative of mobile.

Bob Moul says his 50s are going to be his best decade yet.

Today, Moul, who led Berwyn-based Boomi to a Dell exit, announces he has become chairman and CEO of AppRenaissance, a year-old Old City mobile development shop. The 48-year-old, who left Boomi after transitioning the acquisition and diving into the local entrepreneurship scene on way to volunteering to lead Philly Startup Leaders, has major plans for what is now a five-person startup.

“The goal is to IPO or otherwise make a really big technology story here,” Moul told Technically Philly on Super Bowl Sunday. “I want to build a major, permanent software company in Philadelphia.”

Moul is proving to be a convenient poster child for a technology community seeking big name players in a city that is still shaking its post-industrial rust. At a Chamber of Commerce luncheon this afternoon, Mayor Nutter is due to speak about, among other successes in local technology, Moul and his interest in building business in Philadelphia proper.

Bob Moul

Though a suburban resident and frequent defender of regional connectivity, Moul says his whirlwind tour through the Philadelphia tech scene has made him realize the importance of building up a central hub.

“You can look at all the different industries that Philadelphia used to have and how that connected to what the region became,” said Moul. “This is a digital rebirth.”

With recent news of a possible First Round Capital move here, the on-going question continues of whether it’s truly in the cards for Philadelphia to build up a truly dense collection of technology businesses or if the broad region might continue to keep it too diffuse for a change in impact and perception.

“There’s a richer source of talent in the city [than suburbs], it’s a much more vibrant community to build a company. That is good for everyone in this region,” Moul said. “Maybe saying the reputation for technology here is blossoming is overstating it, but it’s sprouting or budding… and big stories help move that forward.”

Moul is joining AppRenaissance at an earlier stage than he joined Boomi by almost every measure. The company was already a half decade old with 18 employees when Moul joined Boomi in 2005. By contrast, AppRenaissance isn’t yet a toddler, with just five employees, though it also has a board that gives it roots in Silicon Valley and India.

Old City is an ideal location for his new venture, says Moul.

“Mobile is a hugely creative endeavor. Of all the different applications and platforms, mobile above all else is about the intersection of art and ingenuity and technology and science,” Moul said. “We want to run more of a studio than an app firm, and Old City has that artistic spirit.”

At the surface, AppRenaissance, which presented a 2011 Philadelphia Geek Award, may seem like a cookie cutter app shop that builds mobile tools and does related contract work. But, Moul says the differentiation can come in shared infrastructure, developing products for scale and, as he adds, “focusing on the hand-crafted nature that Philadelphia was once known for.”

Moul is joining Scott Wasserman, the company’s CTO and founder, and bringing a top notch growth resume. Before Boomi, Moul was president of education solutions powerhouse SCT leading to its own acquisition by SunGard in 2003. Prior to that, he spent nearly 20 years at EDS, including stints overseeing efforts in Hong Kong and Australia.

But, now, has Moul missed the window of getting in on the basement floor of the mobile scale that was among the buzz words of choice in 2011? He says it’s still the beginning of the movement.

“Even though mobile has been around for a while and we know it’s big, I think it’s early in how we’re going to see it penetrate in how we work and play,” Moul said. “There’s loads of talent around mobile here, so I feel like if we coalesce, we can build a major mobile software company that can impact the market and the region in a really big way.”

“The team at AppRenaissance wants me to take that journey.”

Updated 2/9/12: The MyHeartMap Challenge will run for six weeks beginning Jan 31 through March 13, 2012. Applications to participate in the challenge are now open to the public. The application was developed by GIS firm Azavea.

Automated external defibrillators are life-saving devices located in buildings and public spaces like fire extinguishers across the country. But no one really knows where they are in any broader way.

With the MyHeartMap Challenge, launching this week, a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania is hoping to crowdsource the location of every AED in Philadelphia and raise awareness about the tools, as Technically Philly previously reported.

