Shop Talk: NPower PA ITWorks graduates first class

Last November, the trains that normally shot South in regular intervals on the Broad Street Line were at a standstill.

But as SEPTA’s transit workers—at strike over wage and pension issues—were busy on the picket lines, nothing was going to stop Eric Harper, bound to a wheelchair, from making it to class. Harper, living in North Philadelphia, trekked more than 40 blocks to Drexel University.

Harper is one of ten students that graced the stage at Drexel’s Mitchell Auditorium Tuesday morning to receive his diploma for ITWorks, an Information Technology job-training program for disadvantaged young adults. Harper is a member of the first graduating ITWorks class, a program put together by NPower PA, a nonprofit that does IT work for other local nonprofits.

Through a collaboration with the United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, NPower helped identify a need for a cost-free training program to help young high school or equivalency graduates that were neither employed or seeking post-secondary education, whom were getting by on part-time work. It was as much an opportunity to to support the community and it was to support NPower’s partner organizations, who were seeking more hands in their IT departments.

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Biggest tech community stories we covered in 2009

Happy New Year, folks.

It’s been an exciting year for us. Though we’ll be celebrating our first birthday in February, we’ve had a chance to take part in Philadelphia’s vibrant technology community for 10 months. We’ve seen the amazing things that this community offered in 2009. Coming up on our 500th published story about this community, we’re proud to be a part of it. And we’re ecstatic to see what lie ahead.

No, Technically Philly has not started its own Mummer troupe. We do, however, want to ring in the new year by taking a look back at our top stories of 2009. Our month-by-month perspective, after the jump.

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Google Zeitgeist shows top Philadelphia search queries; colleges and SEPTA reign in ‘09

Let me Google that for you, Philadelphia.

The search giant has released its 2009 year-end Zeitgeist, a list of its users’ most popular search queries, a reflection of cultural phenomenon from Google’s rear-view. Studying aggregation of billions of searches, Google yearly tries to capture a “spirit of the times.”

This year, Philadelphia-specific searches were listed, in a city-by-city collection of queries.

We’re not sure what it is, but colleges—Penn, Temple and Community College of Philadelphia, specifically—were the most often searched, appearing eight times in a top ten list. It’s proof that yes, these kids certainly know how to Google, and they’re having a hard time remembering URLs for sites they visit often.

The SEPTA strike and the transportation authority’s Web site were the second and fourth most searched topics respectively, and given the short lifespan of the strike, it’s apparent that Google’s servers were hit hard and fast by the contract negotiations, as were commuters.

No mention of the Phillies, Free Library shut-downs or Arthur Kade, amazingly enough. Not even Comcast, with its expected merger with NBC Universal, was able to crack the top ten.

There’s always next year. Full list after the jump.

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SEPTA to launch Google Transit bus routes this week, more redesign details

After redesigning its Web site last week, SEPTA got back to Technically Philly with a laundry list of plans and details to answer our questions about the transit authority’s retooled Web strategy.

The company is well aware of the bugs that were the subject of complaints, says spokesmen Andrew Busch. Rather than stall the site internally, the company felt it could push out the new version as long as no features were missing.

On the call, SEPTA let us know some of its upcoming plans. With so many juicy details to share, allow us to present them in convenient bullet point format:

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SEPTA gets a new Web site

While SEPTA transit workers were on strike this month, it appears the organization’s Web team was hard at work.

As announced via a tweet yesterday afternoon, the transit authority has released a brand spankin’ new Web site.

The new digs highlight SEPTA’s (sorta) cutting-edge features, like RSS feeds, Twitter account and a real-time train ticker. The home page is noticeably cleaner and continues SEPTA’s push in branding each of their services with a distinct color.

As pointed out by Colin over at SEPTA Watch, there are a few bugs to be worked out such as an empty Regional Rail page. It’s likely that the transit organization wants to fix these bugs before releasing any formal press announcements. Calls for comments to SEPTA have yet to be returned.

After the jump we take a look at some highlights from the new design.

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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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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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Links: Alex Hillman and Kelly Lee spar, the Baltimore tech scene and More

DEFINITE READS

• The Inquirer jumps into the fray of criticism lobbed at Innovation Philadelphia and their Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit by Independents Hall co-working co-founder Alex Hillman, most notably through a lengthy post on his personal blog. Community response was less than enthused. Read our Q&A with Innovation Philadelphia head Kelly Lee.
• The Baltimore Sun’s tech blog has a guest post calling for advancements in their tech scene. Now, Philadelphia is bigger, more historic, cooler and totally owns Edgar Allan Poe’s legacy, but we’re way down with Charm City and totally dig that both of our towns get the short stick even though we’re the realest two in this urbanized eastern corridor we have here, so cheers to them. We hope to see their community grow just like ours has and continues to do. It ain’t Baltimore, my friends, it’s Balti-most.
• The Inquirer reports that Gov. Rendell announced an electric car manufacturer is looking at property along the Delaware River — get this — within city limits. But business columnist Joey DiStefano reports that state legislation that would make street legal the low-speed electric vehicles in question has stalled.

After the jump, a Ben Franklin expansion, Thrillist cats called coolest and eight more tech stories, including our best read piece of the week.

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Ten Philadelphia iPhone apps that don’t exist but should

The iPhone application news has to be getting a little tiresome, no?

Google says the mobile application collection is a fleeting concept. The iPhone store is completely flooded with more than 36,000 and few are making money or much worth the time.

Still, they keep coming. We reported that Comcast has its own new iPhone and iPod touch mobile app. Educational software company Blackboard and freakin’ Harry Potter have apps. Newspapers on occasion have them, but big ones like the Wall Street Journal and USA Today are trying to figure out how to charge.

Philly has many apps made by Philadelphians, like one about old Abe Lincoln and a righteous one for Philly concerts, but they are hardly comprehensive.

So why doesn’t Philadelphia, rife with culture and on the cusp (and perhaps in need of a bit) of a technology renaissance, have more of their own?

That profit problem, of course. Because, really, with rare exception no real money is being made, so it isn’t likely that a crush of Philadelphia-specific iPhone apps are going to be made anytime soon. But it sure is fun to indulge.

So, after the jump, find the 10 Philadelphia iPhone (or Windows mobile) apps  that should exist, but don’t and probably never will.

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SEPTA opens Google Transit data to third-party developers

SEPTA passengers and city programmers alike have reason to celebrate.

The region’s transportation organization announced today that it has integrated its trip planning services with Google Transit and that it will give third-party developers access to location and scheduling data, as reported earlier.

The first phase of SEPTA’s Google Transit offering provides route planning automated by Google for its Regional Rail, Market Frankford El, trolley routes and Norristown high-speed services. Users can enter a start point and a destination and are quickly returned directions that utilize Philadelphia’s public transportation system.

“Google Transit will help us introduce SEPTA and the convenience of using public transit when visiting our destinations in the city and the region,” SEPTA General Manager Joe Casey told members of the press on the Mezzanine level of SEPTA headquarters on East Market Street earlier today.

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