Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. Follow along with the Startup Roundup’s dedicated RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

Radnor’s Guideworks, a joint venture of Comcast and TV Guide, which maintains Comcast’s interactive programming grid—likely one of your daily-used UIs—has applied for a patent that will display “substitute media” when you fast forward through an advertisement. That’s right folks; your Comcast ad-skipping days will soon be coming to a close.

Viddler has opened its HTML5 beta, timed with some hot press from USA Today to boot. Like our coverage of Fishtown design shop WellFed last week, Viddler’s another local company effected by Steve Job’s anti-Adobe-ism, if that was a word.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Duck Duck Go founder Gabe Weinberg announced on his blog Monday that the startup search engine would begin accepting a small 85 pixel sponsor banner on the right sidebar. Should be pretty lucrative; the site served 1,182,204 results last month, Weinberg says.

Startup Leaders has posted more than a dozen video interviews with attendees of the 2010 Entrepreneurs Expo.

Philadelphia Business Journal covers Plymouth Meeting’s MultiFunding, a platform that helps small businesses find lenders. According to the publication, the software will also provide consolidated debt services in a new product release.

GIVE A GLANCE

Conshohocken-based VCopious, which creates virtual environments for companies behind a firewall, has appointed Kenyon Hayward as its Chief Executive Officer. Hayward was formerly with Center City’s RedLasso. Hayward left the streaming video company as it changed direction, facing copyright litigation.

Philly collaborative tool WizeHive—which lets folks track all those pesky potential employees, admissions and contest entries—launched an iPhone app Monday.

as we reported.

announced last week, raising approximately $2.47 million for general capital and to manufacture products.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here.

Updated: Clarified Osage Ventures partnerships.

Welcome to the VC Round-up, where we’ll parse through venture capital news related to Philadelphia-based private equity firms and the companies they fund. Subscribe to the roundup as an email newsletter. If you have any VC-related news to pass along to us, please drop us a line.

DEFINITE READS

PBJ reports that this year’s DreamIt Ventures class of 15 is its largest yet, thanks to a partnership with Brooklyn-based Startl. Five of the fifteen were from the New York fund. Last year Dreamit had 11 companies. Our buddy Peter Key also writes that Steve Barsh will be leaving the incubator to focus on Packlate.com. In a recent interview with Technically Philly, Barsh said he plans on “dedicating ten percent” to the incubator.

Diapers.com is having a hell of a month. The company just finished raising its Series E (!) round to help speed along its already-breakneck growth. The company, originally backed by MentorTech Ventures, is the largest online provider of baby care items in the country. The company has also recently received press in Forbes, TechCrunch and the Financial Times. Fellas, you can now add Technically Philly to your list. You’re welcome.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

CityBizlist has unearthed a Form D filing for Radnor-based QR Pharma that indicates the company is on its way to raising $2 million. While BFTP was not included in the latest round it need grant the company  its initial $500,000 investment last year. BFTP often only grants money if it can be matched with other investors.

Duke University has partnered with several VC firms to help improve the returns on its tech spinoffs. Included in the firms is Bala Cynwyd-based Osage Partners. Osage has also partnered with Penn.

Ever the Form D snoops, CityBizlist has also found that NuPathe has received an additional $10 million in funds. The company is backed by local firms such as BFTP, Safeguard Scientifics and SR One. Safeguard and Quaker were included in the latest round.

MentorTech Ventures is part of the $500,000 raised by Soft Tissue. The Connecticut-based company is working on regenerating ACL tissue in the human knee.

GIVE A GLANCE

NewSpring Ventures has invested in the Series B round of Xos, a sports media company based in Orlando. The investment amount was not disclosed.

Speaking of Dreamit, Mike Levinson is set to do a chat on Philly.com tomorrow. We love the Pulitzer Prize-winning Daily News with all of our hearts, but can we get a link in that tweet?

BFTP northeast has allocated roughly $400,000.

LLR Partners has named Jack Gavin as an operational partner. We love this move, but mostly because he is a Temple grad.

The VC Roundup will deliver Philadelphia private equity news hot and fresh every Tuesday morning.