Here’s how the challenge will work: interested participants should register at the MyHeartMap site and download the contest app to a smartphone. If you find an AED, take a picture of it. The app will geotag the photo for the Penn researchers who plan to use the information to create a database and comprehensive map of all the AED’s stashed throughout Philadelphia county.

There may be as many as 5,000 AEDs tucked into nooks and crannies around the city, reports the Inquirer. The winner — whoever finds the most — stands to collect $10,000, but smaller prizes will also be awarded.

According to Penn Medicine, you don’t need a medical degree to use one of the devices: “Used in conjunction with CPR, AEDs are an important part of the “chain of survival” needed to save cardiac arrest victims. Even people with no medical training can easily take those steps to help, since many AEDs provide audio instructions that talk users through the process of performing CPR.”

The Penn Researchers are starting the challenge in Philadelphia, but if the contest is successful, they have plans to make the contest and ultimately, their database, national.

From the release:

“Philadelphia is home to a vibrant medical community, some of the nation’s top institutions of higher education, and is a growing hub for new technology development. The MyHeartMap Challenge brings all those elements together to improve the health of our people,” said Donald F. Schwarz, MD, MPH, Health Commissioner and Deputy Mayor for Health and Opportunity for the City of Philadelphia. “The city has a rich tradition of innovation, and we have what it takes to lead the nation in this new form of lifesaving community engagement.”

To download the app and participate, visit the MyHeartMap Challenge website, follow them on Twitter, or visit the Facebook page.

To learn more about the Penn’s AED research check out the Penn Medicine News Release.

If you were a software engineer with Drakontas, the tactical, collaborative communications shop with offices in Glenside and Camden, you would be a licensed firearm owner. It’s part of the job — and they’re looking to hire someone else now.

When building tools for high-pressure units like SWAT teams, it’s of particular use for developers to know how the customer will be using each product, says Drakontas co-founder and COO James Sim.

“The software engineering team embeds with tactical teams for trials. We put on our pants and goggles and go out into the field,” he said. “Our people have been partnered with a sniper in the mud and freezing cold, getting shot at in simulations with flash bangs and tear gas. It’s a different kind of software engineering experience.”

Following military space research from Drexel University professors Moshe Kam and William Regli and other researchers, Drakontas was founded in 2004 by Sim and Regli’s brother and company CEO Brian.

With nine full time employees, the company is working to roll out in Q3 2012 the latest full version of its DragonForce team collaboration software, built for small tactical groups like SWAT or hazardous waste response or others in security, law enforcement or disaster management, said CTO Alan Kaplan.

Above, watch a video demo of a Drakontas-made social mobile app for collaboration.

A key enhancement of the next DragonForce version is its flexibility to create groups that can share some projects and hide others. Put in action, think of Drakontas customer the York County government. Police, fire and ambulance leaders could visit the web application via a shared VPN to create and share tools and information assets. During a large event (hurricane, snow storm or terrorist attack), team leaders could be coordinating escape routes or location planning on blueprints or maps, allowing all disaster teams to be directed smartly and in a coordinated effort. During smaller events, police units could keep their materials private from other agencies.

“This is one way to solve the interoperability problem that governments and their first responders so often have,” said Sim. “This is one software package that otherwise can function autonomously, but can be used to inter-operate across users.”

The company will also roll out two native applications, one for Windows Mobile — which Kaplan says tends to be used on devices popular with disaster management leaders because of their ruggedness and battery life — and later another for Android devices, though iOS apps may follow as iPhones and iPads reach the enterprise, he adds. Some large partnerships could be named next year as well, Kaplan said.

When asked about differentiation in the competitive security communications space, which is dominated by big players, Sim is firm: “We make it a point to know what the client needs to be able to do. This is a group of individuals that if they make a mistake, someone can get killed. Software doesn’t get much more serious than that.”

Pitching it as a pre-holiday house cleaning, nearly a dozen T-Mobile retail stores were completely remodeled, aiming to streamline sales and reduce customer wait times. Altogether, 20 stores are sporting a new look in the region, and some 400 nationwide.

Video above is of a Seattle-area store remodel.

