Profit and conscious with new South Philadelphia incubator

They’re going to incubate profitable good works.

That’s much the angle of GoodCompany Ventures, which opened its Philadelphia Naval Yard Business Center offices with a ribbon-cutting ceremony highlighted by appearances from Mayor Michael Nutter and Chuck Lacy, a former president of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, yesterday.

All the startups they take in will be for-profit and looking to make a difference or two.

Yesterday, the incubator was also welcoming its inaugural 2009 class of “social entrepreneurs,” including the following: Cyrus-XP, which focuses on advancing the management and delivery of healthcare; CalendarFly, a single source scheduling solution for families (for a test drive, use “student for username and password), and VolunteerBIG.com, a philanthropic social network that was gunning for grant money earlier this year.

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Albert Einstein uses real-time tracking system to save lives, cash

If the guy who said “what gets measured gets managed” stepped foot into Albert Einstein Medical Center he would have been a happy man.

The Logan-based hospital has been using a Real-Time Location System (RTLS) that monitors and measures the location of doctors, medical devices and patients since last September, according to RIFD Journal, but the North Broad Street fixture has just released their first round of related metrics.

What Twitter is to your friends’ eating habits, the RTLS is to medicine.

Each patient who comes through the hospital is given one of the 350 special ID cards that gets synced with the patient’s medical file. The devices act as a GPS of sorts, relaying the location of the wearer to receivers throughout the hospital which transmit the data over a local area network to a computer running special software. Hospital employees can pull up the building’s floor plan and see in real-time where patients and co-workers are and how long they have been there.

Doctors no longer have to go searching for equipment (and each other), while the time patients spend waiting around to be treated is being cut down.

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Technically Not Tech: Tech training and another chance at YouthBuild Philadelphia

YouthBuild Philadelphia Leads a green build at the National Mall in D.C. on March 17, 2009. YouthBuild also has technology courses.

She wasn’t going to pass.

Testing for an ICDL, a license noting she had mastered general computer functions, is the goal of the six-week technology class at the YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School, but sometimes there are too many challenges for some students to get there.

This young woman tried, but it sure seemed like she’d be one of the students who miss the mark. Female high school dropouts aren’t often thought as players in technology fields.

But then, she passed. And now, one year later, she’s at the Community College of Philadelphia, reaching even further.

Stephanie Virgo, a YouthBuild technology instructor who had those concerns about that student she liked, now sees that triumph as something of a lesson on how technology can challenge and motivate.

“We have students who have never used a computer before,” Virgo says. “It can be very empowering and help them pursue that post-secondary education. If you’re given a paper to write, that can be hard. If you’re given that paper and you don’t know how to use a computer, it’s a whole ‘nother challenge.”

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Boost Mobile opens first Philadelphia retail store

In photo, from left to right: Jack Huston, CEO of VIP Wireless; Aaron Horne, Philadelphia Inspector of Northwest Detectives; Mike Patterson, Philadelphia Eagles; Michael McCloskey, Philadelphia Chief of Police and Edward Williams, COO of VIP Wireless

Boost Mobile opened its first exclusive retail store in Philadelphia on Friday, with all the pageantry of city police middle management and Eagles defensive tackle Mike “PhatPat” Patterson.

The opening came a day after a deadline Boost imposed on itself to correct lingering problems with a delay in its text messaging delivery.

The delays were blamed on the company’s more than three quarters of a million new prepaid customers in the quarter, which beat analyst expectations, according to Sprint’s first quarter financial results.

Boost has led an advertising blitz on the city.

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North Philly YouTube stars unhappy with PW exposure

Makael Mclendon (left) and Kevin Simmons are The Skorpion Show

There’s a funny thing about this whole “new media” thing that journalists can’t stop talking about. Now, story subjects can answer back.

Such is the case with Joel Mathis’s profile of North Philly-based The Skorpion Show for the publication’s “Queer Issue.” The day after the article ran, Skorpian’s Keven Simmons shared his distaste with 9,000 of the show’s subscribers.

“Now I know how those reality stars feel … this will never happen again,” he said.

The Skorpion Show is a DIY talk show where Kevin Simmons and Makael Mclendon, better known as Skorpion and Makael, chat about everything from celebrities to relationship issues to music reviews. Each video typically features the hosts sitting side-by-side chatting into their Logitech webcam.

Each episode averages around 4,000 views, which when stretched over 185 videos, adds up. Two of the duo’s videos have broken the one-million viewer mark.

After the story was published, The Skorpion Show uploaded two videos pertaining to the PW story. Follow after the jump to hear their beef.
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