Welcome to the VC Round-up, where we’ll parse through venture capital news related to Philadelphia-based private equity firms and the companies they fund. Subscribe to the roundup as an email newsletter. If you have any VC-related news to pass along to us, please drop us a line.

Programming note: We skipped last week due to some technical troubles.

Update: looks like Franklin Park isn’t a straight VC fund.

DEFINITE READS

Ben Franklin Technology Partners is looking to award cash to clean energy companies that employ less than 500 people. The money comes from the federal government and companies must match the funds, which can be as high as $50,000. A notice of intent to apply must be filed by April 7th.

(see update, above) According to SEC filings, Bala Cynwyd-based Franklin Park Venture Fund has raised $50 million. We couldn’t find evidence of preexisting activity from these guys, so drop a comment a if you know anything.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

PBJ’s Peter Key has a wonderful roundup of tech startups who think now is a great time to start a technology company in the city, including two that didn’t make it into print.

BFTP portfolio company Y-Carbon has received nearly $150,000 million in federal stimulus money. The company develops nanotechnology for clean energy. Which satisfies the buzzword requirement of stimulus money.

GIVE A GLANCE
The Energy Collective has a review of the Mid-Atlantic Cleantech Investment Forum. Philly-based BlackGold Biofuels was among the presenters.

Safeguard Scientifics-backed Advantedge Healthcare, a company that offers billing technology to doctors, has acquired AHP Billing Services Inc. AHP offers billing services to medical specialists.

Wayne-based Novitas Capital joined in a $6.5 million Series C round for optical network provider Nistica. The company provides the optics for high-bandwidth applications. We totally could have used them last week when the site was down.

Thomas Balderston

According to Peter Key over at the Philadelphia Business Journal, Thomas M. Balderston has resigned his post as the Chief Executive of the Mid Atlantic Capital Alliance.

The MAC alliance is an affiliate of the city’s Chamber of Commerce that works to link up entrepreneurs and those with capital in our area. The group regularly hosts events for local business owners and investors.

Balderston made the move known at the group’s annual awards luncheon last Thursday, presumably making the move to focus on his own fund at King of Prussia-based Balderston Capital that he started in 2001.

The move is a big deal for the MAC Alliance, and is its first change in CEO since the group widened its coverage area. When Balderston took the helm of the then-named Greater Philadelphia Venture Group in 2006, he announced that he would be stretching the group’s reach from New York City (a.k.a. the 67th ward) to Washington D.C. Using his 20-plus years in the venture business he did just that, helping MAC Alliance expand to outside of city limits while continuing its march back to relevancy.

Balderston is still listed as CEO on MAC’s Web site. He also is still on the Board of Directors for Ben Franklin Technology Partners and is listed as a Principal investor in Rosemont Investment Partners.

Hat tip to the Phildelaphia Business Journal.

The Cherry Hill-based Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories has spent the last four years researching “brain-inspired computing” and is poised to make inroads in the science fiction-style technology, fueled by recent funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — which is credited for offering the initial funding for a little project that helped lead to the Internet.

Lockheed’s research falls into four general categories, Key reports:

1. brain-inspired attentional search — involves monitoring the electrical activity of a person’s brain and using human information retention tools to improve computer recognition
2. brain box research — involves teaching computers to learn by designing them to recognize when their previous tasks are applicable to new situations, reducing redundancy
3. sensor box research — involves programming computers to discount large amounts of information except the most necessary pieces, increasing speed and evaluation skills
4. attentional analysis — involves teaching computers to use orientation, color and motion to scan large amounts of multimedia to identify relevance

Much of this technology is said to be “security” orientated, which I hope frightens you as much as it does me.

And, below, dessert. No robots were hurt in the filming of this Messianic promotional video from Lockheed.

King of Prussia-based Guggenheim Ventures, the venture-capital arm of financial-services firm Guggenheim Partners, announced today it has sold Ciclon Semiconductor Device Corp. to Texas Instruments for an undisclosed total, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal.

Ciclon, which is based in Bethlehem, makes semiconductors that aim to allow computers to use less electricity. Texas Instruments is based in Dallas.

Photo courtesy of Qdev.de.