Developer Reed Lauber presents NEXTSepta, his application using the SEPTA real time API. A dozen other projects were displayed at the showcase inside SEPTA headquarters to a roomful of transit agency officials.

Those in the open gov movement call it ‘evangelizing.’

By not letting technology be the end but the beginning and taking projects to decision makers to improve alternatives, the civic-minded technologist can make development easier for the next guy (or gal). Philadelphia has seen much more of that in the last year. Friday marked another installment.

More than a dozen local transit application developers held captive an audience of more than 40 SEPTA officials with a clear message: keep providing stable, real-time APIs and related data sources, and we’ll keep building cool, useful tools that the public will use.

The SEPTA developer showcase, organized by the transit agency emerging technologies lead Mike Zaleski, was a follow up to the October Apps for SEPTA hackathon, which Zaleski and SEPTA endorsed and was organized by Voxeo Labs hacker Mark Headd and the Devnuts crew. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly was a sponsor of the hackathon.]

After a morning tour of the SEPTA command center in Center City, developers were given a podium in a conference room and slowly, with Zaleski’s prodding, SEPTA officials of various backgrounds and roles came in to watch.

Events like these can help encourage SEPTA leadership to focus more on scalable, secure and reliable data and less on front-end tools, freeing up resources, Zaleski has said.

The set list:

• iTrans by Adam Ernst — A versatile, unreleased SEPTA iPhone app from a Brooklyn-based iOS developer.
• SEPTAlking by Mark Headd — A voice and instant message SEPTA schedule command tool. Github here. This was initially developed during the Apps for SEPTA hackathon.
• beta.SEPTA.mobi by Devnuts — The wide-ranging SEPTA web app built by a few coders from the Devnuts crew was demoed. See it here.
• NextSEPTA by Reed Lauber — A sleek subway, trolley and bus web app from the South Philly developer. See Technically Philly coverage of this project here.
• Travel board by Maurice Gaston and Justin Walgran — A dashboard of upcoming schedules for frequent trips. Development details here. The project won second place at the SEPTA hackathon. See video of their hackathon presentation here.
• Transitfone by Joseph Tricario — An app that tracks, stores and analyzes common SEPTA delays, built by an Azavea developer.
• Railbandit by Yuriy Yakimenko — With native apps for iPhone, Blackberry and Android (including free trials for the last two), this years-old tool, which Technically Philly covered in November 2009, features schedules for transit agencies beyond SEPTA, including NJ Transit, Boston, NYC and others.
• Transit Power by Frazell Thomas — A boldly designed Windows mobile app
• PhillyBus by Tim Wisniewski — Text message an intersection and a bus route line (i.e. Frankford and Berks #3) to 215-987-5416 and receive the nearest bus stop and upcoming bus times. This was another project from the SEPTA hackathon.
• Just Missed It by Lloyd Emelle — Tracks upcoming departures and integrates QR codes for line schedules. It debuted at the SEPTA hackathon — see video of that presentation here.
• Septority Report by Chris Alfano and Matt Monihan — Using the open-source technology behind Xbox Kinect, the Jarv.us pair built a tool that allows users to motion-sensor scroll through SEPTA schedules. Video of their presentation from last month’s SEPTA hacakthon here. Video of their presentation Friday below or here.

DiStefano says:

Search-engine giant Google is entering the hardware business with its biggest-ever acquisition, joining 20,000 workers at Motorola’s factories, to its current workforce of nearly 30,000. The Horsham business, Motorola Home, accounts for about a third of the company’s annual sales.

The 77th annual conference of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International will close at the Pennsylvania Convention Center tomorrow after four days sharing and selling the latest and greatest in law enforcement technologies.

Technically Philly caught up with Motorola representatives, who have been pitching the Philadelphia Police on an array of upgrades to its existing contract partnership, including the 4G broadband network for video surveillance the Motorola team demoed this spring. Philly cops are still evaluating those build outs with the city’s Division of Technology, confirmed Motorola spokesman Matthew Messinger.

In addition to the proposed private broadband network build out for video surveillance, which has been piloted in San Francisco, a Motorola representative showed off other high-end communication tools and toys being developed and deployed, including the following:

• LTE cloud-core solutions, debuted Monday, that would offer flexibility from smaller to larger agencies able to export all of its cloud communication or to host with limited Motorola support. A related network initiative that offers a partnership between the private Motorola public safety LTE network and the public Verizon Wireless 4G network, allowing for uninterrupted service is being trumpeted as a first of its kind.

• Also unveiled were the VML700 LTE vehicle modem and UM1000 LTE USB modem, both of which access the Band Class 14 700 MHz broadband spectrum allocated to public safety.

• Updated APX radios, featuring increased durability, clarity and connectivity and other related tools that track physiological team sensors and GPS-based location during fire or SWAT movements

Inside the convention hall expo across three halls, a variety of other telecommunications giants like Sprint were showing off their own law enforcement-focused innovations, electronic equipment giants like Harris were demoing detailed arrays of on-the-job tools and a smattering of startups and niche firms were talking on anything from GPS-driven robotics and secure temporary messaging devices.

Next year the APCO conference will be in Minneapolis. See the complete media kit from these initiatives here.

In March, one of the larger news stories in the wireless telecommunications industry was the announcement that AT&T would acquire T-Mobile for $39 billion.

What maybe went unnoticed behind the headlines was T-Mobile’s decision in January to begin regionalizing its business, moving management staff from Bellevue, Washington, where the company is headquartered, to specific regional management teams, much like how other wireless telecommunications companies operate, at least locally, where wireless competition is fierce.

AT&T and Verizon both have regional managers that oversee operations here in the Philadelphia region, as we’ve covered in Q&As of the past, like AT&T GM Dan Lafond and Verizon Wireless GM Mario Turco.

The new Greater-Philadelphia Tri-State Vice President and General Manager Martin Pisciotti will oversee upstate New York, Delaware, Southern New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. What it means for Philadelphia is that T-Mobile operations in the region, which include 850 employees and 700 retail partners, will see better oversight to help the organization run more efficient on a local level.

We spoke to Pisciotti, who swung by our offices last month, about the new position and what else it means for Philly.

Why did you decide that now is the right time to regionalize the company?

The company created a regional executive team in January. We got to a point where [working from Bellevue, Washington, where T-Mobile is headquartered] wasn’t the most efficient. It’s easier to find the right newspaper for marketing, or to locate a store in the right neighborhood with regionalization.

Or, let’s say we have a partner and one of our retail stores on the same street. It’s a channel conflict if they feel like they are competing. I can help them orient to our true competitor, and compete against an AT&T or a Sprint. It’s a smart step for us and we feel that its about time.

Was this something that came from the AT&T acquisition?

No, before that. It’s something we intended to do for a while. And until the FCC approves [the acquisition], day-to-day, my operations aren’t changing. AT&T is still a competitor.

What’s the local foot print look like?

We have 850 employees, most in our retail stores, and in customer care and engineering. We also have over 700 partners in national and individual retail [85% of which is located in the Philadelphia region].

How about infrastructure—how has the technology grown in the region for your customers?

Over the last 18 months, we’ve invested $81 million dollars in the region [70 percent is in the Greater Philadelphia area]. We continue to look at towers and speed.

And how are you guys involved on a local level in the community?

We’ve worked with City Year since 2006 to rehab after-school programs. And regionalization is another way to get involved, through sponsorships, outreach events, going beyond the retail presence. It’s an opportunity to connect.

How is T-Mobile continuing to compete in the local marketplace with value competitors like Cricket, Boost and MetroPCS?

Philadelphia is rabidly competitive. But that’s not limited to the value handset, prepaid, all-you-can eat rate play. You have to compete by segment. We rolled out monthly 4G, which used to be classified as prepaid. [At the heart], it’s an affordable way to have access to our network. A national wireless company like us has to step in on that level and compete with value plans, post-paid or pre-paid.

We’re also excited about new rate plans coming out: historically, when you buy a wireless contract, the handset price is subsidized. We’ll be offering less expensive plans with the option to buy the phone on your own.

Does every consumer understand what 4G is? Is it too technical for them?

What they do care about is whether or not they can make a call without congestion. In some cases, like video chat, they can do it and it works. We encourage folks to do a speed test. A year ago, were you able to stream Netflix, or get YouTube down? Today, you can do so much more than you could on a 3G connection. In some cases, people are seeing faster speeds on their device compared to at home.

What are your operational priorities? What do you leave this room to do

Some strategic things are set nationally: brand offerings and messaging, for example. Beyond that, the company has told us to run things as we see fit. We work in that structure. But, for example, our B2B director and our retail director, we want them to work together. We want [a small business] to come into a retail store and ask, ‘we have five employees, how can you help us?’ Six months ago, a retail store might not have been able to help. But with our different departments working together, we will have ways to make it work.

With this nifty map from MIT researchers, using anonymous AT&T data, a user can trace where most outgoing calls from mobile phone in a given county go.

In Philadelphia’s case, depicted above, or available by searching for it on the site, it’s very regional, with New England, Florida and Southern California showing up.

Also check out this regionally based map using cell phone data, showing a big divide between Philly and Pittsburgh.

H/T tweeted:

No, it’s not changing its name, or the philosophy — helping to connect the Mid-Atlantic region’s mobile community, here, in Philadelphia. Often, on Monday evenings. But the group is looking at broader partnerships to strengthen its foothold in Philadelphia and expand the region’s reach across the national mobile industry.

“There are a number of events where we’re tying into someone else’s event schedule. We’re leveraging the power of our team, the power of our network, and our mindshare, to help other events,” says Mobile Monday President and Chair Chuck Sacco.

On Wednesday, the group will embark on one of the first events formulated by this approach, and the last event of the season for the group, with wireless industry publication RCR Wireless and the Pennsylvania Wireless Association.

As opposed to Mobile Monday’s usual, “functionally-focused, specific vertical,” programming, the event, RCR Mobile Broadband Philadelphia: Applications & Infrastructure Conference, will focus on infrastructure and carriers.

“This is the hardware side of things, the guys that put up the towers, the bandwidth. It’s a critical part of the process,” Sacco says.

The all-day conference, being held at the Sheraton University City, will be broadcast live, free of cost, and is otherwise available for an affordable $25 admission fee. Folks in the operator/service provider business, or working with a “large enterprise or vertical market institution,” can apply to attend for free.

Mobile trends being covered, Sacco says, include WiFi’s place in the mobile ecosystem, enterprise mobility, mobile marketing and advertising, tablet use, and mobile video. All of which are topics that will help mobile companies on the content and on the infrastructure sides of the industry map out their businesses and growth potential.

Sacco’s got a stake in that. In his day job, he is Vice President of Movitas, the mobile hospitality business that acquired local startup PhindMe Mobile in 2008. The company is beginning to out grow its Bryn Mawr offices, Sacco says, as it refines its niche in the hospitality and events sectors.

Though the panels include industry leaders from around the country, the focus is on including thoughts and perspectives from local organizations and companies like Comcast Ventures, AT&T Wireless, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and more. Even with so much local representation, macro views of the industry are expected. “Their focus will be more on the national conversation then, ‘geez, it’s hard to get a good cell signal at a Phillies game,” he says.

Though this is Mobile Monday’s last event of the season, the group will continue its programming in September, including an event on mobile advertising in partnership with the Philly Ad Club. The group is also looking forward to announcements about how to grow interest in the mobile startup community in the region.

“We certainly want to find ways to tie together mobile startups, the university ecosystem and what we do,” he says.

As for partnerships, like the one developed for Wednesday’s event, Sacco says they’re helping to grow Philly’s reach, especially by leveraging existing ecosystems here, like the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.

“We can’t do this on our own, but we’re passionate about Philly being seen in its own way. We want to be seen as an area of innovation, but it will play out differently than Boston, D.C., certainly Silicon Valley